Analysis

Willie Baptist on Gentrification

Student Social Workers for a Progressive Society Conference on Gentrification Fordham University School of Social Work, New York March 24th 2007

Panel Questions: Who has the power in gentrification? Who benefits and how? What kind of organizing strategies are occurring within communities to either resist or incorporate gentrification?

Willie Baptist: Hello everybody. I think this question raises a fundamental question of the relationship between the estimate of the situation and the solution that you propose for that situation. I think it' absolutely crucial that we look at this question as deep as we can to look at all the different dimensions so we can come with as accurate a description and analysis. So that we can come forth, we can put forth, a proposal for solutions. And when I think about this problem of gentrification, it is not something that is not exhausted by the New York City situation. Having been involved with national organizing and so on, you’re dealing with a pattern that amounts to a massive housing eviction of poor folks all over this country. It has its patterns that are replicated in every city, every major city, in this country. But not only in this country, but world wide... London, Paris... every country is undergoing this gentrification. It has definitely a global character to it. Every city is having to compete with the other city in the moving of the poor out and the bringing in of the middle income to support the tax base, to give more incentive for this increasingly global and mobile capital. So you have this process that is of national and worldwide significance and if we’re gonna solve it, we’re going to have to have a movement or solution that fits that. A big problem demands a big solution. I really want to stress that aspect of the thing because otherwise if our estimate is that its just this local situation and we don’t see the global and ...and national character to it then it amounts to us fighting for a better chair in the Titanic. If indeed our estimate is that we’re dealing with the Titanic, and my estimate, of course, is that it is, having been homeless for a good part of my life, and been at the result of this process that' been undergoing and accelerated within the past decade....

So, who benefits? Well, it' implied. I mean clearly what you have today with the revolutionization of the information technology and the robotization and computerization of the economy you have the emergence of this increasingly global and mobile capital. Some 21-30 trillion dollars, I would say, move around the globe seeking areas that they can get the most profit from. And every city is having to force itself into a development, towards some kind of global city that would attract this global/mobile capital. And if it can’t, then it dies. In Pennsylvania there' a number of cities that are already... and same thing in upstate New York... that are on their way to death. You go to these cities and they look like ghost towns. This is the consequence of this tremendous competition to accommodate this increasingly global and mobile capital. So if I was to answer the question as to what is the power that you are dealing with, you’re dealing with the agents of this increasingly global big capital that is having to seek places where it can increase it' wealth. So it can show a dividend to its share holders so that the share holders don’t vamoose out of that stock. But these are the forces that you’re dealing with.

In terms of how we go about solving this problem, I think clearly in as much as this problem is not to be understood in and of itself, but in my estimation and my study and my experience you’re dealing with an ever growing concentration of wealth that has given rise to greater poverty that is besetting this nation and defining every other ill and issue that confronts this society from racism to gender discrimination, you name it. This growing concentration of wealth is having this devastating impact. And if we’re going to solve this problem, which is again, not just local, its national and has a global character to it, we have to create a social movement on the level of the civil rights movement just in the recent past, or the industrial union movement in the 30's or the women' suffrage movement.

We’re talking about a new anti-slavery movement. Because in my view, poverty is the moral equivalent of slavery in this country. And this beset our nation, the richest country in the world, it is very important that we come to terms with that scale and scope of the problem. A social movement in history is successful when those who are most affected by those problems have agency. That is to say, that the people who are being evicted with this gentrification, the poor who are being pushed to the periphery of these big cities, out of state, have to begin to organize themselves to then steer the nation for a gigantic movement. We’re gonna solve the problem. Because that is the scale and scope of the problem. If you think you’re just gonna solve it just here and just there, although the struggles that are beginning to emerge or have been ongoing over a period of time are very important in terms of how do we coalesce those movements into a greater broad movement to end this problem. I think this is the challenge that each one of us face. How do each one of us contribute to the development of a social movement in this country that will make this country a better country? And to use it' resources and technological development... we shouldn’t have anybody living in homelessness; mothers in there beds with their children living under fire ducts in the city and people dying because they’re freezing to death because they have no homes. These are the results of gentrification and to resolve that you need the involvement of every one of us in this room to build a powerful movement in this country. To totally end this problem and not fiddle with it or tinker with it. That' my comment.

Willie Baptist is a formerly homeless father who serves as the Scholar-in-Residence for the Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary. Willie is also responsible for the new Poverty Scholars Program where he works to train dozens of low-income leaders to become Scholars-in-Residence for other seminaries, universities, and religious institutions. Coming out of the Watts uprising and the Black Student Movement, he has worked as an organizer and leader of the United Steelworkers Union, the National Union of the Homeless, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, and the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign.