gentrificationofthevillage

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One by one, many of the working class quarters of London have been invaded by the middle classes – upper and lower. Once this process of ‘gentrification’ starts in a district it goes on rapidly until all or most of the original working class occupiers are displaced and the whole social character of the district is changed.

Ruth Glass, London: Aspects of Change

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Learning From: The Gentrification of the Mind by Sarah Schulman

The statistical correlation between high HIV/AIDS infection rates in the city and rate of gentrification is no coincidence. When many people lost their lives during the AIDS epidemic in New York City, city administrators were already underway with their plans to develop real estate to attract richer residents to save the city from bankruptcy. The terrible loss of lives, which ruined families and ravaged communities, was quite an opportunity for them. 

Now the city is flush with money (at least before COVID) yet public services are a wreck. NYU undergrads saunter around Washington Square Park, by four million dollar townhouses. The West Village might be the home of the Stonewall Riots but I doubt any patrons of that bar would reside there now. From white flight to late 20th century return, COVID flight and possibly back again, gentrification is built on exploitation and a distanced disregard for the long-term communities that reside in these locations.  Though it is too late for the Village, this problem is spreading to Queens, Brooklyn, uptown Manhattan and the  Bronx and merits quick and determined action 

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213 East 2nd Street

The former residence of the Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries in the East Village where Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson housed and took care of queer youth without homes. 

Now it’s one of many building filled with luxury condominiums that brought with them a new trendy name “Alphabet City”.

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What Happened at the Stonewall Riots and do we care?

Accounts are unclear and contradictory. History is messy and archives aren’t necessarily our friends. From New York with STAR to GALA in San Francisco and other communities all around the world, queer and trans people of color have been the foundation of the queer liberation movement, no matter who threw the first brick.

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Alvin Baltrop’s photographs at the piers. Baltrop was a self-taught gay photographer from the Bronx. He took pictures at the Hudson waterfront piers for a period of 11 years in the 1970s and early 1980s. He was “determined to preserve the frightening, mad, unbelievable, violent, and beautiful things that were going on at that time”. Many of photographs capture the allure and taboo of cruising culture, the relationships built between community members and how many people found solace in the derelict buildings the city has forgotten about 

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Fenced Out and Forced to Migrate

This community made documentary chronicles the forced removal of queer people of color from the piers. The piers served as a multifunctional point of community: for camraderie, performance, sex and escape. It was a free, acessible space for those who searched for place and the sense of belonging that came with it. This importance of placee and community must be contextualized by the work that Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries did, like providing for their found families and forming the STAR House (permanent address at 213 East 2nd Street) for queer youth.

Taking away the piers and making them into Hudson River Park was marketed by city officials as urban revitilization that would better the community. However, it marked the commodification of the area that only served certain New Yorkers, defintely not the community that called it home for the last 50 years.

Fenced OUT was created by FIERCE!, Paper Tiger Television and The Neutral Zone.

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Hudson River Park today

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Stonewall (1969) - (2018)

The first picture depicts a group of young people outside on the Inn a few days after the riot broke out. For some, their eyes are bright and seemingly hopeful and they gaze into the camera. Like the knew of the significance of the moment and were basking in it. It is like Sylvia Rivera said in an interview with Leslie Feinberg, "I’m glad I was in the Stonewall riot. I remember when someone threw a Molotov cocktail, I thought: “My god, the revolution is here. The revolution is finally here!"

Almost 50 years later and in many ways the revolution worked. Gay bars cannot be raided for existing, more people fell comfortable being out, gay marriage is federally legal and our society is continuing to examine gender and sexuality. However, there is an insidious underbelly to this popular acceptance. 'Gay is okay' when it feeds into the norms of American life. When Pride can be co-signed by capitalism (like Jet Blue on the banner in the second picture) and queer people are deemed acceptable. This fed into the gay normalcy narrative that the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) and activists like Randy Wicker wanted to share. Not only is this reductive, anti-radical and supporting other systems of oppression in the attempt to dismantle homophobia, it is to the detriment of queer folks who didn't live in this box of respectable 'normalcy' (i.e. trans people, queer people of color, disabled queer people).

It's hard to be happy about 'Out and Proud at McKinsey' when people queer people on the same island are being attacked or living without basic needs.

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“....Marsha P Johnson was a freedom fighter and she taught us how to fight....”

This song is a modern retrospective of black activists, including Marsha P Johnson, and the influence they have on intersectional black movements today.

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In the Kiki Ballroom Scene, Queer Kids of Color Can Be Themselves (2019)

“Now, almost 20 years later[after 2000], LGBTQ youth continue to seek refuge in the community. Today there are about a dozen active kiki “houses” in New York City, each composed of a “mother, ” a “father,” and a gaggle of “children.” Every month, kiki house members get together for extravagant competitions known as balls: joyous, raucous affairs where house members vie for trophies and cash prizes in a series of runway competitions and performance-art battles. Balls are infused with safe-sex messaging and typically offer free STI testing. They provide an alternative to high-risk behavior for troubled youth. Membership in a kiki house is a huge responsibility—members are expected to show up for weekly rehearsals and meetings, even as they struggle with health issues and homelessness.”

Notice the geographic shift to the outer boroughs, as historically queer spots in Manhattan have been taken over by richer, more ‘acceptable’ new residents. Yet with prices rising, even the outer boroughs are facing pressure from landlords and hipsters alike.

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Looking Forward

How can we reimagine the future as queer people of color? Though the pandemic has been, quite bluntly, terrible, we can build something new. We have to, since the disparate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic were caused by systemic injustices in the United States. So maybe we can utilize the rise in apartment vacancies with housing for the disproportionate amount of  queer people of color without homes. This is especially important because trans women do not have a shelter run by and for them in NYC and 40% of the homeless youth in New York City identify as LGBTQ+ though they are only an estimated 7% of the total youth population). Movements like Defund NYPD can also help since as LGBTQ+ folks as they are targeted more often by the police, even when the are the victims, and are brutalized on many occasions. This is even more likely if the person is without permanent housing. Coming out of this pandemic we need to bolster what helped so many of survive: our communities.  As the great black, queer poet Audre Lorde said “[the saying] that you can't fight City Hall, is a rumor being spread by City Hall.” The collective power of community organizing is everything

Check out There Goes the Neighborhood , a WNYC podcast with The Nation, that covers gentrification more broadly in Brooklyn and later Los Angeles and Miami.