Gentrification - Uneven Earth

Kathputli colony’s fear of displacement

April 25, 2017September 13, 2017

Houses torn apart with sledgehammer in the Kathputli colony. — Houses torn apart with a sledgehammer in the Kathputli colony.

by Eleonora Fanari

“The vans and bulldozer came first, rumbling along the main road; they stopped

opposite the ghetto of the magician. A loudspeaker began to blare: “Civic

Beautification programme…Prepare instantly for evacuation to new site… this slum is

a public eyesore, can no longer be tolerated…while bulldozers moved forwards into

the slum, a door was slammed shut…but not all the magicians were captured; not all

of them were carted off…and it said that the day after the bulldozing of the magicians’

ghetto, a new slum was reported in the heart of the city.”

– Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (1980)

In his famous novel Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie tells the story of a magician ghetto, or as Rushdie calls it, the “moving slum”. The magic infused in the novel has captured the attention of many readers worldwide, but only few know that this magic was the province of an actual community living in Old Delhi, and that the magician’s slum in which Saleem Sinai takes refuge is an actual slum that was subjected to “clearance” during the Emergency of the 1970s. Subsequently, the settlement managed to re-appear close to Shadipur bus depot.

Rushdie’s magicians are the magicians of Kathputli colony.

A family of artist in Kathputli colony. — A family of artists in Kathputli colony.

The story is repeating itself, and after 50 years of existence, the infamous colony of Kathputli (puppeteer in Hindi), is once again being threatened by the postcolonial city’s power, which, in the name of development and adjusting to the modern standards of a “global metropolis”, orders the eviction of its own inhabitants.

Kathputli, like other slums, is considered ugly and dirty ; the lack of sanitation, running water and sewage system gives this space a negative connotation while making the life of the inhabitants a constant struggle. Nevertheless, this does not prevent them from practising their beloved art, jumping on stage and performing in front of a respectful audience.

Today, Kathputli is considered one of the largest colony of artists in India, inhabited by acrobats, dancers, singers, musicians, puppeteers and shamans who share this ostensibly shabby space, where art and magic are practised amid narrow colourful streets. Kathputli, like other slums, is considered ugly and dirty ; the lack of sanitation, running water and sewage system gives this space a negative connotation while making the life of the inhabitants a constant struggle. Nevertheless, this does not prevent them from practising their beloved art, jumping on stage and performing in front of a respectful audience.

Fanari1 — Nikka the fire eater, playing Kachipuri (a Rajasthani dance) in his courtyard.

The present threat of eviction is one of the first strategically planned in-situ redevelopment projects aiming to rehabilitate the public space, both to finance the urban project that aims to make the city slum-free, and to relocate poor neighbourhoods. Being one of the first project, Kathputli will set up the base for a bigger plan of city gentrification. This means putting at risk the life of a huge population: in Delhi alone, the number of household inhabiting these almost “invisible spaces” accounts for more than 30 per cent of the city’s population.

The project and its opponents

In 2009, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) sold this land to a private construction agency, Raheja Developers, famous for having created Mumbai’s modern skyline at the expense of numerous slums. The land was sold for just an amount of 6 crores rupees, (60 million rupees), an amount of money the colony dwellers argue they could have put together if they had known the land was far sale for such a low price at the time of sale. The real value of the land was of 1000 crores rupees (10.000 million rupees). The entire project is part of a larger development scheme launched in 2010 by the Indian government, the Master Plan of Delhi, 2021, a plan to make Delhi a global metropolis and a world-class city.

Banner at the entrance of the Kathputli colony.

Following the plan, Raheja will be building a 5.22 hectares commercial center in the area. The result of this collaboration between the DDA and Raheja will be a luxurious showplace of grand proportions: the planned 54-floor tower will have a ‘skyclub’ and a helipad, and hold 170 premium condos of more than 1000 square feet per unit. Although the DDA is claiming that the Kathputli colony will be resettled in the same area as the planned high-end dwelling, no contract or written word was given yet.

Under the directive of the DDA, the police forcibly entered in the slum area with bulldozers, along with workmen carrying sledgehammers.

The apparent calm of the colony, which already witnessed violence and threat some years ago, got disrupted on 19 December 2016, when it got surrounded by 500 policemen and paramilitary troops. Under the directive of the DDA, the police forcibly entered in the slum area with bulldozers, along with workmen carrying sledgehammers.

Houses thorn apart by the DDA in the Kathutli colony. — Houses demolished by the DDA in the Kathutli colony.

While many houses have already been torn down, the dwellers of the colony, supported by NGOs and volunteers, are organizing themselves to oppose the unconsented demolition. Anwari Begun, a Rajasthani woman living in the colony argues, “This is our land! We came here more than 50 years ago when this place was only forest and we created our colony with our hands. Whose else is this land?”.

The entire process has been carried on without any involvement, or any kind of agreement reached with the inhabitants of the colony. The dwellers only learned about the eviction plan in 2013, when rumors came up in the news. At that time, a wave of violence hit the colony: some dwellers were beaten up by the police and other were arrested on false charges. Until now, only 400 households have moved into the transit camp in Anand Parvat, 4 km away from the current Kathputli area. Although some families have signed contracts recognizing their relocation to the transit camp as “voluntary”, Delhi Solidarity Group, the NGO supporting the cause, claims the officers are forcefully pushing the families to leave their houses, and some dwellers say their houses got demolished without any consent. Moreover, on January 8th, the 25 public toilets available in the colony were demolished, leaving the dwellers in even worse conditions hygiene-wise.

Although some families have signed contracts recognizing their relocation to the transit camp as “voluntary”, Delhi Solidarity Group, the NGO supporting the cause, claims the officers are forcefully pushing the families to leave their houses, and some dwellers say their houses got demolished without any consent.

Bhirju Bhaat, a young puppeteer of the colony who is active in the movement against the demolition, explains the inconsistencies of the project. “After almost four years of discussions, the DDA has not given us any document that specify the entire conditions of the relocation plan. They argue they will build up 2,800 apartments for all of us in the 20% of the entire area, but the number of the entire households is of about 3,600! Where will the other residents go? Moreover we do not want to live in 54-storey apartment buildings. What if the elevator breaks down? Who will fix it? “.

Singing and protesting in Kathputli colony.

Today, the colorful Rajasthani clothes commonly seen in the settlement are mixed up with the uniforms of the numerous police officers. Puppets and dholas seem to already be submerged under the broken bricks that lay on the edge of numerous lanes, and songs evocating Indian mythology got substituted by political slogans. The dwellers are struggling for the recognition of their rights, at the daily meeting thousands of people are gathering to discuss their strategies, and to propose a new plan of development. “We won’t move unless all our demands are recognized, and only when all of us have a written paper with the allocated flat”, shouts Dilip Bhaat, the Pradhan (leader) of the colony.

The violence suffered by the inhabitants in the last years, and the brutality with which the police have invaded the colony definitely do not help to create an environment where solutions and decisions can be negotiated.

Overall, the project presents many inconsistent and unacceptable burdens, such as the current environment in the relocation site, which lacks of basic services such as running water, and hygienic conditions seem to be worse than those of the slum. Moreover, the violence suffered by the inhabitants in the last years, and the brutality with which the police have invaded the colony definitely do not help to create an environment where solutions and decisions can be negotiated.

Development for whom?

How much this process will actually benefit the people of the colony is highly debatable. Even if people obtain the promised flats and the recognition of their housing rights, will this represent a real improvement? Clearly, this in-situ relocation plan does not correspond to the kind of surroundings the people of the colony are used to, and it will be hard for them to adjust to the new life habits linked to the changed housing arrangements.

It is obvious that the people of the colony are not feeling very confident about living next to a massive, posh condo tower. Most of them do not believe it will be possible to share this space with the city’s wealthy inhabitants, and believe even less that they will provided with free houses close to a such iconic tower that embodies the identity of the idealized modern city.

Fanari4 — Lala Bhaat, a master puppeteer, playing with his puppet.

The inhabitants also feel uncomfortable living in small and high floor flats. “How would we work in one-room flats with our wood and stone, which will apparently also host our families, and our huge equipment?” Asks Lal Bhaat, a Master puppeteer from the Kathputli colony.

It is clear that the flats will create an environment where these slum dwellers will prefer not to perform, as they will not have enough space to manage their material and practice. They will hence try to generate income from a new sort of livelihood and the art will be lost. Although they will be able to find other jobs, they will probably experience fear and embarrassment in doing another activities, as argued by G. Sikkha.The Kathputli colony will be destroyed and people will feel isolated and depressed. The women will start doing household chores as maids in the nearby high-end districts and apartments to meet their daily needs. Their lives will be harmed, but their identities as artists and their economic autonomy will also be completely lost.

What strikes me most in this struggle is the incapacity of the government to think of an urban development plan which differs from the commercial use of public space. The development model pursued by the Indian government continues to be driven by market forces, through which every place sees and evaluates itself. The gentrification of the Kathputli colony’s space relies on the creation of consumerist spaces necessary for the capitalist model of development to continue to thrive. It will convey the triumph of the Modern Indian State, symbolized and embodied by the iconic tower.

What strikes me most in this struggle is the incapacity of the government to think of an urban development plan which differs from the commercial use of public space. […] Social discrimination drives the Indian government to consider this space an embarrassment, and as a slum to be cleaned up, instead of looking at Kathputli colony as a resource.

As Ashish Kothari observes, in the present globalization era, countries and city have been redefined exclusively according to the world market, changing rapidly the meaning and function of places and their relation to each other and to their inhabitants.

Social discrimination drives the Indian government to consider this space an embarrassment, and as a slum to be cleaned up, instead of looking at Kathputli colony as a resource. If the policies were able to respond to the need of the people, as they are supposed to, and merge some commercial and economic activity with a real inclusion of diversity into the city spaces, Kathputli would be transformed in an attractive artistic space, with a craft market, a open theatre, a dance school. All this could benefit both the people and the government, which could implement its tourist development strategy in this peculiar and enchanting area.

Nikka showing the album of his family' s performances. — Nikka showing the album of his family’ s performances.

In fact, dwellers submitted their own proposal for local development, which integrated tourism and artistic contributions to the local economy. This proposal was not considered a serious alternative and rejected by the government. If this proposal had been accepted as a viable alternative, and agenda of improvement of living conditions for slum dwellers could have substituted the exclusionary, paternalistic and short-sighted “clean up the slums” plan. This would have been a sound development strategy using human resources in the best way possible and contributing in meaningful and sustainable ways to the local economy and cultural life.

A young artist of Kathputli leaving the colony to sell the "horses" in the market. — A young artist of Kathputli leaving the colony to sell puppet horses on the local market.

If the government does not use its power to intervene and modify these structures of oppression, India’s national motto “unity in diversity” will remain wishful thinking.

Unfortunately, today, both policies and architecture are failing at constructing spaces that are suitable to slum dwellers’ needs. As the professor Tapan Chakravarti argues, “it will be a tragedy if we lose such living evidences of intuitive architectural practice; it is fast deteriorating at the present site and it needs to be reinvented with sensitivity”. A sterile reconstruction centered on designing spaces for wealthy newcomers at the detriment of the existing community’s right to self-determination will completely alienate people of the Kathputli colony from their surroundings. In a society like India, with an entrenched caste system, this kind of gentrification becomes even more dangerous as it is naturalized and justified in the already present stratification of society. If the government does not use its power to intervene and modify these structures of oppression, India’s national motto “unity in diversity” will remain wishful thinking.

Eleonora Fanari is a researcher currently based in New Delhi. She has been working on the issue of social exclusion, minorities, and land rights in collaboration with several non-governmental organizations. She is currently associated with Kalpavriksh, a non profit organization working on environmental and social issues, where she is carrying on research on conservation and tribal rights in protected forest areas. She blogs here.

Broadway, New Haven

May 25, 2015September 13, 2017

by Michael Lee-Murphy

Sunday May 17 was graduation day for Yale University. The day is more properly called commencement, and refers to the time when Yale graduates commence the part of their lives when they don’t live in New Haven. The day was marked by the full closure of several blocks of downtown, massive police presence, and sun dresses. The interchange of I-91 and I-95 was completely closed for a full half hour to allow for the escape of Joe Biden, who had addressed the graduating class.

I was on the corner of York Street and Broadway when Biden’s motorcade happened to pass. It’s been a pastime of many in New Haven to complain that Yale’s recent restructuring of the Broadway strip has been to effectively keep the non-White and poorer populations of the predominantly Black Dixwell neighborhood away from Yale. This was at the very least the result, if not the outright goal, of the University’s buying up of most of the property on the block. An article in Sunday’s paper, however, laid bare the racism at the heart of Yale’s machinations. Ethnic and economic cleansing was the desire as well as the result.

Sunday’s edition of the New Haven Register featured a front page with two stories both running several thousand words in length about what a great place Yale is, and what the school has done for New Haven. You could read in the paper what the cops and the secret service were telling you in the street through barricades and wags of the finger. Stay away, this is not for you.

The stories hung under the massive blue headline IVY + ELM, a photo of the Sterling Memorial Library and the text:Yale pumps more than $2B a year into city, region. The headline cleverly merges the city and the region as if the divided politics of the two in real life isn’t one of the big problems about urban policy in Connecticut.

One of the stories, by Yale beat reporter Ed Stannard, ran just over 3,000 words. The headline in the print edition gave us two words for the act Yale has performed upon Broadway. “Yale the star of rebuilding Broadway,” read the print version, while the web version of the story reads “Yale University and New Haven team up to remake Broadway for retail, restaurants.” Already there are some interesting differences between the version of the story meant for single day consumption, and the version archived to the internet.

“Remake” means “make something again, or differently.” Rebuild means “build (something) again after it has been damaged or destroyed.” So which act has Yale performed upon Broadway?

Yale’s Vice President for New Haven Affairs Bruce Alexander, of whom the article is essentially a profile, gives us yet a third word for the act Yale has performed upon Broadway. From the article:

“Alexander said he was walking on York Street near Broadway and noticing litter and storefronts such as barbershops and liquor stores. Since Yalies went through the area on their way to the Yale Co-op, he thought it needed an upgrade.”

An upgrade. A remake. A rebuild.

When was Broadway damaged or destroyed so as to be rebuilt? Why would the Sunday print edition of the paper need to imply that it was? The headline and the article itself was quite obviously geared toward the parents of Yale students in town for the weekend, looking for a souvenir of the day. The choice of headline, articles, and layout reflects what is a truism about Connecticut’s cities in general: they are not built for the people that live in them, especially in the era of late capitalism.

“Poor people will not be allowed to ruin the mall. People of color will not be allowed to ruin the mall. Barbershops will not be allowed to ruin the mall. New Haven is a mall and Yale kids are its customers.”

The article doesn’t say when Alexander had this stroll along York Street and slouched toward Broadway, but Alexander has been Yale’s downtown property man since the late 1990s. Before he came to Yale, Alexander negotiated with cities throughout America to build malls for the Rouse Company. The complaint of many that Broadway now feels like a mall rather than a city block is not a curmudgeonly gripe about the good ol’ days: that has been Yale’s goal for Broadway from the start.

Brian McGrath, the business manager of Chapel West Special Services District — a sub-municipal development organization with its own taxation and zoning policies, currently trying to change the name of the Dwight neighborhood to Chapel West — illuminated to the Yale Herald in 2012 Yale’s philosophy behind the redevelopment.

“If you want synergy, and you want the maximum number of customers, you need to run it like a mall. You need everyone opening and closing at the same time. You have some stores that close early? That’s going to ruin your mall. You can’t have a customer leaving trash on the sidewalk—that’s going to ruin your mall. You can’t have a customer attracting bums—that’s going to ruin your mall.”

This fear of their mall being ruined led Yale to force out a number of undesirable businesses along the road. Streetview on Google Maps has a feature which allows you to take a cyberstroll down Broadway and compare what the street looked like in 2008 to what it looks like now. The Yale Co-op, a locally owned bookstore, was forced out in favor of a Barnes & Noble branch. Next door, the new Apple store gleams into the night, and happily offers workshops to the New Haven Police Department. Next to the Apple store is the building York Sq Cinema used to share with a store selling Yale themed clothing. York Sq closed in 2005 and the building is now entirely Campus Customs. Cutler’s Record Store. Quality Wine and Liquors. Even the Au Bon Pain at the intersection with York was seen to be not fit for Yale’s purposes when Yale decided not to renew its lease back in 2013.

Yale has had varying degrees of involvement with the closure of these businesses — Yale said it loved Cutler’s — but at the very least, the Art House theater, record store crowd ain’t the J Crew Kiko Milano crowd.

There were usually homeless people outside or inside the Au Bon Pain. Now they are gone. No longer will the homeless of New Haven be allowed to ruin the mall. Now the location is a “Emporium DNA,” where you can get a pair of shiny trousers for the price of a month’s rent.

But for Win Davis, the executive Director of the Town Green Special Services District, it is the Apple store that is the jewel in the shitcrown that is the new Broadway. The store is “a huge get. … That’s a huge bellwether for our retail community and what is difficult about retail and something that Yale has helped us overcome is talking with people and getting people to come to town despite the census data.”

There are only two possibilities for what “despite the census data” means here: either despite the people of color, or despite the poor people. In New Haven’s segregation, there is significant overlap between the two categories.

Poor people will not be allowed to ruin the mall. People of color will not be allowed to ruin the mall. Barbershops will not be allowed to ruin the mall. New Haven is a mall and Yale kids are its customers.

It is further unclear in the above quote which “people” Davis was trying to convince to come to New Haven. Either he means national chains who want to sell their high-end shit despite the fact that 25% of New Haven residents live below the poverty line, or suburban types who would come into town, but have been looking at the census data and doing reconnaissance on the skin color of the people that live there and they don’t like what they see. Let us keep the community away so we can bring in a retail community, which along with synergy is an unspeakably horrible phrase that only signals the destruction of things we hold dear.

The remaking of Broadway as a mall is in fact a very old tradition in New Haven, representing no new ideas. As Mandi Isaacs Jackson details in her book Model City Blues, the 1960s saw an effort to “remake” New Haven as “New England’s Newest City,” as if there was no New Haven that existed before.

Here’s a 1960 pamphlet from New Haven’s Redevelopment Agency replicated in Jackson’s book, with an army of zombie housewife shoppers lurching toward New Haven.

As Jackson writes,

“[G]eographer Don Mitchell argues that inherent in spaces like the new downtown “shopping mecca” is the ‘perceived need for order, surveillance, and control over the behavior of the public.’ The primary aim of corporate planners, like those who planned New Haven’s new downtown shopping, parking, and hotel center, argued Mitchell, was to impose ‘limits and controls on spatial interaction.’ In this way, public spaces such as malls, shopping centers, and redeveloped downtowns become what Mitchell calls ‘spaces of controlled spectacle.’ But Mitchell also asserts that such spaces have never actually been inclusive, even in their most basic early forms–such as the forum of ancient Rome or the colonial town square. It was only through what he calls ‘concerted social protest and conflict’ that they were opened up. ‘Spaces were only public,’ he asserts, ‘to the degree that they were taken and made public.’”

Broadway must be made public again. They’ve ruined Broadway by making it a mall. We have to ruin it back.

Later Jackson quotes historian Eric Hobsbawm, who says that “the rebuilding and reorganization of cities is one of three strategies employed by the state to counter urban insurrections.”

Indeed, during New Haven’s last major insurrection of May Day 1970, Liggett’s (where the $1000 shiny pants store is now) boarded up and demanded freedom for the imprisoned Black Panthers of the city.

Broadway is just one block in Yale’s master plan. Of Yale’s properties, only $108 million’s worth is taxable, bringing in $4.49 million in tax into New Haven. Yale owns a separate $2.5 billion dollars worth of property that goes untaxed. Here is a map of their empire.

The arguments defending Yale’s designs for large parts of the city usually feature some variation of this: “New Haven without Yale would be Bridgeport or Hartford.” Whether this is more insulting and condescending to the people of New Haven who have no involvement with Yale, or to the people of Hartford and Bridgeport is an open question. The other argument is often, “We need Yale for the money it brings in to the city.” This argument is a variation on the first, and we hear it parroted anytime Yale buys up another street (literally), or forces out a locally owned store for a high-end chain.

This is the nerdish warbling of a company stooge, and it makes us all look like assholes. As a friend pointed out in a Facebook discussion about this, that argument almost completely overlooks the fact that the money Yale brings into New Haven is meant to be circulated within Yale’s properties. The whole point of the rebranding of Chapel Street and Broadway as “The Shops at Yale” is that Yale money never gets spent at something that is not Yale-owned, and furthermore to keep non-Yale people away from the area. (Observe the closing of the Anchor, as an example.) The other work the argument performs is that it turns every complaint about Yale’s behavior into an argument about Yale’s existence. This this the Stockholm syndrome of a hostage. We need them, so we can’t criticize them.

Certainly it strikes me as the same type of thinking that would operate in the coal towns of Appalachia, where, robbed and exploited by the company store, the townsfolk plead with the company to be nice to them.

Is New Haven a place of its own, or is it a company town? (And let’s be clear: Yale is a company as much as or even more than it is a University. Its University Properties real estate holding company has done things like buying out locally owned stores and leaving the storefront vacant because they didn’t like the fact that booze was being sold so close to campus.)

What is the purpose of New Haven? Is it for the people that live there to be able to live happy lives, or is it for Yale to crank out raw materials and provide these raw materials with ample shopping opportunities?

Let’s ruin the mall. They haven’t won yet. Skate it like Jim Greco did in the 1990s. Wear punk patches. Be drunk. Sneer. Don’t buy. Don’t cede.

Michael Lee-Murphy is a reporter and writer based in New England, USA. He has written for Jacobin, Ricochet Media, and Maisonneuve Magazine.

This story originally appeared on Michael Lee-Murphy’s blog, A Furious Return to Basics.

“My neighbors…”

May 21, 2015September 13, 2017

photo and words by Cindy Milstein, chalk by Lisa Ganser

Just as I was about to snap this photo, two guys walking by stopped to read the pavement, too, and said, “Another arson. They keep happening here in the Mission.” They hadn’t noticed me, but our eyes met after the one spoke, and I nodded agreement. We all had a worn look about us, deep in those eyes of ours.

I took my picture.

The chalking is becoming too routine on the dirty concrete in my neighborhood. I know who does it, carefully, with solemn respect and raw pain. Chalking, as public and plain as the mourning in the Mission, but likely washed away by tears and time, not rain.

There is a lack of rain here. Drought they call it, as in a period that “causes extensive damage.” Yet there is no lack of people “getting killed and displaced by fires, gentrification & police.”

Minutes later, as I tried taking another shot, this time of the haphazard array of flowers clinging desperately to the padlocked security gate pulled tight across the front of the charred liquor store at Treat and 24th streets, another couple of folks strolled by, walked past, and then turned back toward me.

“What happened?” they inquired, as if somehow they knew that I would obviously know. Maybe it was those serious eyes of mine.

Burned household objects litter the street still in two big mounds, one to each side of this corner store’s entry, like sentries, like graves, smelling as if still smoldering, still dangerous.

The blackened piles are remnants of life, tossed quickly out windows in haste, one imagines, to battle flames. Yet they feel an affront now, left as if warning sign for others — by landlord? by city? by police? — as a way to spark further fear for the marginalized and precarious in this neighborhood.

Mostly, it feels like a violation, an injury, a dishonor toward the people who used to call these things “home.” This is not a fitting part of the communal makeshift shrine and quiet witnessing, quiet processing, that’s going on in between the smelly, messy heaps of disaster.

Indeed, one can still hardly take in a breath for the stench of it all.

“A 13-year-old, Amal Shaibi, died last night from smoke inhalation during the fire last week,” I tell this second pair of passersby. “Her 38-year-old dad, Mohamed Shaibi, died a couple nights ago. I heard the 13-year-old helped a younger sibling out a smoke-filled window during the heat of the blaze.”

I go into detail, too much probably, weaving in nearby evictions, nearby harassment by landlords and immigration agents and plainclothes cops, who also murdered 21-year-old Amilcar Perez-Lopez only about a block and a half away, only about three weeks ago, and wander further afield to offer the story of the enormous fire on Mission at 22nd streets that killed one and dehoused many dozens of longtime, low-income, mostly Latino residents. I repeat the words heard often these days here: arson. “Or that’s what everyone thinks, at least those who think about and are impacted by gentrification.”

I can’t quite tell if they wanted to hear this thoroughly interconnected story, but they listen eagerly, and thank me profusely. They aren’t from this neighborhood, so all this seems like news to them. I can’t quite tell, either, if it touched their hearts or not, or was simply spectacle after a nice dinner and evening walk.

Earlier today, at a public hearing at city hall about all the fires of late, politicians fell over themselves to congratulate city workers for bravery, courage, and hard work. The workers fell over themselves to cover each other least they’d made any mistakes, and speak of how they are objective in determining the cause of fires. The politician who called the hearing for his district, David Campos, mentioned that people in the neighborhood have “conspiracy theories,” by which he dismissed any thought of arson even as he vaguely noted that such theories arise from “what’s happening in the Mission,” by which I assume he means gentrification and eviction by whatever means necessary.

The closest that any of these officials, all feigning investigative vigilance, got to touching on what nearly everyone at risk of disposal in the Mission believes — that the fires are part and parcel of dispossession — was when they danced around how sometimes landlords don’t keep their buildings up to fire codes in terms of safety.

This is, I think, arson as well, by any means, whether flagrant conflagrations are the result of landlord “negligence,” or secondary-degree burning of buildings comes in the form of winking away code violations until rent-stabilized apartments, say, catch fire.

Funny, people in the Mission observe, how the huge 3-story building at Mission and 22nd got thoroughly destroyed but the extremely expensive new Vida apartment complex right next door — literally touching each other — didn’t seem to receive even a scratch.

All “conspiracy theories,” mind you, but they have a certain ring of reality down on the street level, especially around 24th and Mission these days.

Meanwhile, on Treat and 24th, two shopkeepers across the street from the vacant burned building, with plastic blowing out its windows now, tell me they are collecting funds for the family. “They keep refusing money, though. So we’re encouraging cards. But yes, we’ll insist they take the money for all their health expenses.” They explain how the family returned earlier today, briefly, and said they were doing OK.

I imagine they can barely begin to understand how they are doing, and hope they somehow didn’t notice those two sprawling heaps of burned objects, so they won’t become a memory, when memories return.

Grief settles slowly, like ash.

This family is now a woman, wife, and mom, now in a wheelchair from her own injuries, now with one husband less and one child less, no home, and no family business below it. She is left with two kids, ages six and sixteen, and too much pain to almost comprehend.

All that’s left on this forlorn building — ripe for the plundering for some new, bland, luxury project that has no community — is another chalked sidewalk soon to fade, flowers already beginning to wilt, and a cardboard sign with handwriting briefly attempting to explain the loss, attached on the liquor store door next to a beer ad with an image of the Bay Bridge, on this sad corner of a neighborhood being disappeared.

#LaMission #RestInPower

For two news stories about the family, fire, and their needs now, see:
http://missionlocal.org/2015/03/injuries-from-fire-take-13-year-olds-life/
http://missionlocal.org/2015/03/after-fire-shaibi-family-searching-for-2-bedroom-in-mission/

Cindy Milstein writes about gentrification struggles, police brutality, anarchism, and capitalism. She’s also actively engaged in “solidarity not charity” forms of anti-displacement and anti-police organizing, ranging from Eviction Free San Francisco to Coffee Not Cops, in her neighborhood, San Francisco’s Mission, alongside fighting her own eviction. Cindy is the author of Anarchism and its Aspirations, coauthor (with Erik Ruin) of Paths toward Utopia, and recently curated the zine “Revolutionary Solidarity: A Critical Reader for Accomplices” following the Ferguson uprising.

This story originally appeared on Cindy Milstein’s blog, Outside the Circle.

Just what is gentrification anyway?

September 5, 2014September 13, 2017

by Aaron Vansintjan

We hear the term ‘gentrification’ often nowadays. The news is full of it. Protests against Google and Microsoft buses, people in Vancouver fighting condo development by burning condos, food co-ops in Brooklyn worried about whether they’re displacing the local Hispanic community. The news almost always frames the wealthy new residents as the culprits, and those unable to afford rising rent and property taxes as victims.

A month ago, I was staying in Tay Ho, a neighbourhood of Hanoi known for its growing expat population. Here I found chain supermarkets, unfinished luxury apartment complexes, brand-new chic boutiques, and dog spas. In between all of this, there remain some thin strips of orchards, garden plots, and vegetable markets hidden in the alleyways. A wealthy and mostly foreign social class seems to be increasingly encroaching on agricultural land. These, I thought right away, are the telltale signs of gentrification.

I wanted to find out more. To start my search, I met up with Roman Szlam. Roman is a volunteer guide for Friends of Vietnam Heritage, an English teacher, a blogger, and also happens to be a walking Wikipedia on the history of Hanoi.

“I’ve noticed everything you’ve noticed,” he noted, recognizing my discomfort. “I see all the farms disappearing, all the high-rises coming in here. All the luxury development.” But Roman didn’t seem too troubled by the changes in Tay Ho.

Apparently, everyone who originally owned land in Tay Ho has been able to sub-lease it at high prices. “Even the farmers,” noted Roman, “who are losing their farms here directly around West lake, tend to be happy. There are no protests from anyone.” What’s more, agriculture in the neighbourhood was primarily for decorative plants – in no way would the sale of this land affect the need for food access in the city.

I wondered whether it was really all that rosy in Tay Ho: were there some people that weren’t as happy as others? Nevertheless, to Roman, the real gentrification problems were occurring in the outskirts of the city and in the city centre.

What’s really happening in Hanoi?

In the early 2000s, Hanoi was facing mounting traffic problems, while the Old Quarter, the prime tourist attraction, was being slowly destroyed by untrammeled development. In 2008, the Vietnamese government allowed Hanoi to expand its borders significantly. To do this, they re-zoned huge swathes of land for commercial and high-income residential uses.

The re-drawing of Hanoi’s borders coincided with a spate of farm acquisitions by the land management department. Officials offered farmers a small payment in return for the land and then leased it to developers – often acquaintances – at inflated prices. In other words, outright corruption. These developers thought it was the perfect time to build houses for Hanoi’s new upper-middle-class. But this didn’t go so well.

“Nobody bought any of these developments,” Roman explained. “As they began to go bankrupt, these people who had borrowed 90 per cent of the money could no longer repay the banks.”

The criminalization of the informal sector, which grew in large part due to land dispossession, in turn sets the conditions for the creation of a cheap new labour market.

At the time, many government-owned corporations had started investing in the stock market. Come the crash of 2008, Vietnam’s banks had no more money, and foreign investors started pulling out, causing a banking crisis that still hasn’t been resolved. What’s more, a group of farmers started making a stink, holding in-your-face protests in front of the government buildings.

“This huge land grab,” remarked Roman, “became a national scandal. It couldn’t be hidden anymore. There was no money to be had anywhere. Consequently, a lot of the food production around Hanoi has been lost.” In a city where 62 per cent of the vegetables consumed are locally produced, you can imagine the effect on food prices.

Around the same time, the city cleaned up its downtown core by, on the one hand, criminalizing street vendors, and on the other, promoting supermarkets and shutting down two of the city’s open markets, replacing them with high-end – but mostly empty – malls.

Noelani Eidse, a PhD candidate at McGill, has been researching the case of Hanoi’s street vendors and how their livelihood has been affected by land grabs on the urban fringe. “It’s all part of this larger push for Hanoi to become a global city,” Eidse said. “The rationale behind banning vending is that vendors are adding to traffic congestion. A less explicit reason is that vendors are seen as uncivilized and their livelihoods are considered to be anti-modern, and a hindrance to development.”

There is no doubt that gentrification is an international phenomenon, and what links each case is the opening up of markets, privatization of public goods, and collusion between the market and state.

Eidse has found that it’s often the same people who were pushed off their land who are also forced to make a living in other ways. “For a lot of these people,” she explained, “it’s either working in factories or working informally.”

Those who choose informal work, like street vending and trading trash, are now being targeted by these new laws. Arrests and fines are more and more common, making it difficult for these people, mostly women, to practice their livelihood.

In sum, the unfair leasing of farmland to developers, shuttered and empty markets, lack of space for food vendors, and the inaccessibility of supermarkets for most Hanoians, has meant that many people in the city centre are now facing increased food insecurity and precarity. And so, the cycle of dispossession, precarity, and criminalization continues.

The all-too-real effects of gentrification

In Hanoi, top-down decisions to make the city more appealing to foreign investors helped trigger a nationwide banking crisis, followed by a shortage in food production and access locally. This is gentrification at its worst – far more devastating than a fancy boutique in the expat neighbourhood.

The changing of land rights, the corruption that came with privatization of land, and the increase in high-end development projects – all of these happened at about the same time that Vietnam opened its markets to foreign investment and encouraged foreign factories to set up shop. The criminalization of the informal sector, which grew in large part due to land dispossession, in turn sets the conditions for the creation of a cheap new labour market. People have no choice but to start working in the new factories run by foreign corporations.

Before I go on, I have to stress that Hanoi is unique. Vietnam, as a socialist state, also has an unusual land rights system and one-party-closed-door-politics. Pair this with increased liberalization, and a system of state-owned corporations, and you have a one-of-a-kind situation. It is also important to reiterate how sometimes it isn’t all that bad, like in the case of Tay Ho and its wealthy expats.

But it’s striking how these patterns repeat in other cities, like Lagos, Nigeria. Eidse noted that Singapore’s model of development and regulation has been a reference point for Hanoi’s own city planners. Gentrification in London and New York is well-documented. There, social housing and tenant rights were increasingly eroded through active government policies encouraging outsider investment. There is no doubt that gentrification is an international phenomenon, and what links each case is the opening up of markets, privatization of public goods, and collusion between the market and state.

In all cases, gentrification should be understood as the concerted effort, by a coterie of businesspeople and government officials, to profit from communal wealth.

It’s easy to vilify the upper-middle class – those taking the Google bus or the expats moving into the new high-rises – but if you really want to address the problem, you need to follow the money.

In all cases, gentrification should be understood as the concerted effort, by a coterie of businesspeople and government officials, to profit from communal wealth. In Hanoi, this came in the form of land grabs and policies targeting the informal economy, but elsewhere it can happen through the privatization of social housing, or the branding of a city as a haven for the creative class.

It all seems a bit hopeless. Yet, there are plenty of avenues for resistance. In Hanoi, a group of villagers who had been pushed off their land started protesting in ways that made it hard for the media to ignore them, or for the police to beat them up. As a result, they were able to bring national attention to endemic corruption and initiate a series of laws to protect against land seizures.

While gentrification hurts those who have little to start with, those who have lost the most often have the loudest voice. If we want inspiration for future actions, it’s these voices we should listen to. These villagers have it right – they followed the money, smelled something fishy, and created a stink.

This article was originally published in The McGill Daily.