Am pretty sensitive to the concerns of many in Boyle Heights regarding gentrification, particularly after our whole blown-up bike tour.
Still, can’t help but feel like chasing an opera company and a walking tour out of the neighborhood is conduct unbecoming of what appears to be an otherwise quite-thoughtful group of citizens.
I know the rhetoric around gentrification can be militant, with people using words like “class war”, “displacement”, “refugees”, etc. But this isn’t war; it’s politics.
The law (mostly, the Rent Stabilization Ordinance and Prop 13) slows gentrification to a very great extent. And, if people feel like the law is insufficiently tough, they ought to work to change it.
While we can and should disagree on the question of who has a right to live in any particular place, can’t we all agree that all citizens have the right to use public spaces, so long as they are behaving lawfully?