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The Plan to Gentrify DC

Last week, This American Life featured a segment on gentrification in Washington, DC. Gentrification in DC, residents say, is not led by market forces, but is rather an orchestrated plan to displace blacks from neighborhoods to make way for rich whites.

“The Plan” is incredibly moving and persuasive. It highlights gentrification signs like local government closing public schools, libraries, and hospitals to replace them with condos and, among other things, sushi restaurants. Others, from around the country, discuss how their cities purposely allowed neighborhoods to deteriorate so developers can buy land for cheaper prices.

Is “the plan” a conspiracy theory? Maybe. But the results are striking.

Full Episode: 350: Human Resources

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Review: The Camden 28

A film by Anthony Giacchino
First Run Features

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. saw the “war as an enemy of the poor” when asked why he opposed the Vietnam War. Today, President Bush’s latest budget proposal makes that abundantly clear. Social spending would be cut by $2.4 billion while Pentagon spending would rise by $35 billion—not including Iraq war funding.

Sadly, the connection between war and domestic spending has been nearly lost. Luckily, we can learn from those who risked their freedom to show us that poverty here is directly related to war overseas. Continue reading “Review: The Camden 28”

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Book Review: The Revolution Will Not Be Funded – Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

Edited by: Incite! Women of Color Against Violence
South End Press

Bill Gates recently stepped down from Microsoft to pursue philanthropic work through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But is he really going to help people with his riches? Or is he just using his money to push his own capitalist, pro-business ideology on the world? After reading Incite!’s latest book, you’ll recognize the later is true, not only of Bill, but of the vast majority of “philanthropic” foundations.

The Revolution Will Not be Funded is a collection of seventeen persuasive essays by activists, academics, and practitioners working in the non-profit sector. Its authors set out to explain the rise of the non-profit industrial complex (“NPIC” as they call it), its effects on social change efforts, and how to rethink non-profit institutions with at times weak, but altogether convincing, arguments and personal experiences. Continue reading “Book Review: The Revolution Will Not Be Funded – Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex”