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South Enders afraid of black and brown people win another battle
By adamg on Sun, 09/23/2007 - 10:00am
Ever get the feeling that some people in the South End wish the city would let them build a wall to keep out the darker-skinned and poor people? Forget the battle over a transitional house for homeless people on Upton Street. Just take a look at this Herald story today about how the city tore down a wall at Peters Park that local artists had been decorating for 20 years to replace it with a new wall with an "approved" mural.
Seems nobody now in city government has any idea that then Mayor Ray Flynn (remember him?) agreed to let a bunch of South End kids tag up a wall at Peters Park if they agreed to stop spray-painting nearby buildings. They kept to their word and the wall kept getting redone - becoming everything from an homage to Martin Luther King to a memorial for Katrina victims.
Of course, that won't do in a neighborhood with condos that cost more than most of those kids will make in their lifetime. The Herald sums it all up pretty nicely in this exchange:
... Last week, 20 ALA members went to Peters Park and stood on a patch of crushed rock, remnants of their wall. Lee Kleinman, a five-year resident of the South End, approached them with her poodle.
"I hope you're not planning on painting stuff on this wall that is offensive and racy. There are children who play in this park," Kleinman said. "This park has changed a lot. It's a wonderful place now."
Peters Park is, of course, home to a $300,000 dog park, with plans for doggie water fountains and a walk of fame.
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Comments
Careful
While I agree that some, but only perhaps 10-15%, of the changes in the South End have been for the worse, remember that this wall was not demolished by people living in the South End. The South Enders who are behind refurbishing Peters Park have good intentions, and it's possible or even likely that no one involved knew about the origins of the painting and the Flynn agreement. Same too for the parks department. And while it's also easy to say that the ALA could or should have spoken up (because the Peters Park renovations have been in the works for years and have been very publicly advertised in the park), that doesn't provide any answer or justification either.
The best solution? Give the ALA a leg up in the artwork bidding, but also make sure that the art proposed reflects the neighborhood - both past, present and future.
Nice hatchet job
Nice hatchet job, Adam. Way to obfuscate the issue.
If you'd at least read the article with clear eyes, instead of through the "us-vs-them" glasses you were apparently wearing, you'd see that it was ignorance on the part of the city, not anyone who lives in the neighborhood.
My neighborhood (the South End) has more homeless shelters and low-income housing than yours (and more than any other neighborhood within the entire city), and I dare guess my neighborhood is more racially diverse than yours (although very stratified, by address).
So, basically, don't point accusing fingers at me and my neighbors. We do our part.
I'm guessing the majority of the 20 ALA members who showed up there don't even live in the neighborhood!
Perhaps you should stick with the "Go Red Sox!" and "Boy, the Charlie Card is s-o-o-o-o hard to use" topics on your board.
Chill - it's not like he blamed you personally or anything
Your super-diverse website brags about how much you love diversity in theory, unless that diversity involves urban planners nixing some gentrification project on which you were looking to profit, or a few park-dwellers with different hygiene standards than yours scaring someone away from spending daddy's money on a luxury condo.
please
Firstly JohnK, you've worn exactly the same glasses on your own website.
And secondly, "guessing the majority of the 20 ALA members who showed up there don't even live in the neighborhood" is probably because they, or their family, have been priced out. Just a fact, not an accusation.
Finally thirdly, the South End isn't as diverse as one might think. It's become more of a place where the hyper-affluent count the days until the last low income person moves out so that the gates can finally go up at East Berkeley and Mass Ave.
PS: It's fine to be judgmental or opinionated, whether in a thoughtful or obnoxious manner, but it is poor manners to tell a fellow blogger what they should or should not include on their website.
Unlikely
First off, I think Adam can handle any criticisms, he's a big boy.
Second off, no sense having a blog if you aren't willing to receive critical comments.
Now.
If he thinks he (or anyone else) can get away by calling me and my neighbors racially-intolerant (my words, not his), he's mistaken.
Here's a couple (four) photos from Peters Park, from earlier this evening. (I don't think Adam allows photos, but maybe he can link to these ...)
http://johnakeith.com/mailimages/blackandbrown.jpg
Above, black and brown people play basketball. No one with pitchforks in sight.
http://johnakeith.com/mailimages/yellow.jpg
Look! We even let yellow people in!
http://johnakeith.com/mailimages/drunk.jpg
Here, a couple locals enjoy a bottle of Jack Daniels. And a bottle of Jim Beam. And a bottle of .... you get the picture.
http://johnakeith.com/mailimages/projectplace.jpg
Here's the new headquarters of Project Place, on the edge of Peters Park. Upstairs, there are studio apartments for 15 previously-homeless people (I think all men, actually?). (Downstairs is a new yellow-themed, I mean Asian-themed restaurant, Myers and Chang. We went there last night, and enjoyed a delicious meal. Expect a long wait between courses, though!)
Any questions?
Ivory-tower participants, have at me.
I wrote "some," not "all"
First, it's obvious I'm a South End outsider. I probably spend about as much time there as you spend in Roslindale (which I assume is not a whole hell of a lot, based on your crack about diversity here).
Hoss makes good points, no reason for me to diss the dog-park people, although as for the wall itself, my experience has been city departments don't do things like tearing down walls in local parks without talking to people in the neighborhood first. Normally, that's one of the good things about Boston city government, but it makes me doubt whether the parks department simply decided to take down that wall without getting an earful from people who didn't want it.
But even still: From where I sit, it seems like *some* new people in the South End have a serious issue with the people they're displacing (let me repeat: Some). No, I don't think everybody in the South End is a racially intolerant spoiled-brat white bigot who wishes those icky poor brown people would go away (any more than I think all people in the South End would rather have a parking lot than a school soccer field; not to bring up another issue or anything). Even the Herald story ended with a quote from a relative newcomer who hoped the ALA people would repaint the wall. But there seem to be enough such people in the neighborhood that an outsider reading the Herald story might wonder what's going on.
It's nice you have a new Chinese restaurant. I wouldn't make that an argument for proof of your open-mindedness, but whatever. I admit I'm jealous: We don't have a decent sit-down Chinese place around here.
Yes
Hi Adam. Yes, I certainly made it sound as if you had made a gross generalization, yet I know you didn't. I, on the other hand, often DO make gross generalizations, as you well know (ha-ha).
I didn't mean to suggest that me eating at the restaurant was a sign of my good-willness (?). (About that, it seemed downright bizarre, actually, to be eating there ...)
Back on the subject at hand. It's unbelievable that the city (at whomever's bequest) would paint over the mural. Very disturbing. I sent a note to a reporter at the South End News, hoping that the paper could find out more about this.
I have a great photo somewhere of the mural, from around 10 years ago, prior to the construction of the Wilkes Passage condo building.
From what I remember, the developer got the creators of the mural to agree to move the art into the park, in order to put up the building on that location, which at the time was an abandoned lot.
My experience in the South
My experience in the South End is that the new wave of people who have moved in since about 2003 is that they simply want to be surrounded by others like themselves: blonde, bland, beige and boring. As many of them previously spent decades in the suburbs, they expect the city to become another homgoenized version of the suburb from which they came. When they see a mural with graffiti tags which they don't quite understand, it sends a shiver of panic through them. "I don't like those youths congregating over there, with their dark skin and their cans of spray paint. I shouldn't have to witness this from the deck of my $1.8 million condo, which is also beige, bland and boring, and designed by (insert name of celebrated Boston interior designer for whom Pottery Barn remains an inspiration here).
Middle Point of View
At the risk of throwing myself into a heated debate, I would suggest that the real barrier here is not race but, rather, socioeconomic disparity. Stated another, overly-general, way - its wealth. The color of someone's skin doesn't cause them to like or dislike grafitti, drinking on the front stoop, hanging laundry out of windows, or any of the other things that you often hear are causing friction in changing neighborhoods. If you don't believe me, go talk to people in South Boston. The old timers being pushed out of there by rising real estate prices are, for the most part, white and there are the same kinds of conflicts going on there that you discuss here.
The cause of these troubles is generally people's values, which are influenced substantially by their socioeconomic backgrounds. This is why today the dirty word is "gentrification" and not something like block busting. As more wealthy people move into neighborhoods that were previously lived in primarily by less wealthy people, values collide. These conflicts aren't based on race (although I'm certainly not saying that there aren't some instances in which bigotry comes into play) but rather socioeconomic backgrounds. In another time it would have been called class but that is a term that we, as Americans who believe in social mobility, have difficulty with.