Challenging Gentrification and the Nonprofit Industrial Complex

Cincinnati was our first stop in Ohio on the road to the U.S. Social Forum. Our visit kicked off with a march from the Kentucky border to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and through the downtown area. It ended with a welcoming party and speak-out at the Contact Center in the historic Over the Rhine neighborhood. Poor and low-income residents have been struggling for years to combat a massive plan to gentrify Over the Rhine. Corporate giants aim to push out the poor and homeless population and develop the real estate for the middle-class and affluent. Poor folks are gearing up for the USSF to keep building their movement to resist corporate control and keep their communities intact.

The Contact Center is an organization lead by the poor that works to end poverty by empowering poor folks to directly take action on issues that affect them. In the 90’s they used civil disobedience in attempt to prevent low-income people from being displaced. They also organized welfare recipients to pressure officials to pass policies that serve the poor. Today, the Contact Center is facing off against a highly organized creature of the corporate elite, the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation, or 3CDC, a nonprofit that serves to reshape the city according to the corporate agenda.

3CDC has purchased almost two hundred million dollars worth of vacant and dilapidated property in Over the Rhine and surrounding areas with the message of “revitalizing” the city. Revitalization is often a euphemism for gentrification, and certainly so in this case. 3CDC is building expensive residential properties and businesses in this low-income area. As a result rent prices have skyrocketed and forced many who could no longer afford to live there out of the neighborhood, even if that meant entering a homeless shelter. The public swimming pool at Washington Park has been closed down. Public housing projects have been demolished. A new K-12 school is opening up with highly competitive entrance criteria.

“They’re gentrifying the whole area,” Cassandra Barham, a longtime resident of Over the Rhine told us on a walking tour. She is an office manager and local organizer with the Contact Center. “They want to move out all the poor families so that higher income people can move in.”

These decisions to transform Over the Rhine, one of the poorest sections of the city, have been made without asking for any input from the poor and low-income residents who have lived there for generations. 3CDC states on its website that it works with and for local and state politicians and “Cincinnati’s corporate community.” Sitting on the organization’s Board of Directors are over 30 corporate executives that represent some of the most powerful corporations and banks in the world. Executives from Proctor and Gamble (the 5^th most profitable corporation in the world), Macy’s, Kroger, American Financial Group, and numerous other banks and corporations make up the board of 3CDC. Using the tax benefits of a nonprofit these corporate giants form a powerful coalition to control city politics and economics for the sake of their private profits.

Each of the aforementioned corporations that sit on the board of 3CDC also have their global headquarters in Cincinnati. Meanwhile, the poverty that so many face in the city is alarming. Just a block down from 3CDC’s gentrified area of new businesses is blight. Homeless people crowd Washington park by the dozens, unable to get into the packed shelter across the street. These contradictions reveal the extreme inequality caused by corporate capitalism. The fact that so many people live in poverty in a city where some of the country’s wealthiest corporations are headquartered shatters the myth that the private sector satisfies people’s economic needs. Instead it seems clear here that the corporate system serves the wealthy while forcing many into poverty and then punishing them for being poor. Poor and working people are organizing to build grassroots power to fundamentally challenge that system.

Reform Immigration Now

Residents of Over the Rhine are organizing working class people, including undocumented and documented immigrants, to defend their community. Ohio is currently proposing an anti-immigrant law similar to the one recently passed in Arizona, which encourages racial profiling and criminalizes Latinos and Latinas. The recent wave of anti-immigrant attacks across the country seeks to scapegoat a major section of the working class for the economic crisis actually caused by capitalism. In reality, the same globalized corporate system that benefits from high unemployment rates and poverty in Cincinnati also does so in Mexico and throughout the world.

U.S. policies like NAFTA have opened up borders to the free flow of capital but closed them to the flow of people. Multinational corporations exploit the land and labor of these countries while the profits go to Wall Street shareholders. Poor people, workers, and the unemployed in each country suffer as a result and compete against each other for low-paying jobs. Poor farmers in Mexico, Central America, and South America can’t compete against cheap U.S. food from giant agribusinesses so they must find other work. U.S. corporate control of the resources and markets of other countries has forced many to cross the border into the U.S. in search of jobs and opportunities that no longer exist where they are from. The globalized capitalist system that exploits and oppresses workers in the U.S., where record unemployment rates today go hand-in-hand with big profits and bonuses, also hurts workers abroad and forces them to emigrate to the U.S. looking for work. Working class community members in Cincinnati are shining light on this reality and building unity across diverse sections of the working class to resist corporate control.

Reform Immigration Now is a group we met at the Contact Center fighting to do exactly what their name says. While we were in town they were working with volunteers to phone bank Ohio’s senators to challenge the proposed racist law. Organizers have been coordinating their efforts across Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland. They have planned an upcoming 1,000-person march to oppose the proposed new anti-immigrant law and demand comprehensive immigration reform.

Building Unity in the Movement

The Contact Center has spearheaded efforts to unite the poor and working class in Cincinnati and throughout Ohio. In the mid-90’s they started the Ohio Empowerment Coalition, a statewide network now made up of over 30 groups advocating for the interests of low-income people. The U.S. Social Forum will be a tremendous opportunity for these organizers to unite with other working class groups from across the country to fight against corporate control of their communities and build the long-term movement for economic justice which is lead directly by the poor and working class.

Labels: USSF 2010

// posted by Jeff Rousset @ 9:33 PM