Racist! Santa Monica, Murder Capital USA

So one popular teenager being murdered in Santa Monica equals a trend. Or so would be the case if you believe this article in the LA Times.

This article is full of so much of the usual crap that it's hard to separate, but let me try.

The Santa Monica High School 10th-grader grew up in an apartment in that area, called the Pico neighborhood. It is a low-income pocket with the largest proportion of blacks and Latinos in the city of 84,000 that is nearly three-quarters white.

OK later in the article they help clarify what they mean by 'low-income'

The Pico neighborhood is a large rectangular area bounded approximately by Lincoln Boulevard, Pico Boulevard, Centinela Avenue and Colorado Avenue. According to a 2003 Rand Corp. study, the median household income for the city as a whole was $50,714 in 1999. In the Pico area, the median income was $39,821. By contrast, the median income in the tony neighborhood north of Montana Avenue is $118,553.

So an area where household income is still 80% of the median is now 'low-income'. OK, I guess, but no thoughts as to why this persists. We have this thing called rent control in Santa Monica, it's been a disaster for landlords, and a burden on tennants, too. Part of the reason why median incomes are low is because of the artificially low prices set by the rent-control board here in Santa Monica. If property owners could get fair market value for their properties, you'd see the 'Pico Neighborhood' (which the article expands to include many parts of town that haven't been traditionally included in that designation) reap the benefits of the land values and overall desirability of living by the ocean in a low crime (if you don't believe me look at the official statistics, the last two pages of this PDF from the SMPD shows the crime statistics for 40 years) city outside the jurisdiction of the city of Los Angeles.

(of course if that happened lefties would be angry over the encroaching horror that is gentrification)

Also, the worst public schools in Santa Monica are better than all but the best public schools in LAUSD, and have been so for the past 50 years, so for these pockets of poverty to persist, two things are happening. One, some parents aren't availing themselves of the opportunities to get a solid education for their children in these 'low-income' areas, and two, as the children of these formerly 'low-income' parents get the educations available to them, they have sense enough not to move back into these 'low-income' areas and spread out to other parts of the country or Southern California (the housing stock in Santa Monica being too expensive for any beginning family to even think about entering, the very humble duplex my family owns is worth in excess of $750,000 if you believe Zillow, and that's in a neighborhood very near the 'low-income' Pico Neighborhood, plus most of the houses sold in the 'low-income' Pico Neighborhood have sold in excess of $500,000 recently)

This is one place where there are a myriad of opportunities for 'at-risk' youth to avoid engaging in 'at-risk' activities. There's absolutely no excuse for falling into that lifestyle regardless of your families income level or background.

Another thing about the article, let's see who they choose to go to for some juicy quotes about the prevalance of gang activity within Santa Monica

"You have people drowning in poverty in an ocean of wealth," said Oscar de la Torre, a school board member and founder of the Pico Youth and Family Center, an organization for at-risk teens and young adults.

Let's take a look at what this place is about. Here's a blurb about the opening of the Pico Youth and Family Center from Streetgangs.com's website

Although the center will provide a variety of technological tools for education, de la Torre states that "its not just about providing services but developing leadership." As a former counselor at Santa Monica High School, de la Torre pledges that counseling is among another of the important services that the PYFC will provide through a partnership with Saint Johns Child and Family Development Center. The main goal with counseling is to provide youth with effective communication tools, to manage anger and to develop more meaningful relationships among peers.

Sounds good, everyone can jump on board to that message, but on the same webpage they show some of the portraits of 'positive' influences for Blacks and Latinos



Sorry, but Cesar Chavez isn't a hero to everyone, and I still eat grapes. (somehow I don't think they'll ever put a picture up of this gentleman)



So for the black kids they get Malcolm X, again, I think there are many better choices that could be made, like say Thomas Sowell, but oh wait, Oscar De La Torre thinks he's an 'Uncle Tom'. (just in case you aren't sure it's the same Oscar De La Torre, Chico News & Review confirms this). Here's another young conservative's take on Oscar De La Torre from the standpoint of a recent former Samohi student (during De La Torre's tenure on the School Board). And lest you think that the opening of this center, attended by many local politicos was a reason to be optimistic here's the closer to the piece I linked

In addition to the financial support, de la Torre has received much moral support from the community and elected officials. On the opening day those that showed their support included Mike Feinstein the Mayor of Santa Monica, along with Dr. Piedad F. Robertson, the president of Santa Monica College, California State Senator Sheila Kuehl, three City Council members and a school board member. It was the most elected officials that de la Torre had ever seen in one place in Santa Monica in all his years there, but the unfortunate side was that other than STREETGANGS.com, there was no significant media presence to cover this event. Press releases were sent but it did not garner enough publicity to be covered as a relevant event in the community. De la Torre states that the absence of any media coverage "is a testament to the racism that still exists within the media."

What's my point in highlighting that bit, well it seems that there is no event, no cause, no time, and no point in Oscar De la Torre's sorrowful existence that isn't shaped, motivated or ruined by some perception of the horrors of institutional racism that have limited him to a life of multiple opportunities at public colleges, jobs at public schools, and high positions within 'racist' school boards. Must suck to be him.

What's this have to do with the LA Times piece? Everything and nothing.

The LA Times just figures it has an angle to explore the ever increasing 'disparities' between the haves and have nots, and what better venue for this than 'glitzy' Santa Monica.

But all you need to know about the piece is that their first instinct was to go to a life-long aggrieved lefty agitator like Oscar De La Torre to get their pull quotes about the tough life on the streets that traps the poor youths in the Pico Neighborhood.

Reality isn't that simple. What happened to Eddie Lopez sucks. It sucks big time. But it would have sucked whether or not he was Black, Chicano, Mexican, Guatemalan, Chinese, or even White. The problem lies with the folks who think shooting someone is a solution to a 'beef' regardless of whether the target turned out to be who they meant to shoot.

No amount of community activism by lefties who insist on telling these kids that they are victims of some nefarious 'white' conspiracy to keep them down will change the culture that allows these situations to escalate to a point where gunplay seems reasonable and justified.

People like Oscar De La Torre, and slanted myopic articles by the LA Times that look to externalize the blame for what clearly and unequivocally is a problem internal to that community are a part of the problem, not the solution.

Don't make excuses for criminals, instead shun them, belittle them, and when they commit crimes incarcerate them for as long as possible.

That's how you'll improve neighborhoods like the Pico Neighborhood, not by telling these kids that the deck is stacked against them, when it's more likely they are choosing to not play with all the cards that are dealt to them in the first place.

(and the percentage of kids who slide into 'la vida loca' type crap is still very small, even in the worst neighborhoods, unfortunately the effect those thugs have can hold communities hostage)

Also I found this interesting and part of the close to but not quite plagarism watch here's this from the LATimes article

That isolation could explain in part why young people from the Pico neighborhood tend when riding their bikes not to venture north of Montana, where, they say, police ask not "How are you doing?" but "What are you doing?"

No quotes of a specific kid, just a generalized, everyone north of Wilshire is a racist! charge, and the racist! police force (headed by the Racist! Chief Butts (so what if he's black, he's obviously an Uncle Tom, if he's willing to be Chief of Police in a Racist! town like Santa Monica)) do the bidding of all those racist! white folks who live in racist! comfort north of Wilshire.

And since when is it okay to put "quote" marks around "quotes" that aren't attributed to any "one" person?

Let me play this game. I had a conversation with a reporter and she explained that when she writes about the Bush Administration "I make up stuff all the time" and "I hate conservatives with a passion" and "Our religious nuts are worse than the Taliban", this is fun, I'll have to remember that this is perfectly valid procedure for a reporter at a major (yes, I know, that's becoming increasingly disputable) daily newspaper.

Now compare and contrast that to this blurb from this article I found while looking for other articles about the experience of youth in the Pico Neigborhood

On the rare occasions when 21-year-old Albert Ruiz rides his bike north of Montana Avenue, he knows to keep his eyes open. He knows that people are watching him, waiting for him to do something he shouldn’t.
It’s a feeling he gets whenever he ventures too far from his home in Santa Monica’s predominantly working class Pico neighborhood, a largely minority community whose residents over the years have come to feel more and more isolated within this affluent seaside town.

Parallel thoughts clearly, though not a clear act of plagarism, still it's part and parcel of the same knee jerk, rich white folk are racist! argument, when it could just be that anyone looking around at all the houses, and looking a bit nervous while doing so would attract attention.

Notice, no specific accusations of harrassment, no Patrol Officer badge numbers, cause what they describe never happened! I rode my bike from the 90404 area code into those 'tony' enclaves all the time (and I could just as easily appear Mexican/Chicano to someone as not, so if the local police had standing orders to harrass kids who were 'out of place' then I was just as likely a target as anyone), and the only thing that really kept me out of there was the punishing elevation changes that you have to deal with as you head north in Santa Monica (easy breezy when you're older and have a bike with more gears, but really tough when you're ten and stuck with one speed), not the police, or the prying eyes of racist! white folks peeking at me from behind their mansion's windows.

And I walk my big black dog (around 80 pounds, Rott/Pitt and Mystery Mix, Mutt) in those 'tony' neighborhoods sometimes and the people don't seem too concerned, but all those little white fou-fou dogs get pretty agitated, so the people racist!, not so much, but the dogs, they're a different story.