To build just communities we must first understand how we built unjust communities: In the new liberal (neoliberal) strategies of building enclaves of privilege/injustice, first the elite demonize the spaces they want, this justifies destroying them, then they rebuild them, then they boost the place for the new race and class, after they change the name.  And lastly, they protect the new community from the rest of the city. Back in the day, they protected their new enclaves of power and separation by building walls around the people they loved. These days, they protect them with policing force. Case in point, Johns Hopkins University and its plan for private policing.

Ras Baraka reminded us this weekend at the Gentrification Conference in Newark NJ of this wise truth of Chokwe Lumumba: ‘if you don’t love the people, you will betray the people’. The powerful elite and our government of Baltimore and Maryland do not love the people of Baltimore and therefore easily betray them. Continue reading →