Why Uber and Lyft are so big in Los Angeles

According to several articles, Los Angeles is one of the most profitable cities for the rideshare companies uber (and lyft).

That's right, not just New York Chicago and San Fran, but also. Los Angeles.

It is a fact that counters stereotypes that Angelenos are wedded to the automobiles that they own, and that Los Angeles is too sprawling to support transportation alternatives to the single-occupant vehicle.

Of course, that Los Angeles (quite notoriously) boasts the most congested freeway system in the nation may make this rideshare shift less surprising. Why make risky lane manuvers to avoid gridlock on the 10 westbound when you can ride with a guy who knows a short cut?

In addition, Los Angeles (despite Metro Rail's expansion in recent years) still lacks a transit system that is comprehensible or reliable enough to provide a viable alternative to commuters in all areas of the city (and at all hours of the day). Moreover, taxis have traditionally been harder to find in Los Angeles (and have cost more) than in other metropolises.

Surprisingly (though gridlock affects Los Angeles' freeways as much if not more than Los Angeles' streets), most  Lyft trips in Los Angeles (according to both the company website and personal experience as a driver) are under ten miles

This means that for Lyft (and Uber), the origin and destinations of the vast majority of rides have to be geographically concentrated in certain areas of the vast Southland metropolis: but where you may ask?

The answer can be discerned in the following "heat maps" produced by Lyft, whose pink shading shows where the "highest" demand for rides is.


Weekday morning "heat map"


Weekday evening (i.e. "rush hour") heat map


Weekend evening (i.e. "rush hour") heat map
Heat maps for all three main "peak" periods show that the area of high demand for Lyft rides primarily takes the form of an arc, starting in Downtown, extending up through Koreatown towards Hollywood and then curving back down through Westwood to reach Santa Monica.

Outside of this area, demand only clusters in much smaller "dots" or "patches", around some of the movie studios and business districts in the southeast Valley and Burbank and in entertainment districts in Pasadena or Manhattan Beach. Large swaths of areas like the South Bay, Harbor and San Gabriel Valley have no high-demand shading whatsoever.

Indeed, as a Lyft driver, I have mostly kept within confines of the Santa Monica to Downtown "corridor", leaving only a handful of times.

A few years ago, USC graduate student Samuel Krueger used a GIS modeling system to deduce whether the Los Angeles region has a "central" core.

Krueger, who conducted his analysis with a scale measuring the number of urban amenities (the so-called "centrality index"), found that Los Angeles indeed does have a large regional "core" that roughly follows the course of Wilshire and Santa Monica Blvds in a linear fashion from the LA River to the Santa Monica Bay.

This crescent-shaped "Wilshire-Santa Monica corridor" almost perfectly maps onto the main arc of high-demand Lyft activity in Los Angeles.

 For day travelers, this area boasts most of the Los Angeles region's main business centers (Downtown, Koreatown, Miracle Mile, etc.). For the late night, this area boasts the Southland's largest and busiest  entertainment centers of the region. (Hollywood, WeHo, Downtown)

Because this region (particularly east of La Cienaga Blvd.) has a compact grid street system, mostly developed before World War II, and lacks a central freeway, its major arterials suffer heavy traffic at all hours of the day (and many at night).

Finally public transport is sparse outside of Downtown and Koreatown, with the Purple Line to Westwood not slated for completion until 2040. The Expo Line, which will start service to Santa Monica in the middle of next year, only skirts the fringes of the "core".

In other words, the profitability of Lyft (and, most likely, other rideshare companies) in Los Angeles stems in large part from its ability to exploit a previously underserved demand for alternative forms of transport to the single-occupancy automobile in this "linear downtown."

That in and of itself, breaks another stereotype of the city of Los Angeles: that it lacks a dense, transit-friendly urban "center".

The private sector has responded. Will LA County Metro ever catch on?

Why Angelenos should ride the bus or train to the bar

As I rode the 704 Rapid bus to get to the Virgil Saturday night, I couldn't help but notice, with regret, that I was the only passenger dressed up for a night out.

That's not to say that the bus wasn't crowded (it was packed), but most of the people on board carried backpacks or briefcases, or were dressed in tennis shoes, suggesting that they were coming back from the night shift rather than heading to the bar.

Sadly to say, I was not surprised in the least (and have had other such contemplative moments on past bus trips eastward).

Just saying that you ride the bus in LA, is enough to get questions and glances (especially in middle-class, Westside social circles). Saying that you ride the bus at night, on the other hand, can elicit odd stares and concerns about "safety."

The friend who I met the Virgil put it succinctly when he remarked, with stupefication: "you took the bus?"

And yet, if you are looking to drink or party outside of your neighborhood in a city as large as Los Angeles (the alternative is only available if your neighborhood has bars or nightclubs within walking distance), there is perhaps no more logical way for you to reach an abode of hedonism than by Bus or Metro Rail.

Driving while intoxicated is just downright dangerous (and risks a hefty fine). Moreover, the primetime surge pricing for apps like Lyft and Uber makes these quite pricey on weekend and holiday evenings (with fares as much as eight to nine times above average), especially if you are traveling more than a mile or two from your home. And ditto for Taxi service.

Whereas, I would have paid 19 dollars to get from my house to the Virgil traveling with Lyft, I paid only one dollar and seventy-five cents to ride there on the 704. Since the bus was a "rapid" service, traveling at a time with little traffic, it took only thirty-five minutes to get to the Virgil, slightly longer than it would have taken by a rideshare car.

Contrary to popular stereotype, I have not once felt my personal safety threatened when riding the bus late at night. You do see homeless people sleeping on some of the bus seats (in the same way you see homeless in any public space in this city) but the buses (in my experience) are generally clean and comfortable (they even have seat padding) and are very well air-conditioned. The fact that the buses tend to get more crowded at night (ironically due to the reduced service) means that more eyes and ears are watching whatever happens.

And, contrary to another popular stereotype, most of LA's popular nightlife areas (with some exceptions) are in places that are walkable and easily accessible by transit: Hollywood (buses and the Red Line), Downtown Los Angeles, West Hollywood (the 704/4).

That's not to say that I expect denizens of Whittier or Chatsworth, peripheral, suburban areas with limited to no bus service at night, to try undertaking a two-hour commute by public transit to a Hollywood club.

But in regards to the Santa Monica corridor (Bus #s 704/4), where buses run for twenty-four hours and pass through the heart of such nightlife hubs as West Hollywood, Silver Lake, Echo Park and Downtown Santa Monica, its frustrating that not even a sizable minority of nearby residents use the bus to get to the bar.

Of course, even on the Santa Monica corridor, frequency is significantly curtailed after the evening rush hours, with headways between buses as much as 30 to 40 minutes.On more secondary corridors (like Sunset Blvd.) service often reduces to once an hour in the later evenings before stopping completely after midnight.

In general, in order for public transportation to become a popular means of accessing nightlife in Los Angeles, LA County Metro and other transit agencies are going to have to adjust their bus (and train) schedules to better accomodate late night traffic.

Personal experience additionally suggests, furthermore, that advertising will be necessary in order to convince Angelenos that the bus (and train) is a cheap, safe and (not un-)cool way to get around our city, nonetheless to go out on the town.

The task at hand for Metro and other LA area transit agencies (in nightlife) is not daunting.

The likely benefits, including decreases in DUIs (Los Angeles, not surprisingly, has one of the highest numbers of DUI citations among American cities), lower rates of nighttime crime (increased late night activity at bus stops has been claimed to reduce the amount of street crime) and improved air quality  would be extraordinary.

For the sake of our wallets and for LA's social and physical environment, it is time for all of us, and our transit agencies, to stop neglecting public transit as a means for going out at night.

Blame NIMBYs, not Hipsters, for the gentrification of LA

Author's note, since I am interning in the Los Angeles Department of City Planning now, I am going to be writing a lot more on transporation and housing issues. Deal with it. 

A few months ago, after the rent on my family's apartment was raised, I did some research to assess whether we could afford to "move."

A quick search of apartments in nearby neighborhoods (on Zillow) revealed an average rent of 1750 dollars a month for one-bedroom apartments, most of which were well under 1000 square feet. The two-bedroom apartments that I sought ranged upward from the mid 2000s in West Hollywood and even in Palms, which made the revised monthly rent of 3300 dollars that we were soon to dish out for our posh (not especially fancy but far from shabby), leafy Beverly Hills street, quiet and yet coveniently located, still seem to be a bargain.

Alright, I then thought, surely I will get a better deal if I turn eastward, to the "up-and-coming" hoods of Silver Lake and Echo Park. Well, I should have known better (given the amount of time they had been talked for): two- bedroom rentals (which started at about 2000 dollars per month) were no longer priced much lower than they were on the Westside.

Only looking further afield, at neighborhoods such as Boyle Heights and Glassell Park/Echo Park, did I finally find two-bedroom apartments going for below two thousand dollars a month, enough of a difference for which to make a move.

Despite popular reputations to the contrary, I knew from Los Angeles Times profiles that these neighborhoods were no longer meccas of petty crime and gang vuikebce.

Indeed, on previous drives through both of these neighborhoods, I had been impressed by the charming architecture, (sense of community) and walkability. The proliferation of cheap and delicious Taquerias and Birrerias was an additional positive for this lover of Mexican food.

But within a minute, it dawned on me that I, in the course of my search, had embraced the process of "gentrification"! Excitement gave away to moral reflection as I realized the social implications of my quest for a better deal.

My problem with the "g-word" has nothing to do with the racial aspect of a light-skinned Eurasian moving into a brown neighborhood (though many commentators on both sides of the issue simplistically reduce gentrification to an ethnic conflict) so much as with the economic effects that a (whiter) middle-class presence in the neighborhoods has of jacking up rents in a neighborhood, incentivizing the displacement of the working-class.

I ended up not pursuing the deals on the eastside after some discussions with my mother. And yet, I know now that if I had not had my parent's financial support on rent (and relied solely on my own earnings), I would have seized on the properties in a heartbeat.

What drives an educated progressive like myself (and others who I know), who is perfectly aware of the ills of gentrification, to partake in gentrifying the Eastside of Los Angeles is the simple fact that  Los Angeles has the least affordable rental market in the country. (LA's rents are not the most  expensive in terms of price but they are the highest relative to the average per capita income) Therefore, whatever housing is still affordable, decent and in a (relatively safe) location will be snapped up by those of us who are not (financially)"loaded."

A steep rise in rent as a percentage of income over the last decade can be observed in cities across the country and yet what makes Los Angeles' situation particularly frustrating (though not entirely unique) is the fact that the crisis stems less from physical constraints than from political ones.

Los Angeles has far more room to grow than cities like New York and San Francisco (bearing only half the density of the former and one-third the amount of density of the latter two cities), and yet Los Angeles officials zone far less land for new housing than these cities (with fewer units being built in Los Angeles in 2014 than in spread-out Houston).

The root cause of this paucity of zoning, in turn, has been the disproportionate power afforded to LA's affluent single-family homeowners by participatory planning policies to halt multi-family housing development that is perceived to threaten their neighborhoods.

As UCLA Doctoral candidate, Greg Morrow, explains, a 1968 law that switched Los Angeles' planning regime away from the singular control of the City planning department to (what was supposed to be) joint decision-making (Morrow, page 54) between planners and community-based "Citizens Advisory Committees." (chosen on the basis of dividing into thirty-five "communities") gave growth-adverse homeowners groups the power to prevent zoning for development of large-scale multi-family housing in large swaths of the city.

This switch to a "bottom-up" approach to planning was supposed to empower ordinary citizens to have a say in planning issues: many progressives, indeed, hoped that a democratic planning regime would prevent the massive uprooting of poor neighborhoods carried out by city planners in the name of the city. (e.g. Chavez Ravine) (Morrow 71)

    In actuality, however, as Morrow notes, community participation in the planning process gave disproportionate weight to wealthier and whiter single-family homeowners residing in the city's western and hilltop neighborhoods, who had the time and expendable income to closely follow and act upon city planner's proposals.

Motivated by (mainly aesthetic) concerns about the environment and a desire to maintain their neighborhoods' secluded low-density character, wealthy Angelenos have utilized community-planning to fight any housing or transportation development that they perceive will bring even a modicum of congestion or density to their neighborhoods.

To give a example from my own career, just last week I overheard my colleague in the City Planning office inform her superior that she would take a major arterial street in Hollywood off a proposed "Transit-Enhanced Network" (meaning that it would be slated to receive increased or upgraded public transit service) because of staunch opposition from neighborhood councils in the Hollywood Hills.

Never mind that this arterial street was located a mile away from the hills or that a transit network (especially should it lead to rail development) could do much to alleviate the bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic on the street. The neighborhod groups feared that the "corridor" would lead to an increase density that would eventually make its way up the hilltops... So they fought tooth-and-nail and won.

Though such stubborn opposition has repeatedly stymied development in the Westside, Hollywood, and southern San Fernando Valley, however, it has done little to discourage Los Angeles' continued population growth, not only through immigration but through natural increases in the existing few million inhabitants.

With more people (primarily earning lower or moderate incomes) to house but little new multi-family housing being constructed in or near affluent single-family neighborhoods, middle-class Los Angeles residents entering the rental market today face a difficult choice.  They can relocate to far-flung suburbs, which provide low-cost housing (primarily in single-family units) at the cost of an inconvenient commute (while additionally contributing to heavier traffic and environmental devestation).

Or they can enter into traditionally poorer, working-class communities on Los Angeles'  Eastside (many having reduced crime by gang injunctions in recent years), which initially boast affordable rental properties not only due to their less desirable reputatons but also because the single-family homeowners of these neighborhoods-who are often fewer in number to begin with-have not had the time, money or concern (given the myriad other issues they must deal with on a day-to-day basis) to fight dense multi-family development.

 Long before neighborhoods like Boyle Heights and East Hollywood entered the radar of the middle-class, they had become progressively more crowded through population inflows, and/or saw a net increase in the units of multi-family housing . Prior to the age of gentrification, the crowding of low-income immigrants into already-impoverished communities on the east and south sides of Los Angeles fostered a toxic concentration of poverty, urban decay and crime.
 (Morrow pps. 166-8)

And yet, in neighborhoods that have to come to be predominantly populated by low-income renters, a subsequent influx of young middle-class professionals  (quite ironically in search of bargains), by encouraging landlords to ensuingly jack up the cost of rent (to adjust to demand by a wealthier cohort) or, in some cases, demolish affordable properties to make way for higher-end housing, spells out displacement for the original (and in some cases, deep-rooted) inhabitants and a denial of the latter group's right to live in the city.  


 The logical conclusion to Morrow's thesis is that the power and intransigence of affluent homeowners is the driving force behind not only Los Angeles' suburban sprawl, but (especially, as the latter becomes less viable) gentrification.

This is not to deny that the gentrifiers themselves often carry problematic attitudes of privilege and saviorism that serve to justify (both to themselves and outsiders) their uprooting of low-income residents of color.

And yet, at the most basic level, gentrification is not driven by personal opinion so much as by economic calculus.

It is the entrenched westside NIMBYs and not the eastside hipsters who bear the blame for LA's rampant gentrification. Let's hope that the advocates for social justice take notice.

Morrow Thesis:
Morrow, Gregory D.(2013). The Homeowner Revolution: Democracy, Land Use and the Los Angeles Slow-Growth Movement, 1965-1992. UCLA: Urban Planning 0911. Retrieved from: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6k64g20f

West Hollywood: A Plea for mass transit

For many City Planners in Los Angeles, "new urbanism" trends in transportation planning have focused on the city center, Downtown LA, which currently anchors the majority of lines of the expanding metro rail system. When people talk about a "third-wave" Los Angeles characterized by density, compactness and extensive public transit and walking options, they usually point to the revival of Downtown as the sign of the future. However, transit planners such as Michael Rhodes and Samuel Krueger have pointed out that Downtown is not Los Angeles' singular focal point of urban density (in the way that, say, Manhattan is to New York) but rather comprises one of a series of "dense" core-like areas, most concentrated in a line extending from Fairfax to the ocean. Of these core areas, the congested, centrally-located and compact entertainment West Hollywood provides even greater prospects for rapid transit development than downtown.

For one thing, West Hollywood's central location (conveniently surrounded by the commercial hubs of Beverly Hills and Century City (to the West), Hollywood (to the northeast) and Mid-Wilshire (to the east)), along with its legendary nightlife and dining destinations draw cars from across Greater Los Angeles onto its streets. With no freeway in the immediate vicinity and few wide streets running through the neighborhood, congestion constantly plagues West Hollywood even late at night.

Compounding West Hollywood traffic woes is the city's high commercial and residential density. West Hollywood is not only a nightlife hub (containing both the LGBT Boys Town" and the "Sunset Strip") and commercial center (with major design and entertainment industries centered in the city) but the most densely-populated independent city in Los Angeles County. Not only are all the major thoroughfares filled with cars in transit, but swamped along the curbsides. In the "Boys Town" district (near where I live), pedestrians not only crowd the sidewalks at night but, per East Coast mores, frequently wander into the street itself (especially as the night drags on). Indeed, so many pedestrian fatalities have occured on the stretch of Santa Monica in Boys Town, that the City of West Hollywood has gone out of its way to install signs and flashing signals warning cars to yield to pedestrians by crosswalks not located by traffic lights.  This goes to show how West Hollywood has long been a leader in efforts at making things easier for non-automative forms of transport and has result, been ranked as one of the most walkable cities in California. (Yes, above San Francisco)

Unfortunately, despite the congestion and pedestrian fatalities, a proposed line to West Hollywood remains off Metro's list of short-term expansion projects. This despite the city's proposal to plunk down money and even lobbyists to get a line through the city. If Metro were serious about expanding rail rather than winning votes from the San Gabriel Valley, they would construct a line towards West Hollywood as part of the short-term, rather than the contingent plan.

The Olive Tree Initiative, Israel-Palestine and the Conflict of Nationalisms

So at last, I get around to my grand "reflection" on the trip I took with the Olive Tree Initiative (no, the last article does not count).

When in the process of going through my notes from the trip, my thoughts kept drifting back to the Spring Quarter of my Freshman year of college, when I took a course on the Israel-Palestine conflict with Professor James Gelvin. Gelvin is a truly incredible teacher, delivering presentations with the perfect mixture of clarity and wit. What brings me to remember his course, in recent days, however, is Gelvin's theoretical characterization of the conflcit as a "conflict of nationalisms."

In the course of my travels throughout Israel-Palestine, I could not help be struck by the prominence of historical narratives in determining present political actions.

By history, I do not refer to the past as objective actuality, but rather as perceived narrative, that varies according to one's personal/life experiences. constructed as  so much as the conceptualization .

When our group visited the infamous Hebron settlement, the settlement's spokesperson, David Wilder, justified the imposition of the settlement, as well as the accompanying military regime, on the city on the basis that Jews "had lived there continuously" from Biblical times prior to the founding of the state of Israel (and because Judaism's third holiest site, the Cave of the Patriarchs, lay in the city).

Palestinian entreprenuer Mubib al-Masri, as if to counter Wilder's logic of causation, off-handedly remarked (when showing , when showing off the ruins of a Byzantine church that archaeologists had excavated beneath his house) that "it was lucky that we didn't find any synagogue...for then the settlers would come..." A full-fledged Palestinian national "counter-narrative" could be witnessed (amongst other places) on a historical timeline at the Jenin Municipal museum, which omitted any mention of Hebrew or Jewish events occurring in the region.    the local museum at Jenin,  history  al-Masri declared that he's "glad a synagogue was not discovered on the site, for it would lend legitimacy to Jewish nationalists (who would perceivedly try to displace him).

In a world of nation-states, national identities and narratives (such as the Zionist and the Palestinians) can seem to be primordial (especially when they draw legitimacy from a text as ancient as the Bible). To the contrary, however, most historians and social scientists concur that nationalism can be traced no further back than the early 19th-century, when the societal changes induced by the industrial revolution and the rise of constitutional democracy prompted a transition from older, feudal-based forms of identity. In the case of Israel-Palestine, Zionist and Palestinian identities are especially the first arising in late-19th-century Eastern Europe (in response to problem of Jewish emancipation) and the latter around the same time in Palestine due to economic industrialization. As Mazin Qomsiyeh reminded us, Palestine's Jews and Christian lived and died not as different peoples but as locals until recently.

Statesmen, accustomed to nation-state as predominant form of political arrangement, commonly pitch a two-state solution to the conflict, which would allow both nationalisms achieve "realization" through territorial compromise. For similar reasons, I too have traditionally believed that this would be the only endgame.

And yet, in Israel-Palestine, where the competing nationalisms not only covet the same territory but are premised-at least in recent times- so strongly on the denial of the legitimacy other (nationalism), fulfilling both nationalisms in tandem may add fuel to the conflict rather than manage it.

 As Jerusalem lawyer, Daniel Seidemann noted, this division will not result in hunky-dory coexistence but rather a "bitter divorce," that would require a considerable security guarantee by America and its allies to implement. Ironically, Seidemann made this comment as the bus wound its way through the Arab neighborhood (slated as belonging to a future Palestinian state) of Sheikh Jarrah, situated a mere 600 meters away from the future border (the Green Line) and the Jewish neighborhood of Mea Shearim. Should the future independent states of Israel and Palestine remain beset by opposing claims and grievances, the geopolitical situation in Jerusalem would ensure for a Cold War-like hostility at best (if not fractious bloodshed).

Compounding the problematic nature of the nationalisms is the degree to which religious belief (something that is far more difficult to "assimilate" to than a language or even culture) permeates the political and societal structures of the land. At the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, a strict religious (and ethnic) segregation between Jewish (Israeli) and Muslim (Palestinian) worshippers is maintained by the Israeli security forces,. Entering the country through the security checkpoints at Ben Gurion airport, my party was confronted with questions not about our citizenship but about our religion ("Are your parents Jewish?" I was asked): wrong answers could get students pulled aside for extended questioning. In East Jerusalem, on the other hand, a member of our group who looked  and inform politics on both sides.

Though religion and ethnicity have played a significant social role in the Middle East since the days of the Ottoman Millet System, the construction of national (Jewish-Zionist and Palestinian) identities political systems exclusively around religion is a relatively recent phenomenon.The first Zionist Congress, which laid out for the first time, an explicit goal of a homeland for members of the Jewish faith in Eretz Yisrael, convened only in 1896 . Palestinian nationalism, whose roots lay in the wholly secular process of industrial modernization (in nineteenth century Palestine), only became gradually (and partially) tied to the Islamic religion in light of the conflict with Zionism (e.g. the language of Islamic Martyrdom first entered Palestinian revolutionary rhetoric during the anti-zionist rebellions of the 1920s and 1930s), the flight of Palestinian Christian populations and political changes in the region (e.g. the Islamic Revolution and Hamas).

In theory, one could easily become a "Palestinian Jew" simply by embracing one's regional origins (and perhaps Arabic culture) and proclaiming solidarity with the Palestinian national cause: Uri Davis provides a case in point. Becoming a "Jewish Palestinian," would , on the other hand, be an extremely difficult and painful process: it is for this reason that the Arabic-speaking (many self-identifying as "Palestinian") citizens of Israel suffer such institutional discrimination within the Jewish state.

My point is not to blame Zionism but to argue that a long-term, equitable solution to the conflict will require people on all sides and their supporters (particularly Zionist American Jews) to identify with their neighbors as much as they do with their coreligionists.

In other conflict zones such as Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland, where religious-based national divisions once fueled bitterness and strife, a peaceful resolution resulted in a single political entity (backed up by security guarantees), in which people on both sides of the divide were compelled to live side-by-side, preserving their communal identities without negating the presence of the other.

The question, then, is why (rather than another "two-state proposal") can't the same feat be achieved in Israel-Palestine?

Young and Broke

My head hits the concrete
legs crooked, askance and
arms...slouching back.
In hiding.

The checks have been cashed
and turned up blank.
The beer and cover charges
remain outstanding.

To mother's ears
you shouldn't lie.
From Father's eyes
you cannot hide.
Alone, to yourself, you try, try, try...

To run away..
to flagellate...
to sit and stare...

You LAZY, erect Bastard!

You've got decades ahead
swallowed
in debt
and fear
and hate.

Thoughts on the Olive Tree Initiative Trip and Normalization

Author's Note: The first three paragraphs of this piece portray a dialogue and between a myself and a metaphorical Everyman of a certain political perspective. Readers of this blog need not worry that I am singling them (or any other person) out.

I have been quite sluggish for the past month, taking frequent naps and heading to bed before midnight. This, along with the rigors of my new job, are what have prevented me from making the much-awaited first post of the New Year.

Now why am I so tired, you ask, when you meet me in the coffee house.

The answer is largely jet-lag: I returned on January 11th from a ten-day Conflict Education trip to Israel-Palestine with the Olive Tree Initiative.

Why would you go on that trip, some may say?

This "why" is not the "why" asked by family members worried about my safety, nor the "why" posed by friends curious about my interest in the conflict. Rather, this why asks "how can you go on a trip that normalizes the Occupation and/.or Apartheid in Palestine.

Maybe, you think that the adoption of a terminology of a two-sided "conflict" obscures the oppressive nature of the West Bank Occupation regime.

 Maybe, instead, you fear that the program's careful balancing of Zionist Israeli and Palestinian speakers (and narratives) too strikingly resembles the sort of "dialogue groups" that characterized the failure of the Oslo era.  

Before I voice another subconscious opinion of yours, I must rebuke by pointing out that the Olive Tree Initiative (unlike some other trips of greater noteriety) bears no insitutional affiliation with the Israeli government or Zionist organizations (even if pro-Zionist groups and individuals may donate money from time to time). Indeed, the group's sole stated mission is to provide "rigorous academic preperation" and "experential education" (hence the travel to conflict zones) necessary to "better understand, negotiate and resolve conflicts." Note how the word "understand,"in particular, denotes the detachment from any particular narrative. As such, any of the frames that you fear the group mirrors are not the intent of the trip leaders/organizers.

What supposedly holds true in theory is supported by my empirical observation.

During the course of the trip, the group met and conversed with figures as politically diverse as Palestinian academic Mazin Qomsiyeh and Hebron settler leader David Wilder. While providing each speaker's background and political orientation, the group leader, Daniel Wehrenfennig, never made value judgements about a speaker when addressing the group. Nor did he seek to guide or frame the innumerable conversations participants had (following each session) about speakers or the trip as a whole. The official group reflection sessions, held every evening, were hands-off, allowing for the free flow of thoughts and opinions.

Indeed, at no time during the trip did we ever feel stifled in our conversation. I could make a comment in the daily reflection session on how I was led to a believe (through my day's experiences) in a one state solution as an ideal resolution to the conflict only to have a companion retort that the "two-state solution remains the only realistic outcome."

One night, when the group split up to attend dinner gatherings at the homes of locals, I found myself engaged in a three-way conversation/debate on the discriminatory nature of Zionism involving myself, a student prominent in Zionist activism at UCLA (I won't give out any names)  and our house, whose house had beeen damaged during the 2001 siege  in the Church of the Nativity. Our host and I actually dominated with our arguments pointing out Zionism's ethnic colonial and the third participant remained largely silent.

This brings me to my second objection to criticism of OTI from Palestine Solidarity activists about the trip: the humanizing effect that it has on Zionist students.

No student, no matter how they were raised, can go through the intensive, racially-charged "security screenings" at Israel's airports, embassy and military checkpoints without recognizing the practice of bare-boned racism.

No trip participant can travel from the bourgeois suburbs of Haifa to the dilapitated refugee camps at Deheisheh and Jenin and witness the snaking walls and pots on the rooftops for collecting rainwater (so scarce is the amount of water the authorities allocate) without acknowledging the fundamental power disparity between the Palestinian and Israeli sides.

If the trip had an overtly activist or anti-occupation agenda, Zionist students would probably shun the trip, as would many non-Zionist students (like myself) who rely on ionist-minded relatives for funding. By presenting a sheath of detached "neutrality" the Olive Tree Initiative manages to attract pro-Israel students to a trip that lures in them into the underbelly of the Occupation.

True, the trip exposes students to as many the voices from Israeli society as it does to those in Palestinian society. Many of the Israelis we met with on the trip spoke of their own fears of Palestinians and need for security. What one took from the Israeli narrative was left up to the individual.

For me at least, the surrounding contexts of occupation and military rule, together with the humanity I found in the Palestinians I met made it clear that the fearful Israeli perspective, though an attitude to be dealt with, proved misplace and unfounded.

Other students, who may have been rooted more firmly in Zionist background, likely reached different conclusions. On a hopeful note, however, I recall an one student with revisionist Zionist express concerns with Israel's airport interrogation methods after hearing one of the Muslim students recount his experience

The best way for participants (especially Zionist students) to absorb the reality of Occupation and oppression would be for a stronger activist presence on the trip. By conveying an added layer of context at each step of the journey, Palestinian activist students would provide a valuable educational resource.

All of this leads to a larger point that I have about "normalization" (and why I am opposed to many applications of the term by anti-normalization activists).

Yes, I do believe that certain "dialogue" efforts which are initiated by right-wing Zionist institutions and actors supporting the Occupation (e.g. a "peace conference" held in a settlement) are too patronizing and cooptive to expect Palestinian participation.

And yet, in many cases, I believe that education forums, like the Olive Tree Initiative, and even infamous "dialogue groups" can help empower Palestinian participants, if the latter use their presence wisely.

Even where dialogue takes an implicitly "balanced" stance, that fails to recognizes the gaping power differentials, Palestinian participants can (and should) utilize their presence to subvert the frame of discussion by laying bare cogent and forceful facts that argue for justice.

But why should Palestinians participate in dialogue groups that fail to recognize the fundamental injustice perpetrated by one side?

A telling answer lies in the fact that (as I've mentioned before) Ultra-zionism is largely born in ignorance. American Jews spend their lives cooped up in an ideological "cocoon", in which they are raised to believe Palestinians as reincarnations of the racist and menacing anti-semites of yore. This leads them to unwittingly support (with "reluctance") repressive political actions by Israel that often conflict with the liberal attitudes that they hold on most other issues.

An added rationale for Palestinians and their sympathizers to participate in shared forums with Zionist Israelis-even those that appear condescending-is an age-old piece of strategic wisdom: you can't win a fight unless you"know"your enemy, by understanding (though not necessarily acknowledging) his mindset and worldview.

Bringing justice to as messy of a trauma as that tormenting Palestine will require as much discipline as passion and as much nuance as dogma. Especially given the amount of fear and vitriol that drives oppression in this region, it is more advisable that Palestinians counter through open mouths than closed arms. Indeed, as Martin Luther King affirmed, justice is fundamentally intertwined with peace and understanding.