The Looting of Los Angeles
As the Neoliberal Sodom burns, the poorest lose it all.
Pacific Palisades, now demolished and defrauded, is ripe for acquisition by predatory equity firms.
It is infuriating watching the fires burning through the streets and valleys of LA, listening to the cries of those who have lost everything from cherished memories to family members and pets to the meagerest bits of wealth they had managed to build over their lives. Too many have been effected, stolen from in this fire, and now we hear the word of looters.
Who would take advantage of people in such a situation? Would see the panic, chaos, and impending disaster and choose to turn against their very communities in pursuit of some extremely short-term gain?
According to LA Sheriffs Department, 20 arrests have been made of alleged looters though not a single shred of evidence has been suggested to exist other than to say the police allege they have someone in custody. We have heard from newscasters who warn residents of the dangers of these opportunists, have heard the repeated words of leadership who, despite the reality of the situation, have taken time and time again to warn prospective looters that the police are looking for them.
Regardless of the fantasy of their words, the world they are forcing into reality through their fears, the fact of the matter is that there has been NO PROOF as of time of writing of a single incident of looting outside the stories of random people on the street and police, and neither of theses are to be trusted at face value.
I have heard from rightwing residents who have warned of scary, foreign-llking people who cant possibly live near them and must therefore be looters. I’ve seen pictures taken of random Brown folk who couldn’t possibly be from this neighborhood and must therefore be casing places for an easy hit. I’ve seen the internet turn against immigrants, as if they somehow profit from the loss of opportunity which will surely follow for all who live in the area currently on fire or recovering. What we have seen is that brown people are bad and inherently suspicious; that we can’t trust those who look different, especially in times of crisis.
And for many, that is the message they have taken. The fear of the “other” has been uses – once again – as a convenient lightning rod by which to refocus the conversation of life-altering loss from those really responsible, to those who are suffering alongside us in the ash and mud.
There is a truth here that many are desperate to ignore: this is a class war. The rich who were able to mobilize private armies of fire fighters to protect their homes and businesses while everything their neighbors owned burned around them are turning around to point at Black and Brown young men minding their own business or seeking to save their own lives and loved ones. The politicians who were happy to allow private interests to subsume public resources as their own, who refused to stop the theft of our water, land, and opportunities in favor of those like the Wonderful Company (hope your pistachios taste like burning rubber) who have stolen some 90% of Californians’ water through underhanded manipulation of municipal levers and officials.
As an aside: have you all returned to watch the honestly ridiculous Dukes of Hazzard from like 2005 lately? Remember how Boss Hogg tried to acquire the mineral rights to the town by manipulating a public hearing to ensure that only his representatives were present to push forward his corporate interests against the residents of the township? That is kinda how it went down for the owners of Wonderful, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, who were able to steal almost all the water in California through manipulation of local peoples and public processes until they suddenly owned the most valuable natural resource in the State. They had tricked and stolen until they moved the dastardly tactics of Carrol Farms in Mexico to the hills and valleys of southern California. This is the looting that happened BEFORE the fires ever began, the privatization of such an essential resource and its hording against the needs and will of the masses who, by Right, own the public good by virtue of their residency and taxpayer status.
Similarly, just as we have seen across every natural disaster in our Nation for more than a decade now, we are hearing of the multitude of insurance companies who have taken the opportunity to rake in billions in stolen profit by denying coverage to people who have been paying them for protection for decades. I know this well from personal experience with fires in the Southwest, but we all know of it whether we are in Texas dealing with freezing weather, the East Coast with Hurricanes, or the Great Plains dealing with Derechos, tornadoes, and prairie fires. Just as we all know someone without healthcare or who has been denied coverage by their insurance “provider” in this Hell Country, we all know someone who has lost everything in a disaster and later found that their insurer had changed or cancelled their policy for the exact situation they are facing.
These are the looters. They stole your money and time and concern, farmed your labor for years before deciding to just walk away when the time came to payout.
After the fires, the private equity and developers will move in. They will rake and steal the smoldering remains of those who have lost it all before buying property in bulk from the very people who have been left to suffer by the insurance companies. They will aggressively consolidate the ruins to build more car-centric infrastructure, increasingly private gated communities, and more useless commercial real estate which will continue to inflate the already skyrocketing houselessness that has overtaken our country as of late. These are the looters. The opportunists who have lost nothing but have everything to gain as they begin to pick at the bones of your belongings and memories.
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