Tag Archives: human rights violation

Study Circle Pamphlet: Race and class determine ‘who gets the land’

Dear friends,

The link below will allow access to a web version of a pamphlet developed for study circles addressing community organizing and community rebuilding in Middle East and East Baltimore. The ‘points of reflections’ on the last pages uses the book as a resource.
There is also a print version of this pamphlet which will print into a 2-sided pamphlet, front to back, and can be stapled for convenience. Please be in touch with me if you would like access to the print version.

Please use as a tool on this path of changing the status quo of rebuilding disinvested and abandoned communities for the white and middle and upper classes while neglecting low income and historic communities of color-and the acute and long-term trauma caused by these oppressive and discriminatory practices.

In spirit!

RebuildingMEBaltimore_PamphletWEB_FINAL2.pdf>

Rebuilding Middle East Baltimore:
Race and class determine ‘who gets the land’
Marisela B Gomez
www.mariselabgomez.com

Images: Groundbreaking for Hopkins student housing during 2 rebuilding projects in East Baltimore (1956 Broadway Redevelopment Project, black and white photo; 2001-current Johns Hopkins and EBDI Development Project, color photo). In both, more than 800 households, of low income and African American people, were displaced to make room for Johns Hopkins expansion. The legacy of this history of power imbalance continues today, in the people and the spaces of East Baltimore.

Renaming history to hide past and present racism and classism in East Baltimore

The recent article ‘Prospect of prosperity means loss of name: ‘Rebranding’ Middle East at the cost of its heritage’ on May 26 by Steve Kilar suggests that we just have to accept that branding by public-private partnerships rule the day and any history which reminds us of what needs to change to make us a more equitable city is removed.

Perhaps it is more about keeping the biggest employer Johns Hopkins University and Hospital, aka as the powerful 1% of Maryland basking in its continuously expanding geography in East Baltimore, feel safe and happy? A name change in line with its vision of a ‘mixed-income’ community and its decision of whose history is worthy of being preserved and whose is forgotten simply reflects its power.

A bit more reflective of the process of this suggested name change would be the agreement with residents by Forest City and EBDI not to change the name after residents said they did not want this to happen. Nevertheless, off they scampered with those public funds to hire yet another marketing firm to do yet another campaign. The public meetings where this current new name was supposedly presented to and accepted by the community were not really public; public is when all the affected community is made aware and invited. The process of community input by EBDI and Forest City is to target selected community members who will not rock ‘their’ boat on the way to a white-washed community of means. Meanwhile it is exactly this repeated history of non-transparency, back-door meetings, and land-grabbing by the powerful Johns Hopkins supported by its public and private partners which must be acknowledged and changed to prevent the continuous uprooting of historic low income and African American residents to accommodate the elite university.  

But how can it when the history continues to be buried and renamed and residents continue to be displaced: out of sight out of mind. This history continues to repeat itself evident by the initial 14 acres of Hopkins in 1889 expanded to the current 70+ acres in 2013. Where are those thousands of families who previously lived in the 60+ acres next to the temporary and changing borders of Johns Hopkins and its affiliates? Where do they live? How have they benefited from the expansion of Johns Hopkins into their land? What happened to their voice in rebuilding their community, their social networks that provided stability? We cannot honestly answer these questions because we have systematically abandoned, disrupted, and displaced the history of this community to make way for the ever expanding giant of Johns Hopkins? Will the name of the community change to seal this lost history? 

Will our segregated-separate and unequal- city every change or simply grow more so? There remains hope if we keep lifting up the truth in the midst of the glamorous changes being shoved down residents’ throats. Let us remember what Mayor O’Malley said in 2001 at the beginning of this project: ‘We really need to arrive at a common vision that can be shared by Johns Hopkins and the citizens of East Baltimore… If that can’t happen, I’m not going to force it down anybody’s throat’. (‘City, Hopkins weigh plan for east-side development More than 20 blocks could be razed for `bioscience park’; Building on city’s strengths’ The Sun 11 January 2001) Well Governor O’Malley, there is some major forcing going on so maybe you can step in and facilitate that common vision! Unless that was just convenient rhetoric back then when your administration was buying public support for a project which never intended to respect the human rights of residents abandoned and marginalized by past and current inequitable systems, policies, and practices? A project which always intended to bury a history of one people for the continued expansion of another.

A new year offers opportunity for a new ethic in development!

House remains standing as protest to non-participatory development by the city of Baltimore and partners.

The neighborhood of Brentwood Village in Baltimore, Maryland is undergoing some changes. Residents of the area agree that there is need for change. But like residents in other parts of the city currently undergoing rebuilding they feel they should be included in the changes. And participation should include not only home owners; it should include renters-of public and privately owned houses-, businesses, churches.

In the 3-block area bordered by Barclay, Biddle, Brentwood, and Chase undergoing bulldozing and preparation for development one renter of public housing feels the disrespect for community residents like herself should stop. To make her point very clear, she has refused to move from her city-owned rental housing. In late 2010 she received the first public notice from the Housing Authority of Baltimore (HABC) -which owns and manages subsidized housing for low-income residents- alerting her and her family that they would have to move in approximately 90 days to make room for a development project. The other residents in these 3 blocks also received similar notices. Ms. Williams advised them to wait and find out whether they could stay and be part of the rebuilt community. Some residents of the area had been there for more than 20 years. Ms. Williams lived in her house on Barclay street for 39 years and felt the residents of the area should have been involved in the plans for development and given an opportunity to stay. Ten years previously she tried to buy her house and the one adjacent to provide a home for homeless people. After asking the officials at HABC about what would be developed in her neighborhood she still does not know. The latest rumor is that it will be a football stadium built by nearby St. Francis Academy. More than one year since she received notice to move, her house remains standing with the adjacent one to allow structural security. The houses across and adjacent to these have been demolished. Ms. Williams will appear in court on January 22, 2013 to defend herself against a city department which has violated her rights as a citizen.

This non-participatory process of community redevelopment continues in Baltimore city unchallenged by many of us. It is important to note that this type of non-inclusion of residents in plans to redevelop their community typically occurs in historically disinvested communities of color and low-income neighborhoods. Recent evidence of this pattern is the current 88-acre redevelopment project in Middle East Baltimore where the majority African American and low-income and working poor residents learned through the newspaper that their homes would be bulldozed to make room for a Johns Hopkins expansion project.

Maybe it is time for all of us to look a little deeper at the pattern of human rights violation that occurs when governmental institutions partner with private institutions-corporations such as universities, hospitals, etc- in non-community participatory rebuilding practices. When community members have no opportunity to participate in what occurs in their community, their rights as citizens are violated. This consistent pattern of disrespect and human rights violation to our communities of low income and color require evaluation and change. Residents of these communities have often lived through years of  disinvestment and resultant deterioration in their communities; they deserve to participate in development plans and to benefit from the improvements.This type of human rights violation would not occur in Federal HIll or Roland Park.

Instead we continue to segregate and concentrate communities of lesser resources which increases the growth of income inequality. Let us call on those who remain with some ethic in our government to convene a panel and investigate the history of public-private partnerships and their resultant benefit to the public. Before we continue to hand off greater public responsibility to private enterprises in the guise of community and economic development let us investigate how they have or have not contributed to the growing gap between the rich and the poor-in health and wealth-in Baltimore city. All the citizens of Baltimore deserve this type of investigation because the growing gap between the rich and the poor affects us all.