ARE WE AT WAR YET?

The following is from a conversation with Sky, a Native Venetian, to discuss the current Snapchat Problem.

Jon Wolff: I was born and raised here. I’m a natural born Venetian. You also are a natural born Venetian. Is that right?

Sky: Yes. I was born and raised here but I’m kind of younger. I was born in 1990. And I’ve seen, since then, what older folks would say is the same style of Gentrification that’s been going on forever. But this is like way worse. In my lifetime, even agreed upon by older folks, this is the worst that it’s ever been. So I’m fighting it.

JW: You had a communication with somebody, awhile back, who was coming out in favor of the Snapchat Invasion/Colonization or whatever you want to call it. Can you read that?

S: Yeah. I put something up on Facebook that would cause a stir and got some friend requests from people that I didn’t know. I gave it the benefit of the doubt and added them. They had some really negative things to say. This is one of the things. We actually sent this woman an article from the L.A. Times recognizing the locals’ distress and what Snapchat is doing here. And this is what she responded. It says, “lol. I read the article. Hippies and artists can no longer afford Venice. Oh the humanity. We should shut down a $15 billion company so artists can live by the beach and not spend so much money? It sounds ridiculous because it is. If artists, poets, and other low-income, generally speaking, producing people want a place to live, then they can move somewhere else. There are plenty of artsy places yet to be gentrified. Check out East L.A., El Sereno, Eagle Rock. All great places, just one third the cost of Venice.” So, when I heard that, I was just really upset. There’s a lot of backlashing but I kind of didn’t say anything. I let other people take care of it. But I’ve been reading that passage at some of the meetings around here just to show people what kind of attitude people have when they’re part of something, a big army like that. We’re kind of small and we’re fighting for our unique Culture. And there’s a lot of other people that are fighting for just some, I don’t know, just some tech, corporate, weird app on your phone.

JW: You used a term, talking about this last week, that I haven’t heard anybody else use about anything in all this time and certainly throughout this present struggle. You referred to this as a War.

S: Yeah. I strongly believe it is a War.

JW: I feel that Snapchat, and all their kind, would consider it a War. They think they’re at War; we just haven’t realized yet that we’re at War.

S: I think that, based on some of the meetings that we all have been to recently, this is brand new information. We went to a meeting last night. And a lot was said. And a lot of important things were said that I’m kind of afraid about. Thinking about the tech corporations: they’re trying to get answers for things so that, when they start making their plans, they have all the complaints. They have everything.

JW: Yeah. I suspect that a lot of what they’re doing is putting out focus groups, a kind of fact-finding expedition to see what our strengths and weaknesses are. They ask us questions. They come off like they want to get feedback from the community. When, in fact, they want to test the depth of the water. They want to see what they can get away with and how fast they have to move and whether we’re going to do anything about it.

S: Moving and shaking. The thing about it is, maybe I’m just paranoid but there’s just a bad pattern that what we don’t want keeps happening. What we ask for doesn’t seem to stick.

JW: And experience has shown that this type of thing never turns out well for us. It always turns to the favor of the other side. And any kind of concessions that we make, anything that we let go, never gets back. I think that past struggles have shown that we can’t have any peaceful co-existence with them. They’re not going to get with the program. They’re not going to learn how to be nice and play nice with the rest of us. There was a time, many years ago, when there was an attempt to put the freeway through Venice. People of Venice fought back. People of Venice won. This is no different. What we need to do though is get our heads straight and take action now.

S: The actions that we need to take are drastic because there’s a lot of people that are angry. So we have to do it the right way and not the wrong way. A lot of people think, they look at me and they think, “That kid looks kind of aggressive.” We’re all really sweethearts. We all have really big hearts. But we’re just born in this area. We’re not from cookie cutter homes. It might look that way now. But when we were growing up it was a lot different. We’re just here protecting. We’re the angels protecting our city. We’re trying really, really hard. Everyone is trying really, really hard. I think that there are ways to protest peacefully. We could do it with music, drum circles.

JW: At one of the recent meetings, one guy talked about this being just part of the natural state of things and that there’s nothing you can do about it. And that it’s inevitable and it’s just the way things are always going to go. So we might as well just give up. Do you have any thoughts on that?

S: I don’t think we’re ever going to give up. I think there’s a lot of people. We just need to start hitting up and really telling them this is a big problem. We have to have more people mad about it that are big and have a lot of pull in Venice to go and talk to the people. I could definitely say something but I’m still young.

JW: These meetings seem to be getting a little more angry each time.

S: Yeah. But that’s why I think that there are decoy meetings.

JW: Yeah. I’ve likened it to that process of opening a bottle of soda pop slowly to let the carbonation out so it doesn’t explode in your face. And that’s what they’re trying to do with us. They’re trying to let us let off steam. They want us to just yell and shout and get it off our chest and then we go home and nothing gets done. We need to keep doing what we’re doing and keep building on this; keep building the anger and the frustration. And anything we do after this will be effective.

S: We could start hitting up other communities that have been affected by it like San Francisco, and places that know our pain.

JW: Boyle Heights has been fairly successful in their reaction to Gentrification.

S: We could hit up all the cities in L.A. that have been dealing with it.

JW: But Venice has its own way of doing things too. I feel that, whereas organization is important and it’s tempting to put a lot of faith in everybody working together as a group, the individual actions are also effective because there’s no command structure. It’s hard for the other side to predict what’s going to happen. If every man and woman in Venice does what he or she knows to do, Snapchat won’t be able to head this off. All the surveillance cameras in the world won’t be able to keep track of what’s going on and they’ll never know which end it’s going to come from. And everybody will act in the same Spirit because we’ll all act in the Spirit of Venice. And, by then, they’ll leave. We have to get it in our head that we want them to leave. We want them to not be here anymore. We can’t think that we’re just going to take what we can get and hope that it all turns out okay and we don’t get hurt too bad. I think that we need to envision them disappeared. We have to expect to win this. We can’t be on the defensive. We have to decide and choose what we want to happen. And we can make the right decisions at the right time.

S: The reason people aren’t fighting for it is because they’re naive. It’s not like a broken leg where you get a cast and everyone can see it. It’s like a cancer. Like inside of you. And it’s not bad yet. And no one can see it. And you don’t even know you have it. “Do I have a lump here? I don’t know. Well, I don’t care.” And you’re just walking around with a fucking lump on your side. It’s eating away your fucking days and you’re tired and you’re sad and you’re like, “What is this fucking lump?” And it gets bigger and it gets badder and then you notice it. All of a sudden you’re almost dead. That’s what it is. That’s the best way to describe it ‘cause it’s an internal thing that you cannot see.

JW: Well then, to carry the analogy, early intervention would be advised here. Something radical. Radical surgery, radical excise surgery.

S: Cut it out and throw it away. That’s radical but it’s the only way.

JW: That is the way. It’s that or death.

S: It’s really sad. There’s no other way. Let’s say, “Please move to Playa del Rey?” “Please move anywhere else?” “You can have Playa?” Sorry, Playa de Reyans.

JW: I think they might as well move to another country. I think they’d do well there.

S: Or like their own island somewhere.

JW: They can set up an oil rig somewhere off shore and do it from there.

S: We have to do something.

JW: Do you have ideas from other people about what to do?

S: Oh yeah. People tell me sometimes we should sidewalk chalk Market and blast it with some paint. But that’s all bad energy stuff. I think it would be better if we had a really loud parade.

JW: What about the Snapchat security that’s becoming a private army here now?

S: Those guys are punks. There’s a thing though. You can’t really let them get to you. In the beginning, I was looking for trouble with them: taking their pictures, following them around. It’s really dramatic and crazy and everyone’s really paranoid about it. Some of the kids’ families are getting pushed out of their homes. They’re not talking about it because it’s not something they want to share with anyone. But, little do they know, everyone is going through it. Everyone’s afraid right now, I think. That’s why I said we’re at War. Because we don’t know we’re at War but they do know. They’re moving pawns and chess pieces around and getting properties. It’s like they’re playing chess right now and we are not even on the board. We’re not doing anything. We’re just yelling about where the pieces should be. We can’t come to an agreement about where to put the first move. For some reason, we have maybe a hundred people trying to be one person and Snapchat is two people working together calling all the shots.

JW: That’s why I say we might as well not wait to take direction from anybody, not wait to receive commands from anybody. If every single person acts with that same Spirit of Venice, they would make the right decisions at the right time. They would know what to do. And that would be unstoppable. We can do this. We’ll see the end of this. We’ll see the backside of Snapchat if everyone just does what they know to do. In big ways and little ways.

S: There’s also the investors. The big investors of Venice. Some of them that actually live here that aren’t even part of Snapchat. I have a feeling that they support it.

JW: But they’re not stupid. When this starts to turn sour, they’ll pull their money and Snapchat will go the way of every other failed company. If this enterprise gets just a little bit stinky, the investors will turn. They have no loyalty. They have no ideology. They don’t “believe” in Snapchat. They just want to make as much money as they can, as fast as they can. If Snapchat got a bad reputation, like Wells Fargo bank has a bad reputation now and lost 30% of their depositors, the same thing can happen with Snapchat. The same thing. It’s easier than we think.

S: We just gotta do it.

JW: We’re going to keep our eyes open on this. And we can expect everyone to make moves on their own without anyone telling them what to do. Do you think we can manage that?

S: Yeah.

JW: Amen.

After the writing of the above conversation, the people of Venice came out to demonstrate in front of Snapchat headquarters on Market St. Hundreds of people, young and old, of all sizes, shapes, and colors filled the street with shouts and drums. Each person had a handmade sign with a different brilliant slogan. At this time, more protests and actions are expected to come.