Elaine Lewinnek - A Peoples Guide to Orange County (A Peoples Guide Series Book 4)

This is a remarkable book. It not only tells one of the richest, most inclusive histories of Orange County out there, but it pulls you along for the ride, taking you to the places and hearing the voices of the people long ignored who made that history.

BECKY NICOLAIDES, author of My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 19201965

This engaging guide to Orange County offers a critical counterpoint to the happiest place on earth. It pulls back the stucco curtain to highlight diverse histories of struggle, resistance, and place-making. A fascinating read that will be an important resource for teachers, scholars, and lovers of history.

GENEVIEVE CARPIO, author of Collisions at the Crossroads: How Place and Mobility Make Race

THE PUBLISHER AND THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS FOUNDATION GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGE THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF THE LISA SEE ENDOWMENT FUND IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA HISTORY AND CULTURE.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS PEOPLES GUIDES

Los Angeles

Greater Boston

San Francisco Bay Area

Orange County, California

Forthcoming

New York City

Richmond and Central Virginia

New Orleans

About the Series

Tourism is one of the largest and most profitable industries in the world today, especially for cities. Yet the vast majority of tourist guidebooks focus on the histories and sites associated with a small, elite segment of the population and encourage consumption and spectacle as the primary way to experience a place. These representations do not reflect the reality of life for most urban residentsincluding people of color, the working class and poor, immigrants, Indigenous people, and LGBTQ communitiesnor are they embedded within a systematic analysis of power, privilege, and exploitation. The Peoples Guide series was born from the conviction that we need a different kind of guidebook: one that explains power relations in a way everyone can understand, and that shares stories of struggle and resistance to inspire and educate activists, students, and critical thinkers.

Guidebooks in the series uncover the rich and vibrant stories of political struggle, oppression, and resistance in the everyday landscapes of metropolitan regions. They reveal an alternative view of urban life and history by flipping the script of the conventional tourist guidebook. These books not only tell histories from the bottom up, but also show how all landscapes and places are the product of struggle. Each book features a range of sites where the powerful have dominated and exploited other people and resources, as well as places where ordinary people have fought back in order to create a more just world. Each book also includes carefully curated thematic tours through which readers can explore specific urban processes and their relation to metropolitan geographies in greater detail. The photographs model how to read space, place, and landscape critically, while the maps, nearby sites of interest, and additional learning resources create a resource that is highly usable. By mobilizing the conventional format of the tourist guidebook in these strategic ways, books in the series aim to cultivate stronger public understandings of how power operates spatially.

A PEOPLES GUIDE TO ORANGE COUNTY

Elaine LewinnekGustavo ArellanoThuy Vo Dang

University of California Press

University of California Press

Oakland, California

2022 by Elaine Lewinnek, Gustavo Arellano, and Thuy Vo Dang

The Peoples Guides are written in the spirit of discovery and we hope they will take readers to a wider range of places across cities. Readers are cautioned to explore and travel at their own risk and obey all local laws. The author and publisher assume no responsibility or liability with respect to personal injury, property damage, loss of time or money, or other loss or damage allegedly caused directly or indirectly from any information or suggestions contained in this book.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lewinnek, Elaine, author. | Arellano, Gustavo, 1979- author. | Vo Dang, Thuy, author.

Title: A peoples guide to Orange County / Elaine Lewinnek, Gustavo Arellano, and Thuy Vo Dang.

Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020051192 (print) | LCCN 2020051193 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520299955 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520971554 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH : Orange County (Calif.)Guidebooks.

Classification: LCC F 868. O 6 L 49 2022 (print) | LCC F 868. O 6 (ebook) | DDC 917.94/9604--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020051192

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020051193

Designer and compositor: Nicole Hayward

Text: 10/14.5 Dante

Display: Museo Sans and Museo Slab

Prepress: Embassy Graphics

Cartographer: John Carroll

Printer and binder: Sheridan Books, Inc.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Contents

Land Acknowledgment

We are grateful to the Acjachemen Review Board for composing the following land acknowledgment.

A Peoples Guide to Orange County centers on histories that take place on the documented unceded traditional territory of the Acjachemem people. The Acjachemem share territory with their relatives and neighbors: Tongva on the northern boundary and Paymkawichum to the east and south. The Acjachemem and their Native relatives are still here and remain as nations with international relationships. The authors of A Peoples Guide to Orange County acknowledge the painful histories of violent colonial invasion and occupation of Acjachemem land, beginning with Spain in 1769, followed by Mexico and the United States of America. The Acjachemem homeland continues to be occupied in violation of their sovereign nationhood. With this writing, we pay respect to and honor the original traditional stewards of what is now known as Orange County, the Acjachemem Nation past, present, and future. We also acknowledge that all the histories in this book only occurred because of land theft, genocide, and the enslavement of the Indigenous people. To help right this wrong, we propose that land be given back to the original inhabitants of Orange County.

Maps

Introduction

(Detail) Women working on an assembly line at the Central Lemon Association in Orange, in 1930.

Home to Disneyland, beautiful beaches, neo-Nazis, decadent housewives, and the modern-day Republican Party: this is Orange County, California, in the American popular imagination. Home to civil rights heroes, LGBTQ victories, Indigenous persistence, labor movements, and an electorate that has recently turned blue: this is the Orange County, California, that lies beneath the pop cultural representation, too little examined even by locals.

First advertised on orange crate labels as a golden space of labor-free abundance, then promoted through the reassuring leisure of the Happiest Place on Earth, and most recently showcased in television portraits of the areas hypercapitalism, Orange County also contains a surprisingly diverse and discordant past that has consequences for the present. Alongside its paved-over orange groves, amusement parks, and malls, it is a place where people have resisted segregation, struggled for public spaces, created vibrant youth cultures, and launched long-lasting movements for environmental justice and against police brutality.