![]() People forging links across online and offline spaces, I argue, can engage in new social relations, linking bodies across divisions of race, culture and space, creating local networks of solidarity. Yet, the process of building alternative online media collectives does provide a viable model for overcoming urban processes of erasure and alienation, an experience common to those that inhabit the decentralized sprawl of Los Angeles. ![]() Presently, language differences, ethnic insularity, the digital divide, and the daily grind of the working poor prevent many ties easily achieved in theory. The process of creating an Independent Media Center in Los Angeles (LA IMC), however, establishes an offline/online nexus, creating material conditions for social interaction and community-building ultimately enriching, rather than erasing, notions of place, regional identity and community. Norman Klein argues the dematerialization view of cyberspace, dubbing online regional practice as “the digitization of forgetting,” and its ties to localism an impossibility due to the spatial indeterminacy of cyberspace - “a spot un-rooted to any definite spot on the surface of the earth” (Klein, 1999: p. In this essay, I advance cyberspace as a location that can potentially provide a common space to enable Angelinos to overcome class, racial and spatial divisions. Mike Davis, in his widely read *City of Quartz*, suggests that the loss of public space in LA is a central factor in preventing the mingling of its citizens, preventing their ability to forge networks of solidarity that can result from common experiences among classes, ethnicities and races. Selective de-industrialization, de-unionization and the brutal demographic divisions that exist in the spatial organization of LA also provide the preconditions for a loss of regional identity and broad grassroots networking in the city, home to 3.5 million Latino, black, Asian and white citizens that inhabit its 464 square miles. Unlock Hype Pro via the Hype > Upgrade to Hype Professional menu item.Recent studies lament the loss of historical specificity in Los Angeles due to the destruction of landmarks and the removal of ethnic neighborhoods, in addition to distorting representations in the media that divide the city into narratives of celebrity and crime.
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