Gentrifiers calling cops on neighbors

[fuckyourcouch]

Jesus. Why are people such assholes

[YeahSure]

Oct 19, 2015 12:33:10 GMT -5 starlily said:

Oct 19, 2015 11:49:39 GMT -5 @mx said:

Yeah I just can't wrap my head around it. I honestly think that some of these people expect that by the time housing prices are driven up to a certain level and a certain quota of trendy restaurants or shops have opened they just shouldn't have to deal with the people who have lived there long term. 

Ding ding ding! See also: San Francisco (particularly the Mission district among several others).

San Francisco is barely recognizable anymore. 

[ESF]

Oct 19, 2015 11:44:21 GMT -5 cookiemdough said:

I just don't understand the mindset. Why even move into the neighborhood if you know from jump you don't really like the neighborhood or the people residing there? Every place I have lived I have driven through the neighborhood in the morning, afternoon and evening to get an idea of traffic, safety, are people throwing parties, are there kids, do people pick up after their dogs, are there a lot of nosey old people lol. It would never occur to me to move someplace I feel unsafe and then spend my days calling the police. How do you ever become part of the neighborhood when you are an enemy to your neighbors who were there way before you??

Prop 13 in California has done some weird shit to the neighborhoods. Throw in the housing boom in the SF bay area, and you get some very diverse neighborhoods.  

For example, my neighborhood has a lot of very low income people. Some of them are living in public housing complexes. Others are just living in the house they inherited from their parents, who bought in 1948 when it was predominately black, because Prop 13 has frozen their property taxes and the high cost of living limits where else they can live.  But the housing boom combined with the low incentive for people to sell has limited available housing stock for home buyers.  So you get situations where a 3br/2bath home sells for $900,000 even though on the same block, there are several overcrowded shacks with poor black families living there. 

In the SF bay area, if you want a 3br and you want to be within an hour commute of San Francisco and have access to good schools, you have to spend $900k.  You don't get to be choosy about who your neighbors are.

And I'll say that Silicon Valley libertarianism (which is very, very different from normal libertarianism) is taking a hold of people throughout the entire region.  There's an increased sense that anything can be bought, and for enough money, you can turn your neighborhood into your own playground. So people drive through and they see the black teenagers roaming about, and just think, "well in a couple months, someone will buy their parents out of their house and they will be gone." 

[omgzombies]

I'm wondering if the look of disgust on my face from reading these stories is going to become permanent. It's infuriating.

[iammalcolmx]

Atlanta got rid of all it's public housing.

[meshaliuknits]

Oct 19, 2015 12:43:57 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

Oct 19, 2015 11:44:21 GMT -5 cookiemdough said:

I just don't understand the mindset. Why even move into the neighborhood if you know from jump you don't really like the neighborhood or the people residing there? Every place I have lived I have driven through the neighborhood in the morning, afternoon and evening to get an idea of traffic, safety, are people throwing parties, are there kids, do people pick up after their dogs, are there a lot of nosey old people lol. It would never occur to me to move someplace I feel unsafe and then spend my days calling the police. How do you ever become part of the neighborhood when you are an enemy to your neighbors who were there way before you??

So many people treat their home as a fortress. They drive everywhere. They pick their house because of proximity to family or work or because they like the building itself. They do not participate in the community, talk to neighbors, or consider themselves to be an active part of the community.

I don't really get this mentality. I need to know at least some of my neighbors. Who better to ask about the local schools, nearby pediatric dentists, WTF is that alarm that goes off at 11am every day and if their teenagers can watch my kids while H and I go out and drink mai tais?

Even better that my kids know our neighbors too, and not just so they have playmates. It's good they know who will help them if there's an emergency. My my girlfriend babysat and locked them out of the house (oops) my girl was able to list off three houses they could go to for help.

[summer]

The first line of this article is really all I need for life. It basically sums up all things. Just sub out Oakland for anyplace.

[LadySusan]

I think there was something similar posted a few days ago on CEP...

Together with this thread/article it is--what's the word--challenging my worldview that it is always good to "turn a neighborhood around" by being getting really active in the community. I think I've seen this and I just didn't recognize it for what it is... I'm sorry, if I'm not really articulating things well.

[sushi]

There's public housing in my neighborhood, but also plans to revise/get rid of it. So, I think some people bought and hoped change would come sooner.

I actually wouldn't say it's gentrifying as much as mixed. Old houses, some fallen into disrepair, some updated and remodeled. So you can have a $2M house next to 200k. Plus there's been recent development in the area. There is a new trendy donut shop across from the old chicken shack. Both have lines out the door.

And now there are condos that are $1M+. Across the street from public housing.

But this is where I don't understand people being upset. It's not like they didn't know they were moving into a neighborhood with this character. Until the chicken shack gets condemned, it's not going anywhere.

[elleblue]

Oct 19, 2015 13:00:00 GMT -5 iammalcolmx said:

Atlanta got rid of all it's public housing.

Wait, what? Really?!

[earlgreyhot]

Oct 19, 2015 11:24:33 GMT -5 @mx said:

These people in my neighborhood want to make "loitering" illegal. I hate all of them.

White people need to adopt adopt loitering. Inpromptu hangouts seem fun!

[jojoandleo]

I think the cops need to start citing people for making frivolous calls. I mean, 700? 700 calls about innocuous shit? That's getting out of hand and a waste of tax payer money. I remember we had an alarm that messed up and after the police showed up the third time for a false alarm, there was a fine. So, something like that.

[iammalcolmx]

Oct 19, 2015 16:56:00 GMT -5 elleblue said:

Oct 19, 2015 13:00:00 GMT -5 iammalcolmx said:

Atlanta got rid of all it's public housing.

Wait, what? Really?!

Yes, they now have mixed use with a waiting lost years long where they decided it was a good idea to do credit checks as a requirement.

[elleblue]

Oct 19, 2015 17:36:07 GMT -5 iammalcolmx said:

Oct 19, 2015 16:56:00 GMT -5 elleblue said:

Wait, what? Really?!

Yes, they now have mixed use with a waiting lost years long where they decided it was a good idea to do credit checks as a requirement.

How can they do that in good conscience? Actually I answered my own question, it appears the city doesn't have one. That's shameful. 

[iammalcolmx]

They gave everyone section 8 vouchers so they could move to the burbs.

[elleblue]

Oct 19, 2015 17:41:48 GMT -5 iammalcolmx said:

They gave everyone section 8 vouchers so they could move to the burbs.

Omg!!!

[cookiemdough]

Oct 19, 2015 17:52:43 GMT -5 elleblue said:

Oct 19, 2015 17:41:48 GMT -5 iammalcolmx said:

They gave everyone section 8 vouchers so they could move to the burbs.

Omg!!!

This is common. It sucks even more because the suburbs generally don't have as many public transportation options. So you displace the poor to an area where you have increased their commute times to work and increased the time to for basic things like grocery shopping etc

[earlgreyhot]

Oct 19, 2015 17:34:08 GMT -5 1234FIF! said:

Why is the only right way the white way?

This has been my train of thought of late.

It's stupid simple, but really helps me see privilege at work.

[NitaX]

Oct 19, 2015 11:13:55 GMT -5 drruth said:

This has happened in my building a couple times this past year. A couple moved into the building from the midwest, and promptly blew up the building email list serve with complaints about neighbors from other buildings and were very open about calling the cops on kids frequently (as well as referring to the kids as "hooligans"). One of the other building residents responded to every email with information about gentrification, invitations to BLM marches and picnics, and information on racially insensitive words and phrases.

I super puffy heart this. This is TOTALLY what I would do.

[katfco]

Oct 19, 2015 11:13:04 GMT -5 Velvetshady said:

I kind of want an organized National "Call the Cops on White People doing Normal Shit" Day.

Do sane white people get to participate, too? 

[NitaX]

Oct 19, 2015 12:43:57 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

Oct 19, 2015 11:44:21 GMT -5 cookiemdough said:

I just don't understand the mindset. Why even move into the neighborhood if you know from jump you don't really like the neighborhood or the people residing there? Every place I have lived I have driven through the neighborhood in the morning, afternoon and evening to get an idea of traffic, safety, are people throwing parties, are there kids, do people pick up after their dogs, are there a lot of nosey old people lol. It would never occur to me to move someplace I feel unsafe and then spend my days calling the police. How do you ever become part of the neighborhood when you are an enemy to your neighbors who were there way before you??

So many people treat their home as a fortress. They drive everywhere. They pick their house because of proximity to family or work or because they like the building itself. They do not participate in the community, talk to neighbors, or consider themselves to be an active part of the community.

My urban problems professor loved discussing this in the terms of how people interact. He felt like the way we built our homes had a lot to do with this. We have garages that face the front of the house/street so you drive in and close the garage and never interact with your neighbors. Also, our houses have lost the old school front porch and puts all of the socializing amenities in the backyard. So again, you have to "know" someone to even welcome them in your house.

I grew up with a front porch and my house now doesn't have one. I didn't realize how much I missed it. I know most of my neighbors on my block because I go outside and speak. After work, it's nothing to find everyone standing outside chit-chatting for a bit. 

[summer]

I'm going to put this here, just an opinion blog piece someone forwarded me on FB:

Stop Talking About Gentrification

My beloved neighborhood in west Charlotte is on the brink of big changes. Neighbors are trying to figure out what those changes will be and how to have a voice in them, and we keep coming back to one term in the conversation: “gentrification.”


I am tired of talking about gentrification, and so I am attempting to eliminate the word from my vocabulary. I think that there are important reasons to do this. Among the reasons I think we should stop using the term gentrification is because the use of the term is a sure-fire conversation stopper. Use it and you can instantly divide a room into at least two factions who will no longer listen to each other (though the power is quite unevenly distributed among those groups, so that some need to do more listening than talking anyway). No one wants to be gentrified, and no one wants to be a gentrifier. Start talking about it in the neighborhood association and the meeting will quickly adjourn.


Besides the emotional baggage, there is also the problem that we do not know exactly what we mean when we use the term. What is it, anyway? How do we know when gentrification begins or ends? When is it complete? How can we measure it? How does this specific type of neighborhood change differ from the changes that are simply the norm for urban neighborhoods? Not only does the term start an argument, but it starts an argument where we do not even know what we are arguing about.


I think those are good reasons to stop talking about gentrification, but they are not the best reason. This is: Describing the shifts taking place in some urban neighborhoods as gentrification places the newcomers — the re-investors, the “urban pioneers” (I loathe the term!), the gentry — at the center of the story. When we talk about gentrification, we make the silent assumption that the land speculation, rising property tax income, adaptive reuse and increased “hip” factor that follow are in fact a public good. They may be, but this is not self-evident. The terms of our conversations about these changes center our discussions around “the gentry,” who mean well, for what that’s worth. We talk about the changes happening in a way that places the poor and people of color on the margins from the beginning. Without a different conversation, we will never get different results.

So, I am proposing that we stop talking about gentrification. Instead, I will be talking about land loss and serial displacement, and I hope you will join me. I am going to do this in hopes of placing the lives of the poor front and center in my own eyes and in the eyes of those I talk to. I am going to do my best to change the conversation in such a way that the voices of the marginalized are amplified, because they are rarely heard in such discussions. And when they are not heard, it is not for their lack of speaking or inability to understand what is happening. It is because some of us have earplugs in.


I think that the change of terminology I am proposing is clear, but it is worth making it plain. By land loss, I mean simply this: that in neighborhoods around the country, including my own (where I may well be part of the problem), the poor are losing access to valuable land in ways that disenfranchise, oppress and disregard the lives they have lived on that land for decades and more. Because we live within a system that makes land ownership a primary means of building wealth, those who own land are lifted up as achieving at least a portion of the so-called “American Dream.” But even a cursory knowledge of United States history makes it clear that the ability to own land has been restricted in a variety of ways that have stripped people of color from land-owning and wealth-building opportunities while at the same time promoting and subsidizing that same opportunity for whites. We are still living out the outcomes of that history. Low homeownership rates in poor neighborhoods of color is one evidence of that. About 30 percent in my west Charlotte neighborhood own their homes. The rate in our city as a whole is near 60 percent. The reasons for this disparity are not a mystery.


Further, in North Carolina, tenant protections are very weak. The law almost always favors landlords, especially as it regards changes in land use and rental rates. So when Jimmy’s landlord decides that the lot he owns can be redeveloped to turn more profit, it will not matter for one second that Jimmy has lived there for 15 years, that he has been the finest neighbor one could hope for, or that he has cared for the people and places of Enderly Park in quiet and meaningful ways far beyond what any of us neighbors have deserved. Jimmy will lose access to his land and his home and we will name that loss “progress” and roll out the red carpet for the developer who rebuilds on it.


To further complicate the problem, the North Carolina General Assembly has effectively outlawed cities and towns from setting their own regulations about the availability of workforce housing in their municipalities. The development lobby, fearing lower profit margins, has worked to help lawmakers craft policy that discourages or restricts mandatory inclusionary zoning policies which could ensure the availability of workforce housing across our city, despite clear evidence that these policies are working in other places around the country. In other words, not only will Jimmy lose his place now, but the more workforce housing we tear down now the less clear it is that there will be sufficient workforce housing for Jimmy’s family in the future. In this and other ways, the General Assembly has been all too willing to work against the interests of their poor constituents. This appears to be normative behavior in Raleigh nowadays.


By serial displacement I mean that the injustice of land loss happens to the same marginalized groups, namely the poor and people of color, each time the changing whims of the market send the land speculators to circle a new area. In the 1960s, the city of Charlotte razed the storied Brooklyn neighborhood downtown, with an almost exclusively black population, encouraging residents and institutions to migrate to west Charlotte. Fifty years later, guess which part of town thought leaders, planners, non-profit groups, business boosters groups, and civic leaders can’t stop dreaming about?


Here is what my west Charlotte neighbors like Jimmy have taught me: we don’t need fancy words to describe what is happening. You can feel it, Jimmy says, and he would know. His people have known land loss and serial displacement from the time they were kidnapped and brought to this continent. Here it is in the air now, again. It constricts the throat and gnaws at the gut.

This is the key question that will determine what goes on from here: Gentry or to-be-displaced — whose story will be at the center?

[summer]

and....

The Atlantic: Gentrification Stops at the Schoolhouse Door

The ups and downs of gentrification have been chronicled thoroughly, but one of its consequences hasn’t been widely addressed: the effect on neighborhood schools when a critical mass of well-educated, well-off people move in. Gentrification usually brings some benefits with it to a neighborhood, such as more attention from the city—as Spike Lee noted, suddenly the trash gets picked up! But does an influx of children from wealthier families make a positive difference to local public schools?



Nikole Hannah-Jones, now an investigative reporter for The New York Times Magazine, says no. She makes the case in Grist that “gentrification, it turns out, usually stops at the schoolhouse door.” Because newcomers tend to send their kids outside of the local system, often to private or charter schools, gentrification tends to have a neutral or even negative effect on neighborhood schools, at least in the short term.



A recent article in U.S. News concurs with this assessment, claiming that “gentrification is leaving public schools behind.” Likewise, a report on underperforming San Francisco public schools from earlier this summer in The Atlantic notes that many if not most urban institutions are “left to flounder,” remaining segregated, low-quality “Apartheid schools,” even while gentrification changes other aspects of the neighborhoods around them.





The exceptions—the public schools in gentrifying neighborhoods that happen to be doing well according to official rankings—seem to be those that compete with charter and private schools by becoming magnet schools or starting gifted-and-talented programs. Brooklyn’s PS 8, for instance, was “failing” only 10 years ago, but after remaking itself as a magnet school has become one of the borough’s most sought-after elementary schools. Likewise, PS 9 recently added gifted-and-talented and foreign-language programs. It now has an above-average proportion of white students relative to its district, and there is a waitlist for its Pre-K program.



These beefed-up programs, Hannah-Jones points out, come at a cost: Any money put toward enticing middle-class parents is money that can’t be put toward students who might need those resources more. And most minority students continue to struggle: The New York Daily News reports that “more than 50 percent of the city’s white and Asian school kids in grades 3 through 8 passed this year’s state English tests. Fewer than 20 percent of the city’s black and Latino kids did.”



Economic and racial integration works: It is what has been shown to help higher-need students without hurting others. Middle-class commitment to urban schools is one way to improve public education for all, and middle-class gentrifiers have placed themselves right where they can do the most good—if they choose to. And yet, it might be unreasonable to expect high-achieving, usually college-educated newcomers, even progressive ones, to stop fretting about sending their children to the “best,” which is to say, highest-performing, schools. Test scores are a matter of overwhelming importance to these parents, no matter how much they may also protest “high-stakes testing.” How, then, can middle-class gentrifiers be wooed into participating in a system that might not appear to be in their immediate best interest?





Sarah Garland of The Hechinger Report suggests that the best way to have gentrification help local schools may be to invest in more and larger magnet schools and bring more diverse students into gifted-and-talented programs. One county in Florida has had success doing just that, finding remarkably talented kids in poor neighborhoods that school administrators had, up until now, neglected.



Even the few successfully integrated public elementary schools might not make a long-term difference, though. Middle schools present yet another challenge. As Garland told me, “Sometimes white and Asian middle-class parents will send their kids to a local elementary school in the early grades and then pull them out when they get older.” She added that “housing and transportation departments can help or hinder efforts to keep communities and schools integrated, and without more coherent policy efforts, gentrification may only make a fleeting difference.” In other words, the burden cannot rest on the shoulders of individual gentrifying parents, who may want to do “right” thing and, at the same time, feel compelled to provide their children with the highest-quality education possible. Local governments need to prioritize better-integrated schools for everyone.



Is that feasible? A recent episode of This American Life documented that it can be. The show focused on how Hartford, Connecticut, which remains mostly ungentrified, has focused successfully on exactly that kind of coherent policy effort, creating dozens of urban magnet schools that are so strong they manage to attract students who live outside the city. Nearly half of Hartford’s students now benefit from integrated K-12 education. Though not a panacea, it is a significant step forward.



How exactly did Hartford do it? The city persuaded patrons to buy in. It wooed children of diverse backgrounds. And instead of having students learn science through worksheets, the city gave students access to a planetarium, an outdoor garden, a butterfly vivarium, a trout pond, and a LEGO lab.



Once newcomers have what they consider to be viable local alternatives, such as high-quality gifted-and-talented programs and foreign language instruction in Prospect Heights and LEGO labs and butterfly gardens in Hartford, they seem to be more likely to choose public schools over charters. A planetarium is not a cheap solution, but if you build it, they will come—and they might well stay.

[cookiemdough]

Oct 20, 2015 5:08:56 GMT -5 summer said:

and....

The Atlantic: Gentrification Stops at the Schoolhouse Door

The ups and downs of gentrification have been chronicled thoroughly, but one of its consequences hasn’t been widely addressed: the effect on neighborhood schools when a critical mass of well-educated, well-off people move in. Gentrification usually brings some benefits with it to a neighborhood, such as more attention from the city—as Spike Lee noted, suddenly the trash gets picked up! But does an influx of children from wealthier families make a positive difference to local public schools?



Nikole Hannah-Jones, now an investigative reporter for The New York Times Magazine, says no. She makes the case in Grist that “gentrification, it turns out, usually stops at the schoolhouse door.” Because newcomers tend to send their kids outside of the local system, often to private or charter schools, gentrification tends to have a neutral or even negative effect on neighborhood schools, at least in the short term.



A recent article in U.S. News concurs with this assessment, claiming that “gentrification is leaving public schools behind.” Likewise, a report on underperforming San Francisco public schools from earlier this summer in The Atlantic notes that many if not most urban institutions are “left to flounder,” remaining segregated, low-quality “Apartheid schools,” even while gentrification changes other aspects of the neighborhoods around them.





The exceptions—the public schools in gentrifying neighborhoods that happen to be doing well according to official rankings—seem to be those that compete with charter and private schools by becoming magnet schools or starting gifted-and-talented programs. Brooklyn’s PS 8, for instance, was “failing” only 10 years ago, but after remaking itself as a magnet school has become one of the borough’s most sought-after elementary schools. Likewise, PS 9 recently added gifted-and-talented and foreign-language programs. It now has an above-average proportion of white students relative to its district, and there is a waitlist for its Pre-K program.



These beefed-up programs, Hannah-Jones points out, come at a cost: Any money put toward enticing middle-class parents is money that can’t be put toward students who might need those resources more. And most minority students continue to struggle: The New York Daily News reports that “more than 50 percent of the city’s white and Asian school kids in grades 3 through 8 passed this year’s state English tests. Fewer than 20 percent of the city’s black and Latino kids did.”



Economic and racial integration works: It is what has been shown to help higher-need students without hurting others. Middle-class commitment to urban schools is one way to improve public education for all, and middle-class gentrifiers have placed themselves right where they can do the most good—if they choose to. And yet, it might be unreasonable to expect high-achieving, usually college-educated newcomers, even progressive ones, to stop fretting about sending their children to the “best,” which is to say, highest-performing, schools. Test scores are a matter of overwhelming importance to these parents, no matter how much they may also protest “high-stakes testing.” How, then, can middle-class gentrifiers be wooed into participating in a system that might not appear to be in their immediate best interest?





Sarah Garland of The Hechinger Report suggests that the best way to have gentrification help local schools may be to invest in more and larger magnet schools and bring more diverse students into gifted-and-talented programs. One county in Florida has had success doing just that, finding remarkably talented kids in poor neighborhoods that school administrators had, up until now, neglected.



Even the few successfully integrated public elementary schools might not make a long-term difference, though. Middle schools present yet another challenge. As Garland told me, “Sometimes white and Asian middle-class parents will send their kids to a local elementary school in the early grades and then pull them out when they get older.” She added that “housing and transportation departments can help or hinder efforts to keep communities and schools integrated, and without more coherent policy efforts, gentrification may only make a fleeting difference.” In other words, the burden cannot rest on the shoulders of individual gentrifying parents, who may want to do “right” thing and, at the same time, feel compelled to provide their children with the highest-quality education possible. Local governments need to prioritize better-integrated schools for everyone.



Is that feasible? A recent episode of This American Life documented that it can be. The show focused on how Hartford, Connecticut, which remains mostly ungentrified, has focused successfully on exactly that kind of coherent policy effort, creating dozens of urban magnet schools that are so strong they manage to attract students who live outside the city. Nearly half of Hartford’s students now benefit from integrated K-12 education. Though not a panacea, it is a significant step forward.



How exactly did Hartford do it? The city persuaded patrons to buy in. It wooed children of diverse backgrounds. And instead of having students learn science through worksheets, the city gave students access to a planetarium, an outdoor garden, a butterfly vivarium, a trout pond, and a LEGO lab.



Once newcomers have what they consider to be viable local alternatives, such as high-quality gifted-and-talented programs and foreign language instruction in Prospect Heights and LEGO labs and butterfly gardens in Hartford, they seem to be more likely to choose public schools over charters. A planetarium is not a cheap solution, but if you build it, they will come—and they might well stay.

DC is soooo evident of this. If you go on listservs, the conversations will make you lose hope in life. People are willing to move in the neighborhood but when it comes to their little precious, they will only expose them to the element for a couple years max in public school before throwing their hands up about lack of change. The problem is that the approach to change has to be thoughtful just like the approach to gentrification and all too often it is not. The number of posts about their child being the "only" in their class or how others haven't embraced them are rampant. What do people think it is like for black children that are the only ones in their class? The "success" stories are only the ones that have received enough integration.

[cookiemdough]

And I do understand the drive of parents to get the best education for your child. But if you walk into a school and think the main problem is the color of the skin of those that attend, and think it will get better as long as the shade of people changes you will be sorely disappointed. The parameters for local schools can't be changed overnight. That is why charters are so big here because they provide an opportunity in these transitioning areas to get faster change outside of what would be allowed in a traditional neighborhood school.

It is a whole different argument about whether they are better for the school system in general.

[summer]

Oct 20, 2015 5:45:23 GMT -5 @246baje said:

Oct 19, 2015 12:37:58 GMT -5 ESF said:

A few days before I moved into my place, there was an emergency neighborhood meeting to discuss how the "neighborhood was going downhill." We had lived there for a total of 8 days, didn't know if this was an isolated incident or a major problem, and also thought it would be good to meet the neighbors.

There had been an escalation in petty crime, vandalism, theft, etc. in the previous months, but the urgency was prompted by the fact some guy had gotten mugged and physically assaulted in broad daylight 10 yards from my front door 3 days before I moved in. There had also been sounds of gun shots that same day.

After discussing with the beat cop that came, the conclusion that the problems were caused by (1) because it was summer, you just had some bored teenagers roaming around and (2) there was a shady landlord operating a nearby public housing complex, and drug deals were on the rise (the gun shots came from that block). To deal with #2, the cop discussed a plan to increase police presence near the shady landlord operation. To deal with both, the cop discussed doing things to increase visibility and make it harder for people to hide. Add some extra street lights, doing some landscaping in the neighborhood park to increase visibility, etc. These were rational solutions.

But there was some batty old lady there and this was not good enough for her. She actually suggested that we create a neighborhood phone tree so that we could call each other if we saw these kids out and about. In other words, if three black teenagers were walking down the street, she wanted to sound the alarm bells so people could go outside and make sure the kids don't throw peel the registration stickers off their cars. Fortunately, most of the people at the meeting told her she was bat shit crazy and we can't just start harassing kids who are just going about their business.

That was seven years ago. Since that time, the neighborhood has gotten more white and more wealthy, though there's still a large minority presence. My NextDoor page is relatively low drama, but now that I'm aware of how that site is being used to intimidate, I'll pay more attention so I can speak up if that batty old lady (or anyone else) gets internet connection and decides to start being an asshole again.

And this is why black parents tell their sons don't walk in groups of more than 2-3 black kids.

Anything more than 2 is a ruthless gang. Been that way since we got off the boat. 

[cookiemdough]

Oct 20, 2015 5:56:31 GMT -5 summer said:

Oct 20, 2015 5:45:23 GMT -5 @246baje said:

And this is why black parents tell their sons don't walk in groups of more than 2-3 black kids.

Anything more than 2 is a ruthless gang. Been that way since we got off the boat. 

Especially if they open a door for a woman and her baby at a bank.

[YeahSure]

Oct 20, 2015 5:06:05 GMT -5 summer said:

I'm going to put this here, just an opinion blog piece someone forwarded me on FB:

Stop Talking About Gentrification



So, I am proposing that we stop talking about gentrification. Instead, I will be talking about land loss and serial displacement

Born and raised in San Francisco, THIS right here, is exactly what "gentrification" means to me. And it's horrible.

[YeahSure]

Oct 20, 2015 5:56:31 GMT -5 summer said:

Oct 20, 2015 5:45:23 GMT -5 @246baje said:

And this is why black parents tell their sons don't walk in groups of more than 2-3 black kids.

Anything more than 2 is a ruthless gang. Been that way since we got off the boat. 

I'm seriously (literally) crying right now from reading this. I know this is your reality, and it has never been mine. And it breaks my heart that life is like this. 

[shauni27]

I feel almost speechless reading these articles and hearing the first hand accounts you are all sharing. I hate that this is happening, and as a white woman, living in rural VT who has not had to deal with this first hand, I feel very helpless.