DAY 26 –FAST FOR VENICE It is such an honor to us all to live and take our stands for what we believe –in Venice.
Just to bring everybody up to date on “THE FAST FOR VENICE.” On Monday March 19th, my 20th day of the water-only fast, I collapsed twice in that morning: Since that morning, beginning with a 450 calorie peanut-butter sandwich meal, I’ve now been on a “limited calorie” fast now since.
I do intend to go back on the water-only fast –at certain points in the coming weeks, and primarily for the goals of the FAST FOR VENICE. But I want to make sure that I make it through the next 15 to 20 days on demonstrations at Bonin’s offices, LA City Hall, and The County Board of Supervisors.
Yesterday for the demo in front of Snapchat, I held vigil starting at 2am on the Boardwalk to make sure nobody else ( especially Snapchat proxies) tried to take up all the spots across from their store, in order to block the demonstrations. It is critical for people to understand two things about Snapchat:
I. They now occupy 25% of ALL commercial real-estate in Venice most of it with ILLEGAL uses and Conversions –and it is an utterly astonishing and frightening amount. They simply are THE BIGGEST THREAT to public access and the future of the counter-culture and working-class presence EVER in Venice Beach. Since Venice Beach’s founding, Venice has never faced a bigger threat to it’s unique character and diversity and community than Snapchat.
IT MUST BE OUR PRIORITY TO STOP and ROLL BACK Snapchat THIS SUMMER.
2. The biggest threat the Snapchat presences poses is especially to the poor and working-class youth of color who have come for several recent decades to Venice Beach –to enjoy the ocean, learn to surf, swim skateboard, and skate–all the opportunities that wealthy white kids in Palos Verdes and and other places up and down the coast get:
To have a beach that is accommodating to THEIR culture.
It is disgusting that privileged upper-class college-educated yuppies, (mostly white) are putting in the old American Apparel Store this “Spectacles” gimmick. They are displacing the $ I snow-cones and $2 hot-dog stands that could be in those spaces; they are taking over the premier beach in all of Southern California that poor kids, mostly black and brown could come to every weekend and hang out and not feel “out of place.” This is disgusting that Wall Street would prop up spoiled self-absorbed over-privileged and arrogant rich white kids to come in and crowd out the poorest youth and struggling families that have had, until now, Venice Beach –as a place that they could also call their bit of Southern California Beach Culture.
And act like they don’t know what they are doing–and don’t give a damn.
What poor kid walking past that filthy Snapchat “pop-up” insult –isn’t going to feel a little bad that they can’t afford $140 “Spectacles” to be “cool” enough to fit into this “white” world. The arrogance of this makes me sick. I was really proud of the fact, that especially moms with kids of color, would tum away from this Snapstore by the dozens yesterday when I pointed this out!
Additionally, the disgusting absurdity of coming to the one beach in LA that prides itself on it’s street artists and real live hand-made art and REAL OCEAN, and REAL BEACH, and REAL PEOPLE OF ALL KINDS–to put on “augmented ‘dis”-reality” and watch computer-generated crap clowns and phony faeries and washed-out “rainbows” skitter across your vision and block it out, is asininely pathetic.
The fact that Snapchat seems especially to hire people of color to sell-out their own younger generation as the pathetic sell-out tokens to shill this crap to kids of their own color is pure racist exploitation at this pop-up store makes one sick. Go check out their perfectly coiffed “corpo-dreads” and nice light-skinned model-women. And Look at the founders, funders and owners of Snapchat stock–overwhelmingly this is a white-culture ruled company –with “diversity” as their “cheap trick.” I made sure that these “uncle and auntie Toms” shilling for Snapchat there as their “representatives got an earful yesterday.
I hope they laid awake last night thinking about what they were selling themselves for. The fact is, Snapchat itself has a warning label on it’s “Spectacles” that they are so addictive to young minds that no child under the age of thirteen is recommended to go near them. Snapchat Spectacles are the CRACK of addictive apps. They are the “Camel Cigarettes” of apps–and shouldn’t even be allowed to put up colorful displays that purposefully are AIMED at CHILDREN.
PEOPLE OF VENICE WE MUST SHOW SNAPCHAT THAT WE WILL NOT TOLERATE THIS CRAP in our community. DRIVE THE SNAPCHAT STORE OFF THE BOARDWALK NOW.
THERE IS NOTHING MORE IMPORTANT THAN DOING THAT NOW. ALREADY DEVELOPERS, SEEING THE SNAPCHAT INVASION ARE PLANNING TO TEAR DOWN EVERYTHING ON WINDWARD TO THE TRAFFICS CIRCLE AND REPLACE IT WITH A NEWLY-CONSTRUCTED MALL!
AND ANY LOSER WHO SAYS “OH THERE’S NOTHING WE CAN DO TO STOP IT” –IS A FOOL: WHO DOESN’T BELONG HERE.
THE FACT IS WE STOPPED THE CITY’S SCHEME TO MAKE EVERYBODY BUY PERMITS TO PARK HERE; WE STOPPED OIL-WELLS OFF THE BEACH HERE; WE STOPPED THEM FROM TELLING ANYBODY HOMELESS THAT THEY CAN’T SLEEP AT NIGHT HERE: WE STOPPED THEM FROM DISTROYING THE MURAL IN THE POST OFFICE AND WE’VE
STOPPED A HALF A BILLION DOLLARS OF HIGH-RISE DEVELOPMENT AT LINCOLN PLACE ALONE!
AND WE WHO DESERVE TO BE HERE –WILL ALL, TOGETHER–STOP SNAPCHAT.
SO IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE IT–THEN GO. AND JUST GET OUT OF THE WAY.
Go up to Santa Sell-out Monica: Patronize Snapchat at the Plastic Malls; with their plastic products, and plastic over-priced, unsustainable, dangerous, insulting arrogant out-of-control greed fulled capitalist excrement there:
OR stand and resist with all your LOVE and POWER. And it for the humanity and love –of Venice Beach.
FACEBOOK: #unhousedvenicelove FACEBOOK: The Alliance For the Preservation Of Venice LOVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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hey, hey, ho, ho … Snapflap, “popup” from the Venice Boardwalk has got to go!!!!!!!
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Categories: Development/Gentrification, Ocean Front Walk, Venice