UCLA prof says freeways are a fitting place for protesters

UCLA students swarm the San Diego Freeway in Westwood over the Bruins being kept out of 1967 Rose Bowl. LA Times/UCLA Library Digital Collection

When he was chief of the LAPD, William Bratton quipped that when protesters ran onto freeways filled with speeding cars, "That's not free speech. That's insanity." But when recent protests about police shootings in Ferguson and Staten Island moved onto freeways in Los Angeles and Oakland, the protesters were perhaps unwittingly picking "historically appropriate venues" to push their cause. That's because, writes UCLA professor Eric Avila in a piece for Zocalo Public Square, the construction of freeways has "fractured American race relations since 1956, when Congress passed the Interstate Highway Act." Avila writes:

For better or for worse, freeways emerged as the centerpiece of 20th century urbanism in the United States, clearing the pedestrian bustle of streets and sidewalks in favor of garages, drive-ins, shopping malls, and parking lots.

This development contributed to the creation of “two societies, separate and unequal, one black, one white,” in the words of a 1967 presidential commission on the causes of racial unrest in cities across the nation. Mass suburbanization, enabled by the automobile’s promise of unfettered mobility, divided the nation into demographic clusters around religion, class, occupation, party affiliation, and race.

While highway construction nurtured the growth of white suburban enclaves, it devastated urban communities of color….

Here in Los Angeles, highway construction has shaped a stark geography of racial difference. Just drive through Boyle Heights on the city’s Eastside. It’s almost impossible to venture half a mile without passing under, over, or alongside a major interstate highway. Freeways cast deep shadows over the landscape of daily life, wrapping around homes, parks, schools and churches. Although they organized in opposition to the construction of five intersecting freeways, local residents were unable to muster the wherewithal of Beverly Hills, which stopped one freeway dead in its tracks.