Am I gentrified?

Gentrification, a term typically used for the takeover of depressed neighborhoods by those who “see the potential” was injected into panel discussion I attended recently about community based media.

Community Based Media or Citizen Journalism as it is sometimes called is typically that which is produced from within the community, and from the community’s perspective. I’m a big fan of the trend. I think Community Based Media contributes to richer dialogue that helps better our practice of democracy. This, despite the fact that in some cases citizen dialogue adds to phenomena such as the Tea Party and militant militia groups. Overall I believe dialogue is a good thing, and the more voices added to it the better.

But this idea of the gentrification of media really bothered me. One of the panel members openly attacked anyone who was not of the 'Hood, for lack of a better term. In fact even those who live in depressed neighborhoods but were educated he felt was fair game, because obviously those persons were “privileged” enough to go to college.

Although I knew these comments were based in fear and anger more than in fact, I had to ask myself, “Am I gentrified?”

So I went down the check list: Catholic high school, check; college education, check; property owner, check; idealistic notions about social justice that may or may not apply to my specific living situation, check.

It wasn’t looking good, but despite this, I continued down the list and added some qualifiers: first generation working class family that started out working in the fields, check; GI Bill earned after 9 years of military service which paid for college and made home purchase possible, check; ten plus years working in community based organizations and projects, check; a deep commitment to honor the history and legacy of communities, check; nonprofit career that will keep me eternally overworked and underpaid, check.

So yes. In many, many ways, I am privileged. I have a house, a car, a job, and a rarified instance where my work is the same entity as my job. And I won’t deny that I can be an intellectual snob. I can’t help it. I like smart things, smart people and stimulating conversations. But I know enough to know that a) I don’t know much, b) that there is a big difference between having an education and being smart, and c) I know my own conscience and intentions, and they are not to capitalize on the potential of a property or an idea. I’d rather capitalize on the potential of people and their tenacity to survive despite all odds. In fact I want to celebrate it. Thus, my opinion is that there's a big difference between looking for someone to blame for a problem, and looking for ways to solve it.

I think there’s a difference between exploiting a situation for personal gain, and genuinely wanting to improve a situation for all those involved. Like all things, Community Based Media has players on both sides, with conflicting intentions. But we mustn’t paint with such broad strokes, as the panelist I saw last weekend did. Education, although often skewed to the mindset of the rich, does not leave us all with that notion. Many of us see the injustice and want to do everything we can to change it.

Us and them mentality won't yield cohesion...only discord.

Check out Community Based Media sites here:

http://ibvallejo.com/

http://www.blockreportradio.com/

http://oaklandlocal.com/

http://missionlocal.org/

http://sf.everyblock.com/

http://www.poormagazine.org/

http://news.eltecolote.org/news

Blogging and Community Dialogue in Real Life

Thanks to the current era of communication and technology, blogs, social networking and websites have created new facets of what we call community. And although this often takes place in the ether world, more and more, online communities are meeting up in person to talk about the ways they communicate and how to enhance the messages that are shared.

Blogger Beast is such an event that I'm currently blogging from in Oakland. This meet up/workshop/camp is part of the programming of the Public Media Collaborative (PMC) a collection of folks and projects that focus on community based journalism and media projects. I first became associated with this group about 9 months ago. Everyone involved is interested in discovering new ways to to use the internet as a soapbox or megaphone.

It seems that in many ways the internet and the self-publish culture that it cultivates has produced an entire nation of people anxious to articulate. After generations of participating in passive communication propagated by radio and television, we have embraced this new medium in which we are no longer required to simply be docile receivers. We are now in fact creators of words, pictures, videos and our own stories. The previously squelched repertory tradition of tales and legends have been revived with a click of the share button. There are quite literally millions of blogs, hundreds if not thousands of blogging tools and seemingly no end to blogging subjects. Who knew we had so much to say? But, this begs the question: What are we really saying, and does it make a difference?

Apparently it does. More and more journalism outlets look to the "non-traditional" blogosphere for source material. In fact some blogging sites have become news outlets themselves. Huffington Post comes to mind and so does a new sight that some peers at PMC launched this week, http://oaklandlocal.com/ . This project is a new media hybrid hyper-local news site that also includes community resources and organizations, and links to other community blogs. It's intended to be a jumping off point for all things Oakland.

The difference between Oaklandlocal.com and traditional news sites is that Oaklandlocal.com embraces the whole community real and online by linking it's readers to brick and mortar community organizations as well as online commentary written by those on the ground. They also produce top notch news content written by seasoned journalists many of whom were discharged by print publications that clearly value profit over quality of content.

Yes, this is a site created by friends, but even if it weren't I would still consider the model they have created to be cohesive, elegant and cognoscente of the era we live in: a new hybrid of the ether and empirical world. I believe it will be the new trend in community dialogue. It's at least one of the reasons 100+ bloggers show up on a Saturday to meet each other in real life.