It was Spring 2015, I had just finished graduate school at Howard University and had been back in my hometown of East Palo Alto (EPA), about three months. By word of mouth, I had heard that TechCrunch (an online magazine covering stories from the Tech industry) was featuring a story on EPA. The article was called, "East of Palo Alto's Eden: Race and the Formation of Silicon Valley" (https://techcrunch.com/2015/01/10/east-of-palo-altos-eden/) by Kim-Mai Cutler. Shortly after that and in response to her article, I wrote her An Open Letter (http://writetoliveblog.blogspot.com/2015/02/an-open-letter-to-kim-mai-cutler.html), thanking her for asking the structural questions about the stark inequalities I had witnessed all of my life, growing up in Silicon Valley. For example, as a high school student, I rode the public bus from EPA to school in Atherton, every morning. Yet, I had white classmates who drove jaguars to school. Where I lived and where I went to school seemed like two vastly different worlds. Yet they were so close in proximity. Looking back, I never understood how such abject poverty could exist beside such prosperity.
Several years earlier, in the Fall of 2008, I was entering my junior year of undergraduate school. And at the time, the four-bedroom apartment my mother rented in EPA was $1,600 a month. By 2015, a studio apartment in EPA was at market rate for $1,700 a month. In a seven-year period, the price to rent in my hometown had changed drastically, and of course, the available space was much smaller. I moved back in with family. What else could I do, a first-generation college student, with two degrees, no established generational wealth (my mother wasn't a homeowner) and a desire to give back to the community that made me? Mai-Cutler wrote, "Now that East Palo Alto has brought its crime from the high-water mark of the early 1990’s [in 1991, I was four years old, and my hometown was deemed “the murder capital of the world” (http://articles.latimes.com/1993-01-05/local/me-833_1_east-palo-alto)], the irony is that the community is now prone to gentrification." And I was feeling the pains of gentrification, first hand. In fact, as I had conversations with community members, (both white and non-white, recent gentrifiers and long-time residents alike) they assured me that: "Gentrification was inevitable." For some reason, this answer was unsatisfactory for me. This is because gentrification is not a force of nature, therefore it cannot be inevitable.
I. "And who is my neighbor?"
In the Fall of 2016, and about a year after Mai-Cutler’s article, I wrote "An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg," (http://writetoliveblog.blogspot.com/2016/10/an-open-letter-to-mark-zuckerberg.html) asking him to consider mitigating the negative impacts of Facebook’s expansion on my low-income and working-class community of color: East Palo Alto. Namely, the displacement happening from the ever rising cost of rents in the Bay Area in tandem with Facebook's expansion in Menlo Park, a town over from us. Furthermore, I didn’t take it lightly that Facebook chose to expand into the low-income and working-class neighborhood of Menlo Park: Belle Haven, as opposed to the more affluent section. I was determined to have the creator of Facebook, hear my concerns, directly. I used his letter to his daughter, Max (https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-letter-to-our-daughter/10153375081581634/), as a point of entry into the conversation.
I wrote [an excerpt]:
"I am a community organizer. But today, I write this letter as a former seminarian. While some may disagree, I believe it is important to focus on the future of our world (as you have done in your letter), but it is equally important to focus on our current world. If not, we miss out on an opportunity to shape the present moment. If not, we are akin to the person whose theology focuses strictly on Heaven and the promise of eternal life, that they ignore the here and now, the everyday social realities such as racism and poverty and how they impact one on a daily basis in exchange for their belief that the future reality could be better.
I get the sense that you care about community, because you have created thousands of virtual ones. However, my fear is that we have become so future-oriented and globally-minded in our technological and fast-paced society that we neglect our present local realities – especially when it comes to poverty. In your letter, you say that “poverty is shrinking [,]” but I ask, for whom? As I pen this letter to you, many people in East Palo Alto live with a different set of realities:
Reality: According to the census, East Palo Alto’s median household income is $52, 716 per year, with 16.5 percent of the population living in poverty. In Palo Alto, however, the median household income is $126,771 and there is a 5.3 percent poverty rate
Remedy: Facebook can hire locally as it is currently expanding its campus with the intent to employ 6,500 workers
Reality: Hundreds of low-income families of color have been priced out of the local community due to Facebook now being in Menlo Park
Remedy: Facebook can forego development/expansion until there is a jobs-housing balance OR contribute a substantial level of housing stock to the region which helps alleviate the housing crisis and does not exacerbate it
In your letter to your daughter, you seem so hopeful, yet we are still so very unemployed, so very displaced and so very disconnected from the wealth in Silicon Valley.
Yesterday, I celebrated a birthday. My birthday wish is this – that you take a stand to address the poverty in East Palo Alto – the heart of Silicon Valley and consult with the community about what our assets are. In a conversation, Jesus was asked, “And who is my neighbor” (Luke 10:29, NASB)? I am asking that you consider that question as you drive through East Palo Alto on your way home to Palo Alto, each day. While philanthropy is important, consider making structural changes which deal with root causes of poverty in the San Francisco Bay Area. Please consider the change that can be made on a small scale locally today, before eliminating poverty globally, tomorrow. Mr. Zuckerberg, consider the opportunity before you. Consider the present moment."
Until then, people told me that based on sheer statistics, "Zuckerberg will never read your letter." I wrote it anyway. In December 2016, he donated $20M to the Catalyst Fund for Affordable Housing (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/02/facebook-affordable-housing-silicon-valley), via the advocacy of (and pending lawsuit from) a local coalition, which I worked with at the time. Simultaneously, I had received a notification from a woman I barely knew, telling me that she had read my letter online and sent it to Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, and received confirmation that they had read it! He had acknowledged that the expansion of his company had direct bearing on the cost of housing in the region, and that he wanted to work with community groups to make sure that people are able to stay in their homes. This was progress.
I felt that in some way, I had made a difference, by influencing the conversation regarding big tech’s expansion in Silicon Valley. I wanted people to know that big tech had to be responsible for how it showed up in and adjacent to our community.
II. "Be humble"
In March of 2017, the East Palo Alto (EPA) city council made the controversial decision with tech titan: Amazon, that they would accept $1M over ten years in exchange for not adhering to our city's First Source Hiring policy. Residents had been blindsided. The policy states that the incoming company must make a "good faith effort" to hire 30 percent, locally. I felt jolted. How could it be that on the one hand, I was fighting for visibility from tech companies, and on the other hand, my city leadership had me, and other residents, in its blindspot? The Mayor at the time, Larry Moody, wrote an article in the local "East Palo Alto Today" newspaper, stating that he, "Would not offer a vote to rescind the [controversial] Amazon decision, nor recommend the Council to do so" (http://www.epatoday.org/news/2017/march_2017/east_palo_alto_mayor_releases_a_letter_to_the_east_palo_alto_community_2229.html). Moreover, Amazon threatened to go to another town if the city council did not accept their offer, the same night it was proposed. Keep in mind that Amazon as a corporation was worth nearly $70 billion dollars at the time of this deal, and has since, doubled in its net worth (https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/#1353f20c1b23).
Residents and community members protested the Amazon deal in the streets alongside a resident-led group, The Real Community Coalition (https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2017/03/31/vigil-in-east-palo-alto-protests-amazon-facebook-policies). But for some reason, amidst this controversy, the discussion of gentrification being inevitable came back to my mind. While the community was not given wind of Amazon's proposal, nor the opportunity to possibly suggest a counter-offer, the critique was that these kinds of development deals and/or decisions speed up the process of gentrification. Also, it is important to note that some decisions more than others speed up the process of gentrification. To that end, when gentrification begins gaining momentum, we can take a look back at (for instance) how city council voted AND the ultimatum that the developer (Sobrato) and the tenant (Amazon) recommended to city officials, in the first place. This example proves that gentrification itself is not inevitable, and that it is in fact, (through key decisions and/or policies of power brokers) brought into play by human actions.
Something about Kendrick Lamar’s song "Be humble," (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvTRZJ-4EyI) (released, about a month after the Amazon decision) gave me the wind I needed to keep going. The music video was laden with imagery about access–which inspired me. As a table typically represents community and inclusion, I couldn't help but see that Lamar’s social commentary, with black men in hoodies at The Last Supper, was that those who look like him are often left out (in depiction and representation), a seat at a very important table, and this translated to many aspects of life. The song's refrain of: "Be humble," made me wonder if heads of tech companies in the Bay Area would give the community of East Palo Alto (EPA), a historically marginalized community, a seat at the table amidst the rapid gentrification spurred by the #TechTakeover, to share our stories, and to work to create a better community, region and world. Before any of this happened, I wanted to exhale. It seemed that Facebook had finally heard us. But we were immediately catapulted into a struggle with Amazon. It seemed that Amazon and our city council, failed to give us, as residents (because of a rushed decision), a seat at the table. And maybe even to have humility throughout the process, when handling one of the last surviving communities of color in Silicon Valley.
Photo: Google.com
That March, the aftermath of the Amazon deal created a culture of mistrust between the local government officials and those who elected them. And this was also not democracy. In July 2017, I took my activism a step further. I wrote an op-ed in two local newspapers asking that Facebook consider creating a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policy/department in order to make being “a good neighbor” (a scriptural concept from the Parable of the Good Samaritan) something that was embedded throughout Facebook’s company culture. At the time, I was told by Facebook’s VP of Communications and Public Policy, Elliot Schrage, that "Facebook shouldn’t have a CSR department because all departments should be socially responsible." I felt like this was similar to saying, "There was no need for a Declaration of Independence, because, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, should be automatic within American society." But even that phrase/idea required accountability in the form of a written policy.
Later, spokespeople from Facebook came forward and stated that they want to do their part in “being a good neighbor” but declined creating a CSR policy. I felt that without a hardwired policy, the alternative was that we (residents) expected corporations to be socially responsible on their own. But corporations aren’t innately socially responsible. For a second, I thought that maybe it was enough that Mark Zuckerberg read my letter and had donated abundantly to nonprofit organizations which serve EPA and Belle Haven – historically disenfranchised and under-resourced communities, in the region. In January 2018, I wrote one final time to two of our local newspapers and asked Facebook (again) to consider a CSR policy. I didn’t hear anything back on the topic. I told myself, maybe it was time to move on.
This past July, I saw a Facebook job posting online for a Director of Social Good Partnerships (another word for Director of Corporate Social Responsibility) position (https://www.facebook.com/careers/jobs/290958338319149/). This was progress. At the same time, I had been attending community meetings surrounding the impact of big tech's expansion and people claimed that gentrification itself was "too broad and complex" a topic to address in terms of actual grassroots community organizing. While I agree that the topic is complex, I believed that it could still be dealt with. While it was a step for tech companies to say they wanted to “be good neighbors,” and another for them to create CSR departments (this meant hiring more than one black person to run this initiative), I still felt that the Amazon deal was a hard hit. Especially as it pertains to setting a precedent for other tech companies to come into low-income and working-class communities of color and wreak the same havoc. Not to mention, the negative impact of the expansion of big tech on the cost of housing. I still could not afford a one-bedroom apartment (for market rate at about $2,500 a month) on my salary, although I was working 40 hours a week at a local nonprofit organization. This meant that over 75% of my check would go to my rent. The rising cost of rent in my small-town was in direct correlation to big tech's expansion. While big tech is not solely responsible for the Bay Area’s housing crisis, they have certainly exacerbated it. And this is the point on which I focused my activism. And then to be back in my hometown of East Palo Alto, post college, and have people insist that this violent process of gentrification was inexorable, on top of all the other hurdles that structural racism brings, felt unsatisfactory at best. And cruel at worst. With all the progress we had made, I wasn't sure how to proceed.
After some thought, I realized with the Amazon deal, that while jobs were coming into the city, current residents did not have access to those jobs in the tech sector. As a result, the economic divide had a high probability of staying the same. Furthermore, Amazon being given a pass to not comply with the city's of EPA’s First-source Hiring Policy altogether, co-signs and further perpetuates income inequality. One would think that given the criticism the tech sector has faced for lack of diversity in the San Francisco Bay Area, Amazon would see this as a prime opportunity to act to lessen the digital divide by giving the people of East Palo Alto an opportunity to shift their income levels as to not stay low-income, forever. This sends the message from tech companies that, "We want to be within your community, but not hire within your community" -- it's a digital double standard. It was then that I came to understand that access to quality jobs in the innovation economy are critical in allowing people, amidst the gentrification spurred by the #TechTakeover, to simultaneously access the wealth of Silicon Valley AND afford to live (stay) in the community where they grew up.
My activism had forced me to decide my negotiables and non-negotiables in the fight against gentrification and subsequent displacement. One of my non-negotiables was that my local government not be complicit in perpetuating tech inequality in the Bay Area (by not negotiating jobs in tech for residents). The above chart known as the tech inequality equation conveys how human actions can spur gentrification. The Amazon outcome helped me identify my own stance in what I believed to be best for my community. And it was for residents to be included in the decision-making process as it pertains to the double-edged sword of the expansion of big tech and the gentrification of our city. The intent here isn’t to blame EPA city council for the whole sum of the Bay Area’s tech inequality, or debate whether or not this was a "difficult" decision, but point to the tangible factors which influenced our complicity in the current state of affairs.
This November, our city council decided to put a parcel tax on the ballot called Measure HH. The proposed parcel tax would tax incoming tech companies and commercial developments (of a certain size), requiring them to pay a per square foot fee for the space that they occupy in EPA. This would be an annual tax and the accrued funds would go towards creating an actual pipeline to tech jobs for EPA residents and to net new affordable multi-family housing units, for example, as well as strengthening the city’s First Source Hiring policy. It is a well known fact that the rapid expansion of the tech industry has exacerbated the region’s housing crisis and placed undue burden of solving it on low-income and working-class communities like East Palo Alto. For example, people often flock to rent in cities where the rent is cheaper (typically a low-income community), thus creating a high demand on top of the already limited supply of existing housing. Units are then “sold to the highest bidder” and this process pushes out those residents who don’t have access to the capital in the tech sector. Not only this, the proposed tax mandates an accountability report every year to see that the program has met its objectives, so that residents have some access to economic mobility in this innovation economy and don’t remain forever at the margins of the wealth of Silicon Valley.
While I do not speak for city council members, part of me felt that this conversation on the possible parcel tax (also referred to as “the Tech tax”) may have been an attempt not to repeat the Amazon deal, and to leverage this moment to create tangible and accountable pathways for economic opportunity (especially from the tech companies!) for our community. This November, we organized and the tax passed with 75% voter approval. I believe this moment is a critical step towards reversing the tech inequality equation. This is progress.
III. Tech expansion and 'Blindspotting' gentrification
For some people, the direct correlation between the expansion of big tech and the gentrification (shrinking) of historic communities of color in Silicon Valley, are in their blindspot. For example, this past summer, when I’d heard that there was a movie about the gentrification of Oakland (Blindspotting), I just about jumped out of my skin. Since this controversial topic had made it into mainstream theaters, it meant this view that gentrification was somehow insignificant and/or "inevitable," wasn’t quite true. While I’m from East Palo Alto (EPA), California, I identified with the gentrification of Oakland, a city much larger in mass than my own, but similar in its demographic make-up, its history of marginalization and its fight to not be overshadowed by big tech companies such as Uber (in Oakland) or Amazon (in EPA).
At one point in its history, EPA was a predominantly black town, whose movement to incorporate, gained momentum in the 1960’s and culminated in 1983. But this notion that "gentrification was inevitable" had become apart of everyday conversation in my activism. But this answer never sat right with me. This is because it was predicated on a social problem (gentrification) which had no point of origin, no ill-effects, and was simply the course of nature. To put it another way, the answers seemed mute because they failed to identify the root causes of gentrification, in a city where its effects were noticeable. For example, there were Tesla charging stations located across the parking lot from where Ravenswood High School (East Palo Alto's first public high school) once stood. For me, people’s sentiments about the gentrification of East Palo Alto (EPA), only brought about more questions. For example: What does it mean for entire ethnic groups to be displaced or pushed out of cities which they helped to build? What does it mean when privileged groups within our rapidly gentrifying communities become dismissive of the difficulties of the most vulnerable groups within the equation—or are we only interested in embracing topics which bring us ease? My hope is that we, as a changing community, are interested in addressing the harms that gentrification can cause and not just uplifting how some aspect of a new development project within our city might bring us some form of happiness.
For this reason, I strayed away from the fallacies that tended to surface when discussing this topic (ex. "Gentrification is inevitable"). I moved from the fallacies to the evidence. And based on the evidence, it seems that in the Bay Area, shrinking historically black communities (namely, EPA, Oakland and San Francisco) are the price we pay for expanding technological advancement. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Not only this, it is also my position that if rapid gentrification is impacting the black community in EPA, its only a matter of time before it starts displacing the Latinx and Pacific Islander communities as well. Just recently, I'd read about the eviction of a long-time Pacific Islander family from EPA (http://extras.mercurynews.com/housingsaga/), who I protested on behalf of, just two years earlier! Moreover, this pattern of displacement isn’t just happening in California, it’s happening all over the United States.
Simply stated, I was looking for a conversation which did not make people gentrifying the city saints who were deserving and people being displaced from the city sinners who were undeserving. The conversation is more nuanced than that. I was looking for balance. And struggling to find it. Since I’ve mentioned a church metaphor, let me just say that if you’re reading this post, and you’re a newer resident in an urban community who has called the police on a Sunday morning, because the worship music was too loud at the church down the block (https://mic.com/articles/126871/a-black-church-in-gentrifying-oakland-faces-a-3-529-fine-for-being-too-loud#.XBDAZxGJw), sorry to break it to you, but you might be a gentrifier. With all of my questions, I was sure that there was another way to approach discussing gentrification. And for me, Blindspotting offered some guidance. What we, in my experience, are missing in the conversation around gentrification, is the unapologetic way in which we create a space for tension which allows people to wrestle with what is happening to their communities. Only then can we find ways to engage in meaningful conversations which point us toward more equitable solutions. But dismissing the experiences of those most negatively impacted by the expansion of big tech and their subsequent displacement, won't do it for us.
In an era where there’s no shortage of political divisions which further separate the haves and the have nots, I submit that we can think of different ways to run our communities which don’t demonstrate a "Make the Neighborhood [insert name of gentrifying neighborhood] Great Again" mantra. This mantra/mindset assumes that nothing which exists in the neighborhood pre-gentrification, make it great (this includes the people). And that the only way to measure greatness or progress within a city is by how many white people OR upper class people have moved into the community. Also, if you're a long-time resident and decide to set up shop on the sidewalk and sell water to a white jogger you see running through your neighborhood, and #PermitPatty reports you to the police for not having the proper paperwork, (https://abc7news.com/society/video-woman-calling-cops-on-8-year-old-for-selling-water-near-at-t-park-goes-viral/3648576/) you might want to switch to a lemonade stand. Apparently, lemonade is less of a threatening drink than water, and selling it won’t result in your eventual displacement/erasure from the neighborhood.
Blindspotting is prophetic, in that it shows us what can boil over, if we keep sweeping the topic of gentrification under the rug. If we aren’t able to discuss the tension in community, in real time, with real people (those threatened with displacement and those new to the neighborhood), where else can we do it? Where do we go to discuss these matters? Where do we sit with the tension? Oakland is the birthplace of the Black Panther Party and WIC programs. EPA is the home of Nairobi Day School and College and a community having been redlined into existence, yet seeking to govern itself so much so that the case went to the Supreme Court (file:///Users/kyra/Downloads/Stanford_Daily_19830624_0001.pdf). Yet many of the children of these generations are being pushed out of town. This is not to say that communities should only have low-income and/or working-class people who reside in them. However, it is to say that both cities (Oakland and EPA) are home to marginalized groups within our society, and as these cities grow, we cannot forget this fact. If we do, shame on us. The movie Blindspotting, in addition to challenging us to sit with the tension of what gentrification means to us individually, I offer that it also urges us to pull up our chairs, close down our computers, and figure out what we are going to do about it, collectively.
IV. "Let the people decide"
At some point, it occurred to me that this notion that "gentrification is inevitable" was rooted in colonization. And the #TechTakeover, which was happening was a symptom of other kinds of take-overs that have happened at the hands of (often) white people (colonizers) and their ideas of “innovation” over centuries. This was why I could never really give up. I remember having a conversation with a family friend, who happened to be white and upper-middle class, about feeling stuck, feeling like the system (structural racism) was against me at several avenues and whatever I tried in the way of gaining upward mobility, didn’t seem to work. I was made to feel like if I had just "worked a little harder," I might be further along my career path, living in Silicon Valley. In another conversation, while I was trying to discern next steps concerning activism and the innovation economy, I remember being told, by white people, who might be labeled gentrifiers if they up and move into East Palo Alto, Oakland or Hunter’s Point, that, "That’s just the way things are." And it dawned on me, that the American cultural norm that takeover is "just the way things are" is a banner for the status quo. I unpacked this sentiment and continued to shape the conversation with direct action and activism in EPA.
In August 2018, we began working on Measure HH and considered ways that big development (including big tech) can be responsible for how they choose to show up in our communities (they can't just blindly expand). I figured that if tech companies and our city government left residents out of the decision-making-process, we could reclaim that power and agency at the polls. In other words, "Let the people decide." And other cities such as Mountain View and San Francisco, were considering similar measures at the time (https://medium.com/fast-company/silicon-valley-voters-just-demanded-that-tech-companies-be-responsible-for-their-communities-4fc545412c75). And in November, Measure HH passed.
Timeline of #TechTakeover Activism 2015-2018:
· East of Palo Alto’s Eden: Race and the Formation of Silicon Valley by Mai-Cutler–January 2015
· Wrote "An Open Letter to Kim Mai-Cutler"–February 2015
· Wrote "An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg"–October 2016
· Zuckerberg’s Response to the #TechTakeover/Catalyst Fund Announced—December 2016
· Amazon Deal and Community Protest–March 2017
· Wrote Tech Inequality Equation–March 2017
· Wrote op-ed for Facebook to create CSR policy/program–August 2017 & January 2018
· Blindspotting Movie premiers–July 2018
· Facebook announces Director of CSR position–August 2018
· Measure HH passes–November 2018
After passing Measure HH, the work that remains for the residents is to hold city government and big tech accountable to the progress we have fought for. To keep our eyes open and make sure the tax money goes where it was proposed AND that there is a process by which city council determines the spending, and this is made transparent to the public. May we never forget that power lies with the people, and they have agency to decide what type of union they want. May we never forget that providing accountability when leaders have drifted is the work of our democracy.
In my experience, a lot of people’s stance on gentrification exposes their privilege. When I first started this work, I had so many questions. During this process, I have learned the following:
(1) Abject poverty sits alongside prosperity in America, because we (as a society) have let it happen.
(2) Privilege is not exactly a motivator for groups in power to change anything (often committed to the way things are), else their privilege be "lost." And how we have arrived at a place as a society where white privilege (and all the systems which keep it in place) are deemed more valuable than the livelihood of people and communities of color, is another conversation for another time.
(3) It is never okay for a colonizer/gentrifier (a member of the group in power) to tell oppressed people from or within gentrifying neighborhoods that the change which is happening to their communities, or more broadly, that our station in life—is inevitable. Ever. This is because it frames the conversation in a way where white people who are gentrifying communities of color in Silicon Valley, have nothing to concede—and certainly not their white privilege and/or power/position as a white person within society. In other words, this notion that gentrification is somehow inevitable, allows gentrification to be written off as merely a force of nature, and therefore, absolves colonizers (recipients of white privilege) of any responsibility on the matter.
(4) As with EPA's city council and the Amazon decision, I have learned that sometimes we are complicit in our own oppression and don’t even realize it.
(5) Those who helped to build our communities will get displaced from our communities, if we (our local leadership) let it happen.
(6) Tech companies have to be willing to "be a good neighbor," to "be humble" and to create actual onramps to access, if we are to truly close the digital divide.
(7) I have learned that gentrification is only inevitable in our communities, if we buy into this narrative. And if we allow it to be.
#TechTakeover #Facebook #Amazon #MeasureHH #CSR #Blindspotting #displacedlane #housingcrisis #EastPaloAlto #BelleHaven #Oakland #Activists #socialjustice #socialchange #SiliconValley
This November, our city council decided to put a parcel tax on the ballot called Measure HH. The proposed parcel tax would tax incoming tech companies and commercial developments (of a certain size), requiring them to pay a per square foot fee for the space that they occupy in EPA. This would be an annual tax and the accrued funds would go towards creating an actual pipeline to tech jobs for EPA residents and to net new affordable multi-family housing units, for example, as well as strengthening the city’s First Source Hiring policy. It is a well known fact that the rapid expansion of the tech industry has exacerbated the region’s housing crisis and placed undue burden of solving it on low-income and working-class communities like East Palo Alto. For example, people often flock to rent in cities where the rent is cheaper (typically a low-income community), thus creating a high demand on top of the already limited supply of existing housing. Units are then “sold to the highest bidder” and this process pushes out those residents who don’t have access to the capital in the tech sector. Not only this, the proposed tax mandates an accountability report every year to see that the program has met its objectives, so that residents have some access to economic mobility in this innovation economy and don’t remain forever at the margins of the wealth of Silicon Valley.
While I do not speak for city council members, part of me felt that this conversation on the possible parcel tax (also referred to as “the Tech tax”) may have been an attempt not to repeat the Amazon deal, and to leverage this moment to create tangible and accountable pathways for economic opportunity (especially from the tech companies!) for our community. This November, we organized and the tax passed with 75% voter approval. I believe this moment is a critical step towards reversing the tech inequality equation. This is progress.
III. Tech expansion and 'Blindspotting' gentrification
For some people, the direct correlation between the expansion of big tech and the gentrification (shrinking) of historic communities of color in Silicon Valley, are in their blindspot. For example, this past summer, when I’d heard that there was a movie about the gentrification of Oakland (Blindspotting), I just about jumped out of my skin. Since this controversial topic had made it into mainstream theaters, it meant this view that gentrification was somehow insignificant and/or "inevitable," wasn’t quite true. While I’m from East Palo Alto (EPA), California, I identified with the gentrification of Oakland, a city much larger in mass than my own, but similar in its demographic make-up, its history of marginalization and its fight to not be overshadowed by big tech companies such as Uber (in Oakland) or Amazon (in EPA).
Photo: @displacedlane
At one point in its history, EPA was a predominantly black town, whose movement to incorporate, gained momentum in the 1960’s and culminated in 1983. But this notion that "gentrification was inevitable" had become apart of everyday conversation in my activism. But this answer never sat right with me. This is because it was predicated on a social problem (gentrification) which had no point of origin, no ill-effects, and was simply the course of nature. To put it another way, the answers seemed mute because they failed to identify the root causes of gentrification, in a city where its effects were noticeable. For example, there were Tesla charging stations located across the parking lot from where Ravenswood High School (East Palo Alto's first public high school) once stood. For me, people’s sentiments about the gentrification of East Palo Alto (EPA), only brought about more questions. For example: What does it mean for entire ethnic groups to be displaced or pushed out of cities which they helped to build? What does it mean when privileged groups within our rapidly gentrifying communities become dismissive of the difficulties of the most vulnerable groups within the equation—or are we only interested in embracing topics which bring us ease? My hope is that we, as a changing community, are interested in addressing the harms that gentrification can cause and not just uplifting how some aspect of a new development project within our city might bring us some form of happiness.
For this reason, I strayed away from the fallacies that tended to surface when discussing this topic (ex. "Gentrification is inevitable"). I moved from the fallacies to the evidence. And based on the evidence, it seems that in the Bay Area, shrinking historically black communities (namely, EPA, Oakland and San Francisco) are the price we pay for expanding technological advancement. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Not only this, it is also my position that if rapid gentrification is impacting the black community in EPA, its only a matter of time before it starts displacing the Latinx and Pacific Islander communities as well. Just recently, I'd read about the eviction of a long-time Pacific Islander family from EPA (http://extras.mercurynews.com/housingsaga/), who I protested on behalf of, just two years earlier! Moreover, this pattern of displacement isn’t just happening in California, it’s happening all over the United States.
Photo courtesy of Eileen Fuentes, NYC
Simply stated, I was looking for a conversation which did not make people gentrifying the city saints who were deserving and people being displaced from the city sinners who were undeserving. The conversation is more nuanced than that. I was looking for balance. And struggling to find it. Since I’ve mentioned a church metaphor, let me just say that if you’re reading this post, and you’re a newer resident in an urban community who has called the police on a Sunday morning, because the worship music was too loud at the church down the block (https://mic.com/articles/126871/a-black-church-in-gentrifying-oakland-faces-a-3-529-fine-for-being-too-loud#.XBDAZxGJw), sorry to break it to you, but you might be a gentrifier. With all of my questions, I was sure that there was another way to approach discussing gentrification. And for me, Blindspotting offered some guidance. What we, in my experience, are missing in the conversation around gentrification, is the unapologetic way in which we create a space for tension which allows people to wrestle with what is happening to their communities. Only then can we find ways to engage in meaningful conversations which point us toward more equitable solutions. But dismissing the experiences of those most negatively impacted by the expansion of big tech and their subsequent displacement, won't do it for us.
Photo: Google.com
In an era where there’s no shortage of political divisions which further separate the haves and the have nots, I submit that we can think of different ways to run our communities which don’t demonstrate a "Make the Neighborhood [insert name of gentrifying neighborhood] Great Again" mantra. This mantra/mindset assumes that nothing which exists in the neighborhood pre-gentrification, make it great (this includes the people). And that the only way to measure greatness or progress within a city is by how many white people OR upper class people have moved into the community. Also, if you're a long-time resident and decide to set up shop on the sidewalk and sell water to a white jogger you see running through your neighborhood, and #PermitPatty reports you to the police for not having the proper paperwork, (https://abc7news.com/society/video-woman-calling-cops-on-8-year-old-for-selling-water-near-at-t-park-goes-viral/3648576/) you might want to switch to a lemonade stand. Apparently, lemonade is less of a threatening drink than water, and selling it won’t result in your eventual displacement/erasure from the neighborhood.
Blindspotting is prophetic, in that it shows us what can boil over, if we keep sweeping the topic of gentrification under the rug. If we aren’t able to discuss the tension in community, in real time, with real people (those threatened with displacement and those new to the neighborhood), where else can we do it? Where do we go to discuss these matters? Where do we sit with the tension? Oakland is the birthplace of the Black Panther Party and WIC programs. EPA is the home of Nairobi Day School and College and a community having been redlined into existence, yet seeking to govern itself so much so that the case went to the Supreme Court (file:///Users/kyra/Downloads/Stanford_Daily_19830624_0001.pdf). Yet many of the children of these generations are being pushed out of town. This is not to say that communities should only have low-income and/or working-class people who reside in them. However, it is to say that both cities (Oakland and EPA) are home to marginalized groups within our society, and as these cities grow, we cannot forget this fact. If we do, shame on us. The movie Blindspotting, in addition to challenging us to sit with the tension of what gentrification means to us individually, I offer that it also urges us to pull up our chairs, close down our computers, and figure out what we are going to do about it, collectively.
IV. "Let the people decide"
At some point, it occurred to me that this notion that "gentrification is inevitable" was rooted in colonization. And the #TechTakeover, which was happening was a symptom of other kinds of take-overs that have happened at the hands of (often) white people (colonizers) and their ideas of “innovation” over centuries. This was why I could never really give up. I remember having a conversation with a family friend, who happened to be white and upper-middle class, about feeling stuck, feeling like the system (structural racism) was against me at several avenues and whatever I tried in the way of gaining upward mobility, didn’t seem to work. I was made to feel like if I had just "worked a little harder," I might be further along my career path, living in Silicon Valley. In another conversation, while I was trying to discern next steps concerning activism and the innovation economy, I remember being told, by white people, who might be labeled gentrifiers if they up and move into East Palo Alto, Oakland or Hunter’s Point, that, "That’s just the way things are." And it dawned on me, that the American cultural norm that takeover is "just the way things are" is a banner for the status quo. I unpacked this sentiment and continued to shape the conversation with direct action and activism in EPA.
In August 2018, we began working on Measure HH and considered ways that big development (including big tech) can be responsible for how they choose to show up in our communities (they can't just blindly expand). I figured that if tech companies and our city government left residents out of the decision-making-process, we could reclaim that power and agency at the polls. In other words, "Let the people decide." And other cities such as Mountain View and San Francisco, were considering similar measures at the time (https://medium.com/fast-company/silicon-valley-voters-just-demanded-that-tech-companies-be-responsible-for-their-communities-4fc545412c75). And in November, Measure HH passed.
Timeline of #TechTakeover Activism 2015-2018:
· East of Palo Alto’s Eden: Race and the Formation of Silicon Valley by Mai-Cutler–January 2015
· Wrote "An Open Letter to Kim Mai-Cutler"–February 2015
· Wrote "An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg"–October 2016
· Zuckerberg’s Response to the #TechTakeover/Catalyst Fund Announced—December 2016
· Amazon Deal and Community Protest–March 2017
· Wrote Tech Inequality Equation–March 2017
· Wrote op-ed for Facebook to create CSR policy/program–August 2017 & January 2018
· Blindspotting Movie premiers–July 2018
· Facebook announces Director of CSR position–August 2018
· Measure HH passes–November 2018
After passing Measure HH, the work that remains for the residents is to hold city government and big tech accountable to the progress we have fought for. To keep our eyes open and make sure the tax money goes where it was proposed AND that there is a process by which city council determines the spending, and this is made transparent to the public. May we never forget that power lies with the people, and they have agency to decide what type of union they want. May we never forget that providing accountability when leaders have drifted is the work of our democracy.
In my experience, a lot of people’s stance on gentrification exposes their privilege. When I first started this work, I had so many questions. During this process, I have learned the following:
(1) Abject poverty sits alongside prosperity in America, because we (as a society) have let it happen.
(2) Privilege is not exactly a motivator for groups in power to change anything (often committed to the way things are), else their privilege be "lost." And how we have arrived at a place as a society where white privilege (and all the systems which keep it in place) are deemed more valuable than the livelihood of people and communities of color, is another conversation for another time.
(3) It is never okay for a colonizer/gentrifier (a member of the group in power) to tell oppressed people from or within gentrifying neighborhoods that the change which is happening to their communities, or more broadly, that our station in life—is inevitable. Ever. This is because it frames the conversation in a way where white people who are gentrifying communities of color in Silicon Valley, have nothing to concede—and certainly not their white privilege and/or power/position as a white person within society. In other words, this notion that gentrification is somehow inevitable, allows gentrification to be written off as merely a force of nature, and therefore, absolves colonizers (recipients of white privilege) of any responsibility on the matter.
(4) As with EPA's city council and the Amazon decision, I have learned that sometimes we are complicit in our own oppression and don’t even realize it.
(5) Those who helped to build our communities will get displaced from our communities, if we (our local leadership) let it happen.
(6) Tech companies have to be willing to "be a good neighbor," to "be humble" and to create actual onramps to access, if we are to truly close the digital divide.
(7) I have learned that gentrification is only inevitable in our communities, if we buy into this narrative. And if we allow it to be.
#TechTakeover #Facebook #Amazon #MeasureHH #CSR #Blindspotting #displacedlane #housingcrisis #EastPaloAlto #BelleHaven #Oakland #Activists #socialjustice #socialchange #SiliconValley
