{"id":16572,"date":"2020-11-10T19:43:25","date_gmt":"2020-11-11T03:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/?p=16572"},"modified":"2020-12-03T21:30:48","modified_gmt":"2020-12-04T05:30:48","slug":"opinion-the-gentrification-of-independence-monmouth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/opinion-the-gentrification-of-independence-monmouth\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: The gentrification of Independence-Monmouth"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

With the popular food trucks in Indy-Mo gone, it brings up questions on gentrification<\/span><\/em><\/p>\r\n

Stephanie Moschella<\/strong> | Digital Media Manager<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

Gentrification is defined by Google as \u201cthe process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new business, typically displaying current inhabitants in the process,\u201d but I\u2019m sure a lot of people didn\u2019t catch the underlying racist speech in the definition of this word itself.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Poor, urban, Black, drugs, Mexican, Hispanic, uneducated, streets, hood, slums, the projects. The ghetto.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

The shifting of neighborhoods, the betterment of the community, cleaning up the slums. \u201cWe\u2019re doing it for the kids!\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re making it more appealing for new tenants!\u201d We\u2019re dusting the streets of the people of color that were once there, and replacing them with a year long process of construction. We\u2019re mixing the color of their skin with the cement being poured to smooth and blend out their edges.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

We see this pattern repeatedly against marginalized communities. They\u2019re given unreliable scraps of society only to have the rug pulled under them at any given moment to make room for the wealthy, improved and traditionally acceptable. However, this destruction of culture and revenue to the community is only noticed by those who\u2019ve carved a space for themselves through their sweat and blood.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

These renovations deemed for the \u201cbetterment\u201d of society only goes to show that the creativity of young, marginalized groups will always be deemed as lesser and disposable. The black square on your Instagram account will never be enough to make you understand, because you will never understand.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Those that live in the Independence-Monmouth area probably know that the food trucks that were in The Annex left. Whether or not they were kicked out with only a 12-hour notice or asked to leave months ago doesn\u2019t matter \u2014 this community has been stripped of a beautifully unique aspect, only to be replaced by \u201cclean\u201d commercial spaces and unaffordable apartments.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Gentrification colloquially means the process where a neighborhood garners wealth and where the population becomes more rich, more young and more white. There\u2019s no hiding what Indy-Mo is becoming, forcing its residents further and further out. Sure, it\u2019s just Independence to Monmouth, but this exact thinking is what happens when people get too complacent, and eventually, kicked out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

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Contact the author at smoschella20@wou.edu<\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the popular food trucks in Indy-Mo gone, it brings up questions on gentrification<\/p>\n

Stephanie Moschella | Digital Media Manager\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1094,"featured_media":16554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[302,319,320,169,216,217],"class_list":["post-16572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-food-trucks","tag-gentrification","tag-indy-mo","tag-opinion","tag-stephanie","tag-stephanie-moschella"],"modified_by":"The Western Howl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1094"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}