Gentrification and Community Organizing

Jack blogs:

This Friday I’m heading to Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn for the premiere screening of Some Place Like Home: The Fight Against Gentrification in Downtown Brooklyn, a documentary by Families United for Racial and Economic Equality. FUREE, a community organization lead by and comprised primarily of low-income women of color, has been rallying the community in a fight against the rampant development that’s going down in Downtown Brooklyn and the surrounding area. While developers, big business, and politicians alike claim they are only trying to improve the community, the development is being conducted with little care or concern for the residents and small business owners who are already there. Some Place Like Home documents the struggle of FUREE, the neighborhoods’ residents, and small businesses against the forces that are trying to push and bulldoze them out. Check out the trailer below.

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Black “Mecca” Disapearing

Exodus Mentality blogs: 

Here in Atlanta, the so-called Black mecca of the south, we are undergoing a gentrification phase that will almost certainly change the color characteristics of the city. Basically the Black people are disappearing. Nobody is quite sure where they.went, but they are indeed going. Places I used to live, where 15 years ago you could only find a white person looking for street pharmacueticals, are now sprinkled with more and more non-Black faces.

…

I am a native Atlantan, and although it is true that you see a lot of Black people here who appear to be doing well for themselves, this is far from some Chocolate oasis where people of color come to be refreshed and replenished. Outside of a select clique, the prosperity never really trickled down to the general Negro population. Inner city schools were still a pure mess, the city infrastructure debilitated, cops still cracked Black heads just as hard and often.

Black “Mecca” Disapearing

Exodus Mentality blogs: 

Here in Atlanta, the so-called Black mecca of the south, we are undergoing a gentrification phase that will almost certainly change the color characteristics of the city. Basically the Black people are disappearing. Nobody is quite sure where they.went, but they are indeed going. Places I used to live, where 15 years ago you could only find a white person looking for street pharmacueticals, are now sprinkled with more and more non-Black faces.

…

I am a native Atlantan, and although it is true that you see a lot of Black people here who appear to be doing well for themselves, this is far from some Chocolate oasis where people of color come to be refreshed and replenished. Outside of a select clique, the prosperity never really trickled down to the general Negro population. Inner city schools were still a pure mess, the city infrastructure debilitated, cops still cracked Black heads just as hard and often.