Letters to the Editor
swilldog
Published Letters: 184 Editor's Choice: 20
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a gentrifier's take
[Read the article: The strangers next door]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Confession time: I'm a gentrifier (not by nature, but by circumstance!). I live in an historically black, depressed neighborhood in East Austin, TX. Up until about 4-5 years ago, the description BabyGrumpus decried as "ludicris" was pretty much spot on, except instead of the DMV being the biggest building dominating the neighborhood, it was/is a building owned by the University of Texas.
About 10 years ago one of my neighbors, the trailblazing gentrifier of the street, bought super-cheap when the neighborhood was really sketchy. The abandoned house across the street was at one point a crackhouse, another time abandoned with a squatter in it. A few blocks away was the largest open air drug market in Austin, begrudgingly patrolled on occasion by the police. Nearby MLK Blvd. was not all that unsafe, but there were sections you didn't want to be on at night. Several of the houses on the street were empty, and most of the long-time residents, almost all black, were renters or long-time owners who generally worked blue collar jobs and weren't overly interested in neighborhood politics beyond their own homes and the usual safety concerns. Vast swaths of the area were without by any kind of neighborhood association or citizen representation. Mind you, all this within eyeshot of the state capital and at a time when Austin was growing like gangbusters. Money was not in short supply, but it certainly wasn't flowing in this direction.
Now, the past couple years have seen a renewed interest in East Austin. Homes that 4 years ago were falling down and selling for 60K are getting band-aided together and selling for 300K, or are being torn down entirely and replaced -- fortunately not many of the new structures are McMansions, thanks to the McMansion ordinance put in place a year or two ago, but unfortunately many are being torn down and replaced with cheaply built duplexes and other rental homes. The open air drug market is still there, but the cops come to visit more frequently, and there are earnest attempts from the public and private sectors to clean up the area. The city is trying to encourage smart growth that is respectful of the neighborhood's history, but it's an ongoing battle between developers (not all of whom are white suit types, btw), real estate market pressure, city planners, emerging neighborhood activists, and the still confoundingly apathetic/disconnected residents of many parts of the area.
My wife and I are blessed in that our relationships with our black neighbors is pretty friendly, but perhaps that's more a sign that we've gotten into the neighborhood on the other side of the curve. Our neighbor who was the first to move in 10 years ago faced a good share of hostility, and the one guy who seemingly befriended him turned out to be the guy who robbed his house 2-3 times over the first year and a half -- apparently, it's a lot easier to case a joint when you're having a beer with the owner.
It all sounds pretty cliche when I look back on it, and I'm sure it is to a certain extent because of my perception from this side of the fence (so to speak). I'm sure if you talk to one of the other long time residents on our street, you might hear a different story entirely. The challenge for us, for East Austin, and for gentrifying neighborhoods everywhere, is finding a place where those stories start to meet up in a way where the back story for everyone isn't (white)washed away.
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30 to 50 dollars?!?!
[Read the article: Buy my bio textbook, or refill my Pill? ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Correct me if I'm wrong here, but don't birth controls pills cost the pharmaceutical companies something along the line of pennies to make and distribute, name-brand pricing aside?
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Actually, we *don't* know that
[Read the article: What does it really take?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]From the article:
We know, for instance, that Hillary Clinton is the sort of politician who will plant a question in the audience, get caught and then not apologize. We know that Mitt Romney is the sort of politician who structures his life like a major corporation and sees politics as a marketing problem. We know that Barack Obama is committed to the untested, and perhaps foolhardy, notion that he can move the nation beyond political partisanship.
Funny thing, though: If indeed we do *know* any of these things, we only "know" them via what's been reported, and how those plotlines have been reported.
As pointed out by the first letter, you're making a huge leap of logic that Hillary was directly involved in that PR blunder. We don't *know* how Romney truly "views politics as a marketing problem" (whatever the hell that means) -- that's just the impression some reporters gave us when they were covering the horse race aspects of the campaign (which may or may not include taking talking points delivered by Romney or his staffers!). And Obama's desire to appeal to something beyond partisanship was nothing if not a strategy to define his candidacy on his terms lest he get pigeonholed into some sort of caricature that would have otherwise been delivered to use via the typical horse race coverage.
Campaigns are huuuuuuuuuuge organizations, mostly about as organized as an ill child's diaper. But according to the campaign-focused reporting we've been force-fed, we're supposed to hold the candidate accountable for every single word and action taken on his/her behalf by a coterie of often borderline-competent and/or sleep deprived lackeys. All the while, very little if any in-depth coverage is given to the policies each candidate proposes, and even less to the gross inconsistencies, non-answers, and doublespeak they expect us to buy in their now-required "everyone must love me" approach to politics. And this is supposed to help us decide who should be elected as the de facto leader of the world?
At the end of the day, campaign coverage all becomes this unbelievably futile exercise in circular logic, and then y'all wonder why the vast majority of Americans tune this crap out.