Last week’s post by Amanda covered most of the climatic events that occurred last week. As the writer of this week’s project update I can say that this has been a transitionary week for our group, as we have completed many of our project goals in the past and are looking forward to completing even more beginning next week. This week has been fairly anticlimactic, in the sense that most of our events has passed or are coming up. Abhishek had suggested an event that would be relevant to our group that we will be attending later this month. This exhibition titled “Uneven Growth NYC” at the Museum of Modern Art will be attended by several of our group members, but not all. As the past project updates have stated, trying to attend an event as a whole group has proved to be quite difficult.
However, the communication between our group is our key point of strength and thanks to many social media sharing platforms we have been able to connect with each other’s ideas and build upon them. The Facebook messenger platform continues to be our consistent method to relay information in the group and for the any large chunks of information we now have a google document that Abhishek has created. This relates back to the earliest days of our group’s interactions where we used a google document created by Amanda to create our first assignment-the project brief. We are hoping to see success in utilizing google docs again.
Lastly, we have another event for El Barrio Unite coming up this Saturday in East Harlem. From last week’s experience with the Community Board meeting that Gisella and I attended, the emotional aspect to this project is becoming more clear as we delve deeper into it. The community board meeting was heavily raucous at times due to the attendee’s passion and strong opinions towards the speakers at the meeting. One man in particular was cheered on by the crowd but was abruptly cut off by the community board panel for taking up too much time. He spoke of his humble beginnings, growing up in the poor conditions of East Harlem. He said that as he grew older he had the motivation to find a good job, yet no one would give him an opportunity to prove his worth. He spoke of an organization in East Harlem that finally gave him a shot in the field of construction. He worked his way up from starting out as a painter, electrician, and handyman that worked for less than minimum wage to now making $50 per hour. The crowd cheered for his success story but it was clear that the community board wanted to calm any sense of entitlement that stirred the crowd before things got too wild. The overall vibe from the meeting brought a deeper level of investigation into this topic, for now we are beginning to see the realities of the consequences that stem from the rapid gentrification of East Harlem first hand.
