Climate gentrification and the vanishing of Overtown

before beginning it is imperative for us

to acknowledge that the land in which we

are standing on

and speaking of was also stolen from the

tequesta people

we honor them and seek atonement for the

sacrifices that they were forced to make

of their land their lives their history

and their culture

i stand before you as a protector of the

legacy

of our ancestors our elders our children

and generations yet to come quick

confession

i haven’t always been about this climate

change life i used to think that it was

all about the polar bears and the sea

turtles

and as cute as they are they were not my

priority

as a single mother my priority was

making sure that my children made it

home safely and that we had an

affordable place to live

and that we had clean drinking water my

priority was survival

not the sea turtles as with a lot of

people in my community

but climate change is about survival

there has been a 400

increase in tidal flooding between 2006

and 2016.

which is encouraging more affluent

populations to move inland

we have had 40 additional 90 degree days

per year

since 1970. here in miami instead of

using the money from the forever bond to

build affordable housing in overtown

luxury condos are being built all around

adding more concrete and ultimately

creating even more heat

developers are building our community

for the people they want to come

as opposed to improving the access for

people whose families who have lived

here for generations

median income is less than twenty five

thousand dollars and the average rent

for a one bedroom is about one thousand

dollars per month

so residents are being priced out pushed

out and displaced

climate gentrification is a systemic and

legalized cultural genocide

one elder shared that overtown and our

people here have become an unwilling

part of a real-life monopoly game

legacy would be respected in other more

affluent communities

i love to sit at the feet of our elders

and many have expressed the heartbreak

of being pushed out

they share how many places that were

once a huge part of their lives and

stories

are gone they have been and are being

destroyed without input from the

community members

all in the name of a culture of power

politics and money

they fear the memories and stories will

be lost overtown is not only changing

it’s changing quickly in a way that

current community members can’t keep up

with and so

for solutions we turn to a conversation

between baba michael and i you know

because of lack of political education

and lack of education period

in our communities and not understanding

that we are domestic

colonized people on foreign soil and

that you can’t

no one can get away from that so we

always been put in a mode of survival

you know you know surviving from one

generation to another hoping that things

get better

so we never really have that type of

articulation to really explain

how we got into this predicament what we

call uh

political tricksters can come into a

community uh

of uh and we call them politicians who

have been elected

as developers you know come in and say

well we’re going to fix up the community

and stuff and make sure you know the

people being pushed out

of the community so when you look at

climate change you have to look at it

from a broad spectrum you know as the

sea level rise people running from the

beach

went into high waters you know i mean

running to the high land

you have to realize that our communities

have been made

and exploited and oppressed for what the

benefit of people who don’t live in the

community

so therefore if your community is in

that type of situation your community

becomes full and forward

more run down and because what you don’t

take the resources

and build your community up that’s what

that’s why we say the most important

fight

for us to save ourselves is community

control it must be

political education must be economics we

must save our culture

we must fight for our children’s future

because that’s what we’re really talking

about the future

what kind of future will they have would

it will there be another future of them

you know marching and begging all over

again no we have to start to really

build

as marcus garvey talked about malcolm x

queen mother more people like that

we’re real real serious about us having

power with our own lives and

we don’t have power over lives and we’re

always waiting for somebody else then we

can forget it

but we we got to start solving the

problems of climate justification

we have become a welfare country of

people thinking that all you got to do

is get the government involved and the

government going to solve the problem

well the only thing the government has

done is become bigger and bigger and

more exploited

so the power of the people has been

taken away from the people because the

people

now are dependent on the government to

do what they can do people need to

really remember katrina

you know it wasn’t 24 hours after

katrina passed by that the people who

lived in those communities

were immediately called refugees

immediately

that was designed right right because

there’s

so many overtowns you know wherever you

black people live smoketown

buttermilk bottom you name it you know

our

communities have been historically

disruptive

and pushed we’ve been pushed out you

know so yes

we must talk about it and organize

against it

the basis education organization

mobilization and then the ability to

establish

structures that are in our community

that fight against climate change that

bring about a

new community we have to start building

differently we have to start teaching

differently about what’s happening to

our community

and we have to start fighting harder for

our community and demanding that people

that we

that we put into office do what we say

not what other people say

okay and yet

everything that we do in this moment to

heal ourselves

to heal our world to right wrongs that

have occurred

in this moment the work that we do

towards that

helps to heal seven generations that

came before us true

and seven generations yet to come

sometimes these issues can seem so big

and yet it helps to remember that

everything that we do in this moment

can either help or harm seven

generations that came before us

and seven generations yet to come the

choice is ours

you