Opinion: Top five reasons why Lineage must leave Boyle Heights

As a former resident of Boyle Heights, veteran community activist and professor of urban planning, I’m sharing my five reasons why Lineage must leave Boyle Heights:

The eight-day fire at Lineage’s gigantic cold-storage warehouse and its aftermath, while initially downplayed by government leaders, fire department leaders and air quality management agencies, jeopardized the lives and health of the residents of Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles

1. Lineage’s lack of urgency (or slow pace) to clean up an estimated 85 million pounds of rotten food, caused an unbearable stench and infestation of rats and flies in the impacted communities. 

2. Lineage’s heavy reliance on large diesel trucks to transport and store millions of pounds of frozen food and beverages contributes to traffic congestion and emissions in working-class Latina/o communities overburdened by too many freeways and sources of pollution. This is a classic case (or paradigm case) of environmental racism.

3. As I’ve previously argued, zoning, which dates to the early 1900s, was originally intended to regulate land uses, such as separating polluting facilities from residents to protect their health. Since Lineage’s cold-storage warehouse (491,000-square-feet) is literally located across the street from working-class Latino/a residents, it violates zoning’s original intent.

4. While some of us with Latin American origin eat insects, like chapulines(or grasshoppers), we don’t eat tacos with large, “glowing” flies from the aftermath of the devastating Lineage fire. 

To conclude, the amount of crumbs (e.g., air purifiers, gift cards) that Lineage, along with government leaders, have offered the impacted residents for the damage this multi-billion-dollar corporation has caused in these working-class Latina/o communities is absurd. This includes any quid pro quo between Lineage and government leaders that allows the corporation to rebuild. Mitigation is not an option. The only remedy is for Lineage to leave Boyle Heights. 

¡Ya basta!