Eastside Austin Community Project - Gentrification and its Toll

For the synopsis for this project, Cynthia, Julie and I have decided to post our summary onto my blog. This project has given us each a deeper insight on gentrification and what it means for the East Austin Community. What are your thoughts on the topic?

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Gentrification of historical African American communities, such as East Austin, has interrupted the once close-knit communities that served as protective factors for African American families. Karenga and Karenga (2007) argue that the Nguzo Saba (or 7 principles) comprise the fundamental value system to sustain African American families, communities and culture. These principles are: faith, unity, self-determination, collective work and business, cooperative economics, and purpose.

Our project sought to raise awareness of the impact of gentrification on the East Austin community.  Within our group, each of us had our own unique and personal connections to wanting to become involved, but through our diversity, we were united in wanting to contribute to the East Austin community. While Cynthia’s interest was fueled by her thoughts that East Austin was losing its roots due to heavy gentrification, Julie’s interest came more from her learning in this course and via a previous project in a social justice class.  Jasmine’s involvement came from a combination of learning in the class as well as a conversation with her grandmother about how the neighborhood she lives in used to be.  In this conversation, her grandmother expressed the nature of how the neighborhood was once a unified place, heavily using many of the Nguzo Saba principles. Overall, our combined perspectives were used to make a change and bring awareness about the impact of gentrification on the East Austin community.

In an article on Gentrification, the past, present, and future outlook on East Austin is highlighted.  The article speaks of how West Austin, also known as Clarksville, was once majority African-American and now is majority Caucasian.  Given these facts, the projected outlook on East Austin is that with the rising property costs and new developments, it too, will become majority Caucasian.  The article states, “The example of Clarksville in West Austin serves as the direction that things will no doubt go in East Austin” – (Emery, 2003-2006, p. 1).

The goal of this project was to collectively gather interviews and information about the gentrification that is in full effect east of I-35 and to raise awareness. The East Austin Contact Team was a committee that caught our eye through Julie’s connection to one of their members. This team is a group of Caucasian residents of East Austin that have moved into these neighborhoods recently.  The team meets monthly to discuss changes that should be made in East Austin, and report to the City Planning Commission about these necessary changes.  Their desire for improvement of the community is great, but highly flawed in its process.  The committee, being all White except for one member, has not sought to include older residents of the community or minorities.  This was seen as a huge problem in the opinions of our group, seeing how a small sector of this community was making decisions that excluded the whole of its residents.

This sparked a new direction in the plan of our group.  Seeing how the Contact Team was operating motivated us even more to want to get these interviews to them.  Revealing the thoughts and emotions shown through our video interviews laid the foundation for our hope that the Contact Team would change its approach and become more inclusive of all members no matter how old or what race they were.

We plan to forward this video compilation to Joy Casnovsky, a member of the Contact Team, so that the video will be shown in one of their upcoming meetings.  This video can be used in a variety of ways to unite the community of East Austin and to implement unified planning on future changes and to increase discussion amongst residents about this phenomenon.

Changes can be made to improve East Austin and to keep the Nguzo Saba principles running throughout the community, but discussion and awareness must be brought in first.  We believe, through this project, that we can help bring about this change.      

References

Allen, B. L. (2012, April 11). (J. McElrath, Interviewer)

Burditt, G.  (2012, April 18).  (J. Burditt, Interviewer)

Emery, M. (2003-2006). East Austin Gentrification. Austin Now .

Higgins, A. (2012, March 30).  (C. Martin-Carnline, Interviewer)

Gilson, C. (2012, April 10). (J. McElrath, Interviewer)

Karenga, M & Karenga, (2007).  The Nguzo Saba and the Black family:  Principles and practice of well-being and flourishing.  In H. P. McAdoo (Ed.), Black Families, 4th Edition (pp. 7-28).  Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage

King, C.  (2012, April 7).  (C. Martin-Carnline, Interviewer)

J. Casnovsky (March 19-April 19, 2012)

Turner, B.  (2012, April 18).  (J. Burditt, Interviewer)