Martin Luther King Day

I'm filing stuff from years ago, and a few items I've come across are relevant to the Day and the idea of strengthening the Black community.

Glen Ford, a key figure in progressive black journalism ("Glen Ford, Black Journalist Who Lashed the Mainstream, Dies at 71," New York Times).  

He was co-founder of the syndicated television program "America's Black Forum," and later the website, Black Agenda Report.  He co-founded Black Commentator, which among many important works, published a great five-part series on urban revitalization, which was focused on black empowerment

This entry includes links to the full series:

-- "Wanted: A Plan for Cities to Save Themselves," 2003

2.  There's been a ton of work and media on African American and foodways.  One person is chef Bryant Terry, who has created a publishing imprint to bring those stories to print ("With 4 Color Books, Bryant Terry Looks to Color Outside the Lines," NYT).

Village Market, Portland.

3.  In 2001, the St. Johns Woods low income housing project in North Portland, reached out to a local youth support organization, to create a community garden as a youth program--now called Village Gardens.  

The impact on the neighborhood was swift--within 8 months, police calls dropped, there was a notable reduction in litter, and on time rent payment metrics improved.  The Garden created a safe environment for youth.  

A community store, Village Market, developed later as part of the initiative ("Village Market, a healthy corner store, opens in North Portland's New Columbia," "Nonprofit grocery store in North Portland's New Columbia turns 1, learns to adjust," Portland Oregonian). It's still going strong 15 years later.

... it’s a unique nonprofit grocery store with a mission to provide fresh and healthy food to residents in and around New Columbia.

While officially a mixed-income neighborhood, New Columbia is also the state’s largest public housing development built to be home to some of the city's poorest residents. The community along this stretch of North Portland between Interstate 5 and the St. Johns Bridge is listed on city of Portland and USDA maps as a “food desert,” or an urban neighborhood where residents must travel extensively to get fresh produce.

The Village Market opened May 28, 2011, on the same corner where two previous businesses, Big City Produce and AJ Java, tried to make a go and failed. A year on, the grocery is still operating on grants and adjusting its nonprofit vision to the reality of the neighborhood. “It’s been an adventure,” said Amber Baker, the store's program director for Janus Youth Programs, which operates the market. “The goal is to be self-sustaining in four years. We’re hoping for that.”

4.  Oasis Fresh Market(s) was opened by Aaron Johnson, a former football player at the University of Tulsa, to bring food to an underserved area ("North Tulsa welcomes Oasis Fresh Market," Black Wall Street Times).  The market has developed a wide variety of support programs for the community, such as breakfast and lunch for kids in the summer ("Oasis Fresh Market launches free breakfast, lunch for Tulsa kids," BWST), and support for SNAP recipients denied benefits.  They're going to open a second store downtown.

A rally against critical race theory in Leesburg, Va., June 12, 2021. Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds, AFP/Getty Images.

5.  A story on Derrick Bell, "The Godfather of Critical Race Theory" (WSJ).

In the life of any big idea, there comes a moment when it stops belonging to the thinkers who invented it and becomes public property. Today, critical race theory is undergoing that kind of transformation. When the term came into use in the 1970s and 1980s, it described the work of scholars like Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado and Kimberlé Crenshaw, whose work was hotly debated in legal academia but little known outside it. But over the last year, critical race theory has moved to the center of American political debate.

In their book “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction,” Mr. Delgado and Jean Stefancic list several of its core premises, including the view that “racism is ordinary, not aberrational,” and that it “serves important purposes, both psychic and material, for the dominant group,” that is, for white people. In recent years, these ideas have entered the mainstream thanks to the advocacy of the Black Lives Matter movement, which was catalyzed by several high-profile cases of police violence against Black people, as well as the New York Times’s 1619 Project and bestselling books like Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” and Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist.” Critical race theory also informs instruction at some schools and other institutions.

These ideas have now become a major target of conservative activism. In September 2020, the Trump administration issued a memo instructing executive branch departments to cancel “any training on ‘critical race theory,’” which it equated with teaching “that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country.” This year, legislators and school boards in many states have introduced proposals to prohibit the teaching of critical race theory in schools, with Florida’s State Board of Education adopting such a rule earlier this month.

6. While tenancy was and is not limited to African-Americans, there is a new National Public Housing Museum in Chicago ("A National Public Housing Museum opens," NPR, "In Chicago, LBBA repurposes a New Deal–era building into the National Public Housing Museum," Architect's Newspaper).

The institution is the first of its kind. NPHM was founded by public housing residents—its goal is to become “a place to experience stories of hope and personal achievement amid struggle, resistance, and resilience,” NPHM said in a statement.

... Sunny Fischer cofounded NPHM and now sits on the board. She grew up in the Bronx at a public housing campus. Fischer called NPHM a Site of Conscience, or a space to remember and address past injustices and their ongoing legacies.

“As a Site of Conscience, we join museums around the world committed to telling complicated and difficult stories, preserving history, and imagining a more just future,” Fischer said.

Upon entry, visitors can see illustrative WPA advertisements for public housing, bygone relics from a time when the federal government invested in such things. Three historic apartments were reconstructed at a 1:1 to scale to show how different generations of public housing residents lived.

Instead of your conventional gift shop, the museum store is co-operatively run by public housing residents. NPHM also has a REC Room, a curated space by DJ Spinderella showcasing the beats and melodies born on public housing campuses. The Doris Conant Demand the Impossible Advocacy Space is meant to encourage discussions about social justice.