|
For six months from last October to this past April, I lived in the West Oakland neighbourhood of Ghost Town, so called because the county had bulldozed right through it to build an expressway to the affluent suburbs, leaving the community behind in tatters. The CIA then filled in the gaps with crack cocaine, destroying the social bonds that had survived the demolition. I'd seen so-called poverty up close before, but I'd never lived knee-deep in it: boarded-up buildings; people pushing around shopping carts that were spilling over the sides with plastic bags, taking up an entire lane of traffic; people cracked-out, drunk as fuck at ten in the morning; cops jacking kids right outside my front door on suspicion of *nothing*. Does it sound to you like a scary place to live? Maybe on paper. But I swear to you, now, I was never happier, I never felt more connected. You would walk down the street, and *everyone* would say wassup. I have *never* in my life lived in any other neighbourhood where I felt that kind of love. And I loved Ghost Town right back. It was these people that inspired me to put into practice everything I'd learned in Portland about the power of City Repair, how to create community one intersection at a time. When I first moved in, no one knew me from Joe Whitey. But once I assembled the first DIYTV, the neighbourhood O.G.'s and community activists took me in as one of their own. After two youths had been shot and killed within a year of each other at Durant Park, three blocks from my house, people on the street realized that something had to change. I proposed reclaiming the streets, painting them and making them beautiful to increase the peace. But by the time I left Oakland in April, we hadn't yet made a consensus decision around it. That is why I was incredibly overjoyed to receive word by e-mail that just this past week the block finally came together and took back the streets. I am so proud that the first City Repair-style "Intersection Repair" in Oakland, the East Bay, and the whole Bay Area, is at 29th & MLK, the heart of Ghost Town -- the hood that's in my heart. GHOST TOWN FOREVER!
|
|
I was already informed that since my departure, the 'hood took up my call to paint the streets, in order to reclaim them and increase the peace. The pictures from the street-painting event itself look great, no doubt, but would the Intersection Repair have the intended effect? Would the crackheads and 'ho's respect the space? Would the drug dealers and gangbangers put down the chrome? When I was back in the Bay for a week in late November 2005, I went back to Ghost Town to see what was up. What I found was not garbage strewn across the park, but a whole pack of kids playing football there, and other kids watching. Their ball game even spilled out onto the street itself, claiming it for community. I was told that on Hallowe'en, over 200 neighbourhood kids attended a block party in the park. We did it, we fucking did it! Now, what about CROW, the urban eco-warriors that coalesced around the Ampeartheatre project? From talking after the fact to Mark Lakeman, co-founder of the original City Repair, I knew that he and a couple of other people had lived off of savings and devoted several months of their lives to the project, without any expectation, in order to start it up from scratch. It took in Portland, and I just wondered if I had hung around long enough in Oakland to see our City Repair group transition to sustainability. When I got back to the Bay looking for a place to crash, I found out that the Apavarga collective that was the heart and soul of City Repair Oakland West has since disbanded, each eco-activist going his or her own separate way. And I heard the CROW core group faltered at first... would people step up to the plate and take on the responsibilities that I had shepherded and shouldered?
|
|
Well, the proof is in the mudding. The DIYTV's that were the catalysts for calling people together may be rusting in storage... but in the half year that I was out of town, the newly crowned East Bay City Repair forged new alliances and built three new awesome public projects in the Five-One-Oh: the Oakland Zoo butterfly memorial garden, the Alameda Point garden gazebo, and the People's Grocery Chicken Coop! The new City Repair projects are perfectly in line with the philosophy that we visioned from the start: urban interventions in the hardest-hit areas, working with natural allies that are doing the most amount of good, for those that need it the most. I challenge Scarborough! I challenge Jane & Finch! I challenge every community that's in pain and suffering to turn this thing around with love of self. The Alameda Point gazebo services a nearby community of 200 formerly homeless families on what was once a navy base that is being permacultured back to health. Some Ghost Town locals that helped plaster the Ampeartheater on Apgar were now hired to artistically sculpt the cob benches. You can check out the quality work they did below -- a trellice roof will be added to the structure in the spring. People's Grocery provides an indispensible service to the community in Ghost Town. West Oakland has 30,000 residents, 44 liquor stores, and only ONE grocery store. Building an ecological facility for People's Grocery means directly improving the health of this community, making sure that people are getting nutritious organic fruits and vegetables to eat, not crappy pre-packaged snacks and junk food. I don't take any credit for any of these projects, they were initiated by other people after I was already long gone. I just feel gratified that the grunt work that I did wasn't in vain, that a natural building movement of the people in the Bay Area has coalesced, and is a shining example of what a small group of very dedicated young people can accomplish when they try to change the world.
|
