In East Palo Alto, as in the rest of the world, capital called forth the labor it needed at a price it was willing to pay. There’s no reason we need to pretend that authorities at any level wanted everyone in LouAnne Johnson’s bused EPA class to succeed, for none of them to be left behind. Capitalists needed low-wage employees because that’s where the growth was. If all the kids in East Palo Alto became engineers and doctors and lawyers, who would fill the hundreds of jobs at the new IKEA by the freeway? In 2003, the hulking furniture sales warehouse filled out the Ravenswood 101 center, thrilling local shoppers in a way big box electronics resellers never could. It was the age of brands, even if the brands were attached to DIY sheets of plywood. Domestic IKEAs were few and far between at the time. The store’s serve-yourself model reduced the number of higher-wage delivery, warehouse, and sales jobs, leaving mostly deskilled service gigs with compensation near the legal minimum. Locals protested during the zoning process that they wanted a grocery store instead—as with a high school, East Palo Alto went without—but leaders were swayed by the retailer’s promise of at least $1 million a year in tax revenue.55 The store opened its doors to what the San Francisco Chronicle described as a “rampaging horde.”56 Say what you will about drug users; they don’t line up 5,000 deep to score. Fifteen minutes on foot from Sacramento Street, the new million-dollar spot was blue and yellow.