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WTF is Gentrification?
221 Plays7 months ago
On this inaugural episode of the Defying Gentrification podcast, your host Kristen Jeffers (she/they), takes you to school in our homeroom to learn exactly what is gentrification, and why should it be defied and eradicated.
But first, on our street corner, the hot topic is how not to leave Baltimoreans of color behind in the wake of the Francis Scott Key Bridge tragedy, as well as honor their competence in leadership during disaster situations.
Read our street corner hot topic article from Capital B.
Read the Curbed article referenced in our homeroom section.
Purchase from Kristen's Bookshop.org store.
Never miss an episode, subscribe to our Substack or on LinkedIn.
You can also find Kristen @blackurbanist or @kristpattern.
Join the Defying Gentrification Fellowship powered by Podia
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Transcript
Introduction and Host Background
00:00:00
Speaker
segregation like the rollback of reconstruction and being liberated from enslavement and then of course going into right now everything that we're going through including gentrification. Gentrification is our starting point but basically this is a podcast that talks about
00:00:18
Speaker
Black folks interacting with cities. This is an inclusive podcast. I, myself, am a queer, non-binary, gender person from the South. We include everybody here. We listen to everybody.
Podcast Structure and Upcoming Topics
00:00:31
Speaker
And that's part of why we have multiple ways you can watch this. We have two segments here at Defined Education. And so at the street corner, that is our hot topic section.
00:00:43
Speaker
You know how if you're out on the block, if you're out on the porch, if you're out on the corner, even at the water cooler, especially if it's about black folks at your job, we're going to talk about stuff that's going on. And so this week we're going to talk about, specifically I pulled from Adam Mahoney's article on Capital B about
00:01:02
Speaker
the community Eterna station, which is adjacent to the Francis Scott Key Bridge. It just crashed in the Baltimore region. So we're going to talk about that. And then we're going to go to what I like to call homeroom. We're going to school and we're going to school to talk about what is gentrification. I want to set the stage. I want to set the definitions. I want to talk about my definition. Before we get into subsequent episodes where here in homeroom,
00:01:28
Speaker
We'll talk about how to define gentrification. We're going to talk about why we're defining gentrification in the next episode. But we're going to touch on it a little bit here. And we're going to touch on why we want to eradicate gentrification a little bit, but then we're going to go deeper in that.
Personal Stories and Community Engagement
00:01:46
Speaker
And then later on this season, I'm going to walk you through my shoes. I'm going to, I'm calling it a diary of a
00:01:54
Speaker
uh gentrification the fire so we're gonna go through my personal story here in homeroom the homeroom section of this show and we're gonna have guests we're gonna have peers come and we're gonna have study hall here in homeroom as well so and if you want to be a guest go ahead and email me christen at the black urbanist.com and then finally um i want to go ahead and tease you about
00:02:20
Speaker
our Defying Gentrification Fellowship, which is our fan club here, starting at $10 a month for a whole year, and you can go ahead and just drop the whole 120. That'll give you extra lecture each week, that deep dives, materials. Some of the materials that I reference here are actually, I'm going to be going to the Library of Congress and digging up for myself.
00:02:40
Speaker
but you'll have access to some of that and you'll have access to me. We'll sit one-on-one and we'll talk about like what you need to defy gentrification, or if you are in a complex allyship mode, what you need to do to eradicate gentrification. So that's what we're going to do here. And so we're going to take an ad break. And when we get back from that ad break, we're going to meet you at the street corner. This is Defying Gentrification with Kristen
00:03:08
Speaker
Hey, everybody. So I... Were you aware that I have a whole bookstore? Probably not. And it's powered by Bookshop. In fact, let me show you the goodies of my Bookshop store. So, yeah, Bookshop. So Bookshop started a few years ago to help people, like, well, I think it, well, you know, it was alternative to that other site.
00:03:37
Speaker
But as you can see, you can get all your rebates. This sells everything. And if you really want to be awesome, you can support me, Christian Jeffers Media. And this will help me produce defined gentrification, continue to upload the future of black urbanist, piss pattern, everything else.
Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapse
00:04:01
Speaker
And anytime I do a referral book,
00:04:07
Speaker
you can come right over here and yes I am an official bookshop affiliate so anything you purchase on this site especially if you purchase it in my bookstore will go back to me now you can purchase it everywhere and there's also other bookstores or the local bookstores that you can support but definitely please please consider
00:04:27
Speaker
Supporting me, when I, and anytime I mention a book on the show going forward, please consider going to my bookshop.org, the link is bookshop.org, slash Kristine Jeffords, as you can see right there, while I'm kind of lighting up the screen. And yeah, you know, they don't have e-books yet, but those are coming. Those are coming very soon. And anyway, thank you again for supporting all of my work and a happy reading.
00:05:04
Speaker
You're listening to the Defiant Gentrification podcast. I'm Kristen Jeffers, and now we are at our Street Corner Hot Topics section of our podcast today. You know, you could call the Street Corner called the Front Porch. It's just the place where we talk
00:05:24
Speaker
When we get real about talking, you know, I did put a clean label on this podcast. So I won't say what I, you know, I was about to say, but you know, I was about to say that this is where we go to talk and talk. Sometimes we got sense and sometimes we hate guys. So first things first, I want to talk about and send all the love in the world to my family, friends, people who are like
00:05:54
Speaker
even more deeply affected by what just happened in Baltimore with the Francis Scott Key Bridge Coast. Even though this was an international news story, let me get you into the loop. One week ago today, I'm recording this on Tuesday, April 2nd of 2024, approximately 1.30 AM local time. A boat named Adali, a container ship, left a dock in the Patasko River, part of the Port of Baltimore.
00:06:24
Speaker
left the dock and it hit a pillar of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which is a steel frame bridge. There's a concrete bridge span leading up to it. And then in the middle, there's like a whole steel apparatus that carries traffic. It is a very large bridge and all of it collapsed into the Patasko Road.
00:06:50
Speaker
all but a slither of it is still sitting in the Pataxco River as of my recording time. Monday evening, April 1 of 2024, they were able to remove some of it and they are in the process of working to open up a new, at least an access point to the port. But as of right now, much of the operations of the port of Baltimore, both on the Baltimore City and Baltimore County sides are suspended.
00:07:20
Speaker
And people who are in Baltimore are going through just some shock. And so I wanted to pull up an article in particular this week from a publication called Capital B by Adam Mahoney. You can look him up at Adam A Mahoney on Twitter because we all, it is Twitter for us. We are Black, it is still Twitter.
00:07:43
Speaker
And back to the seriousness here, Capital B is a wonderful nonprofit online newsletter and they did kind of the overarching, how is this going to affect black communities? Specifically the community of Turner Station, which is adjacent to the span of the bridge on its Northeastern side. The bridge basically kind of goes from Southwest to Northeast. It connects Baltimore County.
00:08:13
Speaker
which is adjacent to Baltimore City. Baltimore County surrounds Baltimore City for those of you who are not familiar with our actual geography here in the region. And then it goes into Anne Arundel County, which is an adjacent county. It is a county that contains the capital of Maryland.
00:08:30
Speaker
Maryland only has a handful of counties. It's already a small state. It's already an oddly shaped state. We're already talking about the region and counties that are surrounding the Chesapeake Bay. The Patasko River is an offshoot of the Patasko Bay that's pretty large and has a big depth to it. So we have been getting bigger and bigger ships now. There has been some controversy in addition to the fact that this Black community
00:08:57
Speaker
in the region has already been affected by being between two Superfund sites. In addition to that, those of you may know the name Turner Station because you have kept up and you've read the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, or you watch the film that starred Oprah.
00:09:14
Speaker
So yeah, this is the same community. There's always, there's been a lot of toxicity, like literally the ground is toxic. People are ill. They're not just hearing at a lax, but many more people have had all kinds of illnesses.
00:09:31
Speaker
The community is 100 years old. There is a church there. That's what you're seeing on the screen. Those of you who are watching the video version of this podcast, the article itself, which I will include in the show notes so you can see this for yourself. The article leads with an image of people worshipping at a vigil that happened Tuesday night. Let's see, March 26. Of course.
00:09:53
Speaker
many folks have. There's been so much has come out of this story, everything from the fact that, yes, we have a black governor of Maryland and we have a black mayor in the city of Baltimore and also there's a black mayor in the District of Columbia and all. Yeah, we have black leadership here. We have competent black leadership. No, they are not perfect. And as someone who is a believer of abolition, I am not happy that they're still signing off on the billion dollar jail. But that is a hot topic for a another episode.
00:10:22
Speaker
But I do want to highlight that it does suck that yet. And again, this neighborhood, because of how adjacent to the bridge, it is home shook. So we may have some property damage just from the collapsing of the bridge. People have been saying, oh, well, that particular bridge is six ninety five. It's our beltway and it only really exists to serve
00:10:48
Speaker
the port and the community of Turner station and the community of Dundalk and some other spares point and adjacent communities. You know, we have it there because we need to drive hazardous materials that can't go into our two downtown tunnels. And on the Anne Arundel County side, there's a whole park and it's nice. So it's not that many people affected. They were able to get most of the people off the bridge. So let me stop you right there. Eight people.
00:11:17
Speaker
Eight people who are from immigrant communities who have families that are missing them. Eight people said goodbye to their families. Well, actually technically seven people because there are four people that are still missing. Two bodies were recovered. One man walked away, miraculously walked away from like, you know, collapsing from the bridge. And one other person as of my taping is in critical condition.
00:11:46
Speaker
but all these families have been affected. The communities, these are men who are from Mexico, Salvador, Guatemala, countries that need Latina diaspora, Latina diaspora, and they're hurting. And once again, these, their friends,
00:12:05
Speaker
in surrounding communities. There are people right now who are out of work. They didn't go to bed on Monday night thinking that they wouldn't be going to work the next day. Some of them thought, some of them probably weren't getting ready to get up to go to work because this is our warehouse community. We have like 24 hour shifts. People didn't realize it was gonna be something like this. And of course, people love to joke
00:12:33
Speaker
on Baltimore. People love to say, oh, I've watched The Wire, oh, X, Y, and Z. But I will tell you this. This podcast would not exist without the time I spent in Baltimore City in 2017 and 2018.
00:12:53
Speaker
In fact, I spend a lot of time there now. I have since driven up from DC to Baltimore and seen the bridge and I couldn't help but cry. Yeah, it's a rough site. It's a terrible site. And I think for the first week, many of us were just in shock. And now I've seen some folks say that they've proceeded to the stage of grief that is anger.
00:13:22
Speaker
And I know many of you are like, yeah, why was this ship so big? Why was it so ragged? Why did we make so much stuff that we have to have bigger and bigger ships? Those are all valid questions.
00:13:36
Speaker
when you learn about the history of the bridge and how it took a decade to plan, how they talk about it being a tunnel, how they decided on it being a steel bridge. Yeah, that's a conversation to have. And I do want you to find a reputable engineer to have that conversation with. Don't just trust me now.
00:13:56
Speaker
I have my expertise, but I want to give credit and credits to the engineers in our circles and communities that do under, especially our civil engineers. That is what they do. Civil engineers build bridges. And many of you are listeners, and I appreciate y'all. And I know y'all are hurting. Y'all are the folks thinking about this watching that tape and thinking about the structural failures. Yeah.
00:14:25
Speaker
So there is a lot of pain. There's a lot of grief. And this is not the time to be claiming that people are incompetent to lead. All I've seen is impeccable leadership of the entities involved anywhere from the president of the United States down to the mayor of Baltimore. Now I do not agree with everything that they do. I want to make that clear right now, but right now,
00:14:53
Speaker
People are doing fairly well and I love seeing how people are coming together, but I wanted to highlight specifically Turner Station and other black communities of the Baltimore region who are already been going through it, redlining and ridicule and being underpaid. And if you are a Baltimorean and listening, I got you, I'll be up soon. I love y'all. I was back and forth this weekend. Y'all are great.
00:15:22
Speaker
Um, and I hate to have to say that we're resilient because we get that enough as black folks, but we, we do have a measure of that. So I'm not sitting here in DC today, just cause I, you know, I hate y'all completely. There were reasons I had to leave first time and there are reasons I'm looking to come back. And I, I know I, I want to just, just honor y'all right now and honor your work.
00:15:51
Speaker
your being, your memories of people. And I wanna encourage everybody listening globally, one, to learn. If you live somewhere that is on water, like of course here in DC, we're not completely out of the boat, but our bridges, we're not a port town in the same way that Baltimore is.
00:16:17
Speaker
But those of you all living in port towns, those of you who have steel bridges, those of you who are vulnerable to water, one of the things that I'm going to be doing to take action after this, what's something that I've been kind of nudged to do is to
00:16:34
Speaker
take
Defining and Exploring Gentrification
00:16:35
Speaker
swimming lessons, proper swimming lessons. My dad helped me learn how to kick years ago but of course wearing glasses and being scared of my lady parts. I wasn't like swimming the way I could and of course I can't really see without my glasses and I have used contacts before but I'm gonna look into that again. I'm gonna look into swimming lessons. I'm gonna also look into getting things like a seatbelt cutter
00:16:58
Speaker
and things of that nature, because I've also seen stories of people being stuck in Rock Creek here in DC, which is not even as deep. There's a lot to learn from this, and there's a lot to sit with with this. And so I want to just start my very first episode, as I was
00:17:19
Speaker
thought about this podcast and started playing in is that this would be my first hot topic on the street corner. But I do want to say that our people deserve more and better and I want to honor that. So with that, as I promise, we are we not only do we take time to sit at the street corner and talk about things, we go to school here. And so
00:17:41
Speaker
After the ad break, I'm going to come back, and we're going to talk about what is gentrification, because this is relevant. At least a couple of you, when I highlighted that Canton crossing in Baltimore, different part on the other side of the Patapsco, is an example, or at least it's something that can trigger thoughts of gentrification. Let me be clear, it can trigger thoughts of gentrification, even though there was no displacement involved.
00:18:05
Speaker
Thinking about Turner Station, thinking about it being a contaminated site, thinking about going to Canton Crossing and that it was on also a brownfield. Yeah, we may be able to reuse some of this stuff, but.
00:18:17
Speaker
Our health quality that that matters and being pushed into certain neighborhoods with bad health quality and Certain part like nobody is actually there's there are apartments in that region of Canton crossing but I don't think they're on the ground but then again in Baltimore City, everybody is exposed to life and environmental stuff. So Let me let me take my little break here and will you will come back and we will talk about what is gentrification as I teased before WTF
00:18:47
Speaker
is gentrification. What is it really? And by the time we get done with this, you will understand, you will truly understand why we are defying and needing to eradicate it. We'll be back in just a moment. Once again, this is Defying Gentrification podcast with Kristen Jeffers.
00:19:14
Speaker
Hey, seriously, I know in the last ad break, I was like, well, you don't have to shop at bookshop and you don't have to shop at my store, but it would be sick of it. Cause honestly, I have to tell you, like, I have curated this wonderful list of books for you. And if you're listening to that first session, you're like, okay, I wonder what we're going to do in the next section. You know, she says we're going to define gentrification.
00:19:43
Speaker
Well, guess what? You can go ahead and do, you can pause this tape right now and do all of your homework. If you go over to the store and you shop for me, like basically you can go to bookshop.com slash Christine Depp's medium. And right here, my smiling face. And then of course my infamous picture. I am in episode two. I will talk about this picture, but this is the picture I'm talking about. In episode two,
00:20:12
Speaker
But yes, all these books, some of them are fiction, and some of them are just fun. Like, one last stop is just fun. I adore this story. It is sci-fi, but it's not dystopian sci-fi, but of course, parable of the soul and parable of the talents.
00:20:29
Speaker
a little too real these days. So read them and like learn. And then of course, all, not only do I have the Black Urbanist Booklist listed here, you can check out that Black Urbanist Booklist, which has books like The Great Society Subway. And if you want to join me in crafty fun, I have a crisp pattern, crafty DIY and design inspirations list as well. So you can join me
00:20:59
Speaker
It's bookshop.org slash Kristin E. Jeffers. And if you shop there, I am an affiliate and I will give a little bit of that money back and you'll support this podcast and support everything else. And you'll know what you need to know to be successful with your reading and understanding of gentrification. Now back to the show.
00:21:23
Speaker
And we are back to Defying Gentrification podcast. I'm your host, Kristen Jeffers. I'm also your producer of this podcast. It's just me here. And I am taking my expertise over 14 years of paying attention to urban planning as a black queer feminist urbanist from North Carolina and living in the DMV, going back and forth between DC and Baltimore. And I'm applying that wisdom and interest here to this podcast. So,
00:21:55
Speaker
I, for the longest time, because I want to be real with y'all.
00:22:00
Speaker
For the longest time, I was hoping that I was wrong about what gentrification was. And you'll understand that when I get to the end of the definitions. But let me just show you the definitions, read them for you, and we'll talk about why now I realize that I wasn't completely off base when we talk about the concept of gentrification. It is deeply problematic.
00:22:29
Speaker
and the conceptualization of it is even problematic. So let's start with the basic definition. So good old Wikipedia, which tries to be unbiased, which is a collaborative project, but as we know, and as we've learned in formal schooling, we don't start with Wikipedia for reasons because oftentimes Wikipedia tries to be right, but it isn't always right.
00:22:57
Speaker
But in this case, this is pretty simple. And the next definition is going to come from a dictionary. But gentrification for Wikipedia distills down to three words, urban, socioeconomic, process. So we go into the dictionary on the next slide, on the next definition here. But this is kind of a simplified thing.
00:23:27
Speaker
socioeconomic process could happen anywhere. Urban, that part, yeah, anything can be urbanized. Yes, even as someone who came from rural areas, I've watched fields become urbanized and suburbanized, so anything can be urbanized. And the idea that something needs to be urbanized often is there well before the field has been turned over.
00:23:56
Speaker
into the urbanization that it is. So, okay, that's our basic definition. Doesn't seem bad. It's just a process. It's a thing that happens. It's economic and a social. Let's hold on to that as we go through our definitions, because this is a social process. Okay, so our next definition from the Oxford English Dictionary, which I accessed via Google.
00:24:25
Speaker
Basically, gentrification is the process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current inhabitants in the process. That's the first definition. The second definition, and I believe that this definition has come about because of the popular usage of things
00:24:55
Speaker
cultural, more of the cultural things being gentrified. So an area undergoing rapid gentrification, the process of making someone or something more refined, polite or respectable. The example is soccer has undergone gentrification. So
00:25:13
Speaker
That second definition is the one that, for the longest time, I definitely didn't want to really deal with. I didn't want to believe it. I wanted to just keep it in a urban planning. I just wanted to keep it as an economic process, having to do with urban areas. But that socio-process part of that previous definition, you have to sit there. And then, oh my gosh, definition number one,
00:25:42
Speaker
So character, poor, improving housing, attracting new businesses, displacing inhabitants.
00:25:53
Speaker
Um, so that's kinda like the dictionary, of course, is very straightforward. This is describes what happens. The dictionary isn't necessarily going to have a value judgment and quiet for folks who don't, who aren't aware of how things get to the dictionary. It takes years sometimes for things to get into the dictionary. You may hear on the news when people have problems and.
00:26:17
Speaker
have complaints about certain terms and things moving into the dictionary that weren't there before. Part of the reason people struggle with that process is that we may not get the nuance right. The nuance might not be there. But as someone who has studied this topic both as a public administration, public affairs student,
00:26:43
Speaker
as well as someone who is a journalist and someone who keeps up with this and who reads, I read articles all day, every day, news articles and even journal articles that like dig into this. And speaking of a journal article, we're gonna move into talking about the person who actually created the word.
00:27:06
Speaker
And that person's name is Ruth Glass. Ruth Glass was born in Berlin, moved to briefly studied in New York at Columbia University and their sociology department came back
00:27:20
Speaker
to Britain and focus more on urban planning and ultimately ended up becoming a top scholar at the University College of London. She wrote a book and the book is what is summarized here. She actually wrote a book that contained the word gentrification
00:27:40
Speaker
Um, the book is called, um, London's newcomers, the West Indian migrants, even though we pinpoint the word gentrification to 1964. She did that in another paperwork. She actually had been studying as part of the center for urban studies, which she ran in London. She had been studying the neighborhoods of London. She had been studying how
00:28:06
Speaker
what we would call now a Caribbean, mostly Afro-Caribbean people.
00:28:11
Speaker
but what they termed in Britain West Indian people, because of course, Britain also was colonizing India at the time. So India was considered East India, and then you had West India, which was the Caribbean, and all as some of the other parts of the Americans that were underneath the British complex. So that is the context that we're talking about. And basically, Islington was in the 17th century was this high-end neighborhood, wealthy neighborhood,
00:28:41
Speaker
mostly white English people. I'm assuming Anglo-Saxon. Okay, you have a black neighborhood.
00:28:49
Speaker
of black Caribbean people, Afro-Caribbean people, they're coming to Britain during this period of time after World War II, even though people on those islands were not considered citizens before they had the opportunity to maybe become citizens, there was still some like roughness there. Those of you who are Londoners who know about the Windrush generation and who are descendants of the Windrush generation,
00:29:17
Speaker
Please feel free to reach out to me and send resources or point me to resources. I'm happy to read them out and share them in a fellowship and in future episodes. Yeah. Basically roof glass was a German, British woman, white woman.
00:29:35
Speaker
who is a scholar of urban planning was given the money and time to go and do sociological and anthropological studies of
00:29:50
Speaker
Afro-Caribbean people termed as West Indian as was the most preferred term back then. Now some people still use the terminology West Indian. Let me know in the comments or reaching out to me if that's how you refer to yourself or your family refers to yourself. If you have, if you are
00:30:08
Speaker
Afro descendant via the Caribbean, much like Afro descendant, but I'm via North Carolina and the Mid-Atlantic region. Tell me what y'all call yourselves and also tell me, if you have family members and friends, what was it like to just
00:30:25
Speaker
experienced this. One of the reasons, those of you who have known my previous work, one of the reasons I wanted to like create something that's broadly called defying gentrification is that I wanted to start having these bigger global conversations. I was on another podcast that's just now released to the world. Depending on when you listen to this, it may already be out and I may be able to include it in the show notes. If it's in the show notes, it's out in the world. And one of another
00:30:50
Speaker
a Black woman that was interviewing me challenged me to spread all around the world. And I had to say, my worldview was very shaped by the United States as it is because part of the colonial project of being in the United States is that we are told that we're the best. And part of the British colonial project was everybody should want to be in the UK. And so you
00:31:16
Speaker
have people coming to the UK, you have them coming to a neighborhood that have fallen out of favor. So one factor that many researchers since this point, including Ruth Glass have found is that oftentimes if a building type is deemed obsolete is sometimes it'll sit vacant, it'll sit abandoned, or because these are unwanted homes to the most wealthy and generally because of colonial dynamics,
00:31:45
Speaker
especially in other nations and of course a little bit in our major cities of the United States.
00:31:52
Speaker
especially thanks to things like redlining, even though you may not necessarily see it, especially in say a city like Philadelphia or Baltimore where the housing typology is almost the same, but you do see it in how inner cities with their row houses and their smaller houses and their older appliances and their older furniture even, because sometimes some of the older homes will come with built-in furniture and people don't necessarily want that. And of course we have an industry that builds on
00:32:21
Speaker
get a car, drive further out, get a newer and bigger house, revamp your house every few years. Now, of course, that is changing because the prices are kind of going out in the way from what people can afford.
00:32:33
Speaker
birth rates in certain communities, specifically white communities have reduced, whereas birth rates in Black, Indigenous, and other folks of color communities have grown, as well as like birth rates are still growing in working class and lower middle class white communities in the States. So
00:32:54
Speaker
Basically, we got the word gentrification because of that. And let me go to, I'm gonna move ahead and talk about, really solidify this definition. So Sharon Zukden, in talking in 2014, which was the 50th anniversary of the word gentrification, Sharon Zukden is a professor at the City, at the time was at the City University of New York and had been studying gentrification
00:33:24
Speaker
themselves for several years and had watched the evolutions when we have more conversations around displacement. And I am going to zoom ahead here. If you want to reference a lot of what I'm talking about today, I'm including in the show notes a curved article from 2014
00:33:45
Speaker
called as gentrification terms 50 tracing this nebulous history. And so that is my reference article here for this particular segment. But I welcome you not even if you don't join us in the fan club to do the digging and learn more about
00:34:01
Speaker
not only what gentrification looked like the roof glass for her to create this terminology, but also what it does look like and how it does show up. It may show up as urban renewal, it may show up as displacement, it may show up as cultural change. Of course, I live in, I actually do live in Washington DC proper now and we've been through that change of
00:34:23
Speaker
and the battle with Gogo. Of course, Gogo City is a wonderful documentary that just came out, Chocolate City. There's two Chocolate Cities books, both of them are worth reading, to learn more about Black migrations and gentrification. Of course, the work of Dr. Natalie Hopkinson, who calls herself Dr. Gogo, look her up.
00:34:41
Speaker
She is on the site formerly known as Twitter and she has a lot of wonderful insight and has a book of her own called Go Go City that chronicles how sites of Go Go music were basically erased. So if you're coming in,
00:34:58
Speaker
I might be the only person that came to DC in the year 2016 expecting GoGo venues to still be operating multiple GoGo entities and being disappointed that really other than the Metro PCS like on the seventh and you and Florida and Georgia that whole corner where everything kind of changes that
00:35:22
Speaker
A lot of other things have been changing. And of course, living here through those changes and even writing an article for the publication, Greater Greater Washington, which I served as a contributing editor for. And at this point of your listening to this podcast, I may have moved on from, but I'm, have been, I am 20, I believe it was in 2017, 2018. I wrote an article saying from my first time living in DC did it. Living in DC wasn't that bad and gentrification wasn't that bad. And.
00:35:51
Speaker
You know, it seemed like we were resilient. Now, next couple of episodes of this podcast, I'm gonna talk about how we can't be that resilient, how we can defy and eradicate, but let me pause there because the reality and what has gotten me saying not just defy gentrification, because I would defy gentrification, because gentrification was something that was done to people like me. That is why I say defy.
00:36:19
Speaker
Eradicate is the call that action for folks who need to eradicate. But let me read this definition for those of y'all who are listening to this episode. They are people with cultural capital, artists, writers, teachers, professors, et cetera. And Ruth Glass's words, if you read the curved article, were like the middle class intelliganista.
00:36:43
Speaker
By the 1950s and early 60s, that group of people begins to appreciate the urban environment in a way that other middle-class people do not. The old houses, the crowded streets, the social diversity. Let's pause on that one. Social diversity. Who is the diversity here? The chance to be Bohemian and also to be around lower-class people of all different backgrounds. The very factors that are driving a more mainstream middle-class out of cities.
00:37:13
Speaker
This is sharing looked at describing what roof glass was talking about and, in many ways, it just zeros into me that.
00:37:25
Speaker
You don't have gentrification if you don't have some people being deemed lower class and other people being deemed upper class. We're talking about Britain that has a monarchy and a landed gentry. Those of you who are into Bridgerton and Pride and Prejudice and all that. Now Bridgerton tries to clean up, oh, well, we could have owned land in Britain and things are nice and everything's pretty.
00:37:51
Speaker
But the reality is with that, just like we're having this conversation around Cowboy Carter and Beyonce's imagery on her album cover, as much as we want to try to reclaim certain things, certain things aren't ours to reclaim, certain things just have to go. Yeah, we can bop, we can dance in a blow free dress, we can have the party of the season, we can have garden parties, but
00:38:18
Speaker
basically gentrification and the curved article really goes into the chronology. First, it was just, okay, in many places, artists, writers, and teachers, professors. But who's to say that the residents of Islington weren't already artists, writers, and teachers? The black residents,
00:38:39
Speaker
of Islington were already artists, writers, and teachers. So here we are pitting artists together based on the color of their skin, partly because gentrification is an economic factor before it's a social factor. The economic factor comes into play when you have
00:39:02
Speaker
those who actually own the property, because that's the other thing.
Call to Action Against Gentrification
00:39:06
Speaker
Some of Islington was rental property. Some of it was in the possession of those who were of landed and who have titles. Yes, in Britain, you can become knighted for your cultural product, but you also become knighted or be given land or be part of the greater order, the British Empire.
00:39:28
Speaker
from having land and just being a person that had land forever. That's a reality. That's a real thing. And so basically, when I read this definition, especially when I hear lower class people of all different backgrounds, other middle class people,
00:39:51
Speaker
old houses and being bohemian, what does that really mean? Who are we basing being bohemian against? Why are we assuming that the people that were there weren't already there? And now let me make it clear. Some of these people wanted to be in community with each other, however,
00:40:16
Speaker
What has happened over the course of all time is that racism, anti-Blackness has been present at all of this at all times. In the States, we are on stolen land.
00:40:31
Speaker
in the British Empire, it is also land taken by force. And so you have a minor version of this witch gentrification. You had this concept that only certain people are wealthy and only certain people are worthy. And I 100% believe that I'm just worthy by being born.
00:40:52
Speaker
We shouldn't, it shouldn't be a thing where, yes, we, there's a lot to talk about digging into basic economics, but it shouldn't be a thing of, okay, we got to get rid of black music stores. We got to get rid of black culture just because we're moving to next door. So one thing I will tell you that has influenced me and
00:41:17
Speaker
you know, why, why I say defy gentrification is because it's happening to me right now. So as I've said, I lived in, I live in DC and yeah, we deserve better because we can get better. I currently am recording this podcast sitting in a building that is 50, 50 people who need housing assistance and people who are paying the market rate. This is a pretty quiet building. There's all kinds of people here. And I feel like
00:41:47
Speaker
Because there is an economic control, there is a agreement that we're going to share space gentrification is not happening in the same way as it does in other buildings because these district government.
00:42:05
Speaker
The property manager, the landowner, the landlord has agreed to take rents at different levels. And in fact, half the rents, half the apartments in this building, including our own have some sort of discounted rate and our rates are discounted based on what our actual income is. So yes, as of this recording, my partner and I have had a good year.
00:42:29
Speaker
We're in, we're in preferred jobs and there's, there's just so many layers to that, but we'll, we'll get into that as we go through the episodes. And of course she's going to eventually be a guest on podcasts and we'll talk about this as well.
00:42:42
Speaker
We do, but we deserve better than just, oh, well, your body isn't worthy. So your body, we're gonna move you away. And so what we have seen over the years is, yes, first it was artists and it was collaborative working, but then it was, oh, well, we don't like this art, but we like this house again. And then it was, we value this historical value. Oh, we can pay more for it. And so,
00:43:08
Speaker
you know it's become a capitalistic enterprise because of course housing is not a human right housing is a capitalistic enterprise and so yes I know that is something that we
00:43:20
Speaker
to sit with and unpack is gonna take a while. And that is why we have started a podcast, folks. And that is why we take our time, a little bit of time in Homeroom. We're not gonna spend, I'm not gonna spend hours on this, but I will say that I do want us, as I come to the end of this episode, why do we eradicate gentrification? It is racist and colonial. So,
00:43:49
Speaker
If you want to go on this journey with me, we will be pro-black, anti-racist, anti-people being pitted against each other in that way. But we are not going to sit here and act like human beings aren't worthy, like just for me and human beings. And we're not going to be colonial.
00:44:09
Speaker
We're not gonna be colonizers here. We're gonna be all looking internally, because of course colonized people have developed internalized biases, racisms, classisms, colorisms, genics, ableisms, all the isms. We're gonna be unpacking that here.
00:44:29
Speaker
And as I have teased, you can, I have a defined gentrification fellowship that get that we, there's purpose for sitting with these concepts. If you're listening to this podcast and you're like, you're a little rumbly, but you want to keep working with me and others to think about how to define eradicate gentrification. We love to have you. Um.
00:44:52
Speaker
The link is in the show notes, as well as the link is on the show page. You go over there is powered by podium is a $120 course and on Mondays, we have an extra lecture where I go even deeper but right here right now.
00:45:10
Speaker
what we're doing here on the defined gentrification podcast is to give you all a taste, and so this is probably going to be the most luxury these first few episodes are going to be probably the most luxury versions of this podcast in the future. we're going to be talking to people in our homeroom section, and we also may have some special guests come on at.
00:45:29
Speaker
So special guests may come on for a street corner. We might talk about current events of the day and then we might talk about our main topic or talk about the work that they're doing or talk about living in the world and talking about, you know, your first home and your first car and riding Metro for the first time. And if you've had stories of like land loss and, you know, home loss and evictions and all of that. And really, as I've said in the trailer,
00:45:57
Speaker
I want this to feel like home. I want you to feel like I'm a friend that you're not alone.
Conclusion and Future Directions
00:46:01
Speaker
And so I wanna end this episode to say, if this is, do some of our episodes, I'm gonna try to trigger warning because some of them may trigger thoughts or feelings, but other episodes like next episode, we're gonna talk about what I do to defy gentrification. So definitely come back and keep going. Actually, if you're listening in real time, that episode is already in your podcast player.
00:46:26
Speaker
When we launched so you can totally listen to it or if you listen to this one You need the palate cleanse a little bit or by the time we have more episodes. We'll have other episodes It'll be a little bit more happy other episodes will be a little bit more sad and we do have this community
00:46:42
Speaker
where you can come and process and spend time with us on Mondays with Q&A, as well as everybody that signs up in the next few months will get one-on-one time with me. That may change as we get more people. A bunch of y'all are interested. I may have to spread that out. I may have to change how we do that. But those of you who really want to sit with me and figure out how to defy gentrification and eradicate gentrification,
00:47:10
Speaker
I would join the fellowship now so that way you have priority as our community grows and maybe even opportunities to become trainers yourself. So this is going to be a community. This podcast is an educational place. It's something to listen to while you're going about your day and helping you understand these concepts.
00:47:30
Speaker
Because yes, absolutely, we can defy and eradicate gentrification. And I'm looking forward to having you on this journey with me and hearing your stories, hearing your like hearing from designers, fellow designers, as well as just community makers, doers, making our communities better and making our communities so that we everybody is worthy and everybody gets a chance to thrive on earth because we only have one earth. Only have one earth, y'all.
00:47:59
Speaker
natural disasters, shipping, accidents like we had this time period. We only got one herb, so we need to be able to communicate and honor each other.
00:48:12
Speaker
As we go out today, I want to give you all, I want to thank you all for listening. Defined Education is a publication of Christian Jeffery Media, which is my umbrella media company. It is home to the Black Urbanist, my legacy blog on urban planning. It is home to Chris Patter and I.
00:48:30
Speaker
vlog on crafting so feel free to go over to blackurbanis.com and read my archives know that my views have changed and they may sound a little a little different but you want to read my black queer feminist urbanist manifesto it lives over at blackurbanis.com
00:48:45
Speaker
And if you want to see some of my artwork, my fiber artwork, go to chrispatter.com or follow me at chrispatter. But you can also follow me at Black Urbanist on Instagram to get updates on this podcast. And the site formerly known as Twitter, you can always get updates there. It's soundbites, share soundbites, share how you feel. Do share this podcast. Do rate and review it whenever you're listening to this. I hope you're having a wonderful day. I hope you have a wonderful time and know that you can and we will.
00:49:15
Speaker
Bye.