A Defense of the RPS Collective and a Critique of the Critiques

RPS and Art-Space Critics Largely Offer Meaningless Punk Rock Platitudes, Shallow Ruminations, No Real Solutions

Several issues raised in a new Fireworks piece about Rock Paper Scissors and gentrification have already been discussed in a comment thread on RPS’s announcement that they would be losing their community arts space, including references to a useless Hamilton Institute piece. Fortunately, the new Fireworks post is more gentle on RPS, and more fair-minded, than some of the comments on the RPS announcement post.

Yes, yes, yes, people sometimes build cool things, sometimes even socially aware community-focused art projects, in “run-down” parts of town that were abandoned by capital at some point decades ago and eventually real estate speculators swoop back in to scoop it up for profit when the area is realized to be undervalued economically. That's hardly news. It happened in the Mission District in San Francisco 15 years ago during the first dot-com boom, and continues there on a whole new scale today. It’s been picking up steam in West Oakland and even making early inroads in East Oakland.

But major shifts in populations happen for a variety of reasons. In the Fillmore District in San Francisco, it was a Jewish neighborhood after the Great Quake, then Japanese-descended locals who populated the area were shipped off to camps during WWII, with African Americans moving in to fill the void, creating what was then known as the "Harlem of the West", who in turn were largely replaced by hippies in the 60s and run off for good by the city officials such as Justin Herman and the forces of capital. A sizable Asian population now resides in the area, and a high-end version of jazz clubs are back.

Just up the street from the current RPS gallery was known as Little Denmark before large numbers of African Americans from the southern United States moved to the area before, during, and after the economic boom of WWII (there's still a “Danish” bakery on 34th and Telegraph). Urban white flight away from the African American migration was enabled by freeways and BART (tearing apart urban neighborhoods of color) and suburb-friendly/white-friendly governmental housing policies. Public services and businesses followed whitey away from the cities, leaving behind increasing economic despair.

People of color with the means to do so, followed the white pioneers to the suburbs decades later, all across the US. Now the reverse is happening as suburbs lose their appeal to more affluent whites. Capital and politicians have colluded to make much if not most of this happen, whichever way the winds of profit and white migratorial sentiment blows. If you're just realizing these patterns for yourself, say so with some humility in your writings. Please don't pretend you figured it out for everyone else.

“You were the footsoldiers of gentrification—don’t say *we* didn’t warn you.” — that's some serious condescending bullshit. Hamilton should be ashamed to write it if they are referring to any non-profit community-based art groups, and Fireworks should think twice before rehashing it in this context. Who and what are you an ally of when you throw that quote at an anarchist collective losing their home? Is that the royal we or the omnipotent we doing the warning? Or perhaps it’s an impotent we, a we that casts stones at others while doing nothing besides smugly releasing useless and self-congratulatory "we told you so" articles. It's a grossly disingenuous and mean-spirited taunting of erstwhile allies (at least in the case of RPS — probably not the "hip (presumably for-profit) cafes" Hamilton writes about).

All of the scolding from on-high, the oh-so serious critiques, from the Hamilton piece to the comments in the RPS thread to the Fireworks piece, asserts that the responsibility for gentrification lies foremost on those who make art (even at no personal gain, like RPS) in poor neighborhoods. The "foot soldiers" as it were, like marines kicking down doors. That's bullshit. The blame lies squarely with the movement of affluent whites, be it led by or followed by the forces of capital, not to mention enabling politicians.

Pointing fingers at a rag-tag collective of volunteer artists renting a once-vacant storefront for pennies misses the mark by 100 miles. And let’s be very clear that the non-hierarchical, 100%-volunteer RPS and the commercial galleries in the area are not one and the same, far from it. The RPS community space hosted anti-police events, raised monies for numerous grassroots anti-oppression and community empowerment groups. Whatever replaces RPS at the same location almost certainly will not do the same. That’s an immediate loss for social justice in Oakland. A bulkhead against crass commercialism will be gone from the area forever. The commercial for-profit galleries will carry on obliviously, at least into the next decade or so.

The over-simplified “critiques” repeatedly are built on the false premise that similar gentrification, if not the exact same gentrification, would be happening even without the existence of RPS. It most certainly would. There was no RPS (or even the commercial galleries) on Telegraph when Oakland eminent-domained several businesses on 20th street ten years ago and gave away land and tax breaks for the massive Uptown Apartments only a few blocks away. Jerry Brown had issued the call for 10,000 new residents downtown in the 1990s, and it was clear he didn’t mean people of low income or people of color. The city decided it was desirable to push out lower income residents in the area, real estate powers wanted to make some money (go figure), and the Uptown Apartments ushered in what would be the first round of displacement (even though it was largely built on a parking lot). The city also pushed out the marijuana dispensaries that had congregated on the southern end Telegraph Avenue in what was once known as Oaksterdam. Other than the remodeling and re-opening of the Fox Theater, it had little to do with art and absolutely nothing to do with art galleries. It was intended to create a new class of residents in the area, and it continues to work as planned. Up the street, the vacant storefront RPS was opening around that time, was destined to go “up-scale” at some point in the near future regardless of whomever rented it in the mid-aughts.

Fireworks mentions the Temescal District up the street towards Berkeley. It was relatively “blighted” 25 years ago. Homes in the area would regularly be tagged, shootings weren’t unheard of, and so forth. And rent was relatively cheap. Then the new Walgreens came in, anchoring a growing wave of upscale restaurants and businesses in the area. Property values increased, the surrounding neighborhood towards Broadway got whiter, and many people were displaced in the process. Absolutely nothing to do with art. Blame the corporate drug store.

Mid-last century, there were African American art, culture, and businesses on and around 7th street in West Oakland, but they were destroyed to make way for BART and the giant Post Office building and to accommodate increased shipping at the port. That area was wrecked (on a human level, and as per capitalist economic value) not by the talented artists who lived and performed there, "foot soldiers" creating value for capitalists, but by commercial and governmental interests that didn't give two shits about art. The local culture was in the way of "progress” — as will happen to even the commercial art galleries on Telegraph one day when inevitably older buildings come down to make way for newer, shinier, more expensive buildings. Capital will gladly pave over and destroy art and culture to make a buck. Capital will gladly co-opt art and culture to make a buck. Neighborhoods “lose” and “gain” value based on the whims and speculation of capital, often presaged by the migrations of wealthier white populations in America. The local art scenes are a secondary consideration at best.

Looking at the bigger picture, looking deeper into the history of the area, Oakland more broadly, and America in general, blows a big hole in the "it's art's fault" theory — or at the very least shows how much more complicated the issues are than a punk-as-fuck fits-on-a-bumper-sticker understanding of capital movements, gentrification, and displacement.

And so we get to the search for solutions. In the Fireworks piece, it’s difficult to tell if the hardcore punk rock “solution” at the end, daring RPS to physically fight off ASCO deputies, was made in jest or not. It would be kind of hard to maintain a community art project open to the all comers behind barricades. Regardless, it's no solution at all, unless the author(s) of that piece are volunteering to build and hold the barricades themselves. If not, it's super-lame to suggest that someone else take risks the authors seem unwilling to bear themselves. As for a general call for sabotaging the economic and political forces of gentrification, fine. Please. The more monkey wrenches gunking up the system's oppressive wheels, the better. But actions speak louder than words.

Often overlooked in the “art as a lead indicator of gentrification” critiques is a recognition that running away from art and toward abject poverty is hardly a solution. Credit is due to Fireworks for bucking that critical trend when they fairly note that their piece “is not, however, a cry for the abandonment of creativity, as useless as the proliferation of blight is as a strategy against displacement.” That is so much more honest and broad-minded than Hamilton recommending, in all seriousness mind you, that radicals "drop out of art" or comments by “ateam” on the original RPS post trying to discourage support and mutual aid for the RPS Collective in their time of need. But “reconfiguring the lens” as Fireworks suggests, or Hamilton’s pretentious assertion that their “analysis” contributes to a “clearer understanding” of gentrification, those are not solutions.

One concrete solution is supporting the Rock Paper Scissors collective now, right now, helping them to find and fund a new home, to build a new future. If you don’t feel directly connected to the arts yourself, you probably know people who do and can let them know what’s going on, and why it’s important to chip in. It appears to be too late to save RPS on Telegraph Avenue, but it’s not too late to keep a Rock Paper Scissors community arts space somewhere in Oakland. At the very, very least, in what should be so obvious that it goes without saying, anarchists and existing collectives certainly should not publicly attack each other or express schadenfreude at the demise of an ally.

RPS doesn’t need to be told “pick a side” — they already have in choosing to run as a non-hierarchical all-volunteer organization, and they are fighting this shit, fighting by surviving. If we are to ever have a chance at effectively pushing back against the ongoing onslaught of capital and state oppression, we will need far more volunteer art collectives, more worker-owned bakeries, more anarchist publishers, more non-hierarchical NoBAWC-type organizations, not less. We need them to not only survive, and hold ground, but thrive. What we need is solidarity, people!