Fuck Assimilation

I wanted to finish up June with a little story from a few weeks ago.

I was waiting at the bus stop on LaBrea and Pico with my friend Jessie (she can back me on this) that evening. That particular bus bench had one of those spiffy ads for the movie District 9, which I have been waiting to see with mounting anticipation. The ads, which are part of a very clever marketing campaign, look like this:


Before I say anything else (and you'll see why this is important) I should warn you, never ever attempt to take the bus that runs along LaBrea. You'll wait about an hour, only to eventually climb aboard an overcrowded, rickety vehicle with an actively rude and beligerant driver. It goes through a mostly-latino neighborhood, making it very difficult for the locals to get very far out of the area, which is not a particulaly nice one. It also makes it logistically harder, more time consuming and less desirable, to go up LaBrea to the relatively nicer, more commercially thriving neighborhood, or up to the Hollywood area, where tourists might see them.

So we're sitting on this bench and I look at it, about to say something about how I love this particular marketing campaign and I'm looking forward to the movie, and South African accents are hot, when I notice some interference with the lettering of the ad. Stepping back and squinting (it was kinda dark) we made out a new, shocking message.


I apologize for the poor quality of the pictures. I will summarize the damage: the word 'Human' in the first line had been abbreviated to just the letters 'US.' Then the 'Report Non-Humans' had been changed to 'Deport Non-United S' with 'tates Citizens' trailing after it. Strong, hateful words to put out in a community that is already horribly marginalized.

I was surprised that I couldn't find anything about our bench online. There was, however, a similar picture of a different bench on Bunny Blog. It looks like this:

I'm the victim of my own racism sometimes, and I beat myself up about it. When you live around any particular ethnic group for a long enough period of time, you start to notice things that annoy you. I lived around white people for eighteen years, and that got old really fast. But people in this town really hate the latino population for what they see as refusal to assimilate. I'm aware of my own prejudices, and in my time in LA I've had the misfortune to meet many people who aren't aware of theirs, but that doesn't mean sights like this are any less upsetting.

I've seen discrimination on both sides of the line, and heard racial hatred spew from mouths of all colors and creeds, and what can you expect from a city where everyone comes to get away from their closed-minded upbringings in small towns in flyover states. All it does is feed the mindset inherent to the city itself. LA was designed to keep it's population segregated, which is obvious if you know the town's history or looked at the city plan (yes, LA was actually planned), and its residents are doing their best to make sure it stays that way.

On another, lighter note, I offer this photo, courtesy of faithful YWBT operative Brian, who recorded this piece of fagtastic defiance in a port-a-potty at San Francisco Pride this past weekend. This is exactly what's missing from LA's gay community, this spirit of "You know what, we have baseball bats too!" That's exactly what we need, an antidote to something like the Happy Hour 'Demonstration' hosted by Fiesta Cantina, a good safe distance away from anyone not already part of the choir, on May 26, 2009. Where are the fags setting buildings on fire? That's what I want to know!

Oh well, I'm not bitter. This rant should have ended several paragraphs ago. Happy last day of June, everybody!