Oakland's Affordable Housing Fights: Chinatown Pacific Renaissance and Alice Arts Center

When the representative from United Seniors of Oakland asked, "how many of you are here to support the tenants and protest the evictions of the Pacific Renaissance Plaza?", the whole room stood up.

When the representative from Just Cause Oakland asked, "If you are here to support the Alice, please stand up.", the room erupted into cheers and the whole room stood up.

These two fights are linked to the availability of affordable housing in Oakland, to the lack of accountability in Oakland City Council regarding community input in decision-making, and the mayor's continued fight to push people -- many people of color, especially -- out of the spaces that we created and made desirable in the first place. Chinatowns and other "ethnic" enclaves are places of vibrant culture, cultures created in the face of economic adversity and institutional and outright racism. These cultures of resistance and survival make those same places, a generation later, desirable for gentrification, while at the same time displacing the people who made the places exciting places to live, create, work, play.

Replace our low-income housing with rich people's condiminiums in Chinatown? We say no. Our friends, relatives or our parents came over and have had to live and fight the same kinds of economic hardship that those currently in the Pac Ren units face. To help them in this struggle is to honor our ancestors, our families, our friends and all the other immigrants and refugees of all colors and nationalities that came to this place.

Replace a vibrant community arts center with a mockery of Western "arts and culture" school? We say no. Our cultures of resistance and survival manifest in dance and music, as well as in arts, poetry, food, stories. We have pride in our arts and will not have them replaced with the arts of the elite.

For more information see:

http://www.latimes.com/la-me-evict24jun24,0,5828743.story

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/06/26/BA276149.DTL

http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82%257E1726%257E1476360,00.html?search=filter