With about five weeks to go until the November 6, 2018 election, the time has come for me to make public who I am supporting in the District 3 city council race. I write not just as a civically active longtime resident of the district who ran for the newly established city council seat in […]
Continue ReadingOn January 15, 2018 — Martin Luther King Day — I was privileged to help spearhead the unveiling of what has since become known as the Austin “People’s Plan” to fight displacement and to help mitigate gentrification. We called ourselves the Austin Poor People’s Campaign and held our press conference at the Montopolis Negro School, […]
Continue ReadingAs we embark upon celebrations commemorating the enactment of the Fair Housing Act, it may be useful to look more deeply into some of the details of American housing history from this period. Fifty years on, it is important for us to take stock of what worked and what didn’t. On April 11, 1968, President […]
Continue ReadingConventional wisdom holds that gentrification is something that a lot of people “feel” but rarely take the time to actually document. Studies about gentrification are often too wonky to influence policymakers, who want a nice, clean definition of the term “gentrification” served to them on a silver platter. Accordingly, allow me to take you through […]
Continue ReadingThe word “gentrification” does not appear in Imagine Austin or in CodeNEXT. This seems odd, given that Austin has had multiple commissions over the past seventeen years meant to study and address the issue. The policy analyses and recommendations made by these task forces and commissions have been sitting on the shelf gathering dust. So […]
Continue ReadingAn impressive propaganda campaign has been orchestrated by pro-CodeNEXT boosters to confuse the public mind about the potential consequences these proposed changes to how Austin regulates land development will produce. The time has come for some historically grounded critical thinking that can help cut through the misinformation, half-truths, distortions and lies that have been promulgated […]
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