LOS ANGELES, October 14,2007 -L.A. City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, supposedly a “liberal Democrat,” has suddenly shocked many of the city's famous Venice Beach counterculture, as a wave of gentrification is now set to come crashing down on what's left --of the historic heart of L.A.'s poor, and creative, freethinkers: A move to kick everybody living in a vehicle out of Venice Beach.
And this, in the midst of one of Southern California's biggest affordable housing shortages in history.
Responding, local Los Angeles activists, and artists, are starting to mobilize for a petition campaign; for what many are calling the biggest attack in L.A. by the “anti-hip” yet --by area real estate developers to literally destroy Venice Beach as a last bastion of free, colorful, antic, and creative people.
“For the City of LA to ban people in vehicles here --is just really going to wipe out Venice; all the poor artists, the poets, the writers, musicians, crafters, and all the youth; who've long come here to find peace, love, and freedom; flower children; like we did,” states Charity Luv, one local activist/artist who first came to the city in the seventies. More than half of those currently living in vehicles, in the area, are poor artists. A group known as the Venice Justice Committee is rallying against the ban. Full Story
Venice Gentrification H-Bomb --To Poor, Rainbows, Travelers and the Arts