The Call for Actions

"We understand gentrification not only as a phenomenon of the market and real estate speculation, but as a force of racial and ethnic displacement and cultural genocide. When the population of black San Francisco is halved over three decades of gentrification, we understand this is not just class war, but race war, too. We understand that gentrification fundamentally functions in the same way as colonialism by murdering and displacing people of color and seizing their land. We understand that individual gentrifiers act as settler-colonial subjects, perpetuating white supremacist entitlement and displacing long-term communities while treating cities and neighborhoods like their personal playgrounds. We understand that the primary targets of gentrification are black, brown, ethnic, and immigrant communities. We are opposed to their notions of “progress,” to the dim “future” that these developers and tech companies offer us. But this struggle is really about what’s happening right now, the terrible future that is already here. It is a struggle about time and space in the here and now. How many hours of your life do you work each week to pay the new rent, if you can even find a job? How many minutes of the day are you free from surveillance? How long can you afford to stay in the city? How many generations of history are being erased? The effects of this takeover cascade from one end of the Bay Area to the other, endlessly pushing people out. Who gets to live here? Who has to sleep five to a room? Who has space? No wonder people are angry. No wonder the war keeps bursting forth."


From "Defend the Bay Area"