I suppose I also want to say that while I understand and agree with what Jack is saying about gentrification, it seems much less useful to blame young whites (however exceeding aggravating–and destructive–their presence might be) than to address, as some others have also mentioned, the issues that create cycles of gentrification in the first place. My best friend’s family was homeless for almost a year as a kid after her dad left. When her mother re-married and there was finally enough money to buy a house, they (a white family) bought in a poor white neighborhood (with a crack house nearby, and drug dealer on the corner). (Most poor neighborhoods in Portland 20 years ago were white, because Oregon was (and still is, though that is changing) overwhelmingly white. This, of course, is no coincidence, but a result of Oregon’s history of racism. Before the civil war, Oregon resolved the slavery question by barring all blacks from the state; after the war, Oregon continued to be actively unwelcoming to people of color. Most African Americans who moved to Oregon did so only during WWII, when they came to work in shipyards.) In any case, the neighborhood they moved in to ultimately gentrified because enough educated hippies moved there (forced there by higher house prices elsewhere in the city). And now their non-profit-job kids could certainly not afford to buy in that neighborhood. So children of that demographic (and *many* out-of-state college kids moving into the city) finally turned to the last ungentrified neighborhood, the African American section of town. I’m not sure exactly what I wanted to indicate with this story, except to emphasize that although gentrification is an economic cycle that is particularly destructive to the lives of poor people of color, it is a cycle that–this example seems to indicate–operates with or without race along class lines. So if any of us want to see communities remain intact, we have to address the underlying economic processes that drive this. Otherwise, it’s just being holier than thou, whether along racial lines, however justified by history, or other lines. As a native Oregonian many of my friends from working class families are constantly bemoaning the influx of priviledged white out of state kids destroying our communities. I do it too–all the time. But it’s ultimately just as annoying as hip people of color complaining about the privileged white kids who are (unquestionably) destroying their communities. And as ineffective.

In some ways it seems to me that the shift that’s going on in Portland is just one of reversing the nodes: first, the rich wanted to live in the suburbs: now they’ve changed their minds and want to live in the city. The poor, who have no choice, must live wherever the rich prefer not to live. So if we want that to change: what are we going to do about it?

Keep an eye on the Fulton Mall if you want to understand the relationship between real estate interests and gentrification. I can’t drum up the statistics about the volume of business on the Fulton Mall, but it is one of the most vibrant, economically sucessful BIDs in the country, and despite the Jimmy Jazz and Forever 21, it is mostly small businesses that are doing business on the mall (selling Nike and Reebok and other big brand merchandise, so they aren’t *that* local) but they cater to a population that is already squeezed by rising rents. The Real Estate lobby wants some little cafes and boutiques so that they can turn vacant space around the mall into upscale condos and collect the high rents, but they are lying liars when they say that the mall as it is is economically troubled. It isn’t.

There is more to gentrification than a bunch of trustfunded kids driving rents up.

None of this has much to do with the racism inherent in talking about “frontiers” as though Bushwick was some kind of empty wasteland where no man had yet to roam, but it has a lot to do with why gentrification happens.

and,
Jack, I’m telling you though. White people will remove the soul from a neighborhood in their quest to find a soul. And the soul can’t be killed, because the soul is with the working class,

Doyle;
I could say you are talking about class more than racism. It’s good to recognize gentrification wrecks neighborhoods. But class requires an over arching sense of commonality that white and black doesn’t imply. I just saw this stat once again. 1 billion people live on 1 dollar a day or ‘less’. 3.3 billion people live on 2 dollars a day or less.

Everyone knows there are stupendous problems accumulating in the U.S. What’s astonishing is the sheer inertia on the part of people whose best interest is to change that. Part of that in my view is the difficulty most people see in uniting. That’s not ordinary people’s fault. It has more to do with the fringe who understand what’s wrong from rising.

Iraq is a good example of why fringes hestitate. Far from being a disaster to the right in this country, the chaos is profitable. All that is bad is they can’t pick up the army for the next war. That is what the fringe faces here.

You can’t complain for long without feeling helpless. What am I to do? An old friend of mine here in the San Francisco Bay Area works in Tenant Union organizing. So he has a sense that things can be done. If one million people followed his example then things would start moving in terms of solutions. One million people in 300 million is just a fringe. But that’s the scale of what it takes.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor

Heh… did you go to Swat, too?