Hello Everyone,
I just wanted to say I am genuinely excited for this class based
on the brief discussions we have had so far.
Out of our conversation about the homage that was A Kind of
Genius: Herb Sturz and Society’s Toughest Problems, we discussed the
unreliability of Statistics (both Qualitative and Quantitative), whether
someone can truly be non-ideological and the “stakeholders” who supposedly
benefitted from the work of the genius we know as Herb Sturz. Through the
latter speaking topic of stakeholders, we see that the question of who
benefitted from his work would bring unsure and somewhat unflattering answers
about the effects of Sturz’s work. The book never mentions where the
homeless go after they have been cleaned up and the neighborhoods they once
dwelled are no longer affordable to live in. Page 190 exemplifies
the concept of gentrification in the two picture comparisons that referred to
the minority men as derelicts (a problematic term which is reminiscent of when
President Bush called African Americans in New Orleans “refugees” after
Hurricane Katrina). This idea brought me back to when Professor Stein mentioned
in class that with every empire, like the one Herb Sturz has built with Vera,
there is colonization.
I personally was tentative about mentioning the ideas of
gentrification, but after the underlying issues we were able to bring about in
class, I feel like I could have written a much better paper after
Thursday. With this in mind, I will
definitely push myself in my writing to question even the best of examples of
successful initiatives in social justice as Sturz has accomplished.
With that I leave you with a short video that talks about the
setbacks of gentrification that started in the Lower East Side as told by
filmmaker and Brooklyn native, Spike Lee.
-Spencer
