INGLEWOOD, CA, September 17—A tenants’ rights group and other organizers learned one more real life lesson today. This vicious, capitalist system serves the billionaire rulers. The setting was a rally protesting a press conference held in conjunction with the “ground-breaking” for a new arena for the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team. Billionaire Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, Inglewood Mayor James Butts and others celebrated the coming of one more gigantic stadium to this overwhelmingly Black and Latin working-class city. Meanwhile Inglewood cops were protecting both the press conference and shelter site being torn down a block over. Only communist revolution, where workers run society, can eliminate these racist cops and the billionaires who they serve and protect.
As with many other large cities, capitalism’s sports team owners and their billionaire banking and corporate backers have realized the profit potential of relocating these teams to brand new stadiums. In order to smooth the way for their profit-driven schemes, they have taken advantage of lousy living conditions for workers in these areas by promising thousands of new jobs. They have enlisted local politicians like Butts, many of them Black and Latin, who have enthusiastically become these projects’ biggest cheerleaders.
Communism: housing for all workers
A multiracial rally of 25 chanted, “Citizen, immigrant, Black, Brown, white: against displacement we will fight”, and “Stop racist gentrification, by corrupt corporations,”as scores of car horns blared in solidarity.
A Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member
active in the tenants union gave a speech,
targeting Ballmer, the capitalists and their profit system as the culprits behind the atrocity that we had just witnessed. He called for revolution as the only solution to gentrification, racism, displacement and homelessness. He pointed out the common interest between all workers—including homeowners, tenants, and the homeless—as he called for unity in the struggle.
Capitalist “sports/entertainment” bosses like Ballmer (net worth is $96.1 billion) are all part of the gang-up of cops, landlords, billionaires and bankers that plague our class. Communism will bulldoze these displacers. Housing will not be bought and sold as a commodity. We will produce housing collectively and provide it to all workers based on need. Join the PLP and the fight for communism today!
Workers denounce racist gentrification
The rally was led by young Latin workers and included a speech by a tenant from Inglewood Gardens (IG), an apartment complex across the street from the newly-opened LA Rams/Chargers So-Fi Stadium. So-Fi is less than a mile from where the Clippers’ “Dome” is going up. This tenant talked about the refusal of the IG slumlord owner to repair multiple lousy and dangerous conditions in the apartment where he and his wife live. He also called out the disregard from the Inglewood Code Enforcement (CE) unit. After he filed a complaint, a CE inspector called and told him they have “no power” to make the landlord fix any of the conditions, forcing the couple to continue to live in squalor.
Meanwhile the cops were supervising the displacement of yet one more homeless individual. We marched to where it was happening. The group loudly confronted the cops and demolition as everything the homeless person owned was thrown away. Knowing that this homeless person would later return to find all of their belongings gone, we demanded that the cops and city provide them with housing and services. They responded by simply driving away. Whether it’s cops or Code Enforcement inspectors, the government serves the ruling capitalists. They will forever fail to meet the needs of the working class; capitalism was built for profit, not the for security for our class.
Racist thiefs, not “job creators”
Inglewood became an industrial center during and after World War II, particularly for aerospace and military production. As factory bosses began moving these jobs out of the city in the 1960s, and 1970s, white workers also began moving out. The population of first Black, and later Latin workers, increased. Mass racist unemployment started increasing in the 1970s and 1980s. By 2000, Inglewood was 93 percent Black and Latin. Combined with deteriorating conditions in public schools and services due to massive, racist state budget cuts, conditions for workers became unbearable with poverty and homelessness.
Ballmer’s puppet politicians have touted the new stadiums as “job-creators.” But all of this new “development” has driven up property values and rents far beyond the reach of many workers, and attracted investment company vultures, which scoop up “distressed” properties and force out homeowners. In Inglewood, resistance to these anti-working class attacks has grown. The Lennox/Inglewood Tenants’ Union (LITU) has been one of the groups at the forefront.
PLP members in LITU have helped give political and tactical leadership to its campaigns, including organizing tenants at IG. In a very positive development, several tenant union members took the initiative to organize and help lead the rally today. This can be the stuff of what communism is made of—workers organizing every aspect of society. Organizers and antiracists in this struggle are welcomed to join PLP!