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07/30/2004:
"West Oakland rallies against massive gentrification project"
Africans arriving in the cities by the Bay450,000 strong
willing, ready
and able to get down
for one's daily bread,
Sat Nan (truth and identity)
But now, again I must ask,
Where's my 40 acres and a mule?
The planned development, dubbed "Central Station," would produce up to 1,500 new housing units mostly for sale starting at $300,000 per unit. This kind of gentrification is in keeping with what Poor Magazine dubbed "Gerrification" in its 1999 Media Action on Oakland City Hall Plaza, opposing the master plan by so-called "strong" Mayor Jerry Brown to bring rich folks by the hundreds of thousands into Oakland to get rid of Oakland's "blight," which is another euphemism for poor folks, mostly of color.
What the corporate media and policy makers never mention is that rather than "cleaning up" an area, massive redevelopment of very poor neighborhoods that isn't rooted in the communities themselves leads to more homelessness. As Po Poet Laureate A. Faye Hicks said in her piece on the colonization of San Francisco's Fillmore District, "When we (poor folks) are evicted and gentrified out of our homes and neighborhoods, we don't leave, we just go live in the sidewalk hotels."
Full Article : sfbayview.com
