Health Rights Are Civil Rights: Peace and Justice Activism in Los Angeles, 1963–1978

362 Pages·2014·8.796 MB·English

by  Jenna M Lloyd

HEALTH RIGHTS ARE CIVIL RIGHTS
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Health Rights Are
Civil Rights
• • • •
Peace and Justice Activism in Los Angeles,
1963–1978
Jenna M. Loyd
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Portions of chapters 2and 7were previously published as “Where Is Community Health?
Racism, the Clinic, and the Biopolitical State,” in Rebirth of the Clinic: Places and Agents in
Contemporary Health Care,ed. Cindy Patton (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2010), 39–68. Portions of chapter 4were previously published as “War Is Not Healthy for
Children and Other Living Things,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space27, no.
3(2009): 403–24; reprinted by permission of Pion, Ltd., London, www.pion.co.uk and
www.envplan.com. Portions of chapters 4and 8were previously published as “‘Peace Is
Our Only Shelter’: Questioning Domesticities of Militarization and White Privilege,”
Antipode43, no. 3(2010): 845–73. A different version of the Epilogue was published as
“The Fire Next Time: Rodney King, Trayvon Martin, and Law-and-Order Urbanism,”
City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action16, no. 4(2012): 431–38;
reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis, Ltd., www.tandfonline.com.
Copyright 2014by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401–2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Loyd, Jenna M.
Health rights are civil rights : peace and justice activism in Los Angeles, 1963–1978 /
Jenna M. Loyd.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-7650-7 (hc: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8166-7651-4 (pb :alk. paper)
1. Health care reform—California—Los Angeles—History—20th century. 2. Public
health—California—Los Angeles—History—20th century.
3. Social movements—California—Los Angeles—History—20th century. 4. Social
justice—California—Los Angeles—History—20th century.
5. Urban poor—Civil rights—California—Los Angeles—History—20th century.
6. Human rights—California—Los Angeles—History—20th century.
7. Social change—California—Los Angeles—History—20th century.
8. Cold War—Social aspects—California—Los Angeles—History—20th century.
9. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Social conditions-—20th century. 10. Los Angeles (Calif.)—
Politics and government—20th century. I. Title.
RA395.A3L69 2013
362.109794'94—dc23 2013028368
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of Sam Ragent, Clyde Woods,
Neil Smith, and Dara Greenwald
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Of all forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most
shocking and inhumane.
—MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
And the swiftly calculated move to a farther suburb, the male
technocrats and the women they have picked and tested,
leaving the familiar globe behind: the toxic rivers, the
cancerous wells, the strangled valleys, the closed-down urban
hospitals, the shattered schools, the atomic desert blooming,
the lilac suckers run wild, the blue grape hyacinths spreading,
the ailanthus and kudzu doing their final desperate part—the
beauty that won’t travel, that can’t be stolen away.
—ADRIENNE RICH, “NOTES TOWARD A POLITICS OF LOCATION”
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Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction: War, American Exceptionalism, and the Place
of Health Activism 1
Part I. Desegregating Health, Transforming Health Care
1. Urban Geopolitics and the Fight for “Equal Justice in
Health Care Now” 23
2. Watts, the War on Poverty, and the Promise of
Community Control 51
Part II. Urban Crisis
3. Economic Conversion, Survival, and Race in “Dodge City” 79
4. Mothering Underground: The Home in Women’s Welfare
and Peace Organizing 105
5. The War at Home: Forging Interracial Solidarities for
Peace and Freedom 127
Part III. Cold War Body Politics
6. Population Scares and Antiviolence Roots of
Reproductive Justice 153
7. Where Is Health? The Place of the Clinic in Social Change 181
8. “Property Rights over Human Life”: Taxes and Austerity
in the Divided City 207
Epilogue: The Right to Health Meets the Right to the City 239
Notes 249
Bibliography 293
Index 323