The article by Crenshaw and Peller discusses how even though there was video evidence of a beating that was done by the police, the law failed to convict them of excessive force. This is an all too familiar case, as made public in recent news about the deaths of Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and others. It is now new that racial profiling is leading to such arrests and in some unfortunate cases, excessive police violence. As we did see in our class presentations by the Stop and Frisk group, African American and Latino men are amongst the ones who are stopped and suspected of crimes the most. Even in the article, the authors discuss Rodney King, who was also a victim of police brutality and the justice system did not serve justice like it should have.

Question: Is there ever going to be any resolution to this problem, or is history just going to keep repeating itself?

Frederick Law Olmsted had it right when he said that public spaces should be for people or all races, genders, income classes, and such to get together and mingle. It should not be a space restricted for only a certain types of people, as Davis is describing the completely separate lives of the rich and poor in Los Angeles. So many immigrants have entered the city hoping for a better life, when in reality, what is happening is that public spaces are being allowed to deteriorate. There are fewer and fewer parks, libraries, and playgrounds, while the poorer neighborhood streets are getting more dangerous by the day. Though not as severe, there is a specific example that I have witnessed on Staten Island as well. It wasn’t that the public spaces open for poorer people was being closed, it was more that poorer people were being inexplicitly denied from, at least, this one specific park. A certain ethnic house of worship was located near the park and so more and more people of that ethnicity started to move into the neighborhood. It was a park that many people used to visit after school, but pretty soon, with the influx of these newer residents, the previous residents who visited the park did not feel comfortable being around the new residents. The new people renovated the park and made it look like brand new, and so the previous residents felt uncomfortable going inside anymore. To further worsen the situation, the new residents placed locks on the park entrances, so no one would be able to go in or out without them knowing. Though not completely the same as the Los Angeles case, it is strikingly similar.

Question: Why is the mixing of different socioeconomic classes so difficult and is there any way it could ever be achieved?

“Canaries of the Creative Age” discusses how community organization is a beneficial way to accomplish agendas that governments have been putting off or declining to look at. One such issue is the “Quality of Life”, similar to what we discussed last week about zero tolerance policing in order to improve crimes rates, safety, and the overall neighborhood. In this week’s reading there was an activist group named FIERCE based in Greenwich Village, which sought to remove this way of policing from their neighborhood. Expect, the entire community did not agree with this group. The community wanted policing to stay how it is, so the neighborhood can be safer. The community claimed that it was prostitution that brought “shady youths” into the neighborhood (aka LGBT groups) This group, which was in support of LGBT, wanted to remove this mentality and wanted to stop discrimination of this kind against this community. It was one of the first opposition that the general public faced to be forced to accept LGBT communities. It supposedly worked, because nowadays the LGBT has succeeded in many of their missions.

How and is this model of community organization be used today to ensure all inequality is erased?

The Broken Windows Theory of policing seems like a great policy on paper, but in the real world, it isn’t as easy to implement. First of all, having enough officers on the streets and enough surveillance to be able to catch every small crime seems very problematic. Moreover, claiming that one group of people/area seems to have more crime than another is just another reason that the police can use as an excuse to use “police force.” As both “Giuliani Times” and “Quality of Life Policing” discuss, police brutality increased when this policy was implemented in New York City. That’s because police had a reason to be suspicious of certain people and if these people did anything that could be categorized as a crime, it would be and if “necessary” police force would be used. It is completely unfair how loopholes, or in this case, vague language in the laws can lead to so much violence. This is actually an ongoing cycle, police believe that people are committing crimes, they act in accordance by being harsher to these people, and the people who may not be committing crimes know that the police believe them to commit crimes anyways, so those people go ahead and commit crimes. It’s a psychological principle called the self-fulfilling prophecy and is not the right way to enforce laws in a city.

Question: Is there any way to have a balance of policing in the city?

The following statement is a real eye-opener: “The 80 wealthiest people in the world altogether own $1.9 trillion […] nearly the same amount shared by the 3.5 billion people who occupy the bottom half of the world’s income scale.” This fact is absolutely mind boggling, and how it could even be true is a whole different story. To think that most of the world’s wealth is held by only 80 people is utterly insane. This shift to private money holders is becoming apparent because there has been a shift from public funding to private funding for various projects. For example, the High Line in NYC is a park that was mainly funded by private donors. Its really beautiful, and when I went to visit the park, I actually did notice that the only types of people visiting the park were tourists, runners, or cyclers who lived near by. It’s a great park and a wonderful way to use the money that the wealthy have, but there is always a better use for excess money.

Question: Is there any hope for the wealth to be distributed among the lower income population, or are the “rich just going to get richer and the poor, poorer.”?

“It’s evidence that when official channels fail, other parts of society respond.” (Feurer). The previous statement really sums up the disaster that followed after Hurricane Sandy. Everyone was basically looking out for one another after this horrific natural disaster. I remember that I had to travel to the Stop and shop down the street in order to do my nebulizer because I had a horrible asthma attack the day after. My experience isn’t as dreadful as those that the people of the NYCHA’s Gowanus Houses had to go through. I cannot even imagine staying in my home for a week because I was trapped at a higher level of a building and not having electricity/heat/power for 11 full days. Both the Huffington post and the New York Times Articles clearly send out the message that during these hard times, government officials were the slow ones to react and that has to be fixed. Volunteers made this difficult time smoother for all those that were suffering. Its truly sad how we were not prepared for such a thing and I hope the governmental officials took note of how devastating this storm was and have made plans to address the issues it brought up.

Question: What types of rules and laws would the government have to put into action to prevent something like this from happening again? Or is this type of consequence from a natural disaster inevitable?

The reality of the climate change crisis is not one that is unheard of. No matter where or when, it sneaks into conversations all over the world. The topic does deserve it though, because as the PlanNYC article stated, the changes expected are drastic. To think that storms like Hurricane Sandy and Katrina are expected to be more common is horrific! This one storm (Sandy) caused so much damage, and it really brought about a sense of awakening to how vulnerable infrastructure really is. It does also bring to the surface the real problem of not having enough protection by the government from such storms, as the “Cities Under Siege” article discusses. People are raising their voices about this problem to get government officials to listen, and such an event took place last September. The People’s Climate March was an event to get the attention of lawmakers who would meet to discuss future climate related policies. This event was really huge and hopefully it sent a good message to the government, to let them know that the climate problem of the future needs to be fixed now.

Question: What other ways can the public influence the government to do more about the global warming crisis?

Gentrification was, still is, and most likely will be an ongoing occurrence. A neighborhood that is considered “bad” or “old” will most likely slowly start to be gentrified, or as the author of the “The Birth of Gentrification” states in other terms “neighborhood revitalization.” This process has occurred all over the US, including many neighborhoods in New York City. The example used in the text is a great example; Brownstoning was started because banks refused to finance mortgages from areas of the city that were “risky” and so newsletters were created, public meetings and events were held to encourage people to take up Brownstones. This entire process ultimately resulted in brownstones becoming one of the most expensive and elite homes in all of the city. This process of gentrification seems to be occurring in all of the neighborhoods we are studying this semester. Slowly, but surely, new and “hip” stores are being opened up to bring in a newer, middle class population. It would be very interesting to track neighborhoods over a long period of time to see how quickly gentrification occurs.

Question: Why is gentrification an ongoing cycle in global cities?