City Of Industry: Genealogies Of Power In Southern California

Synopsis

"In City of Industry Victor Valle stunningly exposes the construction of corporate capitalist government in the Southern California city of the same name. Valle investigated the untapped archives of City of Industry's built landscape, media coverage, and public records, including sealed FBI reports, to uncover a cascading series of scandals with effects that continue to ripple through the region to this day. Offering a kaleidoscopic view of what happened when local land owners, media barons, and railroads converged to build the city, this suspenseful expose uncovers how new governmental technologies and engineering feats provided a rationale for and laws to privatize City Hall and mold businessmen and bureaucrats to serve as their tools." Valle's tale of vast corporate government begins with the city's founder James M. Stafford and ends with present day corporate heir, Edward Roskijr, head of the nation's biggest privately held industrial development firm and co-owner of the L.A. Staples Arena. Not to be forgotten in this penetrating inquiry are Latino communities in Los Angeles's distribution corridors and the workers who suffer wealth disparities and exposure to air pollution as a result of diesel-burning trucks, trains, and container ships that bring global trade to their very doorsteps. They are among the many victims of City of Industry who have become a model for others left vulnerable to the spread of privatized government across the country.