I am grateful for the editorial regarding gentrification. It’s something I think about a lot. I live in a house I like on a block I like, but I’m a young white person living below Woodland; my presence is socially and economically weaponized. I feel very aware of my own presence in majority black neighborhoods, and I know that I constitute a threat, regardless of my efforts to the contrary. But what can I even do, really?? Organize, vote, agitate, be a good neighbor, only live in areas that have already gentrified (I can’t really afford that); with a systemic problem like this, in a system functioning as designed, do my counteractions as an individual really make a difference? I hate what gentrification is doing to communities of color in this city, and I hate that I seem to be helping it along despite that.
Thanks,
Name Withheld by Request
