The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - The Sellout | 2. Gentrification is Warfare

Episode Date: October 26, 2021

A militant organization called Defend Boyle Heights protests encroaching gentrification, by any means necessary. We dig into two origin stories: how Huizar emigrated at the age of 4 and ended up at Berkeley and Princeton, and how Boyle Heights has had a history of resistance and displacement. A Neon Hum Media and Sony Music Entertainment production. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, I want to tell you a story, all right?

A couple years ago, I was with my friend on my way home, and we were driving through Bow Heights. We tried to cut across the small street to avoid traffic, but then we saw the street was blocked off by a group of people, so we parked and got out. I walked up and I saw this crowd forming a semi-circle in front of this art gallery. This building looked totally out of place on the street. It's boxy and bright white,

and it's got these little mini cacti growing out front. And that part of the neighborhood is super industrial. The street is cracked with potholes. But this art gallery looks like something you'd see in Santa Monica, which is the richer part of L.A. that's right by the beach. Anyways, that night, a group of working class folks are outside this fancy gallery. They have a bullhorn, and they're confronting the gallery owners and customers. Sometimes it feels like a neighborhood changes around you before anyone has a chance to speak up.

But not in Bull Heights. No one is an innocent actor in the fine art of gentrification. This is actually Nancy Mesa again, the organizer from this neighborhood, speaking at this protest. She's saying no one is an innocent actor in the fine art of gentrification. I didn't know her at the time. I didn't even realize she'd spoken at this protest until we found this video. But when I watched it, I got chills.

Other people were stepping up to speak too, sharing how gentrification was directly affecting them and how the gallery owners and patrons were complicit. I remember there was a young father there talking about how he couldn't afford to buy food for his kids and pay rent. There was another woman talking about how she was struggling to afford groceries. It's not easy to admit you can't afford to live where you're from anymore. I thought it was really moving, but it didn't seem like the patrons or the gallery owner did. A few people whispered to each other as they passed by, calling the protest performance art. Nancy Mesa called them out.

This is not performance. This is our neighborhood. This is our reality. This is our survival. You said, oh my God, but I've worked so hard for my gallery. We've worked so hard for our community. And right now, your white privilege is showing. We are smart motherfucking people

in here. And we are angry. And we have all the skills and knowledge to fucking bring down this gallery. Okay? We're not going anywhere. And once... If y'all want to listen to the community, respect us. This isn't a spectacle. This is our reality. And your gallery coming here is part of a larger vision of gentrification.

So no one is an innocent actor. Yeah. No one is an innocent actor in the same art of gentrification. So, Nancy's an organizer in Bull Heights. Fast talker who's brilliant and incisive and would often apologize for some reason after making an especially mind-blowing point. I don't know who's going to edit this. I'm sorry. I apologize in advance. She came to our Zoom interview wearing a t-shirt, black shirt, white lettering that said, gentrification is warfare. It's literal war against poor people. It's literal war against working class people, against immigrants.

Okay, so remember Hollenbeck Park? There's a reason Nancy wanted to tell that story. And it really was kind of like, I like to tell everyone, it really was kind of like the birth story of Defend Bull Heights. In the months after the Hollenbeck Park showdown, tensions over gentrification in Boyle Heights reached a boiling point. Organizers started taking militant targeted stands against any sign of gentrification in the neighborhood. A coalition formed between a bunch of different neighborhood groups and Defend Boyle Heights was born. A group known as Defend Boyle Heights. Defend Boyle Heights. Local activists and community groups are protesting the gentrification. Carrying signs saying keep Beverly Hills out of Boyle Heights and gentrification is violence.

The end result is a racist process of displacement. Folks in Boyle Heights have had enough. There are economic consequences to your presence, so you need to get the out of here. Stories that are popping up in the news. A real estate bike tour of Boyle Heights promising artisanal treats is cancelled after an uproar from the community. A hip new cafe's front window is shattered by a slingshot. The militancy of Defend Bull Heights was controversial, even within the neighborhood. Some people thought it went too far, that it wasn't the right way to protest gentrification.

But Nancy and other organizers had a very specific plan, and they followed it. They zeroed in on one thing in particular, art. Specifically, white art. Like that mobile opera hopscotch, or any of the dozen of galleries that were suddenly popping up in the neighborhood. Here's Nancy again. When Nicodeme Gallery was tagged by a local hero, we don't know who they are, but we support their actions. Where, you know, Fuck White Art was tagged on the front. And that actually resulted in the gallery owners working with LAPD. So they, you know, they reported it as a hate crime. And Defendable Heights, I think to this day, is being investigated as a hate group because of that action. The organizers saw the specter of white art creeping across the river from the

rapidly gentrifying arts district, and they shut it down. I would say like it is no coincidence that Bull Heights has led one of the biggest fights against gentrification, right? It really is kind of in the air. Resistance is in the air. And we kind of have this legacy to maintain in the hood, right, of like a place that is extremely political. And that in the air. And we kind of have this legacy to maintain in the hood, right, of like a place that is extremely political and that takes a stand. So this was 2016, a year before Arturo gets that letter on his door telling him his rent was gonna almost double. At this point, a lot of people in Bull Heights still trusted Huizar. They felt like he was a politician who wouldn't let them get displaced.

But Nancy was skeptical, even then. So we had homies, you know, friends who were displaced from Echo Park specifically, and Highland Park specifically, just tell us with such urgency, like, hey, y'all, like these gentrifiers, these politicians, they're going to make it seem like, you know, things are going to benefit you, like they're on your side, but they're basically just trying to do anything they can to just buy the property and kick you out. One of the biggest regrets we have here in our neighborhood is that we didn't fight back strong enough, early enough. But what we're able to get from them is just like the analysis of how fast this thing happened. So when we saw a brewery, it's like, whoa, okay, we need to stop it now. The movement against gentrification in Boyle Heights was born from years of folks having to stand up for themselves and take care of one another.

We're a very politicized community. We come from struggle and resistance, and it's not just a metaphor. Boyle Heights, East LA, Southeast LA, they've got this long history of resistance and activism. Wissad knew that. He grew up steeped in it. But ultimately, Wissad sided with the gallery owners. He came out publicly against Defend Boil Heights. And behind closed doors,

he was already siding with developers too. People just didn't know that yet. From Neon Hum Media and LA Taco, this is Smokescreen, the sellout. A podcast about a politician dogged by allegations of corruption, harassment, and pathological pettiness. It's about the residents who fought gentrification even as the neighborhoods were auctioned off to the highest bidder. I'm Mara Castaneda. This time, we're going to dig into two origin stories, Jose Huizar and the neighborhood that raised him.

Episode 2, Gentrification is Warfare. Let's start at the beginning. I'm just our local neighborhood historian. So this is Shmuel Gonzalez. Shmuel is the founder of the Bull Heights History Studios and Tours. He's an encyclopedia of knowledge about Bull Heights and he's so passionate about it. Sometimes he shimmies his shoulders when he's talking about some specific piece of the neighborhood's history. My family has been members of this community for six generations, and moving into this neighborhood in 1896. And so my family's always been storytellers of the area.

So, Boyle Heights is one of LA's oldest neighborhoods outside downtown. And it actually started out as this kind of ritzy white neighborhood in the early 1900s. But then, over the years, it changes. First, it's a working-class Jewish community. And then, like in cities all over the United States in the early 20th century, redlining and housing segregation pushes all people of color out into the margins, like Boyle Heights. People who are not white Anglo-Saxon Protestant are designated to basically two places.

South of Adams, creating South Central Los Angeles, and east of the Los Angeles River, creating East Los Angeles as we know it. In this community, we had at one time over 132 languages spoken within this community because everyone who did not fit into the average white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, you know, kind of norm was just kind of designated that you could only rent, buy and reside in these areas. The Boyle Heights story is one of immigrant story generationally to this day.

A lot of Mexican workers who had industrial jobs in Vernon end up moving into the residential neighborhood right on the other side of the tracks, Boyle Heights. And so they have, from the very beginning, the Mexican families that are working class and live in the southern parts of Boyle Heights have always been directly affected by some of the pollution that's been going on. So Boyle Heights diversifies, and Schmoll says that's what made it into this kind of incubator for political resistance movements. A lot of organizing happened there, organizing that went on to become famous and influential. Come on up brothers, we are waiting for you.

You're earning more money today because the workers here were not on time. The 11th strike was the spark that had set off a movement among farm workers to organize and to bargain. Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, who also were presidents of this organization, right here, just a couple doors down from me. So it's very interesting that, believe it or not, the very foundations of things like United Farm Workers, which is considered still the gold standard of organizing for working class people in the field was started out of, you know, this community service organization, which is like the Mexican NAACP,

and of course funded by the Jewish community. So the history of Bull Heights is resistance. But Schmoll says it's also displacement, like a lot of working class Black and brown neighborhoods in Los Angeles. So all of our families have the stories of generationally being displaced. My own family homestead, okay, from way back in the day and everything, it was demolished to make way for the 5 Freeway. If you live in Bull Heights, you literally can't live more than a mile and a half from a freeway.

East Los Angeles is carved up by them, sectioned off like pieces of a puzzle. There are four different freeways forming a kind of square around Bull Heights. When they were built back in the 50s and 60s, they were built straight through people's homes, like Schmoll's family. Then the next family house was lost to the 60 freeway. So what happens is that my story growing up, and you would only imagine living here in the east side, when I first had to go to like downtown another place, when we would go pass through here right before we would get to the Sixth Street Bridge, what happens is that right after we get over coming back, my mom would point to the

area where our neighborhood used to be and she would point to it and say, that's where grandma's house used to be, that's where our house used to be, and just we're jettisoned into a freeway. So fast forward to the early 70s. More than 20,000 Chicano anti-war activists marched the East LA in a mass protest, the Chicano moratorium. Watergate is happening. The Lakers won a big championship.

And little four-year-old Jose Huizar moves from Zacatecas to Boyle Heights. His father is a braceros. He works in the fields. And his mother is a meat packing plant worker. Here's a speech Huizar gave at Princeton, one of his alma maters. I moved from Mexico, or I should say my parents brought me from Mexico, in the early 1970s and we settled in Boyle Heights. My father actually came to America as a migrant farm worker under the

bracero program. A federal program started in World War II to import temporary contract labor from Mexico. My father decided he wanted to stay, so when he had the opportunity, he did. He wanted the American dream. The work I do, I try not to forget what it meant to struggle. And here he's talking about growing up in Bull Heights in the 70s and 80s. It's from an interview with We Sad posted online. I try not to forget what it meant not having much money for basic life necessities, for education. I try not to forget how easy it was to join gangs when I was growing up, how easy it was to get into a life of crime,

how easy it would have been to get involved in things that would have had a negative, long-lasting effect on our lives. There's this thing you can't help thinking about when you learn about young Wissad, before he became a public figure. When did Wissad become the kind of person who could do what he did? Was it all an act? Was he ever genuine? And if he was, when did he stop? So Huizar ends up going to a Catholic school in the neighborhood, Bishop Mora Salesian High School. Salesian is known for being a good school. On its website, they say their mission is love with abundance, teach with passion,

and inspire with imagination. And Wissad does well at Salesian. He seems well-liked. Other kids mention him in the memory section of their senior yearbook dedication. There's a very 80s picture of him, a red bow tie, tuxedo, full head of hair. In a section where they all write something about their time at the school, Huizar says, I, Jose Huizar, leave Salesian realizing that I've spent the last four years here thanking the teachers who pushed me when I needed it.

Thanks, mom, for being there. He's on the school newspaper and student government, which seems like a bit of a conflict of interest. But you know, high school. And to thank you for allowing me to mentor you as a Salesian. This is from a speech one of the Salesian priests gave about Weesad, a couple years after he was first elected to city council. Warning, he's as stern as you might expect. And for all the times that, yes, I brought you your favorite meal from Jack in the Box.

Well, this isn't Jack in the Box tonight. This is something better. Enjoy yourself. Wisad graduates, and he goes to UC Berkeley for undergrad, which is a great school. And he does well there, too. He's in student government. He's acting just like you might expect an ambitious kid from Bull Heights to act. Driven, progressive, outspoken. One article from the Daily Californian, Berkeley's student newspaper, has Ouissad saying, quote,

the government knows that students are the springboard for any social movement. There are stories about Ouissad opposing development at People's Park, which is the focal point of Berkeley's student movement in the 60s. He's opposing tuition increases. He's calling out Berkeley faculty for being too white and too male. He seems to be fighting for progressive causes. And it seems like he really believes in them. The newspaper's endorsement of Wissad calls him a, quote, strong, relentless advocate.

We think Jose Huizar will remain true to his convictions. Huizar ends up going to Princeton for grad school, which for an immigrant kid from Boyle Heights just felt like a huge deal. It's very inspiring, especially coming from the neighborhood. This is Raquel Zamora, who's lived in Boyle Heights since she was a kid. She's an educator whose family owns this iconic taqueria called Zamora Brothers. It's so, so hard to overcome so many barriers and make it to college. And so his story of his educational journey was

very inspiring. I just was like, wow, someone from the neighborhood was able to attend all these amazing schools. After Princeton, Wissad just keeps rising. He goes to UCLA for law school, where he meets his wife, Rochelle Rios. Wisad marries Rochelle in 1999. Two years later, Wisad is elected to the Los Angeles Unified School Board. Here's Raquel again. While he was on the school board, it was just like all these ribbon cuttings, like I said, for new schools and new developments. And I think that that's what set him up very well for a council seat because he had done such a good job in the school board.

So spoiler, Wisad is about to run for city council. After the break, he steps into a long and storied history of politicians who do some questionable things while they're representing CD14. I used to live in Weezard's district, and I have seen that district change so much, even just over the course of the last 10 years. This is Scott Frazier.

Scott's kind of like an encyclopedia for LA politics, past and present. When you ask him a question, you can almost hear the Rolodex flipping in his head as he tracks down the exact right piece of information. He's the co-host of LA Podcast, this really popular show about Los Angeles politics. CD14 has had, yes, I would say that is right. It has had an above average share of council members leaving under, you know, clouds or suspicion of wrongdoing. Okay, first on our list, Richard Aladore. Elected in 1985, He's this well-respected guy, a former state assemblyman. But some personal issues come up while he's in office. I'm just gonna read you an LA Times headline from September

1998. Judge says test shows Electora is using cocaine. It's a whole thing. Electora ends up going to rehab. So Alatorre is out, doesn't run for a final term. And that's when Nick Pacheco gets elected. Here's Pacheco. I don't want to say anything negative about Richard Torre today, but at the time, because he was distracted with the issues in his life, the district fell apart. And so my first priority was to get the district back in order. OK, there are a couple scandals that come up while Pacheco's in office.

I'm just going to tell you about one. So Antonio Villaraigosa was this very charismatic politician who lived in CD14, Pacheco's district. Villaraigosa had run for mayor, lost, and it seemed like he might be eyeing Pacheco's seat. And then the strange thing happened. The boundaries of city council districts were redrawn, and all of a sudden, Villaraigosa said he found out that he didn't live in CD14. Most of his neighborhood was still in the district, but not the block he lived on. By the way, you have to live in a district to run to represent it.

For the record, Pacheco said this was a coincidence. For some reason, he kept telling people that I did that, I didn't do that, district riders did that. And so he got a lot of sympathy for that. But if Pacheco was worried about Villaraigosa running to take a seat, he'd be right. That's exactly what happened. Villaraigosa moved into CD14 and ran. Scott Frazier again.

Pacheco lost to Antonio Villaraigosa moved into CD14 and ran. Scott Frazier again. Pacheco lost to Antonio Villaraigosa, who was just a political force in the early 2000s. And then, just two years into his term, Villaraigosa did what a lot of people suspected he would. And Villaraigosa didn't finish his term because he ended up getting swept into the mayor's office shortly thereafter. So CD14 is once again up for grabs. Pacheco's like, I want my seat back. But there's a young new hotshot who's also running. We sad. Here's Pacheco.

So he made himself available. You know, school board president, very, you know, viable candidate. So that's what ended up getting him into the race. Now, when we're walking that day door to door to get votes on the day of election, the primary election, I bumped into Jose in the projects in the Stroud Courts. And we were talking briefly, you know, because we're both working. And we both for sure thought we're going to be a runoff. But no, man, he kicked my butt.

Bissad wins. And again, it feels huge. It feels like CD14 is finally going to be represented by someone who really cares about its residents. Someone they can trust. Like it's finally going to emerge from decades of questionable local politicians. City Councilman Jose Huizar's supporters were dancing in their seats as the early election return numbers were rolling in. The councilman arrived at his election night party in a high school gymnasium,

sharing what appears to be his victory tonight in the city council race. To be given the opportunity, growing up here in Boyle Heights, to now be able to serve in city council, that's what drives council. That's what drives me. That's what motivates me. When he ran for office, he actually had a lot of community support, right? The narrative that was being spent around him was kind of as this like our new Latino

savior, right? I was so happy to hear that we were getting our first Mexican city council member. And I thought that was huge. It's still 10 years before the birth of Defend Bull Heights when everything started blowing up. When the fight over the future of Bull Heights became this real concrete battle happening in the streets of the neighborhood. But by the time the fight came to the streets,

some developers had actually been eyeing Bull Heights for a decade or more. They were looking at one historic apartment complex in particular, home to thousands of residents in Boyle Heights, Wyvernwood. Boyle Heights will be made or Boyle Heights will be broken on the fate of Wyvernwood, I believe. That's next time on The Sellout. The Sellout is produced by Neon Hub Media and LA Taco. I'm your host, Mariah Castaneda. My co-reporters are Alexis Olivier-Ray and Carla Green.

Carla Green is our lead producer, and she wrote the episodes. Our editor is Catherine St. Louis. Vikram Patel is our consulting editor. Associate editor is Stephanie Serrano. Associate producer is Liz Sanchez. Our executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch. Samantha Allison is our production manager.

Fact checker is Sarah Ivry. Our sound designer is Hans Dale Sue. Eduardo Arenas made our theme music. Other original music by Moni Mendoza. Special thanks to Erika Lindo, Javier Cabral, Tanner Robbins, Haley Fager, Natalie Wren, Adrian Riskin, Shara Morris, Navani Otero, Janet Villafana, Vanessa and Jorge Castaneda, and Ivan Fernandez. If you want to know more about what you've heard on the show so far,

head over to lataco.com to see a beautiful map of some of the places we talked about made by Tommy Gallegos, as well as new reporting and interviews. Thanks for listening. See you next week.