The Dodgers are into the 7th game of the world series, which is a big deal even if they don’t win it. So given the long interval between the Dodgers’ last series and today, maybe the Chavez Ravine Curse is finally being lifted. You don’t know about that curse? Sure you do if you are a reader of this blog.
A while back we wrote about it, explaining the municipal shenanigans that led to the City of Los Angeles acquiring that plot of land and conveying it to the Brooklyn Dodgers to induce them to move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. The taking displaced a neighborhood of low-income Mexican families who made their homes there. Ostensibly, this was done to create new, low-cost housing. But that didn’t happen. The city took the land and underpaid its Mexican owners, going so far as to deny them interest on their meager awards, even though they were plainly entitled to it. Some of them tried to stand their ground but were forcibly removed by L.A. sheriff’s deputies. For our piece telling that story see “The Curse of Chavez Ravine,” https://gideonstrumpet.info/2011/04/
Now, more of that sordid background has come to light in the form of a collection of historical photographs made available by the LA Public Library that you — whether eminent domain junkies, or baseball aficionados — may want to see. If so, go to https://www.scpr.org/news/2017/10/31/77135/remembering-dodger-stadium-when-it-was-chavez-ravi/ It will tell you stuff about the history of Dodger Stadium and the fate of little people who get in the way of a grandiose municipal project that in the name of “public use” takes land from some private property in order to reconvey it to other, more favored folks for the latters’ private gain. To see those photos, copy and paste the above link into your browser.
That’s “public use”?
Postscript: We now know the answer to the question posed by the title of this post, and the answer is “No.” The curse of Chavez Ravine is not being lifted. Not yet anyway. Maybe next year. So stay tuned.