le tour de gentrification part deux: my second pedalpalooza experience

Arriving at Col. Sumner's Park for the second gentrification tour, there were considerably less people this time around, only about nine or ten. Many were likely at the panel discussion with Central Northeast Neighbors, North Portland Neighborhood Services, and Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods and Southeast Uplift about demolition, residential infill, and housing affordability. But the smaller group, joined by freelance journalist Arun Gupta, was equally as engaging and allowed for more intimate discussion.

This tour was less structured, and the destinations were chosen by the participants, with organizer Hart Noecker choosing the first location, the nearby goat field that'll soon be home to approximately 84,000 sq ft of retail space, 257 apartment units, and two levels of structured parking with the hopes of enticing younger people seeking to live in this up-and-coming neighborhood of SE Portland for a mere $1,600/month—a neighborhood with a median household income of $34,130 ($24,520 for individuals), $768 median rent, 10% unemployment, and almost a quarter of its residents below the poverty rate according to Portland Monthly. (And as previously mentioned, the site is branded 'the Goat Blocks Redevelopment' in honour of the beloved goats the project itself is displacing to Lents.)

After discussing the neighborhood and the ways it's changing, we headed off towards Division, where a flurry of development has made it almost unrecognizable to many, including the tour's organizer. Pricey apartments are springing up all along Division. One, branded as an eco-friendly apartment complex, offers one bedroom apartments for $1,600/month. Where Portland's only lesbian bar once stood now sits a gaudy apartment complex with $1,100/month studios. This area has long been a popular hot-spot for SE Portlanders, with a number of bars, restaurants, and independent retail spaces drawing in people with its unique culture for years. But now, many of those places are being transformed into upscale restaurants and condos at a pretty alarming rate, scrubbing the neighborhood clean of the people and places that made it popular in the first place.

At one point, when I realized the apartment I was staring at was where the Egyptian Club/Weird Bar once stood, it struck me how fast gentrification can happen. A year or two and you hardly recognize where you live. And I never really understood until then just how much power the capitalist and rentier classes have to not only make huge profits from gentrification and the displacement of minorities and lower-income residents, but to physically alter our communities as well. They literally have the social power via money to aesthetically, demographically, and structurally shape our cities with little to no input from residents themselves, especially those most affected. It's fucked up to say the least.

From there, we rode towards a development on SE 39th/Cesar Chavez just north of Belmont, where we ended the ride. But on the way, I took them by my first apartment where, one month into a six-month lease, my girlfriend and I got an eviction notice (along with everyone else in the building) after the owners sold the property to a developer that turned them into condos. Telling everyone about what happened brought up a lot of the old feelings I had as we were being forced out of our home (our first real home together), especially the anger. Being forced from your home isn't just an inconvenience, it's a traumatic experience.

While talking about it, I also realized that my family and I were displaced by gentrification growing up in Detroit, as well. The historic apartment building where I grew up and my mom worked was sold to developers who wanted to transform into a luxury hotel and residence. While deals were being made, the building deteriorated due to lack of maintenance, and the residents suffered. The eighth floor, for example, had to be evacuated because the roof leaked so bad. Eventually, everyone was evicted, but the planned renovations never happened. Instead, the building was left to rot until it was purchased by Little Caesars founder, Mile Ilitch, who continued to let it rot until it was illegally torn down by the city and turned into a parking lot.

For me, the thing that bothers me the most about gentrification is the harm that it does to the people it displaces. Yes, it alters a community's culture and landscape, and it tends to artificially inflate housing prices making things more expensive. But it also tears people away from their homes and memories. It uproots them, and in many cases, forces them to change schools and jobs. It causes a lot of emotional stress and creates financial burdens for those directly or indirectly forced to relocate in order to make room for the influx of more trendy clientele. My mom had a lot of history at the Madison-Lenox. It was the centre of her life. It's where she worked, where she lived, and where most of her friends lived too. It was her connection to the city. It's no exaggeration to say that she loved that place and the people in it almost as much as she loved me. And when she lost the fight to stay there, she lost more than her home, she lost a part of herself.

Thinking about all the things we saw and how pervasive the influence of owners and developers are in our lives, how much they shape our community and living spaces, and how easily they can disrupt our lives with impunity and a clear conscience, I became conscious of just how much I've been affected by gentrification and it really pisses me off. To them, it's nothing personal, just business. But to me and the countless others who live in the world they manipulate, it's nothing but personal.

le tour de gentrification: my first pedalpalooza experience

Gentrification. That was the theme of Le Tour de Gentrification, a Pedalpalooza bike tour of areas affected by gentrification led by lawyer and former city council candidate Nicholas Caleb and Rebel Metropolis writer/editor Hart Noecker. Arriving at Col. Sumner's Park early Monday evening, about 100 people were already gathered for the event. At around 6pm, after waiting for a few more stragglers and a brief talk defining what gentrification is and covering bike safety, we set off en masse to our first destination, Cartopia.

Cartopia, a beloved late-night community gathering place with a variety of food carts, sits on the northeast corner of SE 12th and Hawthorne. On May 22nd, however, the Oregonian reported that, "Plans submitted to city development officials describe a four-story apartment building with ground-floor storefronts on the site." If things go as planned, Cartopia will become yet another high-rent apartment complex along Hawthorne, displacing all the carts and a southeast community space that local residents have come to know and love. (Two massive complexes have recently popped up on SE 30th and SE 26th, as well.)

Proponents of development projects such as this argue, quite ironically in my opinion, that these new apartment complexes will provide living space for the increasing number of people migrating to Portland moving here in part for the kinds of places and culture these development projects are themselves displacing or even destroying. The same happened at our next stop on the tour, the old location of Spunky Monkey, a local, independent coffee shop and roaster that was displaced when the building they were in was sold for, you guessed it, condos. And an aesthetically uninspired ones at that.

Part of the discussion at this point was the difficulties involved in stopping gentrification, which is essentially developing an area for the 'gentry' (i.e., upper class) to move in. One difficulty is that there's little to discourage gentrification. Laws favour landlords and property owners, not tenants. In addition, cities often give incentives to developers to build expensive apartments and office buildings, and both developers and city leaders prosper—developers make money from flipping properties (especially if they convert them into more profitable enterprises for wealthier individuals/families) and local officials make the rentier and business communities happy (which are big contributors).

Another issue raised was how developers and city leaders cleverly brand gentrification, co-opting the language and culture of the communities they seek to gentrify, just as they use green washing (i.e., using green terminology) to promote new developments as being environmentally friendly, increasing their market value and pacifying local opposition at the same time. At the old Spunky Monkey location, for example, the new condos have a plaque with a bicyclist on it, invoking Portland's bike culture while it displaces one of the few local coffee shops with a bike window.

The next stop was in the Albina neighborhood, highlighting the historical aspects of gentrification in Portland. In the 50s, this area was home to a vibrant community despite disinvestment by the city, primarily due to the large black population funneled there by economic segregation. But because of the lack of investment, the properties in Albina were devalued and relatively cheap; and by the early 60s, gentrification drove in like a bulldozer (literally), sweeping the jazz hot-spot into the obscurity of history. Much of the area became home to Memorial Coliseum and the Lloyd Center. And where we stood, at the intersection of NE Russell and Williams, there was nothing but an empty lot, vacant for 20 years. The spot was intended for an expansion of Emanuel Hospital during the flurry of urban renewal that never materialized.

One of the things that came up was the changing nature of gentrification. In the past, gentrification primarily targeted and affected communities of colour and immigrants, racism being both a motive and a tool. People of colour were often forced into certain areas and out of others. A teacher named Hyung, for example, brought up the practice of 'redlining' (a policy whereby investment to certain areas, mostly black neighborhoods, was restricted, artificially devaluing the properties within these areas), and noted that in Hillsdale, where he teaches, deeds often still have overtly racist language in them, though now defunct, forbidding the sale of the property to non-whites. Although gentrification is arguably less overtly racial today as it's increasingly being filtered through the market, targeting and affecting the poor in general, race is still an issue since many living in poorer areas are people of colour who continue to suffer the effects of institutional racism.

Just a few short blocks away, in another empty-lot-soon-to-be-expensive-condos, was our next stop. One girl who lived a couple of blocks away related how she recently received a 30-day notice after her landlord decided to sell her house to developers, starting a discussion about affordable housing. One of the problems with gentrification is that, while it may result in additional eco-friendly high-density housing, which can be good from an environmental perspective (i.e., concentrating people into tighter areas and with closer amenities, cutting commute time/encouraging the use of public transit and biking, freeing up other land for community spaces/farming, etc.), many of these places are financially out of reach for the people who are displaced. And Caleb even went so far to say that it's a form of violence, both physically and financially forcing people out of their homes and communities.

As if this isn't bad enough, gentrification alters the cultural dynamic, and not necessarily in a good way. In Albina, gentrification destroyed a vibrant community and the heart of Portland's jazz scene, leaving behind the Rose Quarter and its surrounding dead zones. The popular and bike-friendly Spunky Monkey was replaced by what's likely going to be $1,200-and-up apartments that pays lip service to Portland's bike culture. A much-loved community space filled with Portland's nationally-known food carts is soon to be yet another shitty, overpriced apartment complex. And a few blocks away, the nearby goat field is also being displaced by, according to KATU, "a residential and retail development to be called the Goat Blocks Redevelopment." (Well, at least it has 'goat' in the name.)

The final stop was the controversial spot at NE Alberta and MLK where a Trader Joe's was slated to be built until Trader Joe's backed out due in large part to the efforts of the Portland African American Leadership Forum. The land, which was valued at $3 million, was sold by the Portland Development Commission to Majestic Realty for a measly $500,000 to spur development in the majority black neighborhood, who then tried to set up an $8 million deal with Trader Joe's. But PAALF was concerned about the growing displacement of black residents in the area, and demanded that the project be halted or else include some form of affordable housing. Although Trader Joe's backed out, and the lot remains empty, it's a victory of sorts in that the community was able to have their voices heard. (PAALF's letter, part of which was read by Caleb, is worth reading, by the way.)

Overall, it was a really educational experience that highlighted what gentrification is, how it's branded and camouflaged by PR, and the ways it negatively impacts communities. It's discouraging to see the effects of gentrification and how it's unfolding at an increasingly accelerated pace (and not just in Portland), especially when you realize that there's little anyone can currently do legally and politically to stop it. But it's also encouraging that so many people came out and are interesting in doing something about it, like trying to build a movement to counter this trend and help give people more of a say in what happens to their communities.

get ready, robots are going to steal your job

An article from CNBC about the role technology is playing in displacing workers:

Get ready, robots are going to steal your job

To illustrate the insanity of our economic system and the logic underlying it, we tend to view machines that free us from labour as a bad thing because they 'steal our jobs' and screw us out of an income. At the same time, capital invents new jobs to retake up that time and replace said income rather than working towards reducing hours of labour and moving away from a reliance on wage-labour altogether.

Money is social construct that enables a few to accumulate vast amounts of wealth and power while giving the working class just enough to reproduce itself. At this stage of development, it's entirely superfluous to satisfying our needs. People don't starve because there's not enough food in the stores. People don't live in the streets because they're aren't enough empty homes and apartments to put them. They go hungry and are forced to sleep on the streets due to a lack of money.

And ironically, technological advances and increases in efficiency only make matter worse by creating a mass of unproductive capital and labour (hordes of cash and unemployment respectively), and causing the rate of profit to fall and a shrinkage in the absolute mass of profit created, meaning less money in the form of wages for the working class as a whole. Hence, we have to work even longer and harder to afford just the basic necessities, let alone anything more. It's completely absurd.

The way we view the necessity of labour (economically, morally, etc.) is outdated and counterproductive. Our productive capacities are such that we no longer have a material necessity for capitalist wage-labour or social relations, but the demand for profit creates an political-economic system that consistently depresses our productive capabilities and produces artificial scarcity, limiting the production and consumption of commodities to only that which can realize profit, among other things.

We have reached an epoch of material abundance via the technological advancements and innovations of the past, but the old masters, who must increasingly rely on the state (so much so that the two are almost indistinguishable, with the state essentially acting as the national capitalist), are refusing to let go of their death grip on wealth and power, their ownership of the means of production, finance, etc., stalling our transition to a post-capitalist society.

What's worse is that most of us follow suit, fearing that society would drift into chaos and crisis and economic barbarism without them, without capital, wage-labour, profit, and even money itself, when the reality is that we're actually descending into chaos and crisis and economic barbarism because of them, because we refuse to let these relics of a past epoch go, because these things are holding us back and we lack both the imagination and the motivation to conceive of a future without them.

We've reached a point where, even with vast reductions in hours of labour and/or employment, we consistently produce more than can be productively consumed in the capitalist production process (i.e., in a way that produces surplus-value for the capitalist) despite no shortage of need and yet we're worried about robots taking our jobs without realizing that 'we' don't need those jobs anymore, capital does.

dark afternoon

Today I had what you might call a dark afternoon of the soul. It was a really hard day. I was bitter, emotional, angry. I lashed out at everyone and everything. There was no compassion or patience, just unbearable frustration. Worst day I've had in a long time. Part of it was my job. Another was something more, something deeper within. A midlife crisis, perhaps?

I'm getting old. I don't have a very fulfilling career, and it doesn't pay very well, either. I don't have any worldly goals or passions, so I don't really have a direction to go in. I like to work, but it's hard finding a decent job these days without a college degree (especially a rewarding one that pays well). I like learning, but I'm hesitant to put myself into tens of thousands of dollars of debt pursuing an education designed to make me more marketable rather than a better person.

The world seems so contradictory to me; you either have to be a participate or a renunciate. There's no middle ground, really. You're expected to study what you need to get a job, then work until you're old and grey, life being more of a soul-sucking experience than an enriching one. My heart yearns for something more, but the world crushes those dreams with an invisible hand; and religious monasticism seems more and more the only escape. Brings to mind Marx's words in his introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right:

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Deep down, I know that I'm a good person. At least I try to be. But it's hard and I know that I could be better, happier. We have such potential as a species, but as a society we tend to value all the wrong things. And I'm torn. Torn between wanting to be a part of the world and wanting to renounce it, devoting myself instead to a contemplative life. I appreciate aspects of everyday life, but they're just not satisfying in a way that's difficult to explain. Kind of like the things that I find pleasure in also seem fleeting and trivial compared to a truth more profound and immutable that I intuitively feel exists.

And yet I wonder. Maybe I just want there to be something more because I look into the abyss and I'm afraid, afraid that life is ultimately an endless cycle of grasping at shadows to fill a primordial void that can't psychologically or physiologically be filled—a gaping emptiness that consumes all and out of which nothing escapes. Maybe what we see is all we get.

I don't know. I guess I'm just trying to find my place in the world, to find my calling as they say, or whatever it is that'll give my life the direction and meaning it's lacking. I'm tired of feeling lost and fragmented and like I'm running out of time.

estelle tang: an open letter to all my male friends

A pretty moving and timely open letter from Estelle Tang via the Guardian:

An open letter to all my male friends

For me, part of growing up, maturing, or whatever you want to call it, is becoming more aware of, and sensitive to, these kinds of realities, seeing that things like patriarchy, racism, sexism, etc. exist and permeate our culture and society in negative and harmful ways, realizing that even the most seemingly innocuous things we do or say can and do carry the seeds of patriarchy, racism, sexism, etc. without us ever knowing it because it's hard to see the big picture (i.e., history; the multitude of psychology and cultural mechanisms that are at play; the types of discrimination and violence that still exist, even if only in verbal form; etc.).

Reading something like this, it's easy to say, "Well, that's not me. I'd never do that." But that doesn't mean we don't do or say things that, unconsciously on our part, help to propagate these kinds of attitudes. And even when we are aware of it, it can be hard to admit. I know that I certainly don't like admitting to myself that I've done and said things that were less than enlightened, that I've said racist and sexist shit even though I didn't see it that way at the time.

And even if we don't think and act in this way, do we consistently challenge it when we come into contact with others who do? Sometimes, perhaps. But maybe sometimes we're afraid to confront the person. Maybe we think we're too busy or think it's none of our business. Maybe sometimes we think it's funny. Whatever the case, by not challenging it when we know it for what it is, we give it space to grow. Our non-action helps to preserve an environment that allows this to continue to happen. Reading this, the most important message I get is, "Please help me to create an environment that makes it unacceptable because I can't do it alone."

I think her letter is well worth reading, and her advice well worth following.

happy memorial day

To remember and reflect upon tragic events and those who have died as a result is a humane and worthwhile thing, in my opinion. Wars are themselves supremely tragic events that take the lives of countless living beings, both soldiers and civilians alike; and it's worth remembering all those who have lost their lives in the global carnage we, as a species, are capable of unleashing upon ourselves.

But when it comes to the subject of war, I think we should always be on guard so that we don't allow ourselves be so blinded by our patriotism and the idealization of war heroes that we fall into the trap of blindly supporting militarism and nationalism, or attacking anyone who happens to have a different point of view. As WWII veteran and political activist Howard Zinn once said:

While some people think that dissent is unpatriotic, I would argue that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. In fact, if patriotism means being true to the principles for which your country is supposed to stand, then certainly the right to dissent is one of those principles. And if we're exercising that right to dissent, it's a patriotic act.

For me, today isn't just about honouring the dead; it's also about remembering the toll that war takes on its survivors and the heavy burdens that many bear from their time spent in and around war, physical and mental scars that take lifetimes to heal, if at all—victims of political-economic systems in which the ruling class declares the wars that the working class and poor must fight. As Eugene Debs famously said in his 1918 Canton, Ohio, speech:

They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. And here let me emphasize the fact—and it cannot be repeated too often—that the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace.

War is hell, and many of those who are lucky enough to come out on the other side of it are changed forever. And it both saddens and angers me that the one's who fight our wars are caught in the tangled web of geopolitics and the machinations of plutocrats who treat human lives more like commodities in their lust for wealth and power than people while the victims on the other side are denigrated, or else completely forgotten. They deserve to be remembered too.

what does feminism have to do with it?

One of the things I enjoyed the most about yesterday's panel hosted by KBOO was Johanna Brenner's topic of, "What does feminism have to do with it?" Unfortunately, I think a few people misunderstood where she was coming from, and didn't really understand what feminism is, but I thought it was one of the more important and interesting topics of the evening.

Why is it so important? One of the main reasons, in my opinion, is how easily obscured the existence of patriarchy is. It's hidden in plain sight, as is its considerable influence, despite the fact that evidence of it is literally everywhere. Most people don't seem to understand patriarchy, how it works, where it comes from, and why it's worth struggling against. In Western society and culture, for example, patriarchy can be traced back to the earliest parts of recorded history; and even today, it pervades huge swaths of our culture, religion, politics, and economic relations.

The role of women in public life in ancient Greece and Rome, from where Western society can arguably trace its roots, was practically nonexistent. Their primary roles were as child-bearers and homebodies. Women (at least aristocratic women, i.e., non-slaves and prostitutes) in Greece were hardly even seen in public, and then usually only when accompanying a man. Being single wasn't acceptable. Education was primarily something men received. Gender roles were strictly defined. Men dominated all spheres of life. In Romes, things were slightly better and less restrictive for women, but not by much.

(As a side note, one of the more radical and impressive aspects of Plato's Republic was his argument that women should share in the education and tasks of their male counterparts. This includes arguing for female guardians (soldiers) and rulers at a time when women were 'kept at home' and mostly restricted from public life, which really surprised me.)

Another point of entry for patriarchy in Western society was Christianity. While some aspects can be seen as radical and egalitarian in nature, there are aspects that, when Christianity was adopted by the Roman world, reinforced patriarchy and women's submissive role in society. A few examples are: "Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord" (Eph 5:22); "Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says" (1 Cor 14:34); and "I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet" (1 Tim 2:12).

Fast forward through centuries of male dominated society and you have the birth of America, in which initially only white, male property owners could vote, with women only winning the right vote in 1920, 50 years after blacks and 144 years after the country's founding. And if you think winning the right to vote was the end of gender discrimination, you're sorely mistaken. Women are still battling against rigid gender roles, prejudices, and hierarchies that we've been conditioned over time to subconsciously (and even consciously) adopt and maintain.

These material and ideological pressures, albeit weakened, continue to exert their influence on our society and its structure, informing our perceptions of the world and our conceptions of gender norms. Women are still widely seen as and/or expected to be child-bearers and homebodies, providing the free/uncompensated labour of literally reproducing the labour force and supporting the reproduction of labour power via nurturing husbands and children emotionally and materially (e.g., cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc.). They're still expected to provide a certain kind of emotional labour, even in the workforce. They still make up the majority of 'nurturing' professions like nursing and teaching. They still tend to make less than their male counterparts (roughly $.80 to the dollar according to one study). They're often seen and portrayed as 'bitchy,' 'cold,' etc. if they're assertive and not nurturing/emotionally receptive and giving. The list goes on.

But this doesn't just affect women, it affects all of us. Due to the gender roles imposed upon men and women within our society, neither are free to fully be and express themselves (to say nothing of those who fall outside of this historically accepted gender binary). Men, for example, aren't given as much space as women to be 'caring,' 'nurturing,' etc., it not being 'manly' to show too much affection or emotion. And an argument can be made that the prevalence of male privilege embedded in our predominately patriarchal society and the negative aspects of socially-constructed, male gender norms (what some call 'toxic masculinity') are at least partially responsible for the prevalence of male violence, particularly gun violence.

In addition, a recent study published in the journal Psychological Science found that "both men and women see images of sexy women's bodies as objects, while they see sexy-looking men as people," which I think demonstrates that such a gender bias exists in the perception of both men and women; and the study's conclusion further reinforces my belief that sexism and the objectification of women is a broader symptom of a society that's practiced patriarchy for centuries, as well as corroborating evidence that patriarchal ideology has become so ingrained into our collective psyche that even women are conditioned to objectify women in the same way as men.

Feminism, then, isn't about declaring men to be wholly bad or inferior, nor women to be wholly good or superior. It's about confronting the reality that patriarchy exists and permeates our culture and society and challenging that reality in order to create a more free and egalitarian world. I was once ignorant of what feminism was and why it's such an important movement, but not anymore, and I'm proud to call myself a feminist.