This is the most obvious and least dangerous form in which white supremacy expresses itself.My colleagues and I spill a lot of metaphorical ink referring to business improvement districts and their Boards of Directors as white supremacists, and we certainly stand by that position. However, it’s recently come to my attention that not everyone in our audience is familiar with the literal meaning of the phrase. Evidently it strikes some people as a generic, semantically empty insult, or else they’re confused by the fact that the phrase refers to at least two fairly distinct ideologies. Thus I thought it would be useful to explain in detail why BIDs are in a very literal sense white supremacist organizations.
First let’s get the definitions straight. As always, our friends at Wikipedia give us a good starting place. Their article on white supremacy tells us that the phrase has two principal meanings. The salient one for our purposes is that white supremacy is:
…a political ideology that perpetuates and maintains the social, political, historical and/or industrial domination by white people
This is not exactly like the BID Patrol. They don’t carry rifles, for one thing.We’ve been writing a lot recently on what strongly appears to be an anti-Latino attitude on the part of the two business improvement districts controlled by Kerry Morrison. The first indication of this was their freakout over the too-dark skin color of local nightclub patrons. After that it turned out that they think that official acknowledgement of Peruvian culture in Hollywood would be “amazingly inappropriate.” Also, both BIDs design their public art contests in such a way that the chance of a Latino artist being selected is significantly lowered, with both the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance and the Central Hollywood Coalition being guilty of this.
Sarah Besley, erstwhile bossette of the Central Hollywood Coalition, in 2014, fewer than 20 months after she and her minions torpedoed Peru Village.The Hollywood heroes at Peru Village L.A. held a marvy little festival yesterday across the street from MK.org secret headquarters, which prompted us to break out this story, which we’ve been sitting on for years. Well, not just the festival, but the recent revelations that not only does the HPOA hate mainstream Mexican-American artistic styles, but our councilman, Mitch O’Farrell, who by his own account has “a solid reputation of improving the quality of life for constituents in the 13th Council District,” approves of the anti-Latino-art dog whistlings of the Central Hollywood Coalition. So tonight get ready to hear about how they all have it in for our local Peruvian community as well.
Here’s the back-story. In 2012, a bunch of local Peruvian-Americans in CD13 got a council file started in an attempt to get Vine Street between Melrose and Sunset designated “Peru Village.” This makes some sense because, e.g., there are about five Peruvian restaurants along there, including Mario’s Seafood, which has some of the most astonishing fried chicken in the United States, and Los Balcones, both of which are numbered among the finest restaurants of any variety in our City. So they sent a bunch of really cute kids around to knock on doors and they ended up collecting over 500 signatures from people in the neighborhood.4 If you’re not familiar with Los Angeles politics, it’s worth noting that actual city council elections can easily be decided by 500 votes. For mere neighborhood renaming this is a landslide. Double jeopardy: PERUVIAN GRAFFITI. File under things that will NEVER appear in Hollywood ever ever ever if jittery little psychopath and SVBID founding member Carol Massie has her say, and she will have it, won’t she?
But then in February 2013, jittery little psychopath and Hollywood McDonald’s Queen Carol Massie got wind of the plan and popped off this little slab of characteristically jittery psychopathy, in which she swizzlingly pours forth the toxic product of her unchecked anorectic id thusly, proving that she not only hates America and also hates dark-skinned Hollywood club patrons, but that she also has something against Peruvians:
I am a founding member of the Sunset/Vine Business Improvement District which includes this “Peru Village” area. Not only have I never heard of this petition but we, as business owners, work very hard to make Sunset Boulevard and the famous Sunset & Vine corner a place that people from all over the world5 view as an integral part of Hollywood. Peru Village would include the Cinerama Dome,6 a Hollywood icon, among others, which seems amazingly inappropriate.
Graffiti art in Los Angeles is a world-famous cornerstone of local Latino culture. Perhaps this is why the Central Hollywood Coalition, with the explicit approval of Mitch O’Farrell, hates it.We reported a couple weeks ago that the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance had put out a request for artists to submit works to adorn local signal boxes that explicitly excluded graffiti art and cartoon art. This despite, perhaps, given the BID’s vicious white supremacism, because of the fact that graffiti and cartoon art styles are a cornerstone of indigenous Angeleno/Latino culture. Well, if you live in the area, you may have noticed that the Sunset & Vine BID, controlled by the Central Hollywood Coalition, the HPOA’s not-quite-so-evil twin sister, recently put up artwork on ten signal boxes in their district. Their call for artists incorporated the same restriction as the current HPOA one: “No Cartoon Images or Graffiti work of any kind will be considered.” A picture of another white hipster band, approved by Mitch O’Farrell and placed on a signal box in Los Angeles by the Sunset & Vine BID.
We thought we’d investigate the circumstances under which this project was undertaken and approved, and it turned out to be quite illuminating. Continue reading Mitch O’Farrell Explicitly Approved (in Writing) of Sunset & Vine BID’s Racist Public Art Guidelines Even Though They Arguably Controverted LADOT Regulations→
Tile artwork by Gilbert Luján in the Hollywood/Vine Metro station. According to Kerry Morrison and the HPOA this kind of art is not acceptable in Hollywood.The HPOA is famous for hating on dark-skinned nightclub patrons in Hollywood so it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that they7 also hate on graffiti-inspired artwork, which is strongly associated with Latino/Angeleno culture. But it’s a surprise anyway. The depth of the crazy always is. The fact that the HPOA supports graffiti art when it’s produced by white Europeans makes the whole thing even more shameful.
Here’s the story. Yesterday, the HPOA announced a competition to select artwork for ten utility boxes on Hollywood Boulevard.8 The first two requirements for submissions are:
The theme of each project must include “Hollywood”. Be inspired by the city, its history and future!
NO9 Cartoon Images or Graffiti work of any kind will be considered.
Do you see the contradiction here? The history of “Hollywood”10 and even more so the future of Hollywood includes cartoon images and graffiti work, both of which styles are inextricably associated with Latino culture in Los Angeles, including, to the evident dismay of the HPOA, Hollywood itself. And even bracketing this uncaring aggressive ignorance about the local culture, we have to wonder who says something like that out loud? Hate graffiti art if you will, or any kind of art, but if you’re announcing a public contest to choose art for public display to be paid for with public money, have the self-awareness to understand that by announcing out loud that you won’t consider a style of art that’s so strongly associated with Latinos you’re making yourself look like a ignorant racist yahoo. Just a fact. You don’t have to believe us, ask your PR firm.11Tile artwork by Gilbert Luján in the Hollywood/Vine Metro station. According to Kerry Morrison and the HPOA this kind of art is not acceptable in Hollywood.
Just for instance, consider the world-famous Hollywood/Vine Red Line station. Metro commissioned artwork from world-famous Los Angeles artist Gilbert Luján to decorate the station. According to Metro:
Artist and architect worked together to evoke the history, glamour and excitement of the Hollywood film industry’s yesteryears and its great movie palaces.
Kerry Morrison, late of the California Association of REALTORS®, formerly known as the California Real Estate Association, an immensely influential Twentieth Century California white supremacist group, sitting extraordinarily close to some guy whose name we don’t know.While poking around in the bowels and hidden bits of the HPOA’s website recently, we happened to notice, in friend Kerry Morrison’s bio, the following intriguing statement: “Prior to coming to Hollywood, she spent 14 years in public policy and senior management roles at the California Association of REALTORS in Los Angeles.” Maybe it was the ALL-CAPS that caught our eye, so weirdly dystypographical and yet so clearly intentional,1 or maybe something else. In any case, we resolved to discover just for whom it was that Kerry had spent 14 years working for prior to the BID and why it seemed so important to her to include this in her biosnippet. Note, by the way, that the California Association of REALTORS® was formerly known as the California Real Estate Association.2 California real estate agents have done far, far more to shape this state for evil and for good than is commonly acknowledged in popular discourse.
Kerry, as the first and sole director of the HPOA since 1996, has clearly formed and molded that organization in her own image. Thus, we thought, it might be illuminating to understand the professional crucible in which that image was forged. So we sent our faithful correspondent out onto the wild uncharted moors of scholarlandia through the portals of Google scholar, JSTOR, and UCLA. Our minds were well and truly blown by what he discovered, and perhaps yours will be too. There’s far too much material to cover in one post, so we’re going to lay it on you in increments, starting today with some background and a shocking episode from the long hot summer of 1948. Continue reading HPOA Precursor Organization and Former Employer of Kerry Morrison California Real Estate Association Sought to Warp, Pervert, and Destroy U.S. Constitution in 1948 to Prevent “The Threat of Occupancy by Negroes”→
A member of the Hollywood Protective Association and spiritual forebear of the modern BID Board member, with the backing of the 1920s edition of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, announces to the world that she’s a moron. Note sign in window stating “Member Hollywood Protective Association.”Long-time readers of this blog will recall that, last month, we broke the story of Hollywood Chamber of Commerce biggity-wig Marty Shelton’s bizarre distaste for black, brown, and poor people visiting Hollywood. Inspired by that, we recently wrote on the white supremacist roots of our beloved Hollywood sign and the inwrought caucasians-only policies of the real-estate development it once promoted. This line of inquiry got us interested in the jim crow history of Hollywood, which turns out to be quite rich.
For instance, a brief discussion in Scott Kurashige’s interesting book The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles1 led us to read up in old LA Times articles on anti-Japanese hysteria in Hollywood in the early 1920s. It seems that in April 1923, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce gave some advice to a bunch of angry white people. The article is here, but the short version is that some Japanese people bought eight lots in Hollywood, four near Bronson and Sunset and four on Tamarind and Gordon, and had the nerve to wish to build some apartment buildings and a church. Jess E. Stephens, City Attorney of Los Angeles in April 1923 when pitchfork-waving torch-bearing howling Hollywood lynch mobs came whining to him about how Japanese people were being meanies and building a church in Hollywood. His response doesn’t seem to be available in the historical record.
The white people got all in a tizzy, you can see one in the image above, and went to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce screaming for help. The Chamber, as opposed to the presence of non-white people in Hollywood as they are today, directed the howling mob to the City Attorney to seek a restraining order and they also started circulating petitions “urging the residents to agree to restrict the use of land to those of the Caucasian race.”2 They were even inspired to poetry! See after the break for an especially creepy example.
Ad for Hollywoodland development from the L.A. Times, September 7, 1924, page D2, fearmongering about minorities in Hollywood, just like now, 90 years later.While flipping about in old issues of the L.A. Times, we came upon the enlightening 1924 advert you see to the right, luring buyers for the famous Hollywoodland development, from which we inherited not only the iconic sign but the famous racist attitudes, it seems. See what it says?
…to the “Old Timer” of Los Angeles! You…..who have seen the fine residential districts of Los Angeles despoiled by metropolitan development—must realize now that Los Angeles is destined soon to be a city of millons.
Protect your family by procuring at today’s prices a home place in the Hills of Hollywoodland—secured by fixed and natural restrictions against the inroads of metropolitanism and yet within twenty-five minutes of Seventh & Broadway.
Today is Your best opportunity. Are you going to sit idly by and let the March of Progress pass unheeded?
Japanese American citizens of Los Angeles boarding a train for the Manzanar Internment Camp at the behest of BID cronies the League of California Cities. The League, not to mention the BIDs, has been on Satan’s side in every major political issue it’s faced. Why would they be on God’s side about the Right to Rest Act?We’ve written before about the BIDs’ and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce’s sinister plot to turn Hollywood into a sundown town by discouraging black and brown people from coming here at night. We’ve also written about the Hollywood Entertainment District BID’s soulless opposition to the saintly Senator Carol Liu’s Right to Rest Act, which would prevent the BID Patrol from harassing and arresting homeless people for violating the vile LAMC 41.18(d), which makes it a misdemeanor to sit on the sidewalk for any purpose other than watching a parade. What we discovered recently from a fine article by Renee Lewis which appeared yesterday on Al Jazeera America is that the two issues are linked via the despicable League of California Cities. Hotel in Los Angeles confiscated by white people after all the Japanese-Americans were shipped off to concentration camps in 1942. The second “most obvious advantage to be gained” by deporting all the Japanese-Americans in Los Angeles is that white people got to confiscate all their property. Racist economic warfare is never the explicit policy of the League and the BIDs, but is often their implicit policy
Lewis quotes various activists to the effect that “[t]he homeless are not the first marginalized group targeted by the League in its over 100-year history” and “[t]he League has supported sundown towns, Jim Crow laws, Chinese exclusion and Japanese internment.” And it’s true. E.g., look at the LA Times1 on February 16, 1942, where Richard Graves, executive secretary of the League is quoted as saying:
The most obvious advantage to be gained by enactment of such ordinances [including evacuation of Japanese-Americans] is protection of the civilian population…
Jittery little psychopath Carol Massie: “These kind of people” (Hollywood nightclub patrons) use drugs, cause “mayhem,” and are catered to by “businesses who don’t really care about anything except that they make a profit.”
Marty Shelton, Board Chairman of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, wants to turn Hollywood into a sundown town. According to Marty, nightclub patrons who are “decidedly minority, brown and black, and my guess, from a lower economic strata,” are “not appealing at all” and you won’t find that a wealthy apartment dweller “from Sunset and Vine was at Janes House hanging with the homies.”
Here’s the backstory: Last weekend a bunch of people from the Sunset-Vine BID and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce took what they call a “midnight walk” around Hollywood Boulevard. They wander around the Boulevard from midnight until 3 a.m. so they can see how the other half lives in Hollywood. And they don’t like what they see. They don’t like it one bit.
At the March 17th meeting of the Sunset-Vine BID board of directors, Fabiolus Cucina owner Fabio Conti read aloud from an email that Marty sent to the participants describing his reaction. You can watch the relevant segment here, and there’s a transcription after the break. It’s worth reading or hearing the whole thing, because our poor journalistic tools can’t begin to do justice to the offensive craziness to be found therein.
Marty, here’s a newsflash: the city of Los Angeles is “decidedly minority, mostly brown and black.” That’s the way it is here, and the fact that it’s like that in Hollywood at night is a GOOD thing. The fact that it’s NOT like that in Hollywood during the day is the problem. We know it’s too much to ask of the BID, the Chamber, and their minions that they solve this problem, but it’s not too much to ask that they refrain from making it worse by pushing their apartheid policies on our lovely city. If “brown and black” people don’t “mesh with the new high-income residents coming in along with ofc tenants” then let those tenants live somewhere else, like, I don’t know, Minneapolis. Our city is “decidedly minority” and we LIKE it.
After Fabio read aloud this abhorrent piece of racist posturing, jittery little psychopath and owner of multiple Hollywood-area McDonald’s franchises Carol Massie weighed in with another weirdly delusional take on the subject:
Thus spake Carol Massie: You know, one of the problems, I think, and this is from going to security meetings. I think that the patrons do have a lot of money. And they, that’s why they cater to them, and that’s why some of the nightclubs [unintelligible] these kind of people, because they do have that kind of money, and they pay a lot of money for the drink…for, for, for getting into the building. It’s not so much the drinks cause they do other things instead, because after hours it’s mayhem. But whatever they look like, they have money from somewhere and they’re bringing it to these businesses who don’t really care about anything except that they make a profit. Jittery little psychopath Carol Massie’s McDonald’s at DeLongpre Avenue and Vine Street, just sitting there not “really car[ing] about anything except that they make a profit.”
Carol, here’s a newsflash: your company destroys rainforests, destroys the health of the world’s people, exploits its employees, destroys everything, because it doesn’t “really care about anything except that [it] make[s] a profit.” That’s what McDonald’s does. And “these kind of people”?! And “they do other things instead”?!? And “money from somewhere”?!?! “MAYHEM”???!!?!!
And if you don’t think “these kind of people” are good for Hollywood, why do you keep the drive-through window at your Vine Street restaurant open 24 hours? Who do you think wants an Egg McMuffin at 3 a.m. if not nightclub patrons in Hollywood? Do you “really care about anything except that [you] make a profit?” Put your money where your mouth runs off and stop making money off “these kind of people,” why don’t you? We don’t want to seem naive. Rich white racists are racist, but for God’s sake, don’t talk about it on camera. Continue reading Black, Brown, Poor, Nightclub Patrons Are Ruining Hollywood According to Hollywood Chamber Chair Marty Shelton and McDonald’s Owner Carol Massie→
![Jittery little psychopath Carol Massie's McDonald's at DeLongpre Avenue and Vine Street, just sitting there not "really car[ing] about anything except that they make a profit."](https://michaelkohlhaas.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2015.03.19.carol_.massies.mcdonalds.at_.delongpre.and_.vine_.700.jpg)