Gentrify This!

“Cade’s Rebellion – A Novel,” by Edward Sheehy, 2018

Gentrification is a severe problem throughout the U.S. – in cities or upper-end suburbs, around lakes or vacation areas, on seashores, or anywhere the rich or middle-class might want to live. It is the logical, unequal result of too much money in the hands of too few people.   This book deals with a rebellion against gentrification in Washington, D.C., in a large apartment complex called Glebe Valley where 5,000 mostly Latino or Salvadorean immigrants live.

History Comes Alive Again

In the U.S., housing and ‘the city’ are controlled by capitalist real estate interests - 'rentiers.'  Land is privatized.  Private property is king, so your ‘roof’ is always in play.  City councils and ‘development’ bodies, no matter their political party affiliation, side with large construction outfits, real estate developers and real estate investors to enable this circulation of capital, including one in particular - ‘eminent domain.’  The U.S. ‘Supreme” Court has predictably decreed that a city can condemn a property for being a ‘nuisance’ and hand it over though eminent domain to upscale gentrifiers to ‘fix.’ Or because it serves a greater 'public good.'

These are the issues high-lighted in this book, a rarity in any book of current fiction.

Jack Cade is a former sergeant who fought in Iraq and now drives an outstanding green, metal-flake taxi. He has to deal with traffic jams, Uber scabs stealing his rides and shit-bags who don’t pay. He suffers from low-level PTSD, pounding headaches, substance abuse and guilt.  He’s non-political, but has a low anger level and knows when he’s being fucked with.  When he hears that his low-rent apartment in the Chapelita apartment complex might be torn down for an upscale development, he is ultimately convinced to lead the ostensibly hopeless fight against it.  The local liberation theology priest from El Salvador, Father Gustavo, helps, along with a hard-leftist public activist lawyer from Miami, Rita Castro, and the head of a local non-profit, Luis Guzman.  Together they form the ‘Chapelita Coalition for Justice’ to fight a ruthless ‘new urbanism’ real estate developer, Urban Renaissance Partners (URP).  The neighborhood and most small business people back them up, as the tenants realize they are to be forcibly moved to far suburbs, unaffordable apartments or homelessness, no matter the sweetners offered by URP.

The hipster, new-age rhetoric of the new urbanist URP about ‘community’ reeks of hypocrisy, which is one of the delights of the book.  High-end coffee shops, yoga studios and the ‘internet of things’ replace businesses catering to the working class and low-income workers – who happen to speak mostly Spanish.  URP christens their upscale real-estate psycho-babble ‘PULSE tec’ – a brain-computer interface called “Psycho Unified Life-style Environment.”  Yeah, you can stop laughing now.

This story is not a typical non-violent struggle between developers and working-class residents, though that is what normally takes place.  After all, violence is not needed when the real-estate corporations have the law, the political parties, the police and the press locked down. In this story, even the Catholic diocese is part of the sale of the property to URP.  The fix is in, though the residents only suspect it.

Instead, in this fiction, everyone seems to have death lurking in the background. Luis was a former teen soldier in the Salvadorean army who killed peasants and priests during the U.S.-sponsored  holocaust in Central America, and now regrets it.  One of his sons, Enzo, has become a highly-skilled gangster.  Cade himself regrets a moment of laxity in Iraq, which led to the death of 8 Iraqi ‘jundi’ allies.  He’s still a pretty violent guy and can handle himself with thugs.   Anti-capitalist Ms. Castro also seems to want to use violent methods against the English head of the real estate syndicate.  The local agent of URP, Mick Finn, hires Luis’ son Enzo to disrupt the protesters.  A group of armed female white vigilantes, the “Watchdogs” (women stock fillers and checkout clerks…?) police the housing complex.  They represent the reactionary forces against immigration, who think all immigrants are criminals.  Somehow here they have been drawn from the lowest level of the working-class.  Even ‘M13’ gets a mention. The book says it is based on real events.  How much of the violence is real and how much of it is imagination, only the author knows.

This book puts the fight against gentrification front and center.  It cites Henri Lefebvre, a French Marxist who believed that the residents of a city had a right to the city, just as workers have a right to the factories or warehouses or mills or offices they work in. Right now rent control and building controls are almost non-existent in the U.S.  A ‘right to housing,’ like a ‘right to food,’ does not exist in a capitalist commodity society. ‘Food, clothing and shelter,’ the basics of human life, are priced…  Real estate interests have the run of the table.  Politicians, except socialist ones, are in their pockets. It is happening in Minneapolis and every U.S. city of any size.   Liberal politicians constantly blather about ‘affordable housing’ but this is just fairy dust thrown in the eyes of a gullible voting public.  These politicians still rely on ‘market forces’ to supply these so-called affordable homes, with just a ‘nudge’ from government.  It is market forces that are creating the problem in the first place, so it is like hiring the arsonist to put out the fire.  (Which is a good gig if you can get it!)

This book is an antidote to that slick sales pitch.  Do the residents win?   Is there a way to defeat gentrification?  Read it and find out.

The author, Ed Sheehy, is local and will be giving a presentation on his new book in September at May Day.  Sheehy references an earlier Jack Cade, who led a popular rebellion in England in 1450 against royal corruption.  That rebellion did not end well for Cade.

P.S. - Eminent domain is used automatically in Louisiana for oil pipelines.  There is a current fight around the Louisiana Bayou pipeline, which is the southern end of the Dakota Access Pipeline.  In South Dakota, the Dakota Access Pipeline got an eminent domain ruling from the state.  So eminent domain is not limited to housing issues, but extends to any private corporation which has sway with corporate politicians.

Other works of fiction reviewed below:  “The Road,” “Polar Star,” “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness,” “Consider the Lobster,” “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” “The Dispossessed,” “Red Baker,” “Independent People,” “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, “Good News,” “Life and Fate,” “Prague,” “Peace, Love & Petrol Bombs,” “Amiable With Big Teeth,” “What is To Be Done?”, “All the Pretty Horses,” “The Dream of the Celt,” “American Pastoral,” “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” “Petersburg,” “Factory Days,” “The Damnificados,” "The Sympathizer," “Last Man in the Tower,” “White Tiger,” “Between the Assassinations,” “American War.” “The Vegetarian,” “The Appeal,” “Time to Kill,” “Gray Mountain,” “Sycamore Row,” "Child of God," "Suttree," "Blood Lake," "The Heart Goes Last," "Handmaid's Tale," "Merry Month of May," "Fear," "Hayduke Lives!" "The Monkey Wrench Gang," "Affliction."  Use blog search box, upper left.

P.S. - RT/Long-Haired Hippie Swearer Commie reports 9/20 that the Catholic Church is actually, right now, evicting people from a historically black neighborhood that has rent control. 

And I bought it at May Day books excellent fiction section!

Red Frog

July 25, 2018