Who knew that in the age of America First, the greatest threat to Hispanic communities in the United States wasn’t marauding bands of ICE agents wielding mass deportation orders or the construction of a border wall? No, the scourge is Art.
That’s The Scrapbook’s takeaway from the news this week that a small art gallery called PSSST had been driven out of the hardscrabble Los Angeles area called Boyle Heights. PSSST, you see, was one of several art galleries making insidious inroads into the predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. The nonprofit galleristas thought they were bringing welcome Culture to an underserved area; the locals saw them as the thin-wedge of Anglo infiltration, the shock troops of gentrification.
It’s an old story: First come the art galleries and, before you know it, the local bodega has been replaced with an artisanal boucherie selling acorn-fed ibérico ham for $15 an ounce.
And so the neighborhood organized, forming groups such as the Boyle Heights Alliance Against Artwashing and Displacement. They picketed the galleries; they confronted patrons arriving for show openings with shouts of “Get out!”—well, actually, “Fuera!” Parties had to be canceled. Canapés and Chardonnay went to waste. Donors were rattled.
Read more on The Weekly Standard.
