photo by Paul
by Pete Shaw
On May Day, local housing rights activists, including many Occupiers, helped Alicia Jackson take back her NE Portland home. Next door to Jackson’s house a duplex was under construction, which – unbeknownst to many of those helping Jackson – was being built on land that also had belonged to her.
photo by Pete
At yesterday’s Block Party in celebration of the ongoing defense of the homes of Jackson and Annette Steele attended by over 200 people, the community took back the newly finished duplex, thus expanding the idea of defense to encompass a philosophy opposing gentrification. The duplex will serve as a community center that will not only provide services for the community, but will also be a base of organizing against gentrification and police violence in the neighborhood.
Standing next to a banner reading “Together We Are Unevictable,” Jackson opened the door to the new community center at 12:27 pm, effectively christening an empty house a community home. Soon people were being given tours of the building and encouraged to offer ideas ranging from landscape to use of interior space. Out on the street, sharing a potluck, others reflected upon a remarkable three months and shared future hopes. It was a lively day of camaraderie, entertainment, and rousing speeches, particularly from Jackson and Steele.
Grace Schoenlank was impressed with the turnout and optimistic about further gains. “People are building community from the ground up. This is incredibly important. We need to do more of this. We need to be getting out in the streets, making more community centers, and working with long-time residents.”
Claire Flanagan hoped the center would be a place where “we can build something vibrant and loving.” Seeing Jackson, Steele and the community center, as “part of the larger Take Back the Land movement,” she noted that although large numbers of houses stand empty, many people remain houseless. In the future, Flanagan said she’d like to see “more of the community driving the takeovers, more openness in the organizing community, and more outreach to building community. This will hopefully allow for more housing takeovers and better organized communities that can defend themselves and demand their rights and fair treatment.”
photo by Pete
Lobo, co-founder of the Blazing Arrow Organization (BAO), an organization formed to fight gentrification* and police violence in North and Northeast Portland, talked about the relationship between violence and displacement from gentrification. “Housing must be defended to end violence in working class communities,” Lobo said. “Stable housing creates an environment for community self-reliance and healthy relationships. Without secure housing, families are displaced and communities are fragmented.”
The housing crisis has largely been the result of the greed of the 1%, particularly big banks that pushed people into loans they did not need – loans that, in many instances, came with higher interest rates than the owners could manage. Minority communities have been particularly hard hit, and Jackson spoke of the crassness of the bankers who were bailed out with our tax dollars, but offer no help to troubled homeowners.
After Annette Steele spoke about the defense of her home, Jackson, in the most touching moment of a beautiful afternoon, reminded people that while Steele did all she could to repay a loan virtually thrust upon her by an affiliate of predatory lender Citigroup, the bank went out of its way to ensure Steele received no relief. The Banksters,” said Jackson, putting a human face on an inhuman situation, “told Ms. Steele she’d be living in a box on the street. We gotta shut them down.”
As Northeast Portland has become increasingly gentrified, the Portland Police have ramped up arrests through its Gang Enforcement Program, taking in over 200 people – mostly black youth – each month along Killingsworth Street between North Interstate Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard. As police conflicts rise, BAO is beginning community patrols to monitor arrests and support people, and the new community center will serve as the base for those community patrols.
Photo by Bette
The activists outside Alicia Jackson’s modest house on Sunday also believe they are fighting crime. Though the dominant culture discourages it, many historic struggles were won by those who, despite the odds, persist in working toward a more just world. One of the keys, note organizers, is recognizing the opposition, and another is recognizing your allies.
“The enemy is not the gentrifiers,” said Lobo. “The enemies are corporations and the capitalist system. Gentrification is a collective problem. We need a collective solution. Working people deserve to live without the fear of losing their home or being brutalized by the police. The BAO will use this new organizing center to stop gentrification and respond to police violence. It will be open to anyone fighting for freedom from white supremacy and oppression. We are working class, queer, and people of color, committed to creating a society that both meets our basic needs and respects our human dignity. We are prepared to defend ourselves and the work we are doing, and invite others to work alongside us.”
Woody Guthrie once commented that you know you’ve lost your fight when they put you on a postage stamp. Likewise, it seems that latter day proclamations of the African American community representing the soul of Portland signals the fact that something is afoot, said Lobo, while detailing the history of Vanport on Sunday.
References to soul by the moneyed and powerful serve them in what the BAO calls their exploitative development of Northeast Portland. “If If this is the soul of Portland,” Lobo said, “then Portland is selling its soul. Gentrification breaks the tie between generations. Gentrification is violence against people of color and working class people. Gentrification is a crime.”
Update: Early Monday morning four police cars and five police officers showed up outside the new community center where one person was keeping watch. The police entered the center and arrested that person who is now being supported by We Are Oregon’s legal team.
The Portland Rapid Response Network sent out a text informing recipients of the raid, and very quickly about one hundred people showed up. “Our main priority is defending Alicia Jackson and Annette Steele’s houses,” Lobo said. “We can defend them if we in the community have their backs.”
photo by Bette
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*During World War II, people seeking work at the Kaiser Shipyards found a home in Vanport, now the site of Delta Park and the Portland International Raceway. A large contingent of African Americans migrated there, increasing Portland’s African American population from 2000 statewide in 1940 to over 15,000 by 1946, mostly concentrated in what was known as Lower Albina, loosely bounded by today’s Interstate Avenue, Russell Street, Williams Street, and some of Broadway starting at the Rose Quarter and Memorial Coliseum. This area later became known as Jumptown.
On May 30, 1948 the Columbia River overflowed, and the subsequent flooding destroyed Vanport. Many African American families moved just south to neighborhoods in North and Northeast Portland – including Woodlawn, Jackson’s home. These neighborhoods became the center of the African American community in Portland. Jumptown was its cultural Mecca, a vibrant hive of African American culture, most obviously represented by a plethora of jazz clubs that hosted some of the most influential icons of the day. Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, and Louis Armstrong were among the luminaries who graced Portland.
The construction of I-5 and Memorial Coliseum sliced up Jumptown, and the area never recovered. But culture both embraces and transcends place, and the African American community continued to develop despite racist tactics like redlining. Today, gentrification and the new redlining of predatory lending and subprime mortgages threaten to tear the culture apart.
A block party to celebrate breaking and entering…interesting. While I admire the conviction shown by the folks that broke into the “community center”, I sincerely hope prison sentences are handed down should they be charged and convicted. Delusional, misguided, embarrasing…all words that come to mind when reading about the exploits of Portland Occupiers. I think a more constructive use of time and resources would be to hold an educational seminar for people about to buy a new house. Teach people to identify what “predatory lending practices” are. Jackson and Steele both signed contracts clearly outlining what type of agreement they were entering into. If they had problems with the contract, they should not have entered into the agreement. An educated consumer stops problems before they occur.
And when banks deny homeowners short sales in order to more easily foreclose on them, that’s legal too. When the hell did banks become above the law and above common decency? Riddle me that Mr. Rob.
Ms. Illona-
Respectfully, that is between the bank and the homeowner. The point I was trying to make is that people don’t take responsibility for their own actions. The problem does not rest solely with the bank. The loan market was consumer driven…people were buying these products knowing the financial risks. Signing an unread contract means you read it…legally speaking. Finally, banks dont need to be decent. I am not defending them, or their policies. But, they just dont need to be decent. We can choose to patronize them or not. I still maintain that teaching people that no matter what their smiling mortgage guy/girl tells them…banks are only it in it to make money and dont give a crap about you is a much better solution that breaking into a home.
Hey Rob. You’re standing on stolen land.
Hard Luck I am not sure what your point is. If you are referring to the fact that a couple of generations before my grand parents came over on the boat the land was stolen from the locals you are correct. I am not sure why that would be relevant to this conversation however.
“Delusional, misguided, and embarrassing…” Indeed, words similar to those used to describe abolitionists, women seeking the right to vote, and those involved with the Civil Rights Movement, just to name a few groups with ideas of justice similar to these people who see shelter as a human right, not a bank right to profit.
We agree that we should be stopping problems before they occur. In this case, this is stopping the banks from creating more problems, throwing someone whose tax dollars helped save that bank out on the street. It is education, just not of a type you approve.
Garth-
It’s not that I don’t approve of it. I don’t understand your methods. You give me a convincing argument that breaking into a house that does not belong to you is a solution, or at least a partial solution and I will get behind it 100 percent. I can see a temporary reprieve for the Steele and Jackson families but at the end of the day the law has been broken. Steele and Jackson will probably face arrest or legal action. I can see how drawing attention (protesting) gets the cause visible, but breaking and entering causes more problems than it fixes.
Comparing yourselves to the abolitionsts,Suffragists, and the Civil Rights Movement illustrates my point regarding delusional. Rallying around people that didn’t bother to read the contracts they signed covers the misguided and embarrassing parts. So, while I agree that banks have gone waaaaaaaaaayyy out of control over the years, I still maintain that educated consumers who live within their means would have curtailed the economic collapse that our country faced.
The lending market (predatory or otherwise) was driven by consumers who were seeing the same dollar signs that banks were seeing. A lot of people got in over their heads. Some did it knowing the risks, and others were oblivious. I think if the oblivious folks were made aware of the massive financial risks they were taking on, the majority of them would have opted for options that made more sense to them financially.
You seem to have more respect for the law than you do for people who were foreclosed upon. You assume that people who lost their homes either were “oblivious” or foolish. But the law, well, that has to be respected! You keep defending the law, while people continue to lose their homes. I’m sure the banks that are “waaaaaaaaaayyy out of control” will thank you for it.
Mr. Rothstein-
I don’t think the banks care one way or another what my thoughts are. I am not so much a fan of the law as I am for accountability for ones own actions. As to assuming that people were oblivious or foolish you’re close to correct. I base that opinion on the words of my friends who lost their houses.
Listen I realize I am not going to change your opinion anymore than you will change mine. While I disagree with most of the actions I see from Occupy Portland, I wholeheartedly support your right to perform those actions. In the end you guys may be right…I am not convinced, but I appreciate the banter.
We will only be able to accomplish housing equity/affordability if we allow redevelopment of existing under-utilized land. As long as we “waste” land many of our citizens will never be able to afford “their own place.” This is not justification for illegal evictions or foreclosures or government land grabs. We do, however, need to resist blaming “gentrification” for our ills. It is inevitable that land must be redeveloped at higher intensities to enable housing to be affordable. The true “gentrification” problem is when you knock down an affordable dwelling and replace it with more dwellings, each of which are to be sold at a higher price than the single dwelling they replaced.
Our goal must be to increase the housing stock at a rate that outpaces demand (something we proved quite good at with respect to single family houses in the suburbs), but in areas that won’t require residents to own cars to get around. The City of Portland is failing us in this regard, with so much land off limits to development of truly affordable housing.
It’s our moral obligation to draw attention to (and break as needed) unjust laws. Many egregious things were/are perfectly legal. Predatory lending and the manipulation of the financial markets by speculators that helped collapse the bloated markets are simply new forms of banks and the owning class manipulating the law so that they can extract profits from working people — this is legal, just as red-lining and housing segregation were totally legal (and completely unjust). Yes, the laws eventually changed to outlaw things like red-lining; that didn’t just happen though. People fought against red-lining and segregation; they broke laws; they engaged in illegal direct action that empowered communities that were disempowered by the legal system.
The needs of our communities are not being met by the existing system, so we need to make our own way forward. This is not a new concept, it’s steeped in history.
A video from this event that compliments Petes accurate report, is now up on YouTube and posted here in solidarity: http://youtu.be/BF0z_aNSq30
Just wondering what the status of Ms. Jackson suit for the property?
I see that it is still offered for sale at this time.
Is it going to be returned to her?
Or will she just get the selling price when it is sold?
If so, how will the builder get compensated for his materials and labor?
Please keep me informed!!