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Outside Carlitos (raising money through a sidewalk sale).
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Inside Carlitos, during a break between the film & the discussion.
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While gentrification is not a new phenomenon in American cities, it has assumed tsunami-like intensity in recent decades. The combination of declining incomes and soaring real estate prices has meant that formerly “undesirable” neighborhoods have been evacuated, remade, and resold at dizzying rates.
This is happening in New York City’s East Harlem (AKA Spanish Harlem or El Barrio). While the area has a long history of radical community organizing–think of the Young Lords, for example–its historic destitution and poverty has made it particularly vulnerable to real estate speculators. Thanks to their handiwork, luxury condos now seed the streets that weave between the old and enormous housing projects. Of course there are also cops, cops, and more cops.
Among those fighting back are the good people at Carlitos Café y Galeria. Housed in a narrow storefront at 1701 Lexington Avenue, this bar/café serves as a meeting place, gallery, and hangout for local radicals and artists. It is a sub-project of Art for Change, a non-profit organization founded in 1998 to advance “progressive social change by using art as a catalyst for disseminating information to people.”
The BarrioCine film series is one of the initiatives sponsored by Carlitos Café/Art for Change. Its purpose is to bring independent film to the area. Yesterday my friend Gatsby and I attended the second of a two part series of movies about gentrification.
Flag Wars was the movie of the night. This POV/PBS documentary (by Linda Goode Bryant and Laura Poitraan) explores the gentrification of the Old Towne section of Columbus, Ohio. It shows how the longtime residents of this traditionally black neighborhood were being pushed out by a wave of young, gay, white men in search of relatively affordable housing in the urban core. It also reveals the toxic mix of racism, homophobia, and greed that made the transformation of this particular locale possible.
The film presents no clear villains and discourages facile moralizing by treating a conflict between two historically oppressed groups. This enables it to underscore the systemic burdens of gentrification: specifically, it shows that generalized displacement results when housing practices are determined by the market. African Americans lose their homes, but the newcomers never really make them, given that their constant fear of and anxiety about their neighbors stops from feeling “at home” in any meaningful sense.
It was easy to meditate upon the lessons of this excellent ninety minute film while sitting on the cozy benches in Carlitos (air-conditioned) Café. I’d guess that there were about fifteen of us in the audience altogether and BarrioCine co-curator Padmini Narumanchi went out of her way to make us all feel welcomed.
There was a discussion after the documentary ended, although Gatsby and I were tired by then and decided to depart.
This was a modest event, but I believe that it is exactly the type of activity that will have to occur if we are to build a movement that can reclaim our cities.
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