Class Wars! George Lucas, Director

Star Wars creator George Lucas is generously building a new neighborhood for low-income Americans, but he’s facing unfamiliar shrieks of protest from progressive, diversity-praising, pro-immigration Democrats.

They’re protesting because the new houses are to be built in their quiet valley in California’s ultra-liberal Marin County, where they and Lucas live on huge, tree-shaded tracts of grassland, just north of San Francisco.

Carolyn Lenert, chairman of the North San Rafael Coalition of Residents, told the New York Times that Lucas’ plan is “inciting class warfare,” and that a terrified unnamed resident likened the new development to the Islamic killing in Syria.

“This is going to become a more fundamental conflict” among the Democratic Party’s supporters, said Joel Kotkin, author of The New Class Conflict and executive editor of NewGeography.com “We’re seeing this all over the country,” Kotkin said.

“The great irony of the Democratic Party is [that it is] upstairs/downstairs coalition,” said Kotkin, referring to a Downton Abbey-like social structure of lords and servants.

Wealthy “upstairs doesn’t want anything to impinge on their quality of life, and [poor] downstairs is saying ‘Hey, we want a decent place to live and we want jobs’,” he said.

This wealthy-liberal vs. low-income-liberal rift may soon be exacerbated by government policy. On June 11, President Barack Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development announced plans that could have the effect, via government fiat, of forcing wealthy neighborhoods to do what George Lucas is trying to do voluntarily: diversify, in terms of income and race. The idea, said a HUD spokeswoman, is to “break down barriers to access to opportunity in communities supported by HUD funds.”

It may be seen as somewhat ironic, therefore, that in the 2012 presidential election, Marin County voted overwhelmingly — 74 percent — to re-elect President Barack Obama, and has consistently voted Democrat since 1984.

Related: Obama Team Attacks Suburbia

Since 1980, California’s population has boomed as Democrats invited waves of legal and illegal immigrants. Because of their policy, the state’s population grew by 50 percent, from 24 million to 37 million, and a majority of the state’s school population is now Latino.

“The great irony of the Democratic Party is [that it is] upstairs/downstairs coalition”

But Marin County’s wealthy population has largely excluded new arrivals, most of whom are poor, unskilled and rely on state aid. The county’s population has grown slowly, from roughly 220,000 in 1980 to just 250,000 in 2010.

The possible arrival of several hundred low-income families would dramatically increase diversity in Marin County’s high schools.

The nearest high school school is Sir Francis Drake High School in San Anselmo. More than 80 percent of the almost 1,000 kids in school are white. Less than 8 percent are Latino or black.

Statewide, less than 26 percent of kids in California’s government-run schools are white.

The Marin County clash began when residents hired lawyers to block Lucas’s plan to build a high-tech movie studio in the Marin County hills. Lucas eventually gave up the fight and announced he would use some of his land — known as Grady Ranch — to develop low-income housing.

Lucas says he’ll pay for the entire housing complex at no cost to either state or federal government.

Residents say the move is in retaliation to their refusal to allow Lucas to construct a new film studio on the property.

A lawsuit filed by Marin County Alliance was heard on April 29, and a ruling is expected within 90 days.

The Marin County residents are trying to avoid looking like they’re hostile to low-income Latinos. They say they’re concerned greater overcrowding of Route 101 into San Francisco, lowered home values and the impact on the environment.

Local protesters don’t want to be seen an anti-Latino, so they they complaining about proxy issues, such as road congestion, water supplies and ambitious property developers.

“Progressivism has lost [support from] much of the middle- and working-class people”

A residents’ group, the Marin County Alliance, released a video, entitled “How Marin Was Ruined.” The video paints a dire picture of residents trying to resist politicians who are beholden to special interests such as transit developers. Its voice-over narrative sounds like Orson Welles’ radio broadcast of War of the Worlds: It says:

“Marin. The year is 2020. It has become nearly impossible to commute from Marin to San Francisco. Northern Marin commuters face a stark choice between a three to four hour round trip in their car or even longer by transit. Quality of life is being affected. Stresses are being placed on families, more divorces are happening, people are losing their jobs, realtors have been telling people to lower their house prices to sell.”

The video cites fears about water sustainability and worries that there won’t be enough “green energy” to sustain more low-income housing.

Residents also complain about other housing developments , such as such Wincup 180-unit complex in Corte Madera. Even more disturbing for residents is the Larkspur Landing Station Area Plan, which would be much larger than Wincup.

“Today, we’re fighting the state, a myriad of alphabet-soup agencies, unions and grant-funded ‘grassroots groups’ who publicly label anyone who objects with hate-filled names,” according to an opinion piece written by Julie Leitzell published by the Marin Independent Journal.

Marin County is one of the wealthiest areas in the country. Federal data show the median household income for Marin County is $90,839, which is approximately 50 percent higher than the rest of California. It is so wealthy that a family of four people, who earn less than $90,000, can apply for housing subsidies.

The Marin Country conflict is coming to more wealthy Democratic enclaves around the country, Kotkin predicted.

“Progressivism has lost [support from] much of the middle- and working-class people,” he said. “So it’s stuck in this upstairs/downstairs configuration, which has fundamental contradictions” over jobs, the environment, roads and who gets to live where, he said.

“You have to understand the psychology of coastal California in that life is really good, and when you bring in jobs or low-income housing, [it] is simply not what these people have bargained for,” Kotkin said.

“Either they’ve spent a fortune to live there or they’ve made a fortune sitting on their houses … Ultimately, I don’t think that these people will be happy with anything being built there.

“Something had to give at some point,”  he said. “And so it’s going to be very interesting to see.”

 
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