https://themilitant.com/2018/10/06/anti-gentrification-fight-is-pretext-for-attack-on-art-culture-that-workers-need/
‘Anti-gentrification fight’ is pretext for attack on art, culture that
workers need
By Laura Garza
Vol. 82/No. 38
October 15, 2018
Work by South African artist Simphiwe Ndzube at Nicodim Gallery in 2017
in Boyle Heights in Los Angeles. So-called anti-gentrifiers have
race-baited and threatened gallery owners, claiming their “white art”
covers for big real estate interests seeking to raise rents. Some
galleries have closed in face of thuggery. Nicodim has vowed to stay. “I
welcome more art to the area,” said Socialist Workers Party member and
Boyle Heights resident Ellie Garcia. Work by South African artist
Simphiwe Ndzube at Nicodim Gallery in 2017 in Boyle Heights in Los
Angeles. So-called anti-gentrifiers have race-baited and threatened
gallery owners, claiming their “white art” covers for big real estate
interests seeking to raise rents. Some galleries have closed in face of
thuggery. Nicodim has vowed to stay. “I welcome more art to the area,”
said Socialist Workers Party member and Boyle Heights resident Ellie
Garcia.
LOS ANGELES — Claiming to be fighting against “gentrification” in Boyle
Heights, a predominantly Latino neighborhood here, small groups of
middle-class leftists and anarchists have gone on a campaign to
physically attack art galleries, as well as threaten and race-bait
artists, gallery owners and others.
Their demand “for all art galleries in Boyle Heights to leave
immediately” and their thuggery are not just a mockery of a fight to
defend workers who are Latino. They are obstacles to the working class
as a whole, which needs art, culture and freedom of speech to advance on
the road to taking power out of the hands of the capitalist class.
Pushed out by high rents in downtown Los Angeles, gallery owners started
looking at spaces at empty warehouses in an industrial section of Boyle
Heights in 2012. The first anti-gallery protest took place in the fall
of 2015, as more galleries were moving in.
Groups like Defend Boyle Heights, Boyle Heights Alliance Against
Artwashing and Displacement, Unión de Vecinos and others have escalated
their provocative actions over the last few years, claiming that the
galleries are cover for big real estate interests coming into the
neighborhood to jack up rents and force out low-income workers and
immigrants. The Alliance Against Artwashing has vowed to “stop at
nothing to fight gentrification and capitalism in its boring art-washing
manifestations” and described one gallery owner as bearing the “stench
of entitlement and white privilege.”
“Most art is wack [rubbish],” proclaimed Defend Boyle Heights.
Harassing artists and galleries
The self-proclaimed “anti-gallery activists” have painted “f— white art”
on the front of Nicodim Gallery. They have thrown detergent on people
and food at gallery events and threatened people online.
Demonstration against Weird Wave Coffee shop. Leaflet says, “White wave.
Get out, sellouts.”
Ted Soqui
Demonstration against Weird Wave Coffee shop. Leaflet says, “White wave.
Get out, sellouts.”
In an April blog, Defend Boyle Heights proudly boasts of a “mob of
protesters” chasing gallery owner Laura Owens from the steps of the
Whitney Museum and of causing Owen and others connected to the galleries
to have “panic attacks, and recurring nightmares of masked mofos
[motherf—ers] throwing Molotov cocktails at your buildings and cars.”
About half the galleries have moved out since the harassment began.
Rising rents built into capitalism
Workers being priced out of longtime working-class neighborhoods as
rents skyrocket is a permanent feature of capitalism. Real estate sharks
are always on the lookout for neighborhoods where they can buy up
properties and raise the rents and their profits.
In Los Angeles County inflation-adjusted median rent rose 32 percent
from 2000 to 2015, while workers’ median income dropped by 3 percent or
more. It’s tough in Los Angeles for workers to find someplace nice to
live, even if you work more than one job.
This reality has plagued the working class since the rise of capitalism.
In The Housing Question, Frederick Engels notes that each landlord,
faced with competition, is driven to “ruthlessly making as much out of
his property in house rent as he possibly can. In such a society the
housing shortage is no accident; it is a necessary institution and can
be abolished … only if the whole social order from which it springs is
fundamentally refashioned.”
Attacking art is reactionary
The claim that this process can somehow be stopped if art galleries and
coffee shops are kept out of working-class neighborhoods is not only
ridiculous, it’s dangerous to working people and reactionary.
The anti-gallery people admit they don’t do anything to take on the
landlords and builders. They say it’s a tactical decision.
“We have to put our focus where we think we can win,” Rigo Amavizca, who
was involved with Defend Boyle Heights, told the Los Angeles Times.
Working people and the labor movement need to fight for higher wages and
for a massive government-funded public works program to build decent
housing. A movement that raises concrete demands to advance this course
would win support and allies, including from artists and others. But the
white-baiting and thuggish anti-art groups don’t raise a single demand
in that direction.
“I support your right to be here and I think the working class should
oppose targeting someone because they are ‘white,’” the author of this
article, Laura Garza, Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of
California, told gallery owner Mihai Nicodim, during a recent visit to
his gallery. Nicodim, an immigrant from Romania, specializes in
showcasing art from eastern Europe. Nicodim said he had no plans to
leave and did not think the protesters represented the majority of
residents in the area.
Socialist Workers Party member and railroad worker Ellie Garcia joined
me at the gallery. “As a longtime resident of Boyle Heights, I welcome
more art to the area,” she said.
Nicodim told us that one protest took place outside the gallery at a
time when he had works by “a South African artist but they [the
protesters] had no idea what was inside” or who the artist was.
Several coffee shops have also been targeted, including Weird Wave
Coffee. Protesters passed out flyers calling it “White wave
gentrifiers.” The windows of the shop have been broken several times,
most recently in early September.
Garcia visited the Weird Wave shop during one of the “protests.” Like
others who ignored them to go in to buy coffee, she argued with some of
the anti-gentrifiers, who were saying whites aren’t welcome. “My
co-workers are Black, Caucasian and Latino and we have to stick together
to fight the bosses, not each other,” Garcia said.
“Art is one of the ways in which man finds his bearings in the world; in
this sense the heritage of art is not distinguished from the heritage of
science and technique,” Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote in Art
and Revolution. Art is necessary, he adds, “for the building of the new
society, for communism needs people with highly developed minds.”
The race-baiting and thuggery aimed at artists and art galleries are a
danger to the advancement of the working class.
Laura Garza is the Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of
California.
In This Issue
Front Page Articles •North Carolina workers confront social disaster
•US, Russian rulers, Tehran and Tel Aviv vie in Mideast
•‘Working class needs to build a labor party’
•Join SWP door-to-door campaign to boost ‘Militant,’ books, party fund!
•Help fight Florida prison officials’ ongoing censorship of ‘Militant’
•Trump pushes US rulers’ interests vs. rivals at UN General Assembly
Feature Articles •Presumption of innocence is crucial right for working
class
Also In This Issue •NY: Cuba president calls for end to US gov’t embargo
•‘Anti-gentrification fight’ is pretext for attack on art, culture that
workers need
•Argentina: ‘Abortion must be legal, in the hospital!’
On the Picket Line •Uber drivers protest low pay, as bosses pit them vs.
taxi drivers
•Tomato cannery strike leaders win jobs back
Books of the Month •How Cuban workers and farmers took power in 1959
25, 50 and 75 years ago
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