Recall Echo Parque gang injunction supporters saying it was unrelated to real estate prices? http://t.co/kDjsRUFbX7 pic.twitter.com/5lbzMseOw3
— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) July 7, 2014
Showing posts with label gentrification. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gentrification. Show all posts
Monday, July 07, 2014
Recall Echo Parque gang injunction supporters saying it was unrelated to real estate prices?
Friday, April 11, 2014
Vote STAY for 90026 Echo Park GEPENC this Saturday!
Vote for Kwazi Nkrumah
for President, Greater Echo Park/Elysian
Neighborhood Council (GEPENC)
Saturday, April 12, 2014
for President, Greater Echo Park/Elysian
Neighborhood Council (GEPENC)
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Kwazi Nkrumah: Long-time Echo Park resident and life-long community activist and Human Rights advocate.
Founder of the Martin Luther King Coalition of Greater Los Angeles; former Chair of KPFK Community Advisory Board;
2-time Board Member of GEPENC, he has served as Budget Rep to the City,
Regional Liaison to other Neighborhood Councils and currently chairs our Parks, Public Works and Environmental Concerns Committee.
Kwazi has worked to fight mortgage foreclosures, extend protection for renters, and is a strong proponent of human rights for the homeless.
Kwazi opposes the destructive impact of both the re-opening of the Scott Avenue gate and the Barlow Plan on Elysian Park and our community.
He is working for more balanced development that limits economic displacement and preserves the historic multi-cultural character of Echo Park.
Vote for Kwazi Nkrumah for President of GEPENC!
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Edendale Branch Library, 2011 Sunset Blvd., 10am-4pm
TO VOTE YOU MUST BRING TWO FORMS OF DOCUMENTATION.
CITIZENSHIP IS NOT REQUIRED!!!
(Go to echoparknc.org for more info.)
Founder of the Martin Luther King Coalition of Greater Los Angeles; former Chair of KPFK Community Advisory Board;
2-time Board Member of GEPENC, he has served as Budget Rep to the City,
Regional Liaison to other Neighborhood Councils and currently chairs our Parks, Public Works and Environmental Concerns Committee.
Kwazi has worked to fight mortgage foreclosures, extend protection for renters, and is a strong proponent of human rights for the homeless.
Kwazi opposes the destructive impact of both the re-opening of the Scott Avenue gate and the Barlow Plan on Elysian Park and our community.
He is working for more balanced development that limits economic displacement and preserves the historic multi-cultural character of Echo Park.
Vote for Kwazi Nkrumah for President of GEPENC!
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Edendale Branch Library, 2011 Sunset Blvd., 10am-4pm
TO VOTE YOU MUST BRING TWO FORMS OF DOCUMENTATION.
CITIZENSHIP IS NOT REQUIRED!!!
(Go to echoparknc.org for more info.)
Monday, March 24, 2014
Echo Park STAY's GEPENC voter guide and appeal for support
Currently, Standing Together Advocating for our Youth (STAY) is being kept alive and afloat with the help of YJC & Stop LAPD Spying and approximately 10 people from Echo Park. All of us are are volunteering endless hours for justice to our communities. BUT we cannot do this alone! Please, come support us at least for the Campaign elections for the Neighborhood Council April 12. Every single one of us are volunteering our time, energy, resources and money to get the STAY voice in our neighborhood council. NO ONE gets paid, we do this for love and passion of our communities. Please, if you can just come and vote that would be great. If you receive this email, we will be adding your name to a list that will allow you to vote even if you don't live here, because you have volunteer many hours! Please please vote for us!!
VOTE APRIL 12 EDENDALE LIBRARY 2011 SUNSET. VOTE FOR YOUR DISTRICT REPRESENATIVES AND KWAZI AS PRESIDENT! HERE IS THE LIST OF PEOPLE UNDER STAY AND THOSE WE SUPPORT!
- PRESIDENT: KWAZI
- DISTRICT 1: VERONICA ARELLANO & BILLY MAVROPOULOS
- DISTRICT 2: CHERYL ORTEGA
- DISTRICT 3: RIO CONTRERAS AND GORDON LAKE
- DISTRICT 4: PAULA GUADRON, OSCAR TORRES AND TAD YANIWINE
- DISTRICT 5: CHENTE VINCENT RODRIGUEZ, CAROLINA JIMENEZ, JENNIFER VALENTE, LUIZA PADILLA-MAVROPOULOS.
** FOR THOSE VOTING YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A REGISTERED VOTER, NOT A CITIZEN, AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO LIVE HERE. ANY PICTURE ID IS ENOUGH AND A DOCUMENT SHOWING YOUR RESIDENCE OR A LETTER FROM STAY. PLEASE CONTACT US SO WE CAN PROVIDE THIS FOR YOU, SINCE YOU ARE A STAKEHOLDER IN OUR COMMUNITY AND WE WANT YOU TO VOTE!! http://empowerla.org/gepenc/greater-echo-park-elysian-nc-2014-elections/
Standing Together Advocating for our Youth (STAY) website
Standing Together Advocating for our Youth (STAY) facebook
Saturday, January 04, 2014
Gentrification...is not a natural process...it grows out of...institutional arrangements and deliberate actions
"Gentrification...is not a natural process...it grows out of...institutional arrangements and deliberate actions" http://t.co/s2iR1TjvWH
— ken montenegro (@kmontenegro) December 25, 2013The Ins and the Outs: The Gentrification of Franklin Avenue
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Just got great news that the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council voted not to support the racist gang injunction and seeks community based alternatives!
Just got great news that the @GEPENC_Official voted not to support the racist gang injunction and seeks community based alternatives! #90026
— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) August 28, 2013
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Ethnic Cleansing Illustrated: The Echo Parque Gang Injunction. Join the resistance!
Ethnic Cleansing Illustrated: The Echo Parque Gang Injunction. Join the resistance! http://t.co/XoLXq3Ft1Y pic.twitter.com/eAhm27E1A6
— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) July 25, 2013
Ethnic Cleansing Illustrated: The Echo Parque Gang Injunction
The rapid gentrification of Echo Parque and its surrounds just can’t happen fast enough for development firms like Van Daele Homes and others waiting to profit from the Glendale Boulevard Corridor Project. Standing in their way are low income households with children—predominantly families of color and indigenous peoples.
On the right is an overlay of the proposed gang injunction over the area income map. Neighborhoods that poor families of color have lived in for decades, and in some cases generations, are targeted. This damning visual evidence confirms the project as being what can only be termed ethnic cleansing. Both the former and current Los Angeles City Attorneys received donations from developers with stakes in the Glendale Boulevard Corridor.
Join the the resistance: http://j.mp/12njtiv
“Gentrification is Genocide!” — 2008 Graffiti on the Patras’ parking lot wall
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
In Anticipation of the Lake Reopening
Posted on Echo Park-Silver Lake Patch on May 18, 2013
Photos by Robert D. Skeels,
The June 15, 2013 reopening of the park can't come soon enough after the seemingly endless rehabilitation.
My long fondness and fascination with our intriguing body of water goes back decades. On the weekends during the mid nineteen eighties and early nineties I used to ride my VFR to Lago de Echo Parque to escape the city just north of Los Angeles proper. The soothing sound of Spanish speakers, the city skyline, the ubiquitous waterfowl, and the lotus beds were all important sources of solace.
When I was finally able to move to Echo Park in 1994, I was overjoyed that the lake was only a few minutes away. The park was a nearly daily destination, including weekend basketball pickup games on the other side of Bellevue. In those years I began teaching Catechism at St. Teresa's, became fully immersed in the immigrant rights movement, and started researching and writing about the privatization of our public school system.
The lotus beds in full bloom were always harbingers of summer. Attendance at each day of the Lotus Festival was a given. A cultural celebration, the festivals reflected the diversity of the community. In fact, I took Yoon Jung to the 2005 Festival for our first date. We married 2008, and bought our house in Historic Filipinotown right before they drained the lake.
A lot has changed in the past twenty years, and as a transplant myself, it's not my place to remind lifelong residents of those changes. However, the hardest thing for me witness was the slow death of the lotus beds. It felt like the community was loosing one more thing that gave it its unique character. I remember commenting on a LA Times article discussing the issue. Bitter over the rapid changes in the neighborhood that included the park being overrun by fixie bikes and impromptu skinny-jean croquet matches, I wrote something to the effect that the lotus were dying off in direct proportion to the gentrification.
The years without the lotus beds were depressing. While there was some confort in the announcement that the rehabilitation would restore the aquatic plants, the lengthy time frame was daunting. Finally the lake will be returned to the community for all of us to enjoy — even fixie bike riders.
Yoon Jung and I still live within walking distance of the parque, albeit a bit longer walk than before. We can't wait for the reopening, and in anticipation are posting a few old photos.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Corporations have even found a way to co-opt words like urban "gentrification"
Corporations have even found a way to co-opt words like urban "gentrification" to deflect attention from what they do twitter.com/rdsathene/stat…
— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) May 14, 2013
Saturday, August 27, 2011
The unnamed corporate ed-reform "uber-hipster" has a name, Mike McGalliard
"I'm not going to accuse you and John Holcomb of white savior syndrome per se, but I will go on record as saying that your ideas and actions, no matter how well intentioned, are the epitome of what Freire called 'the false generosity of paternalism.'" — Robert D. Skeels
Dr. Ravitch recently spoke about being in a "Twitter debate with someone," and I immediately identified having been in an ongoing one myself with an unlikely opponent — Mike McGalliard of LA's Promise (née MLA Partners). Seems he took exception to my comments on the Los Angeles Times regarding his corporately backed project and wrote a blog post saying as much. I wrote a response on Schools Matter entitled Open note to LA's Promise former CEO Mike McGalliard regarding what he terms my pithiness. We spent about a week going back and forth on Twitter. He went as far as to accuse me of being a defender of the chimerical "status quo," to which I sent him here, and me calling him out on having arch-charlatan Tom Vander Ark on his board. McGalliard, a guy who doesn't seem to mind being called an uber-hipster, was described to me by an ex-employee of a local corporate reform 501C3 as a "child of privilege."
For the most part I can't speak to peoples intentions, and perhaps the wealthy white McGalliard really has good intentions. That said, he says:
I am going to write my own assessment of the Los Angeles Times piece, which will in a round-about way defend the corporate reformers. I say that because these business types don't have a clue, and now that their own scores aren't improving like they claimed they would, they are in a quandary. The truth is that standardized testing, charter school accelerated segregation, and our plutocratic overlords telling us that the purpose of education "college preparation" or "career readiness," are all parts of the malady that McGalliard and his ilk buy into and propagate.
Once we accept the true purpose of education, as put forth by Freire, we can begin looking to real solutions to education ills. Rather than a bevy of idiotic business buzzwords that are part of the problem, including blended, distance, disruptive, and innovative, we can look for solution oriented phrases like desegregation, fighting poverty, equal resources, and liberation. I gave McGalliard the last word on Twitter. Ironically he misapplied a Freire quote in response to me telling him to read Freire. I suppose his class affiliation doesn't allow him to see what he is doing, and we all know how Freire stood on neoliberalism and corporatization.
Ultimately, we don't need education reform, we need economics reform. When we address that, everything else will fall into place.
Dr. Ravitch recently spoke about being in a "Twitter debate with someone," and I immediately identified having been in an ongoing one myself with an unlikely opponent — Mike McGalliard of LA's Promise (née MLA Partners). Seems he took exception to my comments on the Los Angeles Times regarding his corporately backed project and wrote a blog post saying as much. I wrote a response on Schools Matter entitled Open note to LA's Promise former CEO Mike McGalliard regarding what he terms my pithiness. We spent about a week going back and forth on Twitter. He went as far as to accuse me of being a defender of the chimerical "status quo," to which I sent him here, and me calling him out on having arch-charlatan Tom Vander Ark on his board. McGalliard, a guy who doesn't seem to mind being called an uber-hipster, was described to me by an ex-employee of a local corporate reform 501C3 as a "child of privilege."
For the most part I can't speak to peoples intentions, and perhaps the wealthy white McGalliard really has good intentions. That said, he says:
Even if Howard's narrow assessment of CST data is a fair view of school performance, and even if his dubious collection of comparable schools is a legit comparison, what's there to celebrate? Our best reforms are failing and teensy adjustments to the status quo is all we can hope for at LAUSD?
I am going to write my own assessment of the Los Angeles Times piece, which will in a round-about way defend the corporate reformers. I say that because these business types don't have a clue, and now that their own scores aren't improving like they claimed they would, they are in a quandary. The truth is that standardized testing, charter school accelerated segregation, and our plutocratic overlords telling us that the purpose of education "college preparation" or "career readiness," are all parts of the malady that McGalliard and his ilk buy into and propagate.
Once we accept the true purpose of education, as put forth by Freire, we can begin looking to real solutions to education ills. Rather than a bevy of idiotic business buzzwords that are part of the problem, including blended, distance, disruptive, and innovative, we can look for solution oriented phrases like desegregation, fighting poverty, equal resources, and liberation. I gave McGalliard the last word on Twitter. Ironically he misapplied a Freire quote in response to me telling him to read Freire. I suppose his class affiliation doesn't allow him to see what he is doing, and we all know how Freire stood on neoliberalism and corporatization.
Ultimately, we don't need education reform, we need economics reform. When we address that, everything else will fall into place.
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Stop the Criminalization of our Communities
Stop the Criminalization of our Communities
Come to the next “Public Safety Walk” and Call for an End to the Safer Cities Initiative
WEDNESDAY, August 3rd at 5:30pm
As most of you know, last summer the City Attorney launched an aggressive assault against organizers and activists who were actively engaged in protest and dissent against human rights violations against immigrants, young people, homeless and very poor people, low-income tenants, transit riders, and other oppressed people in Los Angeles and beyond.
Because of this and other continuing criminalization efforts against our communities, organizations convened/re-convened under the umbrella of the Coalition against State Violence to develop a broad response and provide solidarity support for individual organization or community issues.
Out of these discussions, one of our first joint campaigns was to protest the City Attorney and business community’s supposed “public safety walk” in the Skid Row community – and demand that it end and be replaced with resident-led community safety efforts. The public safety walk is comprised of business representatives, especially the Central City East Association, elected officials such as the City Attorney and Councilmember Perry, and some large missions including Midnight and Union Rescue. Long-time, low income and homeless residents believe that the leaders of the Walk come into Skid Row pointing the finger at them for the community’s problems and using these problems to justify the ongoing criminalization under the Safer Cities Initiative. The Walk happens on the first Wednesday of every month at 6:00 pm – so the next one is this week!
Besides specifically opposing the format and composition of this public safety walk, we have made three basic demands to the elected leaders who participate:
- End the Safer Cities Initiative in Skid Row
- Stop all Unjust Criminalization of our Communities
- Ensure our Rights to Dissent
While our protest and engagement with Walk participants has led to a decrease in participation, leaders have refused to stop this monthly event and instead are now being accompanied by even more LAPD officers than usual. Last month, LAPD told organizers we did not have a right to protest this Walk or to even chant on a public sidewalk. They arrested Pete White of LA CAN and threatened arrest of everyone else. We cannot allow our First Amendment rights to be summarily shut down. We cannot allow LAPD and the City Attorney to so blatantly prioritize the business community’s right to engage in this Walk and simultaneously violate low-income residents, organizers and supporters’ right to dissent.
LA CAN, Dream Team L.A., Critical Resistance, Youth Justice Coalition, Labor Community Strategy Center, IDEPSCA, ¡Comunidad Presente!, International Socialist Organization and other human rights activists urge you to support next week’s protest, to get involved with the emerging Coalition Against State Violence, or – at a minimum – to contact us to get updated and find ways to support our ongoing work.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: The Safer Cities Initiative in LA’s Skid Row community has criminalized homelessness and poverty at a level never before experienced in the United States. When Mayor Villaraigosa launched the Safer Cities Initiative (SCI) in September 2006, Los Angeles’ Skid Row became home to the largest concentration of standing police forces in the country. In a community with a population of approximately 12,000 – 15,000 residents, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) made over 19,000 arrests and issued roughly 24,000 citations in the Initiative’s first two years. In 2007, a UCLA study found that the number of citations issued in the first year of SCI came at a rate up to 69 times higher than those found in other parts of a city already notorious for intense police activity. Additionally the study found that the cost of the 50-officer SCI task force focused on 50 square blocks ($6 million) exceeded the amount LA officials spent on homeless services in the entire 469 square miles of the City ($5.7 million).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
