Thursday, June 30, 2011

L.A. County's (Illegal) War on Desert Rats

Via Oleg Volk



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"It has a bedroom, bathroom, kitchenette, all that." Joey Gallo, a disabled vet facing homelessness under county orders, with his friend Lucky.
"It has a bedroom, bathroom, kitchenette, all that." Joey Gallo, a disabled vet facing homelessness under county orders, with his friend Lucky.

A cheery facade, but on the backside Jacques and Marcelle Dupuis have begun dismantling every board and nail of their home.
A cheery facade, but on the backside Jacques and Marcelle Dupuis have begun dismantling every board and nail of their home.

In Llano, in the Middle of the Southern California high Desert, a bewhiskered Jacques Dupuis stands in Front of What WAS HIS Once home. His laid-back second wife, Marcelle, her long, silver hair blowing in the breeze, takes a drag on her Marlboro Red as they walk inside and, in thick French Canadian accents, recount the day in 2007 when the government came calling. "That's the seat I have to offer you," she tells a visitor, motioning to the exposed, dusty wooden floor planks in what was once a cozy cabin where Jacques spent much of his life, raising his daughter with his first wife.

On Oct. 17, 2007, Marcelle opened the door to a loud knock. Her heart jumped when she found a man backed by two armed county agents in bulletproof vests. She WAS alone in the cabin, a dot in the VAST Open space of the Antelope Valley , Without a neighbor for More Than Half a Mile. That she feared something HAD Happened to Her daughter, WHO WAS Visiting from Montreal .

The men demanded her driver's license, telling her, "This building is not permitted - everything must go." Normally sassy, ​​Marcelle handed over her ID - even her green card, just in case. Stepping out, she realized that her 1,000-square-foot cabin was surrounded by men with drawn guns. "You have no right to be here," one informed her. Baffled and shaking with fear, she called her daughter - please come right away.

As her ordeal wore on, she heard one agent, looking inside their comfortable cabin, say to another: "This one's a real shame - this is a real nice one."

A "shame" because the authorities eventually would enact some of the most powerful rules imaginable against rural residents: the order to bring the home up to current codes or dismantle the 26-year-old cabin, leaving only bare ground.

"They wouldn't let me grandfather in the water tank," Jacques Dupuis says. "It is so heart-wrenching because there was a way to salvage this, but they wouldn't work with me. It was, 'Tear it down. Period.' "

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