Eminent Domain, Ry Cooder, and Chavez Ravine

Since there's been so much talk about eminent domain in the wake of the recent unconscionable decision of SCOTUS, I think this is very timely. Also, I'm an L.A. contemporary of Mr. Cooder's. We've never met, but we grew up not too far apart, although I didn't know it until I read this article, and I've been a fan of his for years. I remember the whole Chavez Ravine brouhaha. I've never set foot in Dodger Stadium because I didn't like the way it was acquired, even at 10 years of age. Must've been the dawn of any social consciousness I've got.

Ry Cooder has a new album that, given the lead time to do an album, is uncanny in its timing. This article in Mother Jones tells about the album, the neighborhood, and his inspiration.

As late as the 1940s, Chavez Ravine was an Old World enclave with 300 families of Mexican immigrants - a place where goats wandered freely and kids played in the dirt roads. But in 1950, following a city planning commission study of L.A.'s "blighted areas," it was decided that Chavez Ravine would be cleared out to make way for a low-income public-housing project. Most families took the meager payout and didn't challenge the authorities; when necessary, though, the city invoked the right of eminent domain, seized the land, and bulldozed the residences.

But the real estate lobby (which Cooder calls "hideous villains") saw an opportunity, and cast the idea of public housing as "creeping socialism." They accused the Los Angeles Housing Authority's Frank Wilkinson of being a communist agent, and the FBI stepped in to squash the project. Eventually, the housing authority sold 170 acres of Chavez Ravine back to the city, which offered the site to Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley. After a voter referendum and a California Supreme Court decision, construction on Dodger Stadium began in 1961. It's a classic Los Angeles story, full of shadowy deals and backroom corruption, reminiscent of Chinatown or a James Ellroy novel, and Cooder captures it with impressive complexity and nuance.

Read more Below the Fold.

Update: Went and bought the CD. I even paid retail! I haven't played it yet, but the liner notes alone are worth the money. More later.