I totally agree with batkid. As a black person who has contributed directly to the gentrification of west oakland I'd like to say that gentrification is an issue that can not be reduced to race, social status, industry, etc. I would encourage people to think critically about how their actions affect the communities they live in, but not to get caught up in liberal guilt land unless you plan on taking some kind of direct action. On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 12:02 PM, Craig Rouskey <craigrouskey(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote: -- ------- Andrew Lowe Cell: 831-332-2507 http://roshambomedia.com

Just to chime in having observed this thread, and having previously restrained myself from noting 8th/Alice is not west oakland, and in the wake of the bizarre white guilt racism on the recent threads- I don't want to be pedantic but as an urbanist I usually shudder when bay area liberals start talking about gentrification, invariably bringing identity and cultural politics into the mix. Identity and culture are important but gentrification is an issue of political economy, period. As geographer Dave Madden writes in this on-point guardian piece, <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/10/gentrification-not-urban-renaissance> "The least useful way to criticize gentrification is to obsess about an area's character, coolness, or even worse, "grit". Lamenting the proliferation of cupcakes and cappuccino is a staple of reporting on places like Williamsburg or Dalston. But this kind of story reduces something that's all about inequality to middle-class agonizing over authenticity." In short, while people such as ourselves are often able to leverage our relative economic, social, cultural capital in securing housing more so than other segments of society, real estate is not reducible to a consumer choice akin to buying a t-shirt or an mp3 off itunes. White people didn't "just decide" to leave Oakland in the post-war years, and young people aren't "just deciding" to move back to the city for kicks. I don't know about you all but my choice in housing wasn't between getting a mortgage in the suburbs or moving to east oakland. It was between a few places like east oakland, and has been in every city I've lived in. There are political and financial forces shaping the way we live and work that are stronger than the few choices we may have in finding housing, however greater these choices may be than those that more marginalized members of society have. It's important to keep the focus where it belongs- dismantling capitalism and the system of white supremacy that keeps it in place and building community, not self-loathing white/middle-class guilt. m p.s. David Madden is basically riffing off the late great geographer Neil Smith. One starting point for further inquiry: *The new urban frontier: Gentrification and the revanchist city*. Routledge, 1996. On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 12:39 PM, Jenny Ryan &lt;tunabananas(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: --