While I was grinding my way through a piece on the recall for the Valley Voice (check the main page this Saturday to read it), here comes Mike Davis, author of the brilliant City of Quartz in a much more informed piece on the same subject--well, sort of--than I could write with a huge deadline looming.
Cry California
By Mike DavisEvery candidate in California's dark recall-election comedy should be obliged to answer the question: 'Whither Duroville?'
'Duroville' is the California visitors never see and that pundits ignore when they debate the future of the world's sixth largest economy. Officially this ramshackle desert community of 4000 people in the Coachella Valley doesn't even exist. It is a shantytown -- reminiscent of the Okie camps in The Grapes of Wrath -- erected by otherwise homeless farmworkers on land owned by Harvey Duro, a member of the Cahuilla Indian nation.
The Coachella Valley is the prototype of a future -- Beverly Hills meets Tijuana -- that California conservatives seem to dream of creating everywhere. The western side of the Valley, from Palm Springs to La Quinta, is an air-conditioned paradise of gated communities built around artificial lakes and eighteen-hole golf courses. The typical resident is a 65-year-old retired white male in a golf cart. He is a zealous voter who disapproves of taxes, affirmative action, and social services for the immigrants who wait on him.