Community Gardens, A Solution To Urban Food Deserts?

Community garden, Harlem, 127th Street, near Lenox Avenue.

Using The Word "Unhoused" Instead Of "Homeless" Removes Stigma And Prejudice

Listening to a newscast on WNYC-AM, a public radio station in New York, the announcer used the word "unhoused" in referring to those lacking a place to call home. It's a reasonable substitute for "homeless." The last syllable of that word ("less") carries with it judgment, stigma, shame. It makes people feel that they are less than others.Whereas "unhoused" has a more sympathetic feeling and sound to it.

The word "homeless" conjures up images of people who wound up that way because of some character flaw, whether true or not.

The ways people lose their shelter are various and not always their fault such as a fire, illness, unemployment, or an unscrupulous landlord.

By referring to those unlucky to be without a home as "unhoused" allows them to be treated with civility, respect, humaneness, and dignity.

Should Compton Become The New Brooklyn?

 I don't know if Aja Brown, a young African-American urban planner, is still the mayor of Compton, California. Assuming that she is, I will point to an article that appeared on Los Angeles magazine's website dated October 2, 2013. (I accessed the article on February 5, 2019 while looking for anything about the city I once called home in the 1960s.)

What caught my attention, you ask? It was Ms. Brown's prediction, her desire, her belief that Compton will be the new Brooklyn. Disheartened, she said, by "the impact rap has had over Compton for decades," she wants to "rebrand our community."

As any mayor worth his or her salt would do, Ms. Brown touted Compton's many assets: "We're 15 minutes from downtown [it's not clear if she's talking about Los Angeles or Long Beach or both], the port and LAX. We're surrounded by freeways and have light and heavy rail and great institutions....We're ready to have a renaissance."

Let's hope that that renaissance she favors doesn't displace the city's  current residents. I don't know if Ms. Brown has ever been to Brooklyn. But before Compton is turned into a hipster's destination, she should bear in mind the many longtime Brooklynites, like the African-Americans living in the Crown Heights section, who had to leave because the area became too gentrified, too hip, too expensive.

There's an old saying, be careful what you wish for, you may get it. 

A Memorable Slogan

I love this slogan seen on the side of a truck belonging to a porta-potty company that was parked on Saint Nicholas Avenue, near 123rd Street, in Harlem: "We're Number One In Picking Up Number Two." It's a slogan more dog owners should adopt.

A New Nickname For Brooklyn, New York

Brooklyn, New York, has long been called the Borough of Churches because of the large number of houses of worship located there. But a few years ago because there were so many shootings in Brooklyn, an on-air person at New York's WBAI-FM gave the borough a new nickname--Gunsmoke, New York.

To be fair, Chicago deserves a new nickname more than Brooklyn does. In light of all the homicides in that city, Chicago instead of being the Windy City, should be known as Gunsmoke City or better still Tombstone City.

Whose Harlem Is It?

"Around 123rd Street, an enormous luxury high-rise is going up. The people of the neighborhood have scrawled, in white paint, on the walls of the construction site: Where will we live? For Harlem is an exceedingly valuable chunk of real estate and the state and the city and the real-estate interests are reclaiming the land and urban renewalizing--or gentrifying--the niggers out of it."--James Baldwin, "Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway?" (1986), published in Essence magazine (November 1996), quoted in Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway?: Community Politics and Grassroots Activism During the New Negro Era by Shannon King (New York University Press, 2015), page 1 (Introduction).

Now that gentrification has firmly taken root in Harlem, Baldwin's comments are still timely and relevant in the 21st century.

Federal Troops In Chicago Won't Solve Social Problems

President Donald Trump said that he would send federal troops to Chicago if the murder rate there kept increasing. The truth is the National Guard can only do so much to quell urban violence. The social ills in the black community of Chicago are so deep-seated and have existed for so long that a law-and-order approach can only have limited results. The presence of federal troops might even exacerbate the situation. It will take a slew of people--social workers, religious and civic leaders, psychologists, educators, corporate leaders, and others--to deal with the underlying causes of violence in Chicago and anywhere else. These problems did not occur overnight and they won't be eradicated overnight. To expect a law-and-order solution to be a quick fix is to be living in a fantasy world.

Bill Clinton, Gentrifier?

In Edward Klein's riveting nonfiction book, The Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas (Regnery Publishing, 2014), he wrote that when Obama campaign advisors David Axelrod and Jim Messina visited Clinton's Harlem office to get his support in reelecting Obama, Clinton "pointed out that Harlem had experienced a renaissance since he moved his post-presidential office there, and that he was largely responsible for Harlem's revived economy and gentrification."

The truth of the matter is that gentrification in Harlem was happening long before Clinton set foot there or in the White House.

New York magazine, in its July 23, 1979 issue, ran a story by James Mannion called "Who Will Inhabit Harlem?" The article stated that "as middle-class blacks have come to Harlem, so too have whites. Bankers and realtors report that over the past three years, young white families have begun buying homes in Harlem."

Furthermore, "Harlemites are asking themselves how many more whites are going to move in and what that will mean for the most visible black community in America."

For Bill Clinton to puff out his chest and claim that his presence in Harlem brought about its economic prosperity and gentrification is nothing more than hubris.

The Importance of African-American Media

"There's no way--and I say it with as much feeling and passion as I can--there's no way for any American to understand the South Side of Chicago or Harlem or Los Angeles without regularly reading African-American media."--Lerone Bennett, Jr., former executive editor, Ebony magazine, author, and historian. (From Richard Prince's Journal-isms, August 15, 2003.)

It's a safe bet that most of the white people who have recently moved to Harlem rarely or never pick up a black newspaper or magazine, opting instead to read the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. Therefore they have little or no knowledge of the people among whom they have chosen to live.

"The Block," A Play About Inner City Family Life

The Block, written by Earl A. Johnson and directed by Hamid Fardjad, ran for a month [October 28-November 20, 1983] at the Actor's Outlet Theatre on West 28th Street [in Manhattan]. It concerned itself with the problems faced by inner city black teenagers from the perspective of three families: a single, alcoholic mother on welfare who wants her daughter to quit high school and find a job; a stable but overly protective and inquisitive single mother who wants to meet her daughter's "little male friends," and a two-parent home where there are four teenagers present. Three of the four kids are problems. One daughter is pregnant, one son is involved in drug-dealing, and another son is consistently absent from school in order to pursue a boxing career.

Although many of the cast members were in group foster care, The Block did not specifically deal with foster care, only the problems that could cause a child to be placed by the authorities in an environment outside of the family unit. The play made the point that these problems can and do take place in any type of family setting. (It should also be pointed out that a child can be placed in foster care for reasons other than parental neglect and/or child abuse.)

The issues raised by the play were ones many adolescents would readily identify with: the lack of parent-child communication, teenage pregnancy, juvenile delinquency, the monetary lure of drug peddling, the struggle to prepare oneself for the adult world, racism, et cetera.

The Block, based on the experiences and thoughts of its 12 non-professional teenage actors, did not try to arrive at any simplistic solutions. Its goal was to present, in dramatic form, the reality of the streets and of home life for many kids in urban neighborhoods and to give us food for thought and discussion.

"Some grownups can learn something from it [the play], too," said 19-year-old Margaret M., a cast member who was working as a nurse's aide, "because there's some parents who act like [the parents in the play] toward their teenagers and there are some teenagers who don't listen to what their parents say. It is not only for the teenagers to learn something from the play, it's also good for some of the grownups to understand their kids better."

One interesting aspect of the play was the pairing of professional actors with non pros. Although it was easy to tell who was a pro and who was not by the quality of the acting, that in no way took anything away from the impact of the scenes or their message.

All that the participants asked the audience to do was come to the theatre with open minds and to check their negative thoughts  about inner city life at the door.

The Block was conceived through improvisation, and was sponsored by the New York City Human Resources Administration's Office of Direct Child Care Services.

This article was originally published in the Harlem Weekly newspaper in 1983.