Defend, disrupt, and build: Guerrilla urbanist interventions and fighting gentrification in the barrio

This study proposes guerrilla urbanist interventions (GUIs) as a domain to analyze some seemingly more conflictual and confrontational anti-gentrification efforts in the barrio. The historic and theoretical foundation of guerrillas informs the spatial and political conceptualization of these more confrontational urban interventions. The research examines anti-gentrification efforts in Boyle Heights and Santa Ana, California through this guerrilla urbanist intervention framework and analyses data collected through interviews and participant observation, and archival data comprised of public videos, writings, and manifestos. The analysis surfaces themes of "Defense," "Disruption," and "Building" to explain GUI's mode of establishing a new sociopolitical terrain in the neighborhood. GUIs use disruptions to delegitimize processes of community engagement in planning and development and create political spaces to voice complaints against displacement through criminalization, deportation, and gentrification. GUIs also ignite their own public process to try and remove certain actors from the neighborhood. Although GUIs are small and temporary, they help surface the complex political and economic structures that gentrification easily masks through art, culture, and community-based organizations. Political and economic interests become visible enough for individuals to at least reevaluate longstanding alliances and call to question the specific interests of certain actors and processes.