Lincoln Place Needs Our Help
By Jim
Smith
The first article in the Free
Venice Beachhead about a threat to the tenants at Lincoln Place Apartments was
printed in the April 1972 issue. Since then, the events at Lincoln Place have
been an on-going issue around Venice and in the Beachhead. And well they should
be. At its height, there were about 3,000 residents at Lincoln Place, nearly 10
percent of the population of Venice, and an even higher percentage of affordable
housing in our community.
Lincoln Place has been a model of how good
affordable and low-income housing can be. The quality of life at Lincoln Place
is higher than that at most so-called luxury apartments and condos. Lincoln
Place residents are not walled in by security fences and gates. They have acres
of park-like green space to share with their neighbors. And, they know their
neighbors. Ask the residents of the multi-story fortresses that are passed off
as luxury living how many of their neighbors they
know.
Lincoln Place is a living rebuke
to the privatized, anonymous, alienated and consumption driven lifestyle that
are considered the ideal for capitalism in its sputtering old age. You
didn’t see any Lincoln Place-style apartments in such film critiques as
Matrix or Blade Runner. Even though the structures at Lincoln Place are solid,
and probably good for a few hundred years if they receive regular maintenance,
they must be destroyed for ideological and financial reasons. Lincoln Place, by
its very structure, lends itself to community building. Once workers or tenants
start talking among themselves they constitute a threat to those who would
exploit them.
It’s probably no
accident that Lincoln Place was built and thrived in Venice, a place where
community is valued over private interests. While Venice has quite a few
courtyard apartments, canals and walk streets that lend themselves to community
living, Lincoln Place is the flagship. We can’t let it go without a
fight.
Up until now, the renters, and
their organization, the Lincoln Place Tenants Association, has led the fight to
save the apartment complex. We Venetians who don’t live there have stood
back as spectators, perhaps cheering the tenants on, but not actively involved
as a separate force.
A Lincoln Place
Support Committee is long past due. It would bring together all those who see
the importance of saving Lincoln Place and are willing to do something about it.
It needs to be able to act independently of the tenants association and their
legal struggles.
Among the activities
of an LPSC would be: conducting educational and outreach activities about
Lincoln Place in the community; raising money to help in the struggle to save
the buildings and tenants; mobilizing supporters to come to community rallies
for Lincoln Place and against those who would destroy it; supporting civil
disobedience actions against evictions, and
more.
It should also be mentioned that
Lincoln Place residents have a long history of activism in Venice. Issues that
come to mind include the longest rent strike in Venice history at Four-Floors
West, helping with senior issues at the Israel Levin Center on Ocean Front Walk,
working with Oakwood organizations like the Neighborhood Adult Participation
Project (NAPP) and LIEU-CAP, a senior assistance program run by Vera Davis.
Among now deceased Lincoln Place
activists were Sadie Doroshin, Bill Tomkin, Saul and Helen Weingast and Ethel
Bertolini. Many of them came out of New York garment union and political
struggles in the 20s and 30s.
They
“retired” to where else, but Venice. Sadie, a natural leader and
organizer, was by then in her 70s. She used to walk (or occasionally ride the #2
Blue Bus) from Lincoln Place to the beach every day to walk the picket line at
the rent strike. Long after she had to move on to assisted living at Sunset
Hall, her Lincoln Place apartment on Lake Street was one of those bulldozed by
an insane developer.
The elder
generation was replaced by new activists including Sheila Bernard, former
president of the Venice Neighborhood Council, Laura Burns, C.V. Beck, Ingrid
Mueller, Jan Book, Moira LaMountain, Erin Grayson and many more who are
continuing the struggle at Lincoln Place and throughout
Venice.
Now, their homes are at risk. They
need our help.
If you agree,
let’s form a Lincoln Place Support Committee. You can call me at 399-8685
or email: LPSC@freevenice.org
Posted: Wed - November 2, 2005 at 01:40 PM