Gentrified: pt Two
This is the first time in ages you have felt secure walking in your environment. You feel so safe that you realized that you have been nearly sleep walking. The newly added crosswalks allow you to move without stepping into now busy streets. You ask yourself, “ Where has this gentrification been my whole life?”. As sweet as this new panorama is, something stabs your tastebuds & leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. The local soul food joint has now disappeared & a Whole Foods has taken its place. The neighborhood liquor store is not a big box chain store. Even our mom & pop corner store is now a Shell station.
You also notice that this new flow of traffic is not mere people passing through but are your new neighbors. Despite your deep love for all the modern enhancements, something just doesn’t sit well with all of the places that earned your business over the years has been replaced with chain businesses that won’t give you the same level of customer service that Neighborhood stores gifted you. With mom & pop stores, its MORE than just customer service. These store owners watched your parents grow from seeds & also was there to watch your parents raise it. They are practically family. Where is your family go? What happened to their booming businesses that once stood so strong & profitable?
As your stroll comes to an end, you make it back to your front door. Theres no place like home but you are really becoming disturbed about what’s happened to your home. As you open your door, you discover a notice informing you of a rate increase of your rent. The cost of the renovations has been passed on the citizens. Deeper into the correspondence it states that starting on the 1st of next month, your rent has been doubled & if you don’t want to or can’t afford the cost of living price hikes, that you must vacate.
Gentrification is like a beautiful layer of make up. From surface view, everting is pretty impressive. But soon as you dig deeper, you learn of its ugly truth. The easiest way to remove poor people is to drop the pros of gentrification right into their lap. This is happening at alarming rates all over the country. This is a form of systematic form of racism. Either pay the price for a decent lifestyle or get your ass out. So many inner city areas are hidden gold minds with hidden treasures. A lot of these environments are special because of us working with what we have to make what we want. Our artist are called vandals. Everything we do to make our living situations sufficient has been labeled as “ghetto” & demonized.
Necessity is the mother of invention. Our ancestors were tossed parts of the pig that whites refused to eat . They were crafty enough to invent means out of parts they were given. Same here. We were forced into their smog filled & polluted inner city areas & made the best out out of them Once they saw how we survived by making tasty meals out of pig’s feet & intestines, they wanted to take them back & call it fine dining. We made hood home & now they are coming back for what they initially do not want. So please don’t fall victim of the pretty paint job of gentrification because its accompanied by an ugly price. And that price will cost you more than sanitary tender.
☮️🌡 Family
