TENTS AND TENANTS: After Echo Park Lake
February 1 - March 31, 2025 at the Skid Row History Museum and Archive
The Echo Park Lake encampment was an uprising. A settlement of tents in an iconic public park in the gentrified heart of Los Angeles, it offered a poor people's radical solution to the housing crisis. At Echo Park Lake, encampment residents and housed neighbors joined together to organize against state violence and to build community. From challenging sweeps to constructing an infrastructure of life, the Echo Park Lake encampment built an alternative world. In doing so, it became a threat to the policed propertied order of Los Angeles, eventually facing eviction through a police invasion. Even so, the dreams and practices of the Echo Park Lake encampment could not be easily squashed, and they live on in the struggles of housed and unhoused tenants today. TENTS AND TENANTS charts the eras of organizing that unfolded at Echo Park Lake, uncovering not only the machinations of state power, but also how poor people made the city their home.
TENTS AND TENANTS: After Echo Park Lake was curated by Kristy Lovich and organized by the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, with support provided by the Mellon Foundation, made possible by the vision, struggle, and dedication of so many…
Residents, organizers, leaders, and caretakers of the Echo Park Lake encampment who took it upon themselves to fiercely defend their community and its life-sustaining infrastructure.
After Echo Park Lake Research Collective: Ashley Bennett, Jennifer Blake, Jonny Coleman, Hannah Cornfield, La Donna Harrell, Terrie Klein, Samuel Lutzker, Hilary Malson, Jessica "Queen" Mendez, Carla Orendorff, Gustavo Otzoy, Annie Powers, Chloe Rosenstock, Ananya Roy, Rayne Laborde Ruiz, William: Sens, Jr., Pamela Stephens
After Echo Park Lake Archive Collective: Ayman Ahmed, Emma Christie, Amanda Darouie, Lloyd Edward, Greer Little, Kristy Lovich, Jed Parriott, Annie Powers, Adrian "WallSt" Segura, William Sens, Jr., Sonja Verdugo, Leonardo Vilchis-Zarate
Skid Row History Museum & Archive, a project of Los Angeles Poverty Department: Henry Michael Apodaca, Henriette Brouwers, John Malpede, and Zach Rutland
UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy: Marisa Lemorande, Kristy Lovich, Ananya Roy