Little Tokyo Community Speak Easy

Income inequality

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

Little Tokyo (LT) is a federally-recognized historic neighborhood and one of the top 11 most endangered historic places in the country. This beloved neighborhood faces increased economic pressures today with mass transportation investments, corporate redevelopment, and an influx of new residents, despite the neighborhood's long history of fighting erasure. The residents who live there are some of the most impacted in the City. LT is home to >4,000 housed and unhoused residents and is in the 98th percentile of the poorest neighborhoods in the State, 80th percentile in unemployment, and 66th percentile in housing burden. And while policies are in place to protect the infrastructure of LT, little is being done to protect the people and legacy small businesses from displacement. Gentrification pressures have and will continue to lead to displacement of residents and legacy businesses that serve the working class, destabilizing individuals, families and communities.

Little Tokyo Community Speak Easy will host community forums (“speak easies”) and activations against gentrification that centers the mobilization of housed and unhoused residents and workers of the community. We have conducted various previous community forums in LT including one on anti-gentrification in Oct 2023. This grant will allow us to formalize this event in three community wide speak easies as a place to share skills, knowledge and resources in tenant and worker rights, gentrification and displacement, solidarity economics, political education, and review past LT struggles. The second half of the grant period will be dedicated to the implementation of community activations with 6-10 community consultants that address the needs of residents (housed and unhoused), workers and small business owners. Activations may include mobilizing community and supporters against the displacement of a legacy business, a door-to-door campaign on tenant rights, among others. Anti-gentrification and anti-displacement organizing is challenging work and there are no tried and true tools that work across neighborhoods. We will bring together community members to ideate and imagine new possibilities. While there are policies and programs in place that protect the infrastructure and development character of Little Tokyo, we will center the needs of the people who live and work there. We aim to increase the political education, relational power, and economic sovereignty of residents.

Gentrification and displacement is a threat to multiple beloved communities in Los Angeles County beyond Little Tokyo, including Highland Park, Boyle Heights, and Chinatown. The work of Speak Easy is an innovative new way to search for and implement solutions that center people, not infrastructure or investments, first. While the short-term goals of Speak Easy are to increase relational power, political education, and skills in tenant/worker rights, the long-term goals include the protection of residents and legacy businesses from displacement as investments continue to enter Little Tokyo. Los Angeles will continue to see local, federal, and international investments with the Inflation Reduction Act and the upcoming 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. We see Speak Easy as an imaginative way to empower communities to mobilize and implement their own actions to fight displacement and channel those investments for the good of residents who already live there.

Speak Easy will center the building of relational power that is difficult to measure through numbers. Gentrification and displacement are challenging issues for communities to address and the impacts of the program may not be felt for years to come, especially as the goals of Speak Easy are to increase political education, community relations, and resilience to economic shocks. Some of the measurable metrics include: Number of participants in community speak easies. Percentage of repeat attendees at community speak easies. Pre and post survey during community speak easies on the topics of workers rights, tenants rights, gentrification and displacement. Number of activation proposals received from community consultants. Number of public participation in activations (disaggregated by Little Tokyo residents and visitors).
Surveys of participants at activations. Number of legacy businesses informed of their rights.
Pre and post surveys with legacy businesses.