do or die

On the subject of gentrification: it's a strange beast. I had never really given gentrification much thought until I lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and then I was forced to give it a good deal of thought. Gentrification is a natural process, and a healthy one at that. I'm a firm believer in urban renewal and urban education as necessary tools for social justice and equality, and I've seen evidence of that in New York. In the past twenty years, Bed-Stuy's unofficial motto has been "Bed-Stuy, Do or Die," but through gentrification, the neighbourhood begun to be associated with murals, artists' collectives, and community gardens, and has thus achieved a much more positive image and much higher standard of living. But I found it difficult to reconcile the neighbourhood's improvement with my neighbours' bitterness toward the emerging population of young, white, college-educated artists. Through listening to conversations on the street and through being the object of frequent angry comments from passers-by, I felt like I witnessed the neighbourhood grieving the loss of their home. Bed-Stuy has such a rich history and a strong culture, evident even by reading the names of the shops on Nostrand Ave, from the Malcolm X bookstore and barbershop on my corner to Momma's Kitchen: Food for the Soul, located across the street.

Gentrification is a necessary, beautiful, and equalizing. It's a second chance for neighbourhoods to have new lives and reputations, for Bed-Stuy to host beautiful art instead of deadly turf wars. But I think it's wrong that so often the price of gentrification is the death of a culture, the crowding-out of one demographic to make way for another. Gentrification needs to celebrate culture instead of suffocating it, cultivate rather than amputate. That's the only way reconciliation can take place. Otherwise, it only increases marginalization and division. 

So I'm a big supporter both of gentrification and of its reform. Does that make sense? I love this mural from my street in Brooklyn. A lot of Banksy-esque street art and stencils were going up while I lived there, and they were beautiful, but I love how this mural really captures the feel of the neighbourhood. It's something to be proud of.