Resisting Dispossession: Performative Spatial Irruptions and the LA Poverty Department

I was so unimpressed with the city council. … They had a line of homeless people who were allowed to vote because Kevin [Michael Key] was running for councilman and everything. So, they wanted IDs … [The person tabling] asked me, “Well I need some id. Do you have any ID?” And the way he said it, he knew I wouldn't have any id. It was like I wasn't even there. I was invisible. He was just going through the motions of making the sound. But he didn't know he was dealing with R-C-B. So when I dropped my passport, and I do mean dropped my passport on the table, that's when I got respect.—RCB, Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD)What does it mean to perform presence or selfhood? What conditions necessitate these performances? In the opening epigraph, RCB articulates an instance when transparency was mapped onto his body—a moment in which he was simultaneously invisible as an individual and hypervisible as the projections of stereotypes surrounding homelessness and blackness collided on his body, rendering his history, present, and future as instantly knowable. During the election cycles of 2010, 2012, and 2014, KevinMichael Key, a prominent, formerly homeless Skid Row activist, community organizer, and member of the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD), ran for a position on the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council (DLANC). As part of his campaigns, Key sought to help homeless residents of Skid Row exercise their right to vote. One instantiation of this objective involved tabling in the neighborhood. In a show of support, RCB lined up to vote and subsequently encountered the tabler. “And the way he said it, he knew I wouldn't have any ID. It was like I wasn't even there. I was invisible.” As understood by RCB, the tabler did not expect homeless individuals to possess government-issued identification. Instead of acknowledging RCB's individuality and subjectivity, the tabler assumed that RCB's status as homeless meant not having state ID, an official marker of occupancy in a state-recognized residence. In this interaction, RCB's political subjectivity was under erasure, invisible. For RCB, in this confrontation, homelessness marked him as a knowable (non)subject—a generic homeless man.

Negotiating Urban Redevelopment: Exploring the Neighborhood Council Planning Model

This paper analyzes the redevelopment of a residential compound in Jerusalem from a justice perspective. It focuses on the role of the Neighborhood Council (NC) in negotiating representation and recognition of local residents in the planning process. Based on analysis of interviews, planning documents, focus group meetings, and court appeals, we argue that as a hybrid governance structure, which mediates between the residents and the municipality, the NC is uniquely positioned to promote more just and inclusive planning process and outcomes at the neighborhood scale. However, the NC still faces substantial challenges due to its intermediary position.

What Makes Neighborhood Associations Effective in Urban Governance? Evidence From Neighborhood Council Boards in Los Angeles

This study examines the perceived effectiveness of neighborhood councils (NCs) in Los Angeles, a government-sanctioned and financed institutional innovation in urban governance. The study considers NC boards as a dynamic and open social system that interacts with NCs’ internal and external environment. We propose that three factors—internal capacity, external networking, and attention-action congruence—are related to perceived NC effectiveness. The findings from a questionnaire survey of 80 NCs show that NC leaders perceive their organizations to be moderately effective. While internal capacity contributes to all three dimensions of effectiveness, external networking enhances NCs’ effectiveness in solving community issues and advising about city policies. Attention-action congruence, which examines the correspondence between NC board members’ issue orientation and actual actions, is positively related to NCs’ effectiveness in advising about city policies. The study concludes with considerations for enhancing the effectiveness of neighborhood associations.

Skateboard Activism

This chapter shows skaters’ efforts at lobbying local politicians to decriminalize a cherished landmark. The Courthouse in West LA had long been a skating mecca, but in the early 2000s was shut down. Skaters were given heavy fines and often chased out by police. As a result the spot became a site for indigents. Nike began an effort to “remodel” the Courthouse to use for one of their events, but the local skaters became incensed when they learned that the company and the city were intending to make skateboarding legal for only one day. Thus began a concerted effort to make a deal with the city to allow skaters to skate legally at the Courthouse. This chapter describes the efforts undertaken by Aaron Snyder and Alec Beck to lobby the West LA Neighborhood Council. This involved a concentrated social media campaign as well as attending community board meetings. In the span of just four weeks, the skaters realized their efforts. This chapter also describes skaters’ experiences skating the Courthouse legally, and being stewards of this cherished public space.

Dirty Jew-Dirty Mexican: Denver's 1949 Lake Junior High School Gang Battle and Jewish Racial Identity in Colorado

This article details how Jews and Mexicans in Denver, Colorado came together in 1949 in the wake of a widely publicized interracial gang battle at one of the city's local middle schools. It documents the response of the local chapter of the Anti-Defamation League and its involvement in a interracial neighborhood council and how Jewish racial identity in Denver was informed by the broader racial geography of the West-a racial geography that was too often shaped by contrast with Mexicans. The article also challenges the notion that Denver was relatively free of anti-Semitism. Indeed, the 1905 lynching of Jacob Wesskind suggests a more nuanced story than the received wisdom about Jews being “at home” in Denver.