Earl Park
I grew up in Los Angeles and had friends that lived in Highland Park; I would visit them a lot during my freshman and sophomore year of high school, so it shocked me find out that the spots that I would visit in college were the same one from my high school outings. The change was drastic; it was drastic to the point that I did not recognize it until much later.
Being able to map out these changes on Scalar and seeing the trends that reflected gentrification and displacement helped me see how this rapid transformation came to be. It was interesting to see this shift in demographics represented in the increase of housing prices and the decrease in the average age. Collecting the statistics and data behind gentrification offered a way to look at things through a quantitative lens.
I am not one for solely using the quantitative, for I really value individual narratives; I believe in the power of these individual accounts, for when they are put together, they can paint a very telling picture—similar to Pointillism. As a result, getting first-hand accounts on gentrification offered depth to the numbers that Scalar provided. In these quick interviews, people shared how gentrification personally affected them, their friends, and their family. In addition, in some rare cases, people welcomed gentrification because they felt as if it benefitted their businesses and made the neighborhood safer. It was also interesting seeing how people who moved in and opened new businesses were mostly ignorant of their effects on their local community; they tended to be more excited with the opportunities to expand that the neighborhood provided. Lastly, walking around the area while collecting these interviews allowed me to see and notice the following things: how the old and new residents shared the same space but did not interact at all and how old businesses try to appeal to the newer ones.
The different guest speakers sharing their life stories added even more complexity and depth to this phenomenon. I was moved by the stories of living in an all-white neighborhood at a time of blatant racism, experiencing the demographics shifting to a pre-dominantly Latino neighborhood, and seeing the neighborhood getting whiter and whiter due to gentrification. I was also inspired by the stories emphasizing how important art was to Highland Park’s history. Going along a similar theme, the non-traditional survey that my group is developing aims to capture the effects of sharing one’s narrative. We, as human beings, have a myriad of life experiences that define us. Reducing an individual to a cog in a study, in my opinion, is a violence that serves to limit the complexity that he or she intrinsically possesses. Also, I believe that the people that are being displaced should have the louder voices, for as Occidental students, most of us have no real stake in what is going on; we are able to go back to the bubble that is our private, liberal-arts institution. At the end of the day, we are only documenting one’s struggle and not experiencing it, so our voices are not important in this instance. Because of my sentiments, I thought it was great to be working with a community organization and just doing what they wanted us to do; having them place limitations and guiding us to certain projects was very helpful.
Essay
A majority of my Occidental classes either focused on the quantitative or the qualitative; only a few classes really blended the two together (Children, Poverty, and Public Policy is the only one that sticks out to me right now). In addition, most of my Critical Theory and Social Justice classes focused mostly on theory. Spatial Justice was a nice departure from the trends that dominated my experiences in previous classes. In this class, we had class sessions where we were able to (and encouraged to) express our feelings and sentiments. I feel as if the aforementioned qualities are usually discredited in an academic setting, for our academia culture seems to privilege certain ways of sharing over others. However, this was not the case in Spatial Justice, which I am grateful for.
Unlike most classes that focused on current problems outside of Occidental, Spatial Justice had us actually documenting what was happening. While there are still problematic aspects to this, as most Occidental students have no real stake in what is going on, I view it as the lesser of two evils. If we, as Occidental students, are able to acknowledge that we are able to go back to the bubble that is our private, liberal-arts institution, that at the end of the day, we are only documenting one’s struggle and not experiencing it, and that so our voices are not important in this instance, more progress can be made. Compared to the more prevalent practice of only reading about these issues, I feel as if the former is more helpful. The latter, in my opinion, creates a black and white picture, a binary that ignores the infinite number of possibilities that lie in between.
Unfortunately, I was sick for the graffiti tour and had a job interview during the day of the play, so I was not able to really see how the course projects developed out of a community partnership; however, I was able to talk to various people from the community during my photographic documentation. As I mentioned in my short reflection, I truly believe in the importance of collecting individual accounts, for when they are put together, all the individual narratives that can a picture—similar to how Pointillism works. All of these first-hand accounts of displacement and gentrification showed the human side of this phenomena; it was no longer just an economic trend and social injustice that we read about. In addition, as Michael and I walked around Figueroa, we were able to notice the following things: how the old and new residents shared the same space but did not interact at all and how old businesses try to appeal to the newer ones. Lastly, because of my views on the privilege that, we as Occidental students have, I thought it was great to be working with a community organization and just doing what they wanted us to do. I felt as if having them be the limiters and the ones in control of all the projects was the right way to approach this partnership.
Collecting data and mapping other forms of knowledge added a quantitative focus to the class that helped add depth to the qualitative side. Being able to map out these changes on Scalar and seeing the trends that reflected gentrification and displacement helped me see how this rapid transformation came to be. It was interesting to see this shift in demographics represented in the increase of housing prices and the decrease in the average age. Seeing the statistics and data behind gentrification offered a way to look at things through a quantitative lens. In addition, I felt as if it was the right work for Occidental students to be doing. It was basically busy work that didn’t allow us to impose our voices onto it. Everything was a matter of collected the data and putting it into a system, and by doing it, it probably saved the community organization a lot of time—time that they probably spent using their community experiences to fight displacement.
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Bio
Earl Park is a Senior Critical Theory and Social Justice major. He’s a mellow, yellow fellow! Outside the classroom, you can find him trying to spit hot fire, learning the piano, and fighting for Asian American visibility in the mainstream. Through this class, he is now more aware of his spending habits and the power of community-based partnerships/research.