"Having now a collective name, we discovered that death shrinks, and ends up small on us. The worst death, that of oblivion, flees so that the memory of our dead will never be buried together with their bones. We have now a collective name and our pain has shelter. Now we are larger than death..." - the Zapatistas, Chiapas, March 12, 1995

___________

He was a real estate developer and a politician. He had been a high ranking soldier, and the Natives named him "Town Killer" for his practice of razing their population centers and burning their crops so the land could be taken by the colonizers, especially by the wealthy – the land speculators themselves.

His other name was Washington.

Washington: Town Killer.

Laws, treaties, and one’s solemn word meant nothing to the men who seized the land and murdered and starved its former inhabitants. The wealthy men who burned the villages and crops weren’t, shall we say, "nice."

Their spiritual and cultural descendants aren’t nice either.

The Los Angeles Times tells us in a recent editorial that it would be "nice" to keep the nation’s largest urban community garden, LA’s South Central Farm. They admit to the Farm’s beauty in the midst of the urban devastation of the South Central ghetto. They admit that the farmers have made their plots into a "special, almost magical place."

They admit it the way the English colonizers admitted the "Red Man’s Nobility" – as something that had to be destroyed in the interest of "progress."

"There are lots of things that would be nice," the Times opines, "but the land belongs," they claim, to a real estate developer, "and he has every right to kick out those who have been squatting there…"

The Mexican Indian hero Emiliano Zapata had a different idea – that the land belongs to those who work it.

On that premise, a premise Zapata paid for with his life, communal lands called ejidos developed in Mexico, protected by its constitution. That is, until NAFTA. Since then some six million indigenous farmers have been driven from the land, often at the point of a gun. They were driven out in the name of profit and progress to starve, to make their way in the lost cities of Mexico, to the alienated ghettos and barrios of LA.

But here, at the South Central Farm, Mayan farmers gave new life to ancient heirloom seeds, a rebirth and renewal of a heritage of that has continued, uninterrupted, for thousand of years; since the time before; since the ants taught Quetzalcoatl to grow corn. With others, these farmers grew corn and community.

The LA Times wants them driven out again.

"No magic is so strong," they say, "that it erases a land owner’s right to his property or its fair value."

The LA Times is looking for its Town Killer, for someone to burn the crops and destroy the people.

The Times wants them driven out like Indians everywhere – from the land – to the cities, and then, at last, even from there. It wants them "disappeared."

This is the Times’ rationalization for their stand – they imply, using a journalistic sleight of hand, that the courts awarded multi-millionaire real estate developer Ralph Horowitz the right to the land.

Unfortunately for the Times, the court did no such thing. The court, instead, gave explicit permission to the LA City Council to violate the Los Angeles City Charter in order to award the land to Horowitz, if it saw fit to do so.

The Times’ impulse is to honor a corrupt back-room "gentlemen’s agreement." Anything and everything is for sale – including the City Charter. This pretense of "justice" rationalizes the Times’ community-killing instinct.

Remember; "Laws, treaties, and one’s solemn word meant nothing to the men who seized the land and murdered and starved its former inhabitants. The wealthy men who burned the villages and crops weren’t ‘nice.’"

They were, like the Times, killing communities – or, if you prefer, committing various forms of genocide.

For the farmers themselves race and genocide aren’t the core issue – Life is - and they don’t want to be distracted from Life.

The Farm is a community, as independent journalist Leslie Radford has noted, "where plants and people grow."

The Times says it’s time for the Farmers to go.

The world itself is on the verge of destruction and ecological collapse as a result of such "logic."

Under this logic, "Progress" is spelled "Profit." Profit means death. Under this system, there is no right to eat; the food is locked away – there is no right to live. Not for the animals, not for humans. There is only one right; the right, as the Hopi Elders put it, to profit at the expense of all life.

The Town Killer’s system is destroying Life - destroying us - everywhere on the planet, and here in Los Angeles its next intended victim is the South Central Farmers.

The Times’ editorial, "Los Angeles Gothic," is subtitled "The Value of Property."

It’s time they learn a different lesson: The Value of Life.

It’s time we all learned the lesson of the South Central Farm.

It’s time to replant the magic: everywhere on Earth.

 

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

To support the South Central Farmers go to http://www.southcentralfarmers.com

The LA Times editorial can be viewed at

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-ed-farm11mar11,1,2576899.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california

-30-

 

This threads author on the other hand is filled with the tired 60's chicano retoric that is slowly dying out. The thought that any group has the right to deny a person's property rights is facist in nature. Once again this author skips over the facts that Horowitz fairly purchased the land before the city used its gastapo tactics in a force sale. If the city is allowed to use eminent domain without punity the city can choose to prey on any one of us, including land owning mexican-americans.

1st there were the communists
Then there were the fascists.
Do you know WTF you're talking about?

Fascists in Italy and Germany upheld property rights, and pushed to privatized state-owned industries (to give them to corporations). One group supporting the fasicsts were land owners fearing increased communism, so, the Nazis and fascists tailored their message to appeal to the land owners.

Presently, the strongest advocates for increasing the scope of eminent domain have been the developers and local governments. The strongest opponents have been millionaires with much of their assets in land (as well as working class people with houses -- but they are a relatively minor factor). The recent supreme court decision expanding the scope of ED tends to benefit business, because, now, ED can be used for "economic development," instead of just the public good.

Using ED for the farm would be a public good, not economic development.

Also, the latest expansion of ED will probably benefit the conservative agenda, by enlarging the role of sales taxes to fund public services. By enlarging the role of sales taxes, more of the public welfare is jeopardized, because tax revenues will drop when the economy sucks, and consumer spending is down.

The fight around ED is presented, to conservatives, as a right-left fight between communists and anti-communists, but it's really an issue of power. When the city and big business align, they think ED is fine. When the poor push the city to use ED to improve the public good, suddenly, it's "an evil communist plot."

In fact, if you were to consider the implications of the Supreme Court decision... I'd say it's an evil capitalist plot.

The terms communist and facist can be used interchangably given the history of communist nations.

Communism is the control of the means of production by the workforce.
Fascism is the control of the state by corporations to suppresses the workforce.
Tell me how interchangeable these diametrically opposed concepts of society
are, please.

"The fight around ED is presented, to conservatives, as a right-left fight between communists and anti-communists, but it's really an issue of power. When the city and big business align, they think ED is fine. When the poor push the city to use ED to improve the public good, suddenly, it's "an evil communist plot."

It does not matter who is using ED it is being overused and abused by those in government at the expenses of the citizens. I am sure ED is a good tool in your mind to satisfy your quest class warefare. You see everyone who is rich as corrupt in some form or other, and you also see the poor as helpless victims for you to save. Personally, I don't see how you can trust anyone in government with the right over your home. This is essentially what you are doing.


p.s. the strongest support opposing ED has come from the conservative camp.



Kelo Dissenting opinions

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote the principal dissent, joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Justice Clarence Thomas. Justice O'Connor suggested that the use of this power in a reverse Robin Hood fashion—take from the poor, give to the rich—would become the norm, not the exception: "Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms." She argued that the decision eliminates "any distinction between private and public use of property — and thereby effectively [deletes] the words 'for public use' from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment".

Clarence Thomas also penned a separate originalist dissent, in which he argued that the precedents the court's decision relied upon were flawed and that "something has gone seriously awry with this Court's interpretation of the Constitution." He accuses the majority of replacing the Fifth Amendment's "Public Use" clause with a very different "public purpose" test: "This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a 'public use.'" Thomas also made use of the argument presented in the NAACP/AARP/SCLC amicus brief, (co-authored by South Jersey Legal Services) on behalf of three low-income residents' groups fighting redevelopment in New Jersey, noting: "Losses will fall disproportionately on poor communities. Those communities are not only systematically less likely to put their lands to the highest and best social use, but are also the least politically powerful."

thanks, chicano831-Justice, for your personal view of the world.
Unless you own the company, you have no rights at all except to find another job unless you have a contract with the company.
And there were some successful communist/socialist models which were crushed not by internal forces but by frightened capital concerns.
Why do you think the CIA funded so many military overthrows in latin America to be enforced by the death squads they trained and supervised?
The reason is because they were doing what the capitalists feared.
They were returning to the workforce the benefits of the labor and resources to the people that capitalism must appropriate to survive.
Like using the land to provide real intrinsic necessities such as food.

The argument that "Horowitz fairly purchased the land" is ridiculous.

Purchased it from _whom_ - the Tongva Nation indigenous to this land?!

Horowitz _has_ no property rights here that are not granted by the original Native inhabitants.

As far as eminent domain goes, what an ass of an argument to claim property rights for Horowitz.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND that the courts ALLOWED THE CITY TO VIOLATE ITS OWN CHARTER TO SELL THE LAND TO HOROWITZ?

If they can violate the city charter to make a special deal for someone wealthy, god help the middle class homeowner facing frickin Wal Mart.

This piece is not 60's style Chicano rhetoric, by the way - it's cutting edge Xicano Indigenism, a trend that has only fully come to the fore in the last decade.

If we're talking legality than the whole deal is corrupt and bullshi**. You all know that there are forces at work who wish to and have made a lot of money on this issue... that fact will not change. Those profits have already been turned into a starbucks or reimbursed luxory business dinner for some city official.

Lets take a step back...
Tear down DogerStadium!!! Build another farm... don't use ED to do it... use the peoples' power for social good.

People are too focused on profit margins to realize their community is on FIRE!!!

We all know that property rights are not the issue because no matter how legaly entitled the farmers are to the land they cannot afford the legal payoffs that Horrowitz(Horrowitz Law Firm/ Horrowitz former city hall employee) can afford.

Help save the last hope South Central has for enviornmental justice and community health.

It seems to me that the whole point of this article is that the magic of life is stronger than the legal power of death, and that it should be dealt with as such - that we should not allow all this bs about "sacred" property rights to voershadow the fact that life itself is sacred.

So you "own" something?

Come back in two hundred years and tell the peole then what you "own."

Just to clarify, I didn't say that conservatives support ED. I said that the current, widened, pro-business application of ED will support the overall conservative agenda.

To say it doesn't matter who, why, and how ED is applied... is exactly what I mean by "property rights fundamentalism."

john,
don't believe that the conservatives are the ones solely to gain from ED, because it largely depends on who is in power. This body can easly be liberals. Like I said before no one will be safe if a tight reign is not held on ED.


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THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TRENTON — Developers are criticizing and environmentalists are applauding an appellate panel decision that allows municipalities to seize land from developers to preserve open space.

In its ruling Tuesday, the court sided with Mount Laurel after the community seized a 16-acre tract from developer Michael Procacci and his company, Mipro Homes, which planned to build 23 homes on the land.

"We're elated," said Mayor Gerry Nardello. "Hopefully we can move on and go on pursuing more open space."

Although Procacci had approval for the project, Mount Laurel moved to seize the property, saying it wanted to preserve the territory as open space.

Jeffrey Baron, an attorney for the builder, said the ruling would be appealed to the state's highest court.

"It disregards completely the need for open space and concentrates only on the municipality's right to take property — not because it needs it but because it wants it," Baron said.

Environmentalists and municipalities applauded the decision, saying it would protect open space.

"When you look at the fact that New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the entire country, we have to have the ability to preserve some open space to maintain the quality of life in communities," said William Kearns, general counsel to the League of Municipalities.

Traditionally, the ability to seize land, called eminent domain, has been used by governments to construct projects such as bridges and highways.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Kelo vs. New London, Conn., expanded that power, allowing cities to seize land for private developments such as hotels or office space.

Other Garden State communities, including New Brunswick and Piscataway, have sought to seize land to preserve it for open space, and experts say the appellate decision may encourage more municipalities to do the same.

_____________________________________________

chavez revine another government land grab gone wrong

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chavezravine/cr.html

todo se empeso hacer mal .los lideres the ese jardin empesaron haciendo muchos errores primero querian emplantar reglas,correr jardineros,empesar -on a colectar dinero de los jardineros y publico a exijirles mas de lo que muchos podian hacer, traer gente de la calle para pura pantalla las cosas no se deben deben de hacer asta tener la tierra no hera de ellos estaba prestada pero se fueron por el camino equivocado al tratar de conseguir algo. rufina y el guero ya estaban comiendose el pollo antes de servirlo ha ha ha. Dios es justo y no me sorprende que algun dia los paren de estar enganando a tanta organisacion y gente que les hacen creer que trabajan para la gente y lo que hacen es engordar al cochinito. pero recuerden Dion es grande y siempre se paga de una forma o otra.