https://iclfi.org/pubs/lro-en/2026-lineage
Nine weeks have passed and the overwhelmingly Mexicano and Chicano working class residents of Boyle Heights and surrounding neighborhoods are still suffering from the Lineage cold food storage warehouse fire and its disastrous consequences. Chemically toxic air, 24/7 putrid smell of rotting food, infestation of rats and swarms of flies. These unbearable conditions need an urgent resolution. Neither the politicians nor the bosses who are responsible for this disaster are going to take care of us.
Community groups have done what they could in mobilizing mutual aid to make up for the totally inadequate response by the Karen Bass Democratic Party administration and Lineage bosses. Protests outside the warehouse have shown the determination of the community to keep fighting even after weeks of neglect. It was good to see La Raza overfill a Boyle Heights town hall meeting on July 9 to shout down Lineage representatives, Mayor Bass, Democratic Socialists of America city council woman Ysabel Jurado and L.A. Board of Supervisors member Hilda Solis. We strongly solidarize with the demands of La Raza in Boyle Heights for Lineage to clean up, get out and stay out!
To save face and placate anger, the Democrats have instructed City departments to temporarily pause the processing of Lineage’s permit to rebuild the warehouse. All while the Democrats leave the door open to Lineage to have its rebuilding permit granted after cleanup efforts are finished. Karen Bass is deeply unpopular heading into the mayoral election. Continued community anger and pressure can force the Democrats to cave and permanently prevent Lineage from rebuilding. Such an outcome would be a welcome victory for the community. Though to change the situation in favor of La Raza protecting their health and livelihoods, Boyle Heights needs to assert control over decision making in the community.
La Raza securing community control over decision making on repurposing the warehouse land will require a struggle against the Democratic Party. Even with all the anger from the community, there are still illusions to look to politicians like Bass, Jurado and Solis because they come from oppressed communities and have a history of community organizing. Not for one second does that change the fact that Democrats represent and work with industrial and real estate capitalist interests. After all, these politicians sanction the usage of land for those interests at the detriment of the health and livelihoods of working class brown and black communities. To bolster this struggle against the Democratic Party, there needs to be an alliance between the community and the power of the organized working class. Since labor unions make Los Angeles run, they have great leverage to use against the bosses and their politicians.Unions and the labor movement have every interest to defend Boyle Heights. The oppressive conditions of La Raza in Los Angeles imposed by the Democrats and the bosses brings down the living conditions of all workers. Overall wages are driven down as industries thrive off mass numbers of La Raza receiving poverty wages and working non-union jobs. Education, healthcare and housing are segregated, subpar and very costly. Case after case of being beat up and killed by the LAPD and the Sheriffs. The white supremacists in the White House continue unleashing ICE raids to terrorize La Raza. For decades, the leadership of the unions has failed to mobilize to fight against any of this. That explains why today the labor movement is weak and disorganized as well as why the conditions of the oppressed working masses are so horrible.
We have a long way to go to forge the alliance between labor and the community, but even modest efforts to bring small contingents of union workers to community protests and town hall meetings can help strengthen the fighting capacity of the community. Unionized workers entering this struggle can also open the opportunity for unions in the food supply chain logistics industry, from the ILWU to Teamsters and UFCW, to strengthen their collective power by unionizing workers throughout the chain including those employed at Lineage facilities.
It was once widely known that “an injury to one is an injury to all,” but the union leadership does not mobilize the unions to act on that principle. The unions have allocated little aid and few resources to Boyle Heights. No surprise. This same leadership is so far removed from the daily struggles and felt needs of the oppressed working masses. This is because their whole outlook is coalition building with the very same Democratic Party politicians who are responsible for this disaster and who serve the interests of the bosses.
These very same union leaders also have some responsibility for this disaster. Lineage workers across warehouse facilities in the L.A. area are not unionized and the unions were not involved in dictating quality standards for warehouse infrastructure, solar panel installation and workplace safety. The unions taking up the campaign to unionize workers at such facilities would go a long way in uplifting the living standards of workers, many of whom come from the very same barrios affected by this disaster. Unions controlling infrastructure and safety standards, shutdown and disaster response at industrial facilities would complement La Raza’s desire to determine and control what happens in their communities.
As far as we know, there’s no reportage of what happened to the workers employed at the Lineage warehouse where the fire took place. For sure no worker died or was injured at the warehouse. It would benefit the efforts of La Raza and the Boyle Heights community for the unions to make sure these workers receive full back-pay and have their jobs restored and relocated to other facilities. The struggles of La Raza and the labor movement go forward together or fall back separately. If we organize them around that basic understanding, it is possible to beat back the bosses and their politicians.
