There is history here, Black History!

by tiny/PNN

The new Diaspora

Africans Arriving in The cities by the Bay

450,000 strong

willing, ready

and able to get down

for ones daily bread

Sat Nan (truth and identity)

But now, again I must ask

Where's my forty acres and a mule?

Excerpt of Diaspora by Dharma, from the Houzin Project, Words, Art and Resources on Eviction, Gentrification, Displacement and Homelessness by POOR Magazine

"I have lived here for 60 years and as community residents we have the right to give input into what's gonna happen to this train station," Evonne Smith, life long resident of West Oakland who came to the Bay Area from Chicago with her family as part of a mass migration of thousands of African Descendent folks in search of jobs and economic opportunities in the 1940's, spoke to me over the soft sounds of children, elders and adults gathered at the corner of 16th and Wood streets in the heart of West Oakland. As she spoke I eyed the ancient elegance of the now faded Wood Street Train Station standing forlornly behind a high barb wire fence in the background. Ms. Smith concluded, "We are here to make sure that this place won't just be turned into more housing for the very rich" Ms. Smith was one of several hundred community residents and housing activists opposing a huge "market-rate" housing development planned for the Train station.

The planned development dubbed "Central Station" would produce up to 1,500 new housing units mostly for sale starting at $300,000 per unit. As PNN/Bayview readers will note this kind of Gentrification is in keeping with what POOR Magazine dubbed "Gerrification" in its 1999 Media Action on Oakland City Hall Plaza ,i.e., the master plan by the so-called" Strong" Mayor Jerry Brown to bring rich folks by the hundreds of thousands into Oakland as the answer to Oakland's "blight" which is another euphemism for poor folks, mostly of color, who supposedly people Oakland now. Of course the thing that is never talked about by the corporate media and the policy makers is that rather than "cleaning-up" an area, those kind of massive redevelopments of very poor areas that aren't rooted in the communities themselves lead to more homelessness or like Po' Poet Laureate A. Faye Hicks said in her piece on the Kkkolinization of San Francisco's Fillmore District, "when we (poor folks) are evicted and gentrified out of our homes and neighborhoods we don't leave we just go live in the sidewalk hotels."

"I started in West Oakland when I was nine years old, my family migrated here from Louisiana, during the time I was coming up, West Oakland was beautiful," Linnie Cobb, another OG resident of West Oakland rooted in the community was touching on the real roots of gentrification/colonization, i.e., the descimation of healthy communities through redlining and zoning laws, which in West Oakland happened when zoning laws were changed many years ago facilitating the plethora of liquor stores and bars, i.e., the ruin of a thriving Black community which now facilitated the current cheap land grabs by big developers like Central Stations Rick Holiday , also known for kick-starting loft development in San Francisco. After explaining her communities' interest in seeing a monument created to honor the Black folk who built up the area Linnie summed it up perfectly, "There is a history here, and its Black History.

"Its about this place becoming a Museum for the Pullman porters, they threw us on the army base, well we deserve a home here…,"After I spoke to Linnie I ran into the eloquent Monsa Nitoto, Economic justice activist from CWAR and West Oakland resident who was explaining the struggle to build a Museum for the Pullman Porters. " They are talking about building housing that most West Oakland residents will not be able to afford and they won't work with local developers like The Alliance of West Oakland Development that offered to buy 250 units that would go to affordable and subsidized housing, but they wouldn't sell it to them," Monsa went on to explain that one of the important things that need to happen to insure real local involvement is that the Board for the Central Station project needs to have community members that control it, rather than Rick Holidays'; yesmen

"I was a Pullman Porter for 46 years, my first trip to California was into this station"
After I spoke to Monsa, I had the honor of speaking to Herman Simmons, an African Descendent elder who was one of the original Pullman Porters who would be honored if there was a proper museum created for them in the Central Station project. The train station site has been seen for a long time by community members as the perfect location for a Pullman Porter Museum. The Porters West Coast Headquarters was in West Oakland and many West Oakland families, like Linnie Cobb, had family members who worked the trains coming through the Old Station. In fact most African Descendent families in Oakland originally arrived here via the 16th and Wood St Station. Ron Dellums Uncle C.L. Dellums was a local leader in the union which assisted in many other civil rights efforts.

"The train station was one of the original places that African -American folks came into and the developers are planning on building housing that noone in the neighborhood can afford" Adam Gold, one of the organizers from Just Cause spoke to the fight by the community and housing activists that is just beginning to insure that The train Station is community run, integrates 25%-30% affordable housing that is really affordable, and includes a community controlled Pullman Porter museum. So far their effort has gathered over 500 signatures calling for these demands to be met.

In some ways the life of developer Rick Holliday, reads like a horror story out of the pages of POOR Magazine's Houzin Project, a book released in 2003 on POOR Press focused on the root causes to homelessness and poverty. In the 80's he was a "good" developer, i.e., launching Bridge Housing in San Francisco, which originally created several hundred units of affordable housing. But in the 90's like so many of his yuppie forefathers, he took his privileged education and personal access and abandoned the non-profit development world to start his own development firm and in fact launched the entire gentrification effort on San Francisco's South of Market area. In the process almost single-handedly creating the notion of trendy lofts and forcing the eviction of hundreds of poor families from that previously low-income area of San Francisco. His rationale for not including affordable housing in the Central Station project is that West Oakland already has enough such housing.

To get involved in the effort to resist this massive gentrification project call Just Cause at (510)866-7105.