November 4, 2022
Source: https://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2022/22-1327_misc_11-4-22.pdf
Los Angeles City Motion on Land Back
MOTION
ENERGY, CLIMATE CHANGE. ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE & RIVER
The history of land in this nation is marred by state violence, systemic oppression, settler colonialism, structural racism, class privilege, and an uneven distribution of power. Exclusionary policies like redlining, urban renewal, restrictive housing covenants, predatory lending, and the commodification of land legally and economically prevented many communities of color from living in integrated and well resourced neighborhoods. The consequences of these historic policies continue to reverberate into the present day-they have led to generational wealth depletion, limited opportunities for upward mobility, and persistently show up as emotional and embodied trauma due to physical and spiritual displacement for Indigenous, Black, and Brown people.
Land rematriation, reparations, and redistribution must be at the core of racial justice and restorative healing efforts. Bruce’s Beach was a. pri!ne beachfront resort-the first of its kind on the West Coast–0wned and operated by and for Black people more than a century ago during a time of entrenched racial segregation in California. In 1924, the Manhattan Beach Board of Trustees voted to condemn Bruce’s Beach through eminent
domain under the ostensible purpose of building a park. However, it is well documented that this move was a racially motivated attempt to drive out the successful Black business and its patrons. In 2022, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved the transfer of ownership to the Bruce family and will pay a yearly lease for use of the land.
Other examples include the City of Eureka’s return of all the parcels it owned on Tuluwat Island, originally the site of a deadly massacre by settlers that decimated the tribal community in 1860, to the Wiyot Tribe. Recently, Oakland became the first city in California to use city-owned property as reparations for land stolen from Native American territories. The City plans to return five acres of Joaquin Miller Park to permanent indigenous control
and stewardship through a cultural conservation easement. The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust will have nearly full control over the use of the land for cultural, environmental, and education purposes in perpetuity.
The City of Los Angeles is in the midst of a powerful and catalytic moment that is visibly exposing our fraught racial divide. Genuine and transformative decolonization, democratic placemaking, racial reconciliation, and land justice must be central to our City’s healing. Consequently, this occasion requires us to take intentional steps towards acknowledging land theft and exclusion, and identify mechanisms to return land to Indigenous, Black, and Brown communities for their use, benefit, and sovereignty.
The City’s current public land disposition process is somewhat onerous, lengthy, and limited. The City Council will need data, easier processes and procedures, and community partnerships to actualize an equitable distribution of public land and resources for community use.
I THEREFORE MOVE that the Los Angeles City Council instruct the Department of General Services,
Department of Recreation and Parks, Department of Water and Power, Harbor Department, Los Angeles World Airports, with the assistance of the City Administrative Officer and other relevant agencies, to report back within 60 days with a property inventory that identifies all underutilized, surplus, and/or remnant lands within the City of Los Angeles held by the City, and, as feasible, any public lands held by county, regional, state, and federal
agencies such as the Los Angeles Unified School District, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, and Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority among others, that could be transferred or redistributed to historically marginalized groups within the City;
I FURTHER MOVE that the City Council instruct the City Attorney’s Office, with the assistance of the Department of General Services and the City Administrative Officer, to report back with an analysis of how any potential policy recommendations that meet the intent of this motion may conform with Assembly Bill 1486, also known as the Surplus Land Act;
I FURTHER MOVE that the Los Angeles City Council instruct the Chief Legislative Analyst, with the assistance of the Civil and Human Rights and Equity Department, Department of General Services, Economic Development Department, Los Angeles Housing Department, Department of Recreation and Parks, Department of Cultural Affairs and other relevant agencies, to report back within 60 days with recommendations on how these
identified underutilized, surplus, and remnant lands can be utilized for uses such as community land trusts, urban agriculture, environmental stewardship and restoration, cultural spaces, or any other uses that center principles of self-determination, community building, and healing.