Good White People: A short film about gentrification

When a for-profit developer purchases the building they rent, Reginald and his family are told they must vacate the building and are given only 45 days to find a new home and relocate their businesses while their neighborhood makes way for start-up incubators, yoga studios, and luxury condominiums. Formerly a target of the policies created by the War On Drugs, Cincinnati’s inner-city is now the target of urban development corporations as its black population declines.

GOOD WHITE PEOPLE hopes to start a conversation about the use of coded terminology like urban renewal, revitalization, and urban renaissance, and explore how these words help to trivialize and disguise the commercial practice of white supremacy, neocolonialism, and the economic othering of low-income residents.

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth

Destroyed in a dramatic and highly-publicized implosion, the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex has become a widespread symbol of failure amongst architects, politicians and policy makers.

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth explores the social, economic and legislative issues that led to the decline of conventional public housing in America, and the city centers in which they resided, while tracing the personal and poignant narratives of several of the project's residents.

In the post-War years, the American city changed in ways that made it unrecognizable from a generation earlier, privileging some and leaving others in its wake.

The next time the city changes, remember Pruitt-Igoe.

We Will Not Be Moved

We Will Not Be Moved is a slide-tape production created by Community Media Productions (Dayton, Ohio) in 1980, with support from the Ohio Arts Council. It tells the story of gentrification from the point of view of those living in Over the Rhine, a urban neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The area, near downtown Cincinnati, was becoming attractive to urban pioneers and developers, but long time African American and Appalachian residents were determined not be pushed out. This story is still relevant 30 years later.

These Old Buildings Raised Our Many Children

A short documentary by Barbara Wolf about gentrification in a small city where poor folks both white, black, and brown find their rents rising and their wages stagnant as developers buy up buildings all around them and the police are used as mechanisms of enforcement and carcerality protecting real estate conglomerates.

Cabrini Green (PBS)

The Cabrini Green Public Housing Projects in Chicago Illinois are among the most famous failures in American history. Built in the 1930's to house immigrants and middle class families these buildings soon became mostly inhabited the the very poor, and mostly black individuals and families. By the 1960's the buildings (several high rise structures and several blocks of "Row Homes") comprised thousands of units of what were essential industrial style small and low quality apartments.

The high rise buildings used building techniques not unlike a prison, concrete walls and floors, steel toilets and doors, fenced in balconies etc. The building over time became more and more centers of crime and drug trade, while many others not involved lived among it and were forced to deal with it. There is much more to say, look it up if you don't know the story. The high rise buildings have all since been removed, some of the row-house units still exist. The entire complex sits just north and west of Downtown Chicago in the middle of what is a highly desirable and expensive area, and much of the land that once hosted the high rise buildings has been rebuilt with condos and homes. Some of these are mixed income buildings, some very expensive privately owned units.

Let The Fire Burn

On May 13, 1985, Philadelphia police dropped two pounds of military explosives onto a city row house occupied by the radical group MOVE. The resulting fire was not fought for over an hour although firefighters were on the scene with water cannons in place.

Five children and six adults were killed and sixty-one homes were destroyed by the six-alarm blaze, one of the largest in the city's history. This dramatic tragedy unfolds through an extraordinary visual record previously withheld from the public. It is a graphic illustration of how prejudice, intolerance and fear can lead to unthinkable acts of violence.