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