Crime

How Los Angeles Became the Capital of Incarceration

Published

7 years ago

May 30, 2017

For several years, UCLA history professor Kelly Lytle Hernández has reached into Los Angeles history, back before the city was even city or California was even a state, to unearth evidence of how local and national governments, police and jail systems operated as a machine of conquest and elimination targeting native, poor and non-white people.

Her new book, “City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and The Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles 1771–1965,” concludes just before the Watts Rebellion to reveal the roots of the “Age of Mass Incarceration” in the city, the time period since 1965 that has filled Los Angeles’ and the nation’s jails and prisons and continues to bring police and community relations to a boiling point.

UCLA Newsroom talked to Lytle Hernández about how her book lays a historical foundation for the story of Los Angeles’ systemically discriminatory structure of incarceration.

What launched your interest in telling this story? When you were writing your first book “Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol,” were there elements that sparked your interest in digging deeper into the prison and jail system of the U.S.?

Migra! is a story about race and policing in the United States, specifically the the rise of the U.S. Border Patrol in the U.S.-Mexican border region and the border patrol’s nearly exclusive focus on policing unauthorized immigration from Mexico.

After completing it, I wanted to examine another dimension of race and law enforcement. Living in Los Angeles, I knew that Los Angeles operates the largest jail system in the United States. In fact, some researchers say no city on Earth jails more people than Los Angeles.

Therefore, Los Angeles, the City of Angels, is, in fact, the City of Inmates, the punitive capital of the world. We know very little about the making and meaning of incarceration in Los Angeles. It’s a history that has never been told. So, I began to research how Los Angeles, my hometown, built one of the largest systems of human caging that the world has ever known.

I found in the archives that since the very first days of U.S. rule in Los Angeles — the Tongva Basin — incarceration has persistently operated as a means of purging, removing, caging, containing, erasing, disappearing and otherwise eliminating indigenous communities and racially targeted populations.

I tell this tale with six stories that demonstrate how incarceration was used to first clear Tongva and other indigenous populations from the region and cage a variety of racially marginalized populations, ranging from white males disparaged as “tramps and “hobos” to Chinese immigrants, African Americans and Mexican Immigrants.

You reveal that mass incarceration is in fact mass elimination of these non-conforming groups. Why is Los Angeles’ particular history so illustrative of this?

Los Angeles opens a window to see untold histories of incarceration, namely those that can best be told from the perspective of the American West. What the American West teaches us about the rise of incarceration in the United States is that conquest matters.

In particular, the 19th-century efforts to expand the United States across the North American continent and build white settler communities on the nation’s western frontier are deeply imprinted in the nation’s police and incarceration practices.

By focusing on the western town that built the nation’s largest jail system, City of Inmates unlocks how the dynamics of conquest shaped, and continue to shape, the priorities and tactics of human caging in the United States.

Read the full Q&A here.

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Activism

Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

Published

23 hours ago

November 1, 2024

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Alameda County

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price Announces $7.5 Million Settlement Agreement with Walmart

The settlement resolves allegations that Walmart unlawfully disposed of hazardous waste and medical waste from its facilities statewide to municipal landfills. Walmart agreed to pay $4,297,040 in civil penalties and $3,202,960 in costs, to be split among the prosecuting agencies, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, and some local environmental protection agencies. There are nine Walmart stores in Alameda County.

Published

5 days ago

October 28, 2024

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By Oakland Post Staff

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, the California Attorney General’s Office, and eleven other prosecutors’ offices secured a $7.5 million settlement with Walmart on behalf of the People of the State of California.

“Large corporations must be held accountable when they do not follow the law and put the health and safety of Alameda County residents at risk,” said Price. “I commend my office’s Consumer Justice Bureau’s active involvement in this investigation, which helped bring this settlement forward and holds Walmart to account.”

The settlement is the result of over 70 covert waste inspections conducted by the district attorneys’ offices statewide from 2015 through 2021, including many assisted by Alameda County District Attorney’s Office environmental protection investigators. During those inspections, the offices inspected the waste that Walmart sent from its stores to local landfills and found hundreds of containers of toxic aerosols and liquid wastes (including spray paints, rust removers, bleach, and pesticides), as well as medical waste (such as over-the-counter drugs).

Improperly disposed of private consumer information was also found.

The People filed a civil law enforcement complaint against Walmart in 2021, wherein those unlawful disposals were alleged to violate the Hazardous Waste Control Law, Medical Waste Management Act, and Unfair Competition Law.

The civil action and stipulated judgment were filed in Alameda County Superior Court. The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office has been involved in the investigation and civil case preparation since 2015.

The settlement also imposes injunctive terms, which require Walmart to maintain an independent, third-party auditor to conduct three annual rounds of waste audits at its facilities throughout California during the next four years. Walmart’s auditor must use specific requirements in the settlement to ensure that hazardous waste is properly classified, handled, disposed of, and transported according to California law.

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Activism

Black Tulip Calls for Action and a Cultural Shift in Oakland for Black Women’s Safety

Anyka Howard, founder of the Betti Ono Foundation and visionary of Black Tulip, expressed the core value of the movement and urgent need for change. “We’re not going to tolerate Oakland being a hotbed for dysfunction and violence, and perpetuating harms against Black women and girls,” Howard said. “We deserve better, we are worthy, our lives matter, and it’s time for us to boldly, and collectively proclaim that and expect the appropriate response.”

Published

5 days ago

October 28, 2024

Oakland Post

Jada Imani and another Black Tulip attendee building an altar at the Lake Merritt Amphitheater in honor of artist Zoe Reidy Watts, 25, who was killed in Oakland in March. Courtesy photo.

By Kristal Raheem
Special to The Post

Last week, Oakland City Council voted to adopt a resolution supporting the federal Protect Black Women and Girls Act, (H.R. 7354). The federal law would establish an interagency task force to examine the experiences of Black women in U.S. society, from education to health care to jobs to housing.

A 2020 study by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation reported that 40% of humans being trafficked in the U.S. are Black women. In 2022, the FBI reported 97,000 Black women were missing. That same year in Oakland, 400 Black women were reported missing.

The Council vote on Oct. 15 was just the latest reflection of a blossoming movement in Oakland demanding greater protection for Black women and girls.

From Oct. 3-5, the Betti Ono Foundation, in partnership with the Black Arts Movement Business District and Community Development Corporation (BAMB CDC), hosted their inaugural Black Tulip Cultural Week of Action.

The Black Tulip event series included a write-in at the BAMB CDC, an Oakland’s First Friday partnership, and a Day of Action at Lake Merritt.

Howard said everyone must support Black Tulip’s mission, regardless of race and other social identities. She specifically called for men to show up more as allies.

West Oakland native and founder of Black Terminus AR, Damien McDuffie, said the Town’s “pimp culture” has warped how Black women are treated. “Oakland has a complex history around sexual assault and pimp culture, so I think we have a warped sense of what safety might look like, especially for women and girls,” Damien saud. “I think a real impact on how women are treated here in Oakland or in the Bay Area will come from a culture shift.”

The Black Tulip Day of Action took place on Saturday, Oct. 5. Healers, poets, and musicians joined forces to amplify joy, remembrance, and hope.

Oakland educator and healer Venus Morris co-hosted the event alongside honorary guest speaker and singer Dawn Richard.

Richard is the artist relations director with the Hip Hop Caucus, an organization that helps artists use their platform to advocate for important issues. She is also one of 120 people being represented in a lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs for alleged sexual assault and abuse.

Despite the media frenzy regarding the legal case, Richard showed up in Oakland to stand in solidarity for the mission of Black Tulip. “I think our narrative has been stolen from us,” Richard said. “We’ve lost the narrative of what we represent in this culture and in this society. We are more and I think this event exemplifies that.”

Participants gathered to honor the lives of Black women who lost their lives to violence while also celebrating one another as the journey for justice continues.

“We are the mothers, the womb of this earth. There is no America, no globalization, no capitalism, without us,” Howard told Oakland Voices. “People are taught to see us in a particular way that does not honor who we are. Black Tulip is a reclamation of our sacredness. It’s an affirmation, a calling, a demand.”

This story was initially published by Oakland Voices (http://oaklandvoices.us). The author previously worked as a communications and public relations manager for Councilmember Treva Reid.