By Práxedis
This shall be the beginning of a series of articles reflecting on the fight against social cleansing, also known as, gentrification in the neighborhood of Little Village, Chicago.
The fight in Little Village is an important struggle because it is largely led by Brown and Indigenous residents who are rooted in the hood and who have no pathetic desire to bow before anyone, certainly not the local nonprofit industrial complex entrenched in the hood, nor who’s hip in the activist community across Chicagoland. Indeed, this aloofness of these Little Villagers from so-called radical politics is precisely why, in my estimation, such an important resistance network has emerged.
In this article I shall lay the framework for future discussions of the fight in Little Village as a long-time resident of Little Village, discussing some of the general problems and features of the housing struggle that has happened in my hood and beyond. I believe this article shall be useful for people to think about social struggle happening in other places and to frame their own activities.
There is a nasty thing that has happened in Chicago for years whereby the framework of solutions to the housing problem that is making its way to the masses are the very things that are socially cleansing our neighborhoods.
It’s a challenge for radicals and even communities to understand the fatal nature of these frameworks because of the absence of dense relationships that span space and time or the absence of a collective repository to bring together these experiences. Another source of this challenge is the fact that the victims of social cleansing are not always in touch with “the struggle”. For example, no one talks about the disaster of so-called “affordable housing” solutions in Humboldt Park, Chicago that not so long ago doubled rents and drove entire peoples from that neighborhood. I first found out about this because a Puerto Rican driven out of the entire city traveled to my neighborhood Little Village in about 2018 or 2019 to attend an event some radicals had put on here. At the event in private conversation we talked about how he was driven out of Humboldt Park from affordable housing.
Because the victims of social cleansing are often disconnected from any libertarian movement, the firsthand experience is missing, which in turn makes it difficult for us libertarians to understand why frameworks put forward by nonprofits and their footsoldiers harm our communities.
There is also the matter of Chicago radicalism being significantly white with white folks, even the white autonomists, wanting to kiss the ring of esteemed so-called activist groups or nonprofits (which can be mistaken for each other at times) that appear to be run by people of color, no matter what real role the organization plays in the social struggle. Why? Because of the social pressure white folks have to tick that box of being in collaboration with people of color, which is absolutely irresponsible to do without any standards.
As Black Ink wrote in Building a Midwest Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement[1], the colonial elite of color are a reality that we have to contend with in Chicago. White radicals in their impetuous drive to tick that box of diversity need to acknowledge this reality and not be so eager to collaborate with just who is most apparent in the social struggle because who is most apparent (or even positively talked about by radicals) might very well be the most apparent because they are the most funded and because of that funding has been able to manufacture that social prominence that fools so many. And guess who gets the funding? The revolutionaries of color (who might not even call themselves radical) who wage meaningful resistance against the deeply tied elites of color in their hood and are driven out of the public sphere or the neighbors of color who collaborate with the dominant structures to keep the oppressive relationships in place?
We must bear in mind that many neighbors of color, especially those in nonprofit organizations, who collaborate with the dominant structure are not all the same. Some have no idea what harm they’re doing. And with the absence of a real movement that’s able to help them come to that understanding sooner than later, it could take a few years before they ever put the pieces together on these complex matters. But in a place like a Chicago nonprofit or for profit business setting where abuse is typical and turnover significant, people are lucky to ever reach that realization if they’re not driven out from the setting shortly before such a turning point.
We can see a similar problem emerging with radicals not being rooted in a hood deferring to those who are more rooted in the hood than they are. This is all the more disastrous when radicals interfere in the social struggle in other places they are not rooted in, such as organizers this year from hoods outside of Little Village in the so-called Chicago Tenants Movement working hand-in-hand with the most awful gentrifier criminals in my fucking neighborhood without seeking out who the true revolutionaries are and who the real class enemy is (and one callously deflecting my concerns about this when I raised the point to them). And why? To tick a box? To add to your resume? Leave those boxes alone. But for those organizers who are simply careerists stacking up experience to springboard into a nonprofit or political campaign, FUCK YOU.
The elite of every neighborhood already have too much hegemony and too much clout. It is absolute class treachery and, or social war against the locals of a neighborhood when someone or an organization aids in increasing the hegemony and clout of the local elite.
Not all residents are the same with the same motivations or understanding of who’s really pulling the strings in our hood, even neighbors who have lived in the hood longer than us. Some of our neighbors, even in neighborhoods of color, are very capitalist if not actual capitalists; some are very authoritarian; and even the propertlyless and most disadvantaged, well-meaning neighbor may be totally unaware of the harm that certain policies or developments can produce and willingly greenlight against their own interests. But also, that resident might not even be a resident if you find them at a so-called community input meeting put on by a nonprofit–they might very well be bused in from another neighborhood, paid to play the role. That is Chicago.
We need to choose our allies not because of their social clout but because of their actual behavior in the social struggle. I must say that again. We need to choose our allies not because of their social clout but because of their actual behavior in the social struggle
And we people of color need to be very careful about the kind of signals we are sending for inclusion as well. Many white people are very sensitive to these signals, and white anarchists are often working in really good faith trying to do their best to listen to people of color about how to effectively participate in the destruction of racial domination. But if the signals we send are not precise, then we’ll keep having a continuation of the modern chaos.
But what is good behavior in the social struggle in regards to the matter of housing? I believe we should look to two general things–one, if they’re behaving as shitty nonprofits behave, and two, what kind of solutions they’re presenting or not presenting to our communities.
I shall reproduce here at length what I have written elsewhere on these two topics.
The first is a short writing called “When Nonprofits Are Harmful”, which follows.
“When Nonprofits Are Harmful
*It should be noted that this caution about nonprofits should also apply to so-called ‘community-based organizations (CBOs)’, activist groups, political parties, and other groups.
Just because an organization is a nonprofit does not mean it is inherently bad. Not all nonprofits are the same.
It is argued that nonprofits by definition carry out the work of government that government cannot do itself. This would of course mean that all nonprofits are harmful since the role of governments in the United States are to oppress, of course. There is also sometimes a misunderstanding that any nonprofit is the offspring of a capitalist or other harmful social group. All this is a hypersimplification of how all groups operate who are nonprofits.
Some nonprofits can be and are useful tools for community empowerment, especially if they are controlled by ethical community members with healthy relationships to the community and within (like a worker(-hybrid) cooperative nonprofit). For example, sometimes a nonprofit controlled by community members is just a tool for community members to raise and hold funds for them to do transformational work without said funds being poured into their private accounts that would constitute an unnecessary financial burden or foster a lack of fiscal transparency within the group.
However, many nonprofits are harmful. And extra care should be taken to research and study them, their employees, the employee’s social circles, and their supporters before being too exposed to them or after exposure. Many activists who are new to a neighborhood and do not fight to be healthily immersed in what is going on might have to abstain from much activity for one or a few years until they understand who’s calling the shots and to what ends.
Characteristics of nonprofits that make them harmful are entities that
- Bully or discourage community members publicly or ‘behind closed doors’ from or because of creating or partaking in their own autonomous types of associations and initiatives.
- Enforce a territorialist mentality as if they solely own struggles, issues, or parts of the community.
- Practice a hyper-individualist, narcissist mentality as if they are the only ones who are engaging in certain work. These do not contribute to growing a grassroots politics centered on a ‘world in which many worlds fit’, which means centering real grassroots collectives and associations who are not beholden to the ruling classes or the oppressive status quo.
- Are enmeshed in the circles of elites, small and big.
- Expose community members to the footsoldiers of the elite and, or members of the elite itself, compromising the security of community members and ability to act autonomously without fear of reprisal.
- Intrude in community spaces, including the streets, that need space from them security-wise and in order to center the people whom the space(s) is meant for.
- Use law enforcement on community members and oppositionists to them.
- Trap community in oppressive frameworks by presenting ‘solutions’ to the community that are within frameworks that do not clash with oppressive relationships, which often means making the oppressive structure and sociology stronger. This can be particularly insidious since many community members, even radicals and activists, may need a long time to understand that the ‘alternatives’ an organization is presenting is a controlled alternative that is actually harmful to the community and agreeable to our social predators.
- Function hierarchically without consensus-based processes, reproducing within them the very sociology that is why our communities are oppressed. These hierarchies in practice almost consistently disrupt community empowerment processes when these organizations participate in shared spaces with other groups. They also constitute harmful role modelship in and of itself that our communities do not need to be exposed to.
- Claim to represent people who have not given them direct permission to speak on their behalf within a limited mandate. This also includes ‘colonial leadership’.
- Protect their own membership from accountability for harm they do to others in the community. They also enable this harm.
- Monopolize or become ‘choke points’ to limited resources that ought to be shared among autonomous formations.
- Take or benefit from resources from other community groups without meaningfully attempting to share in the benefits with community members in ways the community members express need for after being asked.
- The last two are often not even sharable if the organization exhibits other characteristics mentioned in this list that endanger other community groups or residents.
- Being trapped in the cycle of having to satisfy certain grant requirements in ways that manifest in deceiving community members about the organization’s real effectiveness in solving community problems and that result in derailing community from engaging in multi-approach solutions and more complex problem solving and attempts.
If a nonprofit exhibits any of the above, this necessitates caution around them, clashing with them, exposing them, contributing to their demise, and, or transforming their naive members to walk away onto the right path.”
In regards to the topic of what good behavior is in terms of the solutions being provided or not provided, we should not expect policy changes or legislation at the Chicago city or Illinois state level to solve the problems we face, especially since the dominant housing policy proposals do not include things like Land Back to indigenous peoples and municipal housing[2] that offer solutions predicated on the necessary dispossession of the ruling classes of more and more of their power and wealth. I cannot say if this would be the case outside of Chicagoland, but for sure this is the case here. But if anyone is trying to exhaust our energies in those deadends, stay away from them.
Such legislative work, even if it were attempted by anarcho-municipalist means, requires a different type of insurgency to happen, whose foundations we are far from even beginning to setup.
In the meantime, we will have to see solutions based on short-term activities whose short- and long-term goals are the dispossession of the stolen and hoarded resources of real estate capital and the social circles of their nonprofit and activist arms who engage in the type of unhealthy behavior mentioned earlier in this writing.
These following types of short-term activities and practices are examples of what I think are critical for the day-to-day struggle for survival for our neighbors and ourselves that will also pave the way for bigger things to happen. You’ll find these are substantially different from the practices of many spaces and organizations:
- Develop real safe spaces where enthusiasm and voluntarism can thrive with vetting processes within an anti-carceral framework of consent and redemption
- Help to keep residents housed against evictions and the many forms displacement takes, including domestic violence, price outs, local bullying, gang violence, the oppressive practice of “citizen” and “non-citizen”, the effects of incarceration and other forms of capitalist exploitation or resource denial. Don’t be fooled by nonprofits and activists who help keep some tenants housed because certain type of anti-eviction work by nonprofits and activists actually complements their alliances with other landlords and developers in their social circle.
- Confront, undermine, and destroy small and big exploiter landlord power.
- Help in the “right of return” of already-displaced neighbors and dogged efforts to keep long-living neighbors in our hoods
- Fight for and enforce rent reductions and rent abolition without relying on any legislative work, making life absolutely miserable or impossible for landlords who do not abide by rent controls created and enforced on the ground by community members in whatever legal or extra legal associations we must make to force this into being
- Fundraise and resource share
- Draw lines and cut ties if necessary with anyone pushing so-called “Community Benefits Agreements”, “Affordable Housing”[3], and other capitalist-developer social cleansing programs that are insidiously packaged under cleverly crafted names and fancy powerpoint presentations at farcical “community input” meetings
- Cooperate with long-time residents making and enforcing community member-controlled moratoria or regulation of white folks moving into certain hoods, even regulating their moving out, if necessary
- Develop/construct cooperative housing (not that fake cooperative housing bullshit some of us have seen where there’s not meaningful long-term security for people who are expected to shell out hundreds of dollars per month)
- Use cooperative economics and market mechanisms within dual power frameworks to keep gentrifiers at bay from further invasion and as a means of attack
- Of course, use other means, legal or not, that elevate the struggle for self-determination of oppressed peoples as far as it must go
Conclusion
The values and principles found in this article shall be an important basis for understanding the fight against the ethnic cleansing of Little Village, Chicago as shall be reported in future articles. Hopefully this writing will be of use to you elsewhere.
This article was written by a member of The Blast. If it was of value to you, please donate to The Blast.
End Notes
[1] https://theblast.noblogs.org/building-a-midwest-revolutionary-abolitionist-movement-by-black-ink/
[2] https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialHousing.pdf
[3] https://latenantsunion.medium.com/affordable-housing-is-a-scam-9a4c43ba8149#:~:text=%E2%80%9CAFFORDABLE%20HOUSING%E2%80%9D%20IS%20A%20SCAM%21%201%20WANT%20HOUSING,HOUSING%E2%80%9D%20TO%20HOUSING%20IS%20A%20HUMAN%20RIGHT.%20
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