Los Angeles: Development, Inequality, and Resistance Themes
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Contradictions in LA's development
Dreams vs. displacement, innovation vs. inequality.
Factors shaping LA's construction
It's shaped by the intersection of geography, infrastructure, capital, labor, race, and power.
Key question about LA's development
Who builds the city and who benefits from it?
Nature of growth in LA
Growth often comes through exclusion and exploitation.
Original inhabitants of Los Angeles
The Tongva people.
Significant Tongva village sites
Yaanga (Olvera Street) and Tovangaar.
Spanish colonization's introduction to LA
Missions, ranchos, and pueblos.
Impact of Spanish missions on Indigenous communities
Through forced labor and religious conversion.
Shift under Mexican rule in California
Land was redistributed to Californio elites via ranchos.
Historical pattern beginning with colonization in LA
Land and power became concentrated among racial and economic elites.
Treaty transferring California to U.S. control
The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
U.S. governance's impact on land in LA
It introduced private property and capitalist development.
Treatment of Indigenous and Mexican land claims by Anglo settlers
They were devalued and often ignored.
Biddy Mason
A formerly enslaved Black woman who sued for freedom in 1856 and became a landowner.
Institution founded by Biddy Mason
First AME Church in LA.
Biddy Mason's story illustration
Black agency within a deeply racist and unequal system.
Fuel for suburban growth in early 20th-century LA
Railroads and industrialization.
Major rail companies that helped build LA
Southern Pacific and Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe (AT&SF).
Henry Huntington
A capitalist behind the Pacific Electric Red Cars.
Yellow Car lines
A streetcar network within the city built by Huntington.
Use of streetcars in early LA
To inflate real estate value and drive suburban development.
Shaping of LA's early infrastructure development
Capitalist speculation, not just public need.
Infrastructure replacing streetcars in mid-20th-century LA
Freeways.
LA's first freeway and its opening year
The Pasadena Freeway in 1943.
Impact of freeways on white residents
Suburban migration and increased mobility.
Communities most impacted by freeway construction
Boyle Heights and South Central.
Use of freeways as tools of segregation
By displacing communities of color and reinforcing racial inequalities.
Trade-off represented by freeway development
Mobility for some meant dispossession for others.
LA as a major oil-producing region
In the early 20th century.
Key oil fields in the LA area
Wilmington, Long Beach, and Signal Hill.
Proportion of the nation's oil from LA by the 1890s
One-third.
Emma Summers
The 'California Oil Queen,' a rare woman in the industry.
Oil's impact on LA's economy
Fueled industrial growth and attracted capital.
LA's role during WWII and the Cold War
It became a center of the military-industrial complex.
Prominent aerospace companies in LA
Lockheed, Northrop, and Douglas Aircraft.
Benefits of the aerospace industry to LA
Federal investment, technology, and jobs.
Job availability for Black workers in aerospace
Mostly low-wage, unskilled positions.
Labor segregation reflection
Systemic employment discrimination.
Workplace discrimination and housing
Segregated neighborhoods reinforced job inequalities.
Defining force of 20th-century LA
The entertainment industry.
Major Hollywood studios
Warner Bros, Paramount, and Universal.
Hollywood's portrayal of LA
As a glamorous place full of opportunity.
Hidden laborers in the film industry
Makeup artists, set workers, costume designers (often immigrants).
Myth obscured by the entertainment industry
The real inequalities behind the LA dream.
Cultural scenes in LA
They offered spaces for resistance and identity formation.
Central Avenue
It was a hub for Black jazz and cultural life.
Key areas for queer nightlife in LA
Sunset Strip and Silver Lake.
Treatment of queer communities by law enforcement
They were criminalized and heavily policed.
Representation of nightlife spaces
Imagined alternative urban identities and forms of belonging.
Dominant sectors in LA's recent economy
Tech, fashion, and biosciences.
Silicon Beach
The tech/startup region in Venice and Playa Vista.
Beneficiaries of the tech boom
White, male professionals.
Process displacing working-class communities in LA
Gentrification.
Current inequalities in LA
They continue patterns of racial and economic exclusion.
LA as a city today
An immigrant, working-class city.
Immigrants' impact on LA
Through organizing, art, and activism.
Labor conditions in LA's garment industry
Low wages and poor conditions for mostly immigrant women.
Common forms of labor resistance
Wage theft lawsuits and worker-owned cooperatives.
Ongoing labor struggles in LA
The continued fight for economic and racial equity.
Description of LA's development
A city in constant motion and transformation.
Builders of LA
Different groups for different goals across history.
Themes defining LA's history
Exclusion, displacement, and resistance.
Central question of the course about LA
"For whom is LA being made?"
Course's urging regarding LA's future
Reimagine the city more equitably, informed by its injustices.