Regardless of how much America claims to be a free country with equal opportunities for all, there will always exist a certain sense of prejudice and rivalry between all races. Over the years, despite anti-segregation or anti-discriminatory measures, society hasn’t managed to suppress or move on passed the racial gap. This is when it becomes evident in police cases such as the Rodney King beating case in which the police officers were acquitted. And nowadays, we just keep adding cases to the list, just like the death of Eric Garner and/or Robert Davis, a retired elementary school teacher suspected of intoxication. And there are many more. I agree with the article when it states that different people had different interpretations of the video that went viral after King’s beating. On one side, evidence such as a video could easily prove whether someone is guilty or not, however, it was also frustrating because even after the judge saw the video he still decided to acquit two of the four officers. This is the meanings I stuck with. Unfortunately, justice doesn’t always get the job done. In addition, the article states that the relations between communities cannot be mediated in a neutral fashion, and I completely agree with that. There isn’t such a thing as neutral in current society, as hard as that is to accept, there will always be some sort of biased actions/thoughts/words/procedures executed by someone.

Question: What do you guys propose as a solution for this gender inequality issue?

I found the Bushwick Daily to be an interesting website that provides insight about the community. For starters they have a section called “letters to Bushwick” where people can express their opinions, thoughts and concerns about important matters related to the community. One post that left an impression was a posted letter by a man who realized that he is part of the gentrification happening in Bushwick and as a result, sought out to speak to those who have lived there for a while. Gill, the neighborhood liquor store owner described how the area used to be filled with drugs and crime. Now, it is young people not from New York trying to survive in an already over populated city. He described it as “drunk post college kids running around where you grew up, forcing your mom and grandmother out of their homes.” Gill stresses that gentrification has made the area beautiful but difficult to afford when making minimum wage. (This point is proven in another post that describes a protest over a new build building that does not provide housing affordable for those already living in the community.)In the end, he posed the question of “What’re you bringing here?”

Can the new comers/ gentrification bring something positive to those already living there?

http://bushwickdaily.com/2015/04/letter-to-bushwick-at-the-intersection-of-the-gentrifier-and-the-gentrified-in-bushwick/

In regards to the United States incarceration system, this first piece by Norbal Morris and David J. Rothman discusses the system in action in the west-coast state of California. This may be personal bias but I do not think that this issue is a new issue that people are going to be surprised to hear about. The prison system, as the article states, has adopted this principle of mass-incarceration of people for misdemeanors like drug possession since before many of us in this class were even born. The reason given is that there is an “excess” of people–too many people with low-income jobs. The remedy proposed was a series of laws that would effectively put these people into a cyclic machine that would be more productive (in terms of revenue generation) than their current low to no income activities would. I think that if we could find a way to give these people a way to integrate into society more successfully, we would have less of a difficult time appeasing people who are supportive of this current system.

Question: With this mass-incarceration system being tied to the war on drugs, how can we separate the two now that they have become so thoroughly interlinked?

It is a poorly kept secret that our prison system needs massive reform – this is something that I’ve known about vaguely since I was fifteen or so. I did not know, however, the extent to which prison reform could be actively opposed. I thought it was a no-brainer! Our prisons are overcrowded and inadequate – this must be addressed. The conditions that Morris and Rothman describe, namely the unsanitary facilities and overcrowded compounds, are absolutely dreadful. I hadn’t realized how complex the politics of imprisonment really are. The competing interests, between the state and federal governments, plus their comprising departments, make navigating prison reform a nightmare, as illustrated by the Prison Fix reading. To me, being “tough on crime,” is a poor and superficial way to win political points. Often this means racial profiling and jail time for minor offenses, like drug possession. This is applicable not just to California, which the reading is about, but to the US as a whole. Our prisons wouldn’t be packed to the gills if we didn’t jail activists and drug users.

There were so many elements of the “Reel Time/Real Justice” article that I appreciated and admired, including the clever title. The first element was the author’s assertion that even if the two explanations given for the unjust verdict were to be “fixed” (change of venue and the failure of the prosecution to humanize Rodney King), it is wrong to assume that Rodney King would have been granted a fair trial. He further supports his assertion by pointing out that because narratives are artificially built in the courtroom, the King verdict was not extraordinary but typical. In the second half of the piece, the author presents his argument for why “reasonable force” and “equal force” need to be socially constructed, through narratives of time and space. The last element I want to mention is the rhetoric of “rule of law” vs. “no justice, no peace” and the translation of the two into reasonable and emotion, respectively. Even today, the media coverage surrounding public riots presents the participants as emotional and the riot itself to be an overreaction. In doing so, the media devalues the injustice being protested and weakens the movement. In conclusion, the philosophically dense arguments presented in the article were well thought out and remain relevant.

I’ve been asking this question for most of the semester now, and I’m trying desperately to ask any other question but I can’t think of one as important: how do we shape and use responsible rhetoric in argumentation and law to prevent the inevitable situation we’ve found ourselves in, of an Orwellian “nobody-read-my-politics-of-English-essay” nature?

In both pieces, the authors make explicit reference to how political bodies use rhetoric that masks the reality of what they’re doing with nicety and tact to make it more acceptable. As Crenshaw points out, w/re/to the stills of the King tape, this actually changes the reality of a situation as we perceive it—rhetoric is not then bound to an argumentative structure, but a narrative one. This realization is immensely important—with doublespeak levels of word invention, the reality of a situation changes and our ability to assess and talk about it diminishes.

A natural response to this that I can think of is to then shape rhetoric in a way that can be better used by the disenfranchised, but this has been tried (see the Occupy piece from weeks prior) and met with little success. Is there, then, some ability of a “neutral” rhetoric? But, even if this were invented, would it actually solve the problem if the language we use to tell these stories isn’t used emphatically enough—or with enough empathy? The nature of the world is that it is based on agreed subjective perception—how do we shape this perception to be empathetic?

The Gothamist ran an article about gentrification a couple years ago in their column Ask a Native New Yorker. The response they received was overwhelming, and one such response was published. A native to Bushwick, Rosa Rivera was displaced by increased rent in the neighbourhood and saw the gentrification of her block right after she left. Her anger over it is powerful. Rivera lends a voice to the multitude of displaced people who, undoubtedly, yearn for the security and appeal of gentrified neighbourhoods but don’t want them at their expense. What was once her home is no longer accessible to her due to the marketing toward affluence that pervades the neighbourhood. The image evoked – a woman locked out of a place she used to call her home – strikes a chord of fear and insecurity within us all. It forces us to ask the question if gentrification is really worth it, or if the human cost is too high.

Article can be viewed here.

Question: What is your opinion on gentrification, both before the course and after it? Was it affected by your research on Bushwick / the Bushwick walking tour, and if so, how?

I’m not surprised by the reading today, but I definitely have problems with it. Having visited LA and other Californian cities like it, I know what the city is like. I know its history. But I was most caught by Davis’ description of the Goldwyn Library. The library itself is fairly unassuming. If sentries and fences are problematic, then so is much of NYC. But for a library that had faced arson previously, the anti-vandalism and anti-theft measures are understandable. The vilification of safety seems ridiculous. Davis is projecting his own biases on Gehry’s architecture, claiming that the Library’s security measures – which, according to the Library, are used to protect a valuable archive of rare film materials – is a measure to intimidate ‘undesirable’ people, the poor and homeless, from being in the library. Libraries are public spaces with a purpose. And I’d expect libraries with rare collections who’d been previously burned to enforce that purpose. Trying to claim ulterior motives only serves to bring up the old argument that the only people concerned with security are the people who have something to hide.

Question: What is your take on the Goldwyn Library and the ‘Panopticon Mall’? What do you think of overt security in public places?

In this Huffington Post article regarding the gentrification of Bushwick, the issue of gentrification consequences is discussed. The author interviews a local resident East WillyB and discusses the problems that gentrification has caused this area of Brooklyn. Bushwick is home to Williamsburg, a notorious hipster center (especially with the food festival coming up this summer). With the increasing rent prices, people have been forced to pay more or move out. The displacement of older residents is apparent, as described by East WillyB. Those with a college education, for example, are favored against those who have not had the privilege to attend such institutions. I was happy to see that the intervewee acknowledged his privilege and admitted that he was part of this growing problem. In speaking to others who have lived through these gentrification sweeps, however, I know that the displaced residents will relocate to other areas. At the Macaulay conference, it was discussed that such outlets for residents included places like Flatbush. While they will still find a place to live, it is questionable how this cycle of being pushed from place to place will end.

Question: How can we, instead of just accepting that gentrification will move from place to place, create a space that houses the social benefits of gentrification without displacing old-time residents who cannot afford to pay the new prices that gentrification brings?

article link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sahra-vang-nguyen/the-gentrification-of-bus_b_6018048.html

I think it was interesting that the article started with a description of the militarization urban space using the terms middle class and urban poor as the two warring classes. I feel like in America, this is a strange term to use because everyone generally is considered to be middle class. The gray area is only discussed when we go into the details of what exactly middle class means here. For some people, middle class is defined as being able to own multiple flat-screen televisions and gaming consoles, while struggling to meet ends with rent payments and struggling to afford healthy meals. For others, it means sending their children to the second-best private elementary school in the city and being able to afford a house and organic food. All of these people are middle class, so it is a little ambiguous to use it in such a context. However, the urban poor may also be considered to be part of that lower end of the economic spectrum of middle class citizens. This is, however, debatable, as people will self-identify variably.

Question: how do we address this problem of the increasing militarization of the urban space without making deeper cuts between these described groups and engaging in further class warfare?