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Green Line-Yellow Line: Crossing the Culture Line
I just moved to New York City. I never thought I would be saying those words but that's the truth- I did just move to New York City, the Big Apple, the home of about 16 million people, the city with the most languages being spoken at any given moment in the U.S. I was about to call one of the trains I was getting on recently the yellow line, and someone said whatever you do- don't call it the yellow line because you're from DC and that's what they do there. I heard that and I thought about the last conversation I had about the train lines in DC.
I was having dinner with a friend who had come into town
from California.There was a friend of hers who will remain unnamed, and we were talking about the different areas in DC. Now let me preface this by saying that DC is definitely one of the quickest gentrifying cities in the U.S no matter if you're in northwest or southeast. I said I live in Petworth, which has a megatron-esque building of condos being built which of course will have a Starbucks at the bottom of it, and everyone's favorite local gym which charges a minimum of $80 a month, plus underground parking- duh! This is the area where working Black and Latino families are holding on to the last string of hope of
the balloon of the economy.
Shock! Dismay! Disgust! "You live where?" I said, "I live in Petworth, Its next to Columbia Heights
and off of the green line." She looked like I was the boogie man and I had just reached to grab her off her princess bed. "The GREEN line? That's so ghetto, I
wouldn't step foot on that line." All I could do was really stare at her with an equally grimaced face.
The thing is Columbia Heights is not a ghetto by any means, and if my ghetto she meant the low-income housing situated next to yet another luxury condo building and the influx of shootings in the area around it then she completely missed the issue beneath the surface of her irritation. Yes there has been increased violence but when you build luxury condos, organic let's go green overpriced markets, and Starbucks on every corner you're off to a bad start. Add to that with the fact that 1 out of 5 District of Columbia residents and 3 out of every 10 children of DC residents
is living at or below the poverty line making DC the city with the 3rd highest overall poverty rate and the city with the highest child poverty rate (So Others Might Eat:Factsheet on Poverty http://www.some.org/docs/factsheet_poverty.pdf)
. And if you just look at 2000-2004 we've already lost 22,500 housing units with rent under $1,000 (Fair Budget Coalition: http://fairbudget.org). Things are not ghetto there are just thousands of working people getting screwed, getting frustrated and seeing no protection or progress in addressing the economic or housing issues in the district. My point is not to make anyone feel guilty about going to the Target in the new DC USA plaza in Columbia Heights, but you can't have your conveniently located reduced price shopping, lunch outside at the new mass produced restaurant and say you don't understand the increase in crime, and the shifting culture in the neighborhood.
"Yes I live in Petworth, next to Columbia Heights, off of the Green Line," with Sweet Mango's Jamaican food across the street from the cash checking place that's open 24 hours, where the Caribbean festival every summer is the livest and most beautiful thing I've seen and I wouldn't have lived anywhere else in DC- and its crazy how gentrification is affecting the area.
Active recognition does make a difference. I mean how many
of us actually know where the city council in our city meets? Or if there is going to be an initiative to prevent building shelters in our suburban neighborhood on the ballot? For DC residents, I suggest trying to start with the National Coalition for the Homeless or Community of Hope on a local level to figure out why the red line and the green line look the way they do. For all of us outside of DC- let's try to find our matching local organizations and local government bodies and agencies that can actually make a difference. It's a giant baby step- but its still a step.
- Jessica Pierce's blog
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"That's so ghetto, I
"That's so ghetto, I wouldn't step foot on that line."
She said WHAT??? FUCK. THAT. She'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes, as my Trotskyist friends always say. The sheer amount of privilege oozing out of her makes me want to puke, and I wish some kind of morbidly ironic ill befalls her.
As a white, privileged DC resident, nothing grates on me more than the kind of blatantly racist putrescence that I hear whenever I'm out at bars in places like Dupont Circle or Adams Morgan, or even just walking on the street.
There is a class war going on, and a race war; just Metro to Northeast and Southeast and you'll find yourself on the front lines. You'll see black families struggling to get by with fewer and fewer job prospects, young professionals forming beachheads in black communities, foreclosed houses being gutted and converted to residences their previous owners could never afford, and century-old elementary schools shuttered and then turned into high-end condos.
For those reading this too frightened of "scary black people" and "the ghetto" to go there, let me give you an update: whitey is winning.
Wow
Come on now.
Gentrification and racist comments like that are just as sickening as your comment you just made. Your making all of YP4 look bad by saying you hope some ill befalls someone, and I especially loved the classic revolutionary fervor that seethes from the comment.
Statements like this dont help to change anything, they just shut people down - especially anyone who may find their way to YP4's site wondering what it is. You have the right to say it of course but I'd like others to see that while YP4 fellows obviously are opposed to the ongoing gentrification that is destroying not only the economic prospects (what few their were) but cultural makeups of neighborhood, not all of us also attempt to fight it by painting ourselves as though we are the soldiers in some class war. Some of us are trying to find other ways to fight these problems then fermenting a revolution that is outmoded and outdated (or just portraying it as such with words).
I was already on edge from a
I was already on edge from a related conversation earlier that day, and this post sort of set me off. It's a really personal issue to me. I certainly don't actually wish ill upon anyone, and that was a bad choice of words - for that I apologize. You're absolutely right to call me on that. :)
Getting back to the substance of the post, we can't escape the class and race ramifications of what's going on here. This isn't some vague, inexorable process akin to a force of nature: these are conscious, big-picture decisions made by the folks at the top. The hollowing out of the American city is a long-term project aimed precisely at dispersing and disempowering the poor, minority, and unemployed classes.
And while many of my Marxist friends are deluded when they pine for a capital "R" revolution, let's not downplay the fact that gentrification is a symptom of some very, very foundational problems in both our economy and polity, and will take much more than a piece of legislation to fix.
Growing up in Mount
Growing up in Mount Pleasant in the city of Washington DC I have seen the majority of my classmates and neighboors forced to move away over the years. This was done through a variety of ways, namely landlords letting their apartment fall into neglect and then forcing the tenants to leave and build condominiums creating skyrocketing prices. I am currently studying at the Univeristy of Miami but my dream for the future is to create affordable and sustainable housing that will include various tenants of mixed incomes who pay rent on a sliding or fair scale. I stongly believe that the only way equal opportunity and equality can be achieved is if everyone has basic rights such as affordable and convinient housing and that all income levels are mixed into a single community.
I am applying to the summit/fellowship for 09 and in order to apply I want to work on an issue that will help me learn more about how to accomplish my dream in the future of creating mixed income housing communites. Do you have any suggestions on something I could work on that I could accomplish in the year given, for example a small part of the bigger picture of an entire system of mixed income communites?