>It is quite obvious that the current problems are a censequence of the
>concentration and ghettoization of poverty (or building quasi concentration
>camps in inner cities if you will) pursued throughout 1960s.
Exactly. And the war on drugs & crime will not solve the problem of the concentration & ghettoization of poverty. In fact, zero tolerance is designed to further secure the segregation of poor people from valuable real estate. Christian Parenti writes in _Lockdown America_:
***** The intimate link between security -- that is, segregation of poor people of color -- and economic value has been an integral part of the FIRE/themepark city from its earliest evolutionary stages at the end of World War II....At the same time [as, at the local level, building new highrise central business districts and commuter transportation systems linking these to the white collar labor of the suburbs], Congress passed the Housing Act of 1949, which channeled federal funds to city governments for urban renewal. The stated aim of this program was the alleviation of poverty and the destruction of "blighted" housing, to be replaced by new modern habitation.
The real aim, however, was to clear out the poor and working classes (particularly the darker-skinned poor) who occupied valuable downtown land needed for central business district expansion, and to create "safe" non-Black _cordons sanitaires_ around the CBDs. Federal funds were used to raze the "skid rows" and "ghettos" that border most CBDs....
Critics called the program "Negro removal" because it turned once-vibrant Black neighborhoods into moonscapes. (92) *****
Parenti argues that the same security imperative of segregation lurks behind the FIRE/themepark city development currently under way:
***** As the reconquest of the Times Square Ginza progresses the Big Apple's boosters have become quite candid about the centrality of segregation and repression -- that is, zero tolerance policing -- to profitable redevelopment. As one representative from the New York City Economic Development Corporation put it, "The reduction in crime has improved New York's quality of life, bolstered job growth and increased investment throughout the city...I think the crime decline has been very significant in the city's revival." A Giuliani spokeswoman was even more succinct: "Big business isn't afraid to invest in the city anymore."
...As the boom of the nineties rolls on, the economic pressure to drive the poor from Manhattan has only intensified. (96) *****
Mike Davis's _Ecology of Fear_ makes the same argument with regard to Los Angeles:
***** Slumlords, meanwhile, are conducting their own private reign of terror against drug dealers, petty criminals, and deadbeat tenants. Faced with "zero tolerance" laws authorizing the seizure or destruction of properties used for drug sales, they are hiring their own goon squads and armed mercenaries to "exterminate" crime on their premises. Shortly after the 1992 riots, _Times_ reporter Richard Colvin accompanied one of these crews on a swashbuckling rampage through the Westlake, Venice, and Panorama City districts.
Led by a six-foot-three, 280-pound "soldier of fortune" named David Roybal, this security squad was renowned among landlords for its efficient brutality. Suspected drug dealers and their customers, along with rent-in-arrears tenants and other landlord irritants, were physically driven from buildings at gunpoint. Those who resisted or even complained were beaten without mercy. In a Panorama City raid a few years earlier, "Roybal and his crew collared so many residents and squatters for drugs that they converted a recreation room into a holding tank and handcuffed arrestees to a blood-spattered wall." The LAPD knew about this private jail but ignored residents' protests. An envious police officer told Colvin, "If we could do what these security guards do, we'd get rid of the crime problem, just like that." (379) *****
Yoshie