Let's All Move Into Daryl Hannah's House!
Big Lizards blog
By Dafydd on Econ. 101
So we start with these grafs, showing poor farmers being evicted by the evil government from the land they had farmed for many years:
Sheriff's deputies evicted people from an urban community garden to make room for a warehouse Tuesday, touching off a furious protest in which actress Daryl Hannah and others climbed into a walnut tree or chained themselves to concrete-filled barrels. More than 40 people were arrested.
Authorities cut away branches and used a fire truck to bring down the "Splash" actress and another tree-sitter, who raised their fists as they were removed. Hannah was arrested.
"I'm very confident this is the morally right thing to do, to take a principled stand in solidarity with the farmers," she said by cell phone before the fire truck raised officers into the tree.
So right away, we're all reaching for our Solidarnosc t-shirts and singing Pete Seeger songs. And then we discover just exactly what "principle" Hannah is standing in solidarity with, along with (we learn) Willie Nelson, Joan Baez, and professional tree-sitting protester Julia Butterfly Hill.
They are bravely protecting the right of Mexican immigrants to steal other people's land:
About 350 people grow produce and flowers on the 14 acres of privately owned land, in an inner-city area surrounded by warehouses and railroad tracks. The garden has been there for more than a decade, but the landowner, Ralph Horowitz, now wants to replace it with a warehouse....
Dozens of protesters chanted, "We're here and we're not going to leave!" in Spanish, blew whistles and blocked traffic in the surrounding streets. Protesters linked arms and sat on the tracks. Officers dragged some protesters away.
It seems that the owner, Ralph Horowitz -- probably a liberal -- foolishly allowed the poor, immigrant farmers (Reuters makes clear they are immigrants) to grow food and other crops on his land for a number of years; but at $25,000 per month, it has become too expensive to maintain the mortgage without any income. So Horowitz asked them to leave.
They told him No: now that he had graciously allowed them to farm it for so long, it was now their land, and he could jolly well shove off, or Spanish words to that effect. He tried to evict them, and they fought back in the courts, suing Horowitz. (What on earth was the cause of action? AP doesn't say.) They picketed his office, they picketed his home.
And lefty celebrities by the bushel, possibly having flashbacks to the grand old days of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, rushed forward to support the theft of land worth millions of dollars -- from a man whose only crime was to allow poor, Spanish-speaking immigrants the opportunity to grow crops while he decides how best to use the land that he bought with his own money.
That's the American spirit! That's the way to persuade voters to support normalization of illegal immigrants already here -- though of course we have no way of knowing whether these particular immigrants are legal or illegal. (I should ask Patterico whether there is any state or local law that forbids the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputies to inquire about the immigration status of people they arrest.) But even if they're legal... shouldn't attempted grand theft be sufficient to deport them?
Horowitz noted that the farmers were squatting on land zoned for warehouses and factories. The landowner said in a telephone interview that he was paying $25,000 to $30,000 a month in mortgage and other land costs.
"We've made, in the last three years, enough of a donation to those farmers," he said. "I just want my land back."
Oh, but how could the city of Los Angeles be so cruel and inhuman as to force people out to starve, wives and children huddled together in the snowdrifts? But of course, we don't learn until the very end that L.A. has actually provided other spaces for the farmers:
Horowitz also said the city had provided other locations for the gardeners, and most had left. In a statement, City Councilwoman Jan Perry also said many gardeners had moved to new garden sites.
So it's not even that they want some land; they demand this specific 14-acre plot. I wonder how long the warehouse will stand before somebody -- out of revenge for having "his" land stolen -- will burn it down.
So with what is Daryl Hannah standing in "solidarity?" With the proposition that if someone moves onto your land and squats there, and if you don't immediately summon the cops and have him evicted, but rather make the mistake of letting him stay for a few years while you get the land ready for sale -- then the squatter now owns that land, even if you told him all along that he had only temporary permission to stay.
In other words, if I want some piece of property -- let's say one of multi-millionaire Daryl Hannah's houses, or some piece of property owned by Joan Baez or Willie Nelson, or whatever tree Julia Butterfly Hill currently calls home... then all I need do is plant myself on it and declare it mine.
So let's all go move into Daryl Hannah's house. I'm sure, in the spirit of consistency and solidarity with the land-snatching Sandinistas, she will be delighted to let us stay... and equally delighted when we evict her -- from our new property.
Whaddya say, Daryl? You good with that? |
