By Any Means Necessary
7
MXGM Oakland Report “Landlessness in the Bay” Ifetayo M. Flannery
The Bay Area of California has a remarkable imprint on the memory and Black consciousness of this country. It is most well-known for the birth of the Black Panther Party and for the development of Black Studies in higher education. However, while the history and memory of the Black radical past continue to linger, the actual presence of New Afrikan people has been on a sharp decline particularly over the last twenty years. In any neighborhood in Oakland or San Francisco there is a persistent buzz and tension around the displacement of Black natives; this process is more readily referred to as gentrification. In correlation with the inflated costs of living in the Bay Area over the last two decades, gentrification is the most reported grievance of Bay Area locals and particularly Black Bay Area natives. The Black population in San Francisco has been most drastically diminished and almost eliminated. The Black population in San Francisco is currently at 3% of the total population in contrast to its height of 30%; in Oakland the Black population is currently at 20-25% compared to the 40% Black demographic two decades ago. On the surface the explanation for the de-Africanization of the Bay Area has been the influx of tech companies and tech employees to the Silicon Valley leading to dramatic surges in housing costs. A basic one bedroom apartment in the city of San Francisco is now averaging at $2,300 per month and across the Bay in Oakland is not far behind, averaging at $1,800. Some of the largest global tech companies that have made the Bay Area their cornerstone for business include Google, Yahoo, Twitter, and Uber, among many others. These companies have absorbed the blame for the ongoing displacement of local residents and there remains a general hostility among locals toward these growing tech industries but more specifically around the consequence of being priced out of the city. Poor, working class, and middle class New Afrikans have experienced the most dramatic displacement compared to Asians and Latinos because they have a longer history of renting housing rather than owning property. The idea of gentrification has been the limited way Black folk are able to explain their displacement but at the alarming rates and pace of this removal I do not believe “gentrification” is a strong enough concept to explain this phenomena. The anger, but more importantly, the powerlessness of New Afrikans in claiming ownership to space speaks to the long standing problem of the landlessness of New Afrikan people in this country. The reality is that before the tech companies began to expand, the local Black community held residence but did not hold legal ownership of the land in mass. Therefore, we now have little defense against being removed besides moral sentiment. The growing sense of Black landlessness and involuntary removal has been captured in the new film release, Last Black Man in San Francisco. The film is a close reading of an individual narrative where the main character, a Black man, struggles to accept that he has no way to sustain life or ownership to the only place he understands to be “home” (San Francisco). The issue of landlessness makes New Afrikan communities in the Bay and other urban areas of the United States vulnerable to social isolation, economic destabilization, decline in political potency, and dismemberment of longstanding Black businesses and institutions. Where are all the Black people going? A large majority of Black Bay natives are scattered into peripheral eastward areas of the Bay, most commonly areas known as Antioch, Pittsburgh, Hayward, and Fremont. These areas exist sever-al miles east (further inland) from the urban center of Oakland. While the cost of living declines as you move eastward so does the development of the land and access to food, medical, and learning hubs. Many people may not realize that outside of a few dense cities, much of California looks similar to the rural South or Midwest of America. There is a disconnect in organizing an urban population who has become rural overnight. While the larger population of New Afrikans are now residents in the surrounding suburbs, the familiar public spaces, youth centers, jobs, and universities remain in the cities. The organizing efforts for Black activists are