Geographies of Displacement: Latina/os, Oral History, and The Politics of Gentrification in San Francisco's Mission District

2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Raquel Mirabal
Keyword(s):  
Real Estate ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Oral History ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Print Media ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Mission District

Abstract During the 1990s and early 2000s, working-class and poor neighborhoods in San Francisco underwent dramatic economic and racial changes. One of the most heavily gentrified neighborhoods was the Mission District. As a result of local politics, housing and rental policies, real estate speculation, and development, thousands of Latina/o families were displaced. Using oral historical and ethnographic methodologies, print media, archival sources, and policy papers, this article traces the gentrification of the Mission District from the perspective of the Latina/o community. It also examines how gentrification was articulated as a positive turn within the larger public discourse on space and access.

scholarly journals Safe for Whom? And Whose Families? Narrative, Urban Neoliberalism, and Queer Oral History on San Francisco’s Polk Street

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 86-113
Author(s):  
Joseph Plaster
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Homeless Youth ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Family Structures ◽  
Biological Family ◽  
Queer Politics

In this essay I reflect on my experience as director of Polk Street: Lives in Transition, a project that drew on oral histories to intervene in debates about gentrification, homelessness, sex work, queer politics, and public safety in the highly polarized setting of gentrifying San Francisco. From 2008–10, I recorded more than seventy oral histories from people experiencing the transformation of the city’s Polk Street from a working-class queer commercial district to a gentrified entertainment destination serving the city’s growing elite. Oral histories enabled me to document a local past rich in non-biological family structures, which I interpreted through public “listening parties,” professionally mediated neighborhood dialogues, a traveling multimedia exhibit, and radio documentaries. The project challenged gentrifiers’ claims to be promoting “safety” and “family” by positing alternative understandings of both concepts drawn from oral histories with transgender women, queer homeless youth, sex workers, and working-class gay men who had made Polk Street their home.

“Scrap-Heap Storiesˮ: Oral Narratives of Labour and Loss in Scottish Mining and Manufacturing

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2-2018) ◽  
pp. 8-21
Author(s):  
Arthur McIvor
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Job Loss ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Oral Narratives ◽  
Industrial Work ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Plant Closures ◽  
The Impact

This article is an attempt to comprehend deindustrialisation and the impact of plant downsizing and closures in Scotland since the 1970s through listening to the voices of workers and reflecting on their ways of telling, whilst making some observations on how an oral history methodology can add to our understanding. It draws upon a rich bounty of oral history projects and collections undertaken in Scotland over recent decades. The lush description and often intense articulated emotion help us as academic “outsidersˮ to better understand how lives were profoundly affected by plant closures, getting us beyond statistical body counts and overly sentimentalised and nostalgic representations of industrial work to more nuanced understandings of the meanings and impacts of job loss. In recalling their lived experience of plant run-downs and closures, narrators are informing and interpreting; projecting a sense of self in the process and drawing meaning from their working lives. My argument here is that we need to listen attentively and learn from those who bore witness and try to make sense of these diverse, different and sometimes contradictory stories. We should take cognisance of silences and transgressing voices as well as dominant, hegemonic narratives if we are to deepen the conversation and understand the complex but profound impacts that deindustrialisation had on traditional working-class communities in Scotland, as well as elsewhere.

Working-Class Autobiography, c.1970–1985

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Domestic Service ◽  
Political Education ◽  
Post War ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
Community Publishing

This chapter examines working-class autobiographies and oral history testimonies created in the 1970s by the ‘history from below’, oral history, and community publishing movements. It finds that most working-class autobiographers felt that class divisions had weakened and changed radically in the post-war years: they identified improvements in housing, the NHS, education, and the power of workers as key alterations. The disappearance of live-in domestic service was a particularly powerful symbol of the changes that had taken place. Though none thought class had disappeared, many thought class divides were less powerful. While some working-class autobiographers wrote that their experiences made them instinctive socialists, in fact political activism did not flow straightforwardly from experience, but was the result of political education and context. Working-class experience was highly diverse, and as this became clear to many in the community publishing movement, it led to changes in their activist practice in the 1980s.

scholarly journals Estimation of secondary household attack rates for emergent spike L452R SARS-CoV-2 variants detected by genomic surveillance at a community-based testing site in San Francisco

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Peng ◽  
Jamin Liu ◽  
Sabrina A Mann ◽  
Anthea M Mitchell ◽  
Matthew T Laurie ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Reproductive Number ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Viral Loads ◽  
Mission District ◽  
Household Contacts ◽  
Epidemiological Tool ◽  
Testing Site ◽  
New Mutations

Abstract Background Sequencing of the SARS-CoV-2 viral genome from patient samples is an important epidemiological tool for monitoring and responding to the pandemic, including the emergence of new mutations in specific communities. Methods SARS-CoV-2genomicsequencesweregeneratedfrompositivesamplescollected,alongwithepidemiologicalmetadata,atawalk-up, rapid testing site in the Mission District of San Francisco, California during November 22-December 1, 2020 and January 10-29, 2021. Secondary household attack rates and mean sample viral load were estimated and compared across observed variants. Results A total of 12,124 tests were performed yielding 1,099 positives. From these, 928 high quality genomes were generated. Certain viral lineages bearing spike mutations, defined in part by L452R, S13I, and W152C, comprised 54.4% of the total sequences from January, compared to 15.7% in November. Household contacts exposed to the “California” or “West Coast” variants (B.1.427 and B.1.429) were at higher risk of infection compared to household contacts exposed to lineages lacking these variants (0.36 vs 0.29, RR=1.28; 95% CI:1.00-1.64). The reproductive number was estimated to be modestly higher than other lineages spreading in California during the second half of 2020. Viral loads were similar among persons infected with West Coast versus non-West Coast strains, as was the proportion of individuals with symptoms (60.9% vs 64.3%). Conclusions The increase in prevalence, relative household attack rates, and reproductive number are consistent with a modest transmissibility increase of the West Coast variants.

Sustaining Labor Politics in Hard Times: Race, Labor, and Coalition Building in Racine, Wisconsin

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-63
Author(s):  
Naomi R Williams
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Labor Politics ◽  
Working People ◽  
Hard Times ◽  
The 1960S

Abstract This article explores the shifting politics of the Racine, Wisconsin, working-class community from World War II to the 1980s. It looks at the ways Black workers’ activism influenced local politics and how their efforts played out in the 1970s and 1980s. Case studies show how an expansive view of the boundaries of the Racine labor community led to cross-sector labor solidarity and labor-community coalitions that expanded economic citizenship rights for more working people in the city. The broad-based working-class vision pursued by the Racine labor community influenced local elections, housing and education, increased the number of workers with the power of unions behind them, and improved Racine's economic and social conditions. By the 1980s, Racine's labor community included not only industrial workers but also members of welfare and immigrants’ rights groups, parents of inner-city students, social workers and other white-collar public employees, and local and state politicians willing to support a class-based agenda in the political arena. Worker activists’ ability to maintain and adapt their notion of a broad-based labor community into the late twentieth century shows how this community and others like it responded to the upheaval of the 1960s social movements by creating a broad and relatively successful concept of worker solidarity that also incorporated racial justice.

Presidential Address: Maps in the Mind and the Mobility of Asia

2003 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 1057-1078 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ludden
Keyword(s):  
Real Estate ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Insurance Companies ◽  
Street Gangs ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Visual Text ◽  
Real Estate Developers ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Invisible

A map is a peculiar kind of visual text. It seems a mere instrument of utility, showing us where to go and how to put things in place. Invisible ingredients, however, render every map a Pandora's box. Emotions are undoubtedly the most potent of all of the invisible elements in maps. The cartographic passions that make the headlines may be national ones, but in cities, towns, and villages, people have strong feelings about local maps. Street gangs, real estate developers, insurance companies, zoning boards, planners, and electorates invest maps with local politics. Landowners love their property lines. Universities map their campus identity. The Association for Asian Studies (AAS) signifies itself succinctly in its logo, a map of Asia. Such territorial attachments and many others have striking similarities: they infuse boundaries with iconic significance, tinged with feelings of security, belonging, possessiveness, enclosure, entitlement, and exclusion.

Speaking to the ‘Hard Men’: Masculinities, Violence and Youth Gangs in Glasgow, c. 1965–75

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Bartie ◽  
Alistair Fraser
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Youth Gangs ◽  
Masculine Identity ◽  
Popular Representations ◽  
Oral History Interviews ◽  
The City

This chapter unites perspectives from history and sociology in excavating the lived experiences of everyday masculinities and violence that lie behind the persistent image of the Glasgow ‘hard man’, while also interrogating popular representations of the ‘hard city’. Drawing on oral history interviews with individuals involved in violent territorialism – specifically through street-based ‘gangs’ of young men – c. 1965-1975, it contrasts popular representations of the Glasgow ‘hard man’ with the lived experiences of those living and working in the city at that time. Focusing specifically on Easterhouse, it highlights the prominence of ‘the street’ in narrative accounts of masculine identity formation for young working-class men and links this to the specific social, cultural and economic composition of the locale. Overall, it argues that such ‘street’ masculinities should be understood in historical context, recognising the influence of local cultures of machismo on the persistence of forms of masculine identity.

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