Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Barraitune Day Thurston, and this is how to
Speaker 1: citizen with Baritune Day in season two, we're talking about
Speaker 1: the money, because, to be real, it's hard to citizen
Speaker 1: when we can barely pay the bills. When I grew
Speaker 1: up in d C in the nineteen eighties, it was
Speaker 1: known as Chocolate City because it was that black. Then
Speaker 1: I left d C in the mid nineties that went
Speaker 1: off to Boston for college, lived there twelve years. New
Speaker 1: York after that, mostly Brooklyn another twelve years. And in
Speaker 1: every one of these places, the neighborhoods I lived and
Speaker 1: the ones that felt so much like my childhood neighborhood,
Speaker 1: there was something changing. I couldn't put my finger on
Speaker 1: it until I revisited my hometown, my home block, and
Speaker 1: Chocolate City didn't feel so chocolate e anymore had more
Speaker 1: of a Caramelfuly. My mother had to sell our home
Speaker 1: before we fully left d C. Not because she really
Speaker 1: wanted to, not because we couldn't afford the payments, but
Speaker 1: because it was just too dangerous. This was the peak
Speaker 1: of the crack Wars, and she was worried about the
Speaker 1: safety of her baby for good reason. So when I
Speaker 1: went back to look at our family home, my childhood home.
Speaker 1: We weren't there. The residents were a nice white couple
Speaker 1: from Iowa. Sometimes I torture myself to this day looking
Speaker 1: up the real estate value of that childhood home and
Speaker 1: seeing how much wealth is not in my family, and
Speaker 1: it creates a little bit of a conflict in me
Speaker 1: because I've been a part of that change in so
Speaker 1: many neighborhoods. I've been the new money coming in, And
Speaker 1: to be honest, I like some of the new stuff.
Speaker 1: I am a sucker for an over priced cocktail from
Speaker 1: the school of mixology. I love fancy coffee, more foam,
Speaker 1: more happy baritune day. That's my jam. But I'm also
Speaker 1: troubled by the idea that new folks coming into a
Speaker 1: culturally rich environment are part of the destruction of that
Speaker 1: very culture. That all this nice new stuff is not
Speaker 1: for the people who held it down for so long
Speaker 1: in their neighborhoods, and that's not right. We've got to
Speaker 1: have a different way of letting people own their community,
Speaker 1: determine that future, and have the benefits for themselves. I
Speaker 1: believe we can improve neighborhoods for the people already there,
Speaker 1: and I know someone who has an idea of how
Speaker 1: to do it, who believes that nice things, including good coffee,
Speaker 1: shouldn't mean displacing long term residents because it's all about ownership.
Speaker 1: And she's at the epicenter of gentrification in the US Oakland, California.
Speaker 1: You ask how Oakland could get into the condition it's
Speaker 1: in now. No one has had a moment to stop
Speaker 1: and build a future for themselves. You better believe these
Speaker 1: hedge funds have hundred and five hundred year plans for themselves.
Speaker 1: After the break my conversation with third generation West Oaklander
Speaker 1: Noni Session, let me fix my hair. Oh, your hair
Speaker 1: looks great coming out. I mean, you know, the messy
Speaker 1: afro is a look, but it's very messy, so I
Speaker 1: have to work on bad. Noni Session is the executive
Speaker 1: director of the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative eb
Speaker 1: PREC fights gentrification in West Oakland by buying up real
Speaker 1: estate and historically black and brown communities and then collectively
Speaker 1: owning and managing those properties within the community. Alright, so
Speaker 1: can you introduce yourself? Say your name and what it
Speaker 1: is you do. My name is Nony Session. Um I
Speaker 1: am an accidental community led movement builder, real estate developer,
Speaker 1: and impact investment galvanizer when in my actual professional training,
Speaker 1: I'm trained as a cultural anthropologist who stumbled into grass
Speaker 1: roots organizing. And here we are today. Okay, wow, we
Speaker 1: are clearly going to go on a journey with you,
Speaker 1: because that was a lot of nouns. You know, we
Speaker 1: got organizer, galvanizer, developer, anthropologists, woo woo. Okay, why do
Speaker 1: you use the word accidental to describe so many of
Speaker 1: your jobs? Well, I'm essentially just this little kid from
Speaker 1: West Oakland who was raised on Sesame Street and Nature
Speaker 1: TV shows and read lots of sci fi before it
Speaker 1: was cool to read side Hi. And then I majored
Speaker 1: in Black studies and cultural anthropology, and then did my
Speaker 1: doctoral work at Cornell in Nairobi on the United Nations
Speaker 1: Development Program. And um, when I came home after ten
Speaker 1: years away for grad school, the city was just crazy.
Speaker 1: West Oakland has been a hot spot for local artists
Speaker 1: and musicians. Jessica Florida shows us as gentrification transforms the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: the people who have long called it home are getting
Speaker 1: pushed out. High rents not only forced out families, but
Speaker 1: mom and pop shops. He and his companies have issued
Speaker 1: at least three thousand eviction notices. Prostitution, crime, poverty, the
Speaker 1: illegal duppling, the homelessness were like second class citizens here.
Speaker 1: And it was quite accidental because it started with me
Speaker 1: just volunteering because I wanted to meet some people, you know,
Speaker 1: and talk about really interesting things I had learned in
Speaker 1: grad school. And ten years later it's culminated in this
Speaker 1: work that is actually shocks me every day when I
Speaker 1: wake up. It's it's it's quite powerful for me to
Speaker 1: be involved in it. So where do you live now?
Speaker 1: I live in West Oakland. I actually live in the
Speaker 1: house that I was raised in. I'm speaking to you
Speaker 1: from there right now, which is radically unusual given the
Speaker 1: extreme and accelerated racialized displacement that's taken place in my
Speaker 1: city and cities like it. So I'm pretty proud of
Speaker 1: that accelerated racialized displacement. Can you define that term please.
Speaker 1: We've lost over fifty of Oakland's black and legacy population
Speaker 1: in the last ten years. With a boom in our population,
Speaker 1: the ratio of people of color has dropped to such
Speaker 1: an extreme degree that you can't help but call it
Speaker 1: racialized displacement. Your family has been in West Oakland for
Speaker 1: how many generations? My grandparents migrated here in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen forty, So my grandparents, my cousins, my aunt's mincles,
Speaker 1: my dad, my my mom, my sisters, my brothers, and
Speaker 1: then I have another generation after me as I was
Speaker 1: a teenage mother. So I now have a very very
Speaker 1: very adult daughter living her life here as well. So
Speaker 1: what does it mean to you to have so many
Speaker 1: generations from your family be based in West Oakland? I
Speaker 1: think prior to this tenure arc, it didn't mean a lot.
Speaker 1: I did not understand the privilege of being grounded in
Speaker 1: a place for generations. And when I compare myself to
Speaker 1: my counterparts who have moved a lot, or who have
Speaker 1: had to live squarely in white dominated situations, I realized
Speaker 1: it was almost as if I was raised in a
Speaker 1: royal or cloistered or a situation where my identity was
Speaker 1: reinforced on a daily basis. We were well known, our
Speaker 1: life was stable and predictable, and it it really gives
Speaker 1: you this grounding to both claim and imagine a future
Speaker 1: for yourself that I think a lot of people around
Speaker 1: me haven't had the privilege to capture in their life trajectory.
Speaker 1: You use the word wealth to describe what your family
Speaker 1: gave you, and I suspect you don't mean buried chests
Speaker 1: of gold or stock certificates. How do you define this
Speaker 1: wealth that your family left for you in West Oakland? Um?
Speaker 1: I think I define it as identity right, as a
Speaker 1: well from which I can gather new creative material. I
Speaker 1: think that it really drives a lot of the underlying
Speaker 1: mission and political philosophy of my work now, and that
Speaker 1: that is the definition of culture and Black Americans as
Speaker 1: one of the clear landless people on this planet. It's
Speaker 1: one reason that we've had such complications with getting a
Speaker 1: foothold here and that we don't have a firm place
Speaker 1: to retire ourselves, to to define and build for the
Speaker 1: next generation. We are in a constant state of rebuilding,
Speaker 1: not just generation to generation, I mean day to day,
Speaker 1: month to month, year to year. So that is really
Speaker 1: the definition of wealth. Can you describe your West Oakland?
Speaker 1: What does it look like, what does it smell like?
Speaker 1: Who's in it? Lots of oak trees and big, wide
Speaker 1: empty streets. You know, I think as a kid, and
Speaker 1: as Black Americans, we still thought we were living in
Speaker 1: a place that would show up for us and rescue us. So,
Speaker 1: despite Oakland being empty, washed out city, we at least
Speaker 1: we're left alone to our um class identities and our
Speaker 1: daily goings on. Um. My parents were small business owners.
Speaker 1: My mother ran a board and care home for development
Speaker 1: lee disabled adults, and so I was really safe on
Speaker 1: the same streets that most people were not safe on.
Speaker 1: Nobody bothered this little black kid. I would go to
Speaker 1: bookstores and hang out for hours. I would go to
Speaker 1: West Oakland Public Library to that like quiet, warm, muted
Speaker 1: space and lay on the floor and read book after book,
Speaker 1: and then skip down these wide, empty, silent boulevards. It
Speaker 1: was open space for me. It was a super quiet,
Speaker 1: safe space. And describe your West Oakland today, my poor babies.
Speaker 1: You could call that stretch of road homeless Lane. It's
Speaker 1: an encampment that has grown so large you can see
Speaker 1: it's spilling out onto the roadway. There are hundreds of
Speaker 1: similar tense cities across Silicon Valley, all within a few
Speaker 1: miles of the world's most profitable tech companies. All of
Speaker 1: those wide open boulevards. They're stacked neck high with tents
Speaker 1: and lots of discarded hoarded goods. But it's sporadic. Right.
Speaker 1: If you don't know West Oakland, Google with its racialized
Speaker 1: and class algorithms, will direct you right around those hot
Speaker 1: spots of neglect. The funny thing is the boulevards are
Speaker 1: still wide open, the skies are still huge, so there's
Speaker 1: still this hopefulness. Um, while we stand next to start poverty.
Speaker 1: How do you explain the change in the West Oakland
Speaker 1: of your youth versus your description of the West Oakland
Speaker 1: of today. What happened? You know? It was it was
Speaker 1: a ghost town when I was growing up because it
Speaker 1: was in the middle of of the Reagan years and
Speaker 1: benign neglect. For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit,
Speaker 1: mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary
Speaker 1: convenience of the present. When what is benign neglect? That
Speaker 1: was an economic policy of the Reagan years. That was
Speaker 1: when you started to see a lot of money and
Speaker 1: resources pulled out of urban cities. And that is really
Speaker 1: what accelerated urban decline and the loss of value in
Speaker 1: urban communities which could then be preyed on by speculators. Right, um,
Speaker 1: folks had a plan for Oakland that most of us
Speaker 1: were not privy to. It's a hot market, and um,
Speaker 1: there's very little care and forethought in planning for lives
Speaker 1: that have been led here for generations. So it's a fearful,
Speaker 1: insecure place under the surface of these bride white boulevards.
Speaker 1: What's a hot market? What does that mean? That means
Speaker 1: that after I watched my neighbors across the street be
Speaker 1: removed by the share of the house with two tiny
Speaker 1: eight by eight bedrooms, the house immediately sold for one
Speaker 1: point four million. That's a hot market. So what's what's
Speaker 1: your home ownership situation? Are you renting? Are you owning
Speaker 1: in this home that you're living in yourself? Well? Interesting enough,
Speaker 1: in the subprime lending of the late eighties and early nineties,
Speaker 1: my mother also lost this house. My amazing maternal uncle
Speaker 1: bought it to keep it from going back on the
Speaker 1: speculative market, and we paid all the expenses, but he
Speaker 1: maintained it as the owner of record until someone could
Speaker 1: get another mortgage, and that has just been recently. Me
Speaker 1: and I closed escrow on my childhood home September three
Speaker 1: of twenty The whole family breathed a sigh of relief.
Speaker 1: I'm breathing it for you. I can feel the stability
Speaker 1: under your feet. What do you mean when you say
Speaker 1: speculative market? You were able to keep your family home
Speaker 1: out of the speculative market. Well, you know, we're currently
Speaker 1: living under a financial game that's been in development for
Speaker 1: a long time but is really accelerated, and that everything
Speaker 1: around you is a commodity, the air you breathe, the
Speaker 1: water you drink, and so how currency is currently traded
Speaker 1: is on a speculative basis of its future value. It
Speaker 1: is a gamble or a bet on the future price
Speaker 1: of a commodity item. It's actually meant to drive up
Speaker 1: the value. It's the artificial creation of scarcity in order
Speaker 1: to create excess capital. And so when you speculate on housing,
Speaker 1: you're buying something, you're holding it in reserve from the market, right,
Speaker 1: Meaning you're keeping housing away from people often empty and
Speaker 1: wait for the rise in its value to create excess
Speaker 1: profit for yourself. And through that speculation, you're raising the
Speaker 1: costs and making it inaccessible. Um, it sounds to me
Speaker 1: like what's happened in your area, and it's not limited
Speaker 1: to West Oakland for sure. I'm from d C. I
Speaker 1: used to live in Brooklyn, Boston, like everywhere you look
Speaker 1: in many parts of the world, housing is not being
Speaker 1: treated as a place for people to live, but rather
Speaker 1: as a place for people to park their money and
Speaker 1: make the money grow, raising money rather than kids inside
Speaker 1: of these homes. Uh Is that is that a fair
Speaker 1: rephrasing of what you just said? Yes you could. You
Speaker 1: could name them bread and Chad and it would really
Speaker 1: be reflective of what's going on. So, so what is
Speaker 1: the impact on people when housing is withheld from the
Speaker 1: market for those who want to live in it to
Speaker 1: those who want to profit from the value of the
Speaker 1: increasing you know, financial worth of that housing. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean you circled us back around to accelerated racialized displacement,
Speaker 1: because not only does speculation become this increasingly tight loop
Speaker 1: of accelerating the cost of land and housing, but it
Speaker 1: means that a very specific class and group of people
Speaker 1: are not only going to be pushed out of their
Speaker 1: current housing and access to future housing, they then have
Speaker 1: to lay on the sidewalk as they watch that housing
Speaker 1: being either held in reserve or in some manner developed
Speaker 1: for new populations that are the demand of the current
Speaker 1: labor market, which focuses in on tech. So as seven
Speaker 1: thousand people scrape and scrabble for a living, they watch
Speaker 1: new folks have fifty dollar branches right outside of where
Speaker 1: their children used to play and eat their meals with
Speaker 1: the landscape of affordable housing right now in Oakland? What
Speaker 1: is the landscape of affordable housing? Well, it's the I
Speaker 1: It eats me inside out when people use the language
Speaker 1: of affordable housing, tell me why you made. As of
Speaker 1: two thousand and seventeen, the average Black Oaklanders salary was
Speaker 1: thirty six thousand dollars. That same year, the average White
Speaker 1: Oaklanders salary as eighty thousand dollars. Almost all affordable housing
Speaker 1: as it exists right now is not for the very
Speaker 1: folks who are rent burdened or on the actual sidewalk
Speaker 1: sleeping every night. And those affordable housing developers who are
Speaker 1: trying to produce affordable housing that serves those at that
Speaker 1: median income of thirty six thousand dollars are finding that
Speaker 1: they are hog tied in terms of leveraging state and
Speaker 1: federal subsidies and bond money, and so all of that
Speaker 1: capital that comes from state, federal money bonds still gets
Speaker 1: cloistered among those who are not from the very populations
Speaker 1: affected by rent burden and rent blight. It's a game.
Speaker 1: It's a game. It's a game. It's a shell game,
Speaker 1: if you will. My understanding of shell game is there's
Speaker 1: some trickery involved, that you're covering up the fact that
Speaker 1: something's not really under those shells. There's some deception of
Speaker 1: So bring me to the moment, because I can. I
Speaker 1: can feel the energy. You got me all fired up.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yo, they're not telling this story the right way,
Speaker 1: but it's emotional. This has had significant impacts on people's
Speaker 1: lives and their ability to live, and you took some
Speaker 1: steps to end that game. So what does the East
Speaker 1: Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative do around housing? The East
Speaker 1: Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative is a democratically lad people
Speaker 1: of color, multi stakeholder cooperative that supports Black, Brown and
Speaker 1: Indigenous Oaklanders in collectively organizing, financing, stewarding long term land
Speaker 1: and housing in Oakland in the East Bay. Although we
Speaker 1: are not an affordable housing developer, we develop permanent and
Speaker 1: affordable land and housing for people to live in dip
Speaker 1: back into generation after generation, and through our by laws,
Speaker 1: we restrict ourselves from ever selling it or using it exploitatively.
Speaker 1: So there's a guarantee of permanence and the future for
Speaker 1: people who invest in our revision. So you have created
Speaker 1: a different way for people in a community two own
Speaker 1: land and buildings and housing in their community. And the
Speaker 1: results is what what's different? The result is the rebuilding
Speaker 1: of a community. What is happening in Oakland and cities
Speaker 1: like it is unchecked speculation, where the city is allowing
Speaker 1: folks who actually don't understand community development to stick buildings
Speaker 1: in arbitrary open spaces and then sell off the fractions
Speaker 1: to people who are unconnected to the outcome of the
Speaker 1: place in which they buy the item, the idea even
Speaker 1: and so there is a weird disconnection between where and
Speaker 1: how you build what and who and what it's built for.
Speaker 1: After the break, what happens when instead of a corporate
Speaker 1: developer owning the real estate and the community, it's owned
Speaker 1: by the people. What actually changes? Hi, I'm no need
Speaker 1: and I'm Greg. We're part of b B pre Per
Speaker 1: real Estate Cooperative. First, we get local residents, You me, Greg,
Speaker 1: your mom, your neighbor, to invest a thousand dollars apiece
Speaker 1: into our collective fund with a lot of people that's
Speaker 1: a lot of money. Then EB prec uses that money
Speaker 1: to buy up properties in Oakland and the East Bay.
Speaker 1: We've already picked out properties where long term tenants are
Speaker 1: in danger of being pushed out, and once we buy
Speaker 1: the property, the people who are already live and work
Speaker 1: there get to stay. I think I understand how your
Speaker 1: approach is different. It is grounded in the community. It
Speaker 1: is collective with the community. The ownership sounds like it's
Speaker 1: distributed among the community, not just in the single hand
Speaker 1: of one rich corporation or maybe even one very wealthy individual,
Speaker 1: as is the case with many a building. Why did
Speaker 1: you choose the co op model not the nonprofit model
Speaker 1: for this land and housing need. Well, well, there's a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons. One is sort of a core underlying
Speaker 1: philosophical and political reason. Folks like W. E. B. Dubois,
Speaker 1: Fanny lew Hammer, we just thought, you know, if we
Speaker 1: had land to grow some stuff, only then it would
Speaker 1: be a help too. They were not civil rights activists
Speaker 1: first and then coopers. They were co operas first and
Speaker 1: then became civil rights activists. So we founded Freedom Bombs
Speaker 1: in nineteen nine. The plan of the thing is that
Speaker 1: it didn't grow to produce enough. The people just won't
Speaker 1: know what. From the date the change dropped off of
Speaker 1: us after emancipation, we knew that cooperative and collective economics
Speaker 1: for our answer. On the North Carolina Coast, we had
Speaker 1: over a hundred hectares of cooperative land for which over
Speaker 1: the next hundred years we were judicially an extra judicially
Speaker 1: dispossessed of that land. But we've always known the solution.
Speaker 1: And what I try to communicate to people is that
Speaker 1: we work on this sort of individualistic rhetoric. But even
Speaker 1: if you look at hedge funds, you look at speculative development,
Speaker 1: those are collectives of people combining their economic and political
Speaker 1: power to create an outcome. So that's number one. Collective
Speaker 1: economics is the way of the world. Just those of
Speaker 1: us who are on the ground scrabbling don't understand that.
Speaker 1: That's an important point because I think a lot of
Speaker 1: folks here collective economics, cooperative economics, that's communist MAO with socialist, leftist.
Speaker 1: But a corporation is a collection of people's interests, aligned
Speaker 1: boards of directors, shareholders. So we're all operating as a
Speaker 1: part of some collective, whether we name it that or
Speaker 1: not exactly exactly, So tell me what it looks like
Speaker 1: on the ground. What have you accomplished, what have you done?
Speaker 1: So we're very new and we're have a grand vision.
Speaker 1: So right now we are the owners of two land
Speaker 1: and housing acquisitions. So our first is a multi unit
Speaker 1: building that has teachers and lawyers and activists and gardeners
Speaker 1: who live there. Multiple gardeners. You have multiple gardeners. Gardeners. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're in Oakland, Like urban gardening is the deal right now,
Speaker 1: don't play um. And they're very busy, active people. One
Speaker 1: of them is the founder of Community Democracy Project, which
Speaker 1: is working to change the city charter in Oakland so
Speaker 1: that Oaklanders can participate in defining the city budget. Another
Speaker 1: is a founder of the first People of Color Cooperative
Speaker 1: coffee roaster in Berkeley. Right, these are folks who are
Speaker 1: working in and for our community, and now they pay
Speaker 1: rent at about eight hundred and twenty bucks when most
Speaker 1: people are paying fifteen hundred to twenty hundred for the
Speaker 1: same square footage. Our second acquisition is a single family
Speaker 1: home in Berkeley, League, California that has a detached dance
Speaker 1: studio and there were housing two black women artists, one
Speaker 1: who's formerly homeless with a daughter, and the interview was
Speaker 1: really about their vision as opposed to them being able
Speaker 1: to pass the credit check and show us that they
Speaker 1: hadn't been a victim of other predatory housing situations which
Speaker 1: often result in evictions. Right. And in addition, those two
Speaker 1: women who are now living in this amazing, beautiful shingled
Speaker 1: house in Berkeley, they are now launching a business out
Speaker 1: of the dance studio for an additional stream of income
Speaker 1: because they are active members of the arts community. Right,
Speaker 1: this is transforming people's futures. And so our current acquisition
Speaker 1: and this is this is our biggest one yet, and
Speaker 1: we're we're really going out on a lamb to really
Speaker 1: show the proof of concept for this motto. It's on
Speaker 1: historic Seventh Street, which has been the heart of the
Speaker 1: gutting of Oakland. And so we're take in this historic
Speaker 1: corridor that used to be called the Harlem of the West, right,
Speaker 1: some of the greatest acts in Black history, and it
Speaker 1: was a bustling black business district. It's been a ghost
Speaker 1: town for thirty years and people have tried over and
Speaker 1: over again to restart that corridor. And so we're acquiring
Speaker 1: Esther's Orbit Room Jazz and supper club, and we're creating
Speaker 1: three footprints of commercial ground floor space for a co
Speaker 1: op where one part is intended to be a performance
Speaker 1: venue and a bar, the middle part is a cafe
Speaker 1: and coffee shop where the young can come do spoken
Speaker 1: word and open mic and open jam. And the far
Speaker 1: right spaces of fine arts and movement arts gallery. Above it,
Speaker 1: there are three units of cooperative co housing where we
Speaker 1: will be grounding black arts housing cooperatives in to start
Speaker 1: to ground the community back into the actual physical space
Speaker 1: of the street. And we have a back parking lot
Speaker 1: that's part of this acquisition and really wide, like a
Speaker 1: seven ft wide sidewalks were going to be grounding the
Speaker 1: Freedom Farmers Market, which is a black farmers market. It's
Speaker 1: been displaced again and again over the last like nine years.
Speaker 1: So Esther's Orbit Room Cultural Revival Project is the first
Speaker 1: acquisition among many for what we have named the Seventh
Speaker 1: Street Cooperative Cultural Corride or revitalization Plan. It is a
Speaker 1: site specific plan that thinks about the people and the
Speaker 1: places that exists for which you build the thing the
Speaker 1: commodity object. You described people who are living in these
Speaker 1: cooperatively owned units as resident owners. Why is ownership important
Speaker 1: to them? Uh, and to you and to West Oakland.
Speaker 1: I mean, in the most literal sense, land is the
Speaker 1: ground upon which we define our past and our future.
Speaker 1: Without land, without permanence, the past in the future go
Speaker 1: up and smoke, they disappear. There's nothing to connect you
Speaker 1: from before, and there's there's very little the ground YouTube after.
Speaker 1: So ownership permanence is critical for culture building, identity building,
Speaker 1: the building of futures. You ask how Oakland could get
Speaker 1: into the condition it's in now. No one has had
Speaker 1: a moment to stop and build a future for themselves.
Speaker 1: You better believe these hedge funds have hundred and five
Speaker 1: hundred year plans for themselves. How long out do you
Speaker 1: think the arcis for Black Oaklanders plan for themselves. So
Speaker 1: this is a model for how to cement ourselves as citizens. Structurally,
Speaker 1: identity wise, we are here, we are part but in
Speaker 1: terms of having to pick up our bags and move
Speaker 1: every generation. That is the key to this nation continuing
Speaker 1: to deny our right to the benefits of citizenship. And
Speaker 1: it's a losing battle actually, because if you actually look
Speaker 1: across nationwide, it's not just black communities that are being
Speaker 1: eaten alive by this impermanence. We took a southern trip
Speaker 1: and a couple of years ago when we were really
Speaker 1: ideating and building out this project, and we looked at
Speaker 1: Midwest cities, we looked at southern cities. There are ghost
Speaker 1: towns Baritune day. No one is thinking about this widening
Speaker 1: gap of impermanence and and corporate ownership of people's homes,
Speaker 1: of their histories, of their stories, of their cultures. So
Speaker 1: this is a model for folks who want to use
Speaker 1: their money in a more ethical manner, to divest from
Speaker 1: extractive industries, to invest in models that can assure them
Speaker 1: their modest return. Our return is only one right, but
Speaker 1: it's enough to build hope and a future for people.
Speaker 1: You shared a bit about what it felt like to
Speaker 1: reclaim your family home. For a member of the West
Speaker 1: Oakland community, how do they respond with this new possibility
Speaker 1: from being unable to afford any living in the community
Speaker 1: they grew up in to now having a chance to
Speaker 1: own and define the future of that community they know
Speaker 1: and love. I think there are stages to it, if
Speaker 1: you think of like the stages of grief or healing.
Speaker 1: So the first response for the most underserved is kind
Speaker 1: of like disbelief, right, like you've you've heard it before.
Speaker 1: So many organizations, so many nonprofits coming through doing a
Speaker 1: focus group, putting butcher paper on the walls and like
Speaker 1: saying like we want your ideas, We're here to support you,
Speaker 1: and you really never hear from them again, or maybe
Speaker 1: you see them sort of in the distance, supporting someone
Speaker 1: who's not you and probably not as brown as you.
Speaker 1: And then the next stage, when they see that we're
Speaker 1: actually doing the things we say we're doing, it's hope
Speaker 1: and excitement and investment. And then the next stage is
Speaker 1: kind of a stage of dismay, because the arc of
Speaker 1: a real estate project is a long, gritty arc, and
Speaker 1: it's slow, and we're moving into the next stage where
Speaker 1: we're starting to be able to share why this thing
Speaker 1: takes so long, why it's taken us four years to
Speaker 1: get to the place where we can have the capacity
Speaker 1: to raise fifty million dollars of non extractive capital, and
Speaker 1: so all of the emotions are there because all of
Speaker 1: us want to stay here. Well, that leads me to
Speaker 1: you know, this is not a problem unique to West Oakland.
Speaker 1: Are you in conversations with people in other cities. Is
Speaker 1: there a way for them to pick up this model
Speaker 1: and work on it themselves. What is the plan? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: we have UM so far shared in great detail with
Speaker 1: probably were fifteen and thirty nascent organizations UM nationwide, two
Speaker 1: or three international. So, for example, an organization called Brick
Speaker 1: by Brick and quebec UM the year before last that
Speaker 1: really hit a wall and they flew me out there
Speaker 1: and I spent a week with them and sort of
Speaker 1: like took the project apart. And now they're launching their
Speaker 1: first project in partnership with the City of Montreal. You're
Speaker 1: very busy, a lot of cities depending on you to
Speaker 1: save them, including the one you are a part of. However,
Speaker 1: I gotta ask you this, how do you define what
Speaker 1: a citizen is? A citizen is one who takes ownership
Speaker 1: and responsibility over their space. But I think a better
Speaker 1: way to define citizen is how the Quakers define citizen.
Speaker 1: The Quakers are friends. We're a friend to everyone. We're
Speaker 1: a friend to our neighbors, We're a friend to our enemies,
Speaker 1: We're a friend to our land. Collective care over a
Speaker 1: joint space, pick up trash on your street, and be
Speaker 1: nice to the old lady on the bus, you gotta
Speaker 1: be nice, and old lady on the bus. I mean,
Speaker 1: who's being mean to the old lady on the bus?
Speaker 1: Gotta be um. This has been so wonderful. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it so much. What's exciting about this to
Speaker 1: me is that I've seen what the world looks like
Speaker 1: when we let money take over our neighborhoods. It looks
Speaker 1: like abandoned apartment buildings that are old and crumbling, or
Speaker 1: empty and abandoned apartment buildings that are new and unaffordable
Speaker 1: to anyone, Or it just looks like the same strip
Speaker 1: mall everywhere, or the same furniture shop everywhere, the same
Speaker 1: yogurt stand everywhere. That's not culture. That's financially rich, but
Speaker 1: culturally poor. And I'm excited for our neighborhoods to feel
Speaker 1: different again, to be rooted not just in money, but
Speaker 1: in people again. I want to live in this world
Speaker 1: where we can preserve the culture of a community and
Speaker 1: have it be owned by the people who've lived in
Speaker 1: that community. So how do we protect that and make
Speaker 1: sure that the wealth built there benefits the many and
Speaker 1: doesn't just fall into a few hands or a few corporations.
Speaker 1: Next week, I'm talking to someone who's doing just that,
Speaker 1: protecting our communities from big business, and she's taken on
Speaker 1: perhaps the biggest business of them all. We're gonna have
Speaker 1: a real fight on our hands as citizens about whether
Speaker 1: we live in a country that we control, that we
Speaker 1: set the rules for, or a country where Amazon decides
Speaker 1: how our economy works. Next week, my interview with Stacy
Speaker 1: Mitchell and now our Prentice Sam with some actions you
Speaker 1: can do where for you is home? Take a moment
Speaker 1: to reflect on where you live. How did you end
Speaker 1: up there? Was it based on real estate speculation, rental prices,
Speaker 1: family history, relationship ties, or something else. Really consider the
Speaker 1: role privilege has played in determining your place of residence.
Speaker 1: Learn more about gentrification. Gentrification is a buzzword, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot more to it. To learn more, check out
Speaker 1: the podcast There Goes the Neighborhood, watch the documentary City Rising,
Speaker 1: or read the book The Color of Law. Lastly, invest
Speaker 1: in communities not commodities. Check out eb PreK dot org
Speaker 1: that's e B p R e C dot org to
Speaker 1: find out ways you can invest in community based real estate,
Speaker 1: or start this model where you live. If you're in
Speaker 1: the Oakland area, you could join the cooperative and become
Speaker 1: a community owner for just ten dollars a month. Or
Speaker 1: if you want to make a non extractive but savvy
Speaker 1: real estate investment, you could also invest in one of
Speaker 1: e b prex projects. And we know there are more
Speaker 1: new models like this emerging to deal with our housing
Speaker 1: and ownership crisis. So if you know any other groups,
Speaker 1: let us know. Email us at comments at how to
Speaker 1: citizen dot com. If you take into these actions, please
Speaker 1: brag about yourself online using the hashtag how to Citizen.
Speaker 1: Visit how to citizen dot com to sign up for
Speaker 1: our newsletter or learn about upcoming events or even more
Speaker 1: stuff than that. And if you like the show, spread
Speaker 1: the word tell somebody. If you don't, definitely just keep
Speaker 1: it to yourself. Appreciate you. How does Citizen with Bartune
Speaker 1: Day is a production of I Heart Radio Podcasts and
Speaker 1: Dust Like Productions. Our executive producers are me barrattun Day, Thursty,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Stewart, and Misha you Said. Our producers are Stephanie
Speaker 1: Cone and Ali Kilts. Kelly Prime is our editor, Valentino
Speaker 1: Rivera is our engineer, and Sam Paulson is Our Apprentice.
Speaker 1: Original music by Andrew Eaping. This episode was produced and
Speaker 1: sound designed by Stephanie Cone. Special thanks to Joel Smith
Speaker 1: from I Heart Radio.