Gentrification v. Youthification @bethepea - Tumblr Blog

“Homeowners in gentrifying communities are encouraged to use the police to push out low income tenants, immigrants and people of color. This can be seen in neighborhood watch groups that collude with the police to target “suspicious activity” — racial and class profiling. In this way, the police pit neighbors against each other by putting power in the hands of a few to determine what behavior is disruptive or dangerous. The result is a community that watches one another as opposed to watching out for each other.”

— Autonomous Tenants Union’s new blog post about Policing and Gentrification

yasbxxgie

A Vanishing History: Gullah Geechee Nation

On the Sea Islands along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia, a painful chapter of American history is playing out again. These islands are home to the Gullah or Geechee people, the descendants of enslaved Africans who were brought to work at the plantations that once ran down the southern Atlantic coast. After the Civil War, many former slaves on the Sea Islands bought portions of the land where their descendants have lived and farmed for generations. That property, much of it undeveloped waterfront land, is now some of the most expensive real estate in the country.

But the Gullah are now discovering that land ownership on the Sea Islands isn’t quite what it seemed. Local landowners are struggling to hold on to their ancestral land as resort developers with deep pockets exploit obscure legal loopholes to force the property into court-mandated auctions. These tactics have successfully fueled a tourism boom that now attracts more than 2 million visitors a year. Gullah communities have all but disappeared, replaced by upscale resorts and opulent gated developments that new locals — golfers, tourists, and mostly white retirees — fondly call “plantations.”

Faced with an epic case of déjà vu, the Gullah are scrambling for solutions as their livelihood and culture vanish, one waterfront mansion at a time.

intoxicatingimmediacy

Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs | spoken-word performance CinemaCon 2018

The first thing you do is keep trying to remember the names It’s Freddie, Alton, Oscar, Walter, Eric and Stephon Philando, Sam, Tamir, Terrance, Michael, Sandra, Sean Down Miles knuckles paints his fear of a black son A Collin with a strike, all he can think to do is run This is Oakland under the gun Where we legalize the dope after they locked up all the guys who did the runs Now there’s new ones with the funds who bought broken homes in hopes that they were patching up the slums Not noticing they’re standing on the backs of local sons and daughters Building a high rise in the high tide of a slaughter Shut down the deli, flip the plot, now it’s a Starbucks on the corner Yeah but I do like coffee I like coffee too

But it’s not for me, us The New York Times called Oakland the new top five places to live here It’s cuz we made water out the desert now they wanna build on the mud here Must be something in the water And everything we own wet They keep telling me it’s something in the water and I see that they’re gearing up to go get a piece Lakeshore or The Bottoms, Uptown, Temescal And the problem is half of these neighbourhoods didn’t exist before we felt a drip and got thirsty I do like coffee Yeah I like coffee too

It’s something in the water Look at the desert we made Where money sucks everything dry Where culture is liquid and currently in short supply Where what we once called a community suddenly gets monetized And once again soil is tilled on our backs just when we thought we were out When picking cotton becomes cottonmouth Look at the desert We called it a drought And now they just all want us out A city trying to erase mistakes it makes me wanna shout

It is Freddie, Alton, Oscar, Walter, Eric and Stephon Philando, Sam, Tamir and Terrance, Michael, Sandra, Sean Each day I say the names but it gets harder to hold on Because the city’s disappearing, can’t forget what’s dead and gone While we demonize the poor, we relocate and ignore We revoke and demote till we’re living remote And when they revolt, cops hit reload until a body hits the floor No pity for the fallen kid on CNN who saw his end because he had a gun and we don’t wonder why he needed it Judge the poor resorting to stealing, selling and slanging, not knowing you could’ve lived off those communities’ incomes medium How perfect does a black boy have to be before we mourn him How quickly must a neighbourhood vanish for us to notice We’re standing on roots and coffins and don’t know the names of the dead Quit aiming at my head, I’m trying to focus

It is Freddie, Alton, Oscar, Walter, Eric and Stephon Philando, Sam, Tamir and Terrance, Michael, Sandra… It’s Michael, Sandra… fuck it, who are we forgetting What was his name All I remember is how he was slain Where it was done There’s a Whole Foods there now but I don’t recognise anyone There’s a whole new there there now They told me my here here better run Town want us on the run Cops yelling ‘stop’ Both want us disappeared, unsure which the bigger gun And now when I watch I spot the sly scheme of the high rises on my block Ain’t no bygones getting by gone I’m eyes wide to a blindspot It’s high time that a drive-by by a black suit will get prosecuted like a high crime Fuck a line-of-duty, call it execution right on prime time And what is the peace code when your home streets get repo’d for the highest bidders That’s the fire embers of an auction block causing higher temperates for its dire members

So here’s a story about divided brothers trying to find each other through their violent tempers Called it Blindspotting It’s just been us strumming that sad song we laugh along to as survival fluid Now we wanna pass it along to folks like y’all to help us amplify the movement This is Blindspotting Till we moving more in unison, pen a blueprint till its fruition And Fruitvale type abuses are a rear view like the noose is This is Blindspotting Cuz it ain’t like we lack the proper toolkits and the art is how we hold the mirror up Show this fiction to reveal the truth until it’s clear enough This is Blindspotting Help us roll the picture and remember Freddie (Gray), Alton (Sterling), Oscar (Grant), Walter (Scott), Eric (Garner) and Stephon (Clark) Philando (Castile), Sam (DuBose), Tamir (Rice) and Terrance (Walker), Michael (Brown), Sandra (Bland), Sean (Bell) Cuz a story never told becomes a story dead and gone Together we can make a space where all these names live on This is Blindspotting

mysticlilacart-deactivated20211

TV gentrifiers are usually white and serve as comic relief. But in a new drama on Starz set in Los Angeles’s Boyle Heights, they’re Mexican-American.

terrence-herschel-gay

“What Does Gentrification Look Like in an Overwhelmingly White City? ” by WILL MATSUDA via NYT / Eethg. Corps. Inc. Lens https://nyti.ms/2k1LNmy May 15, 2018 at 08:00PM The New York Times Lens

whitefuckery2

First, the gentrifiers moved in next door. Now, they're wasting my tax dollars calling the police on their neighbors.

imtoopure

“Homeowners in gentrifying communities are encouraged to use the police to push out low income tenants, immigrants and people of color. This can be seen in neighborhood watch groups that collude with the police to target “suspicious activity” — racial and class profiling. In this way, the police pit neighbors against each other by putting power in the hands of a few to determine what behavior is disruptive or dangerous. The result is a community that watches one another as opposed to watching out for each other.”

— Autonomous Tenants Union’s new blog post about Policing and Gentrification

allthecanadianpolitics

Relevant to Chinatown re-zoning, this is my 2nd favorite piece of graffiti in Chinatown

Submitted by ivenoideawhatiamdoing

#gentrification #gentefication #laundrymat #laundromat #sanfrancisco

spacejuncianfilms

Gentrification: knocking down a liquor store to build a new… liquor store.

#gentrification #Newer isn't better

stanfordartsinstitute

today, more than anything else, was a spectrum of the different perspectives of gentrification. we started off in the morning with library street collective, which is the first photo featured. this collective was started by dan gilbert, detroit’s billionaire real estate developer. the narrative he shares is that by vitalizing communities with culture and making the city more appealing for wealthier folk, the problems of detroit will be driven away. however, artist tiff massey shares a different perspective. while she worked with the collective, she didn’t stand for what gilbert did to detroit’s community. she seemed to work against the system by staying with the grain.

antonio cosme, our fierce activist//farmer//anarchist//grafitti artist tour guide took us on a tour of all the different murals and street art in mexican town. he’s shown above with a mural painted on the side of a tortilla factory. he talked about how important and valuable it was for murals within distinct communities to resonate with the culture and aesthetic of the people there and shared his experiences with how he fought against the gentrifiers who tried to defy that.

#gentrification #public art #street art #graffiti