Our Breakout Trip's first full day in Miami featured a unique opportunity to get acquainted to the Miami community and the individuals who commit themselves to service on a daily basis. As part of our mission to learn more about climate gentrification and the housing crisis in Miami, we volunteered with Make The Homeless Smile (MTHS). MTHS is a nonprofit organization that has committed itself "to provide resources, education, jobs and housing to combat poverty and homelessness." As part of their mission, MTHS hosts "Smile Day" on a regular basis. We were able to volunteer on "Smile Day" to help distribute food, clothing and hygiene products. The organization placed on emphasis on ensuring that every individual who came to seek assistance on "Smile Day" was met with a warm smile and a welcoming presence. We encountered a direct form of service that aimed to instill dignity, access and knowledge in those seeking help. A few of us helped serve food while others sorted clothing and hygiene products. Our most interesting experiences included speaking to our fellow volunteers, many of whom had grown up in Miami their entire lives and were able to give us background about ongoing patterns of gentrification in Liberty City and Overtown (the predominantly black and low-income neighborhoods in which we were volunteering). After this invaluable experience, we ventured out to Little Havana to buy our groceries at Presidente Supermarket - a Latin American supermarket. It was an opportunity for us to support a local grocer while visiting an important community in Miami. Afterward, we ventured back to our host site where we retired for the night and reflected upon our experiences. Tomorrow we look forward to many more experiences (and pictures) of our time in Miami! - Mahishan Gnanaseharan '20 & Nathan Poland '20 Breakout Miami: Day 2We started the day slowly. After packing our lunches and getting ready for the day, we headed off—in two vans, at last!—to Little Haiti, a neighborhood located about a 30 minutes’ drive from our host site in Hialeah. Home to a sizeable portion of Miami’s Haitian and Caribbean populations, Little Haiti occupies an interesting position in Miami’s cultural landscape: although its original community is still very visible and plays an important role in the neighborhood’s general feel, it sits just outside what is arguably the most obvious sign of gentrification in the whole city. Speaking of gentrification, a volunteer that worked with us the other day had mentioned that Little Haiti would be “the next to go,” and it was interesting to reflect on that thought during our time there. It was heartening, however, to visit the Little Haiti Cultural Center, where we spent a while admiring art created by artists from Latin America and the Caribbean. We were also able to stop by the marketplace, which is housed in a structure mimicking an important building in Port-au-Prince, as well as a records store, a voodoo crafts store, and a famous bakery. The main focus of our day was meeting with Mr. Michael Liu, who runs the Housing Authority in Miami-Dade county—which is, surprisingly, the fifth largest housing authority in the United States. For half an hour Mr. Liu told us what the public housing market is like in the county, as well as the challenges faced in getting the funds to develop affordable homes. Afterwards we were given a tour around the two affordable housing buildings right beside the Housing Authority, one of which was finished only in December and challenged our preconceived notions of what public housing looks like. Although the experience was really fascinating overall, in our debrief we collectively admitted that the experience was also challenging for us in several ways: some of us disagreed with how the homeless were portrayed by the people we talked to, and others were left with questions on the climate resilience of the buildings, who they were serving, and whether our presence there was merited. Afterwards, we went back to Little Haiti for a while before heading to Wynwood, arguably the most controversially gentrified area in Miami (akin to Williamsburg in New York). We collectively thought it was strange to see Wynwood after the communities we’d already been exposed to, given that it served an entirely different clientele. It was interesting to enter that space with the awareness of gentrification already in our minds, and later we wondered whether that would’ve been different had we come to Miami of our own accord. Dinner was graciously prepared by Fatima and Kai, who cooked a great curry. We debriefed until late at night. - Jimin Kang '21 Breakout Miami: Day 3 After another relaxed breakfast we embarked on the 45-minute drive to Ft. Lauderdale in Broward County, the county adjacent to Miami-Dade. There we met with our next community partners: E-sciences, a scientific consulting team, and Ms. Danchuck, the assistant director of the Environmental Protection and Growth Management Department of Broward County. Ms. Danchuck gave both E-Sciences and us a presentation on how Broward County is planning for and enforcing climate resiliency, so we were able to get a sense of both organizations and how they interacted. E-Sciences graciously provided lunch and we quickly felt welcomed. Although Ms. Danchuck admitted that gentrification was not her area of expertise, we were impressed by how she did her best to adapt her presentation to us and point out the connections between her office’s work on predicting and resisting sea level rise and South Florida’s housing crisis. We were also struck by the way she acknowledged the limitations of her perspective and asked us for any suggestions to better engage local communities. We were inspired by the passion and expertise of both groups and left with a better sense of the scientific context around climate gentrification and what climate resiliency concretely looks like. Afterwards we drove back to Miami and spent some time exploring little Havana. We stopped by a fantastic ice-cream shop, explored Cubaocho, a fascinating art gallery/bar spot, and stopped by a local bakery. It was fascinating to get a better sense of another example of a vibrant local community, but one that was very different from Little Haiti. Finally, we met up for dinner with Mrs. Lawson and her daughter, Ariel. The food was remarkable, and it was great to connect with local Princetonians and take a quick break from thinking about climate gentrification. Thank you Mrs. Lawson! We’re looking forward to learning even more tomorrow and hopefully starting to get more of a community level look at climate gentrification. - Kai Torrens '22 Breakout Miami: Day 4 We started our day simple with showers and breakfast—Mahishan made the most delicious scrambled eggs! We packed our lunches and embarked for our meetings with community partners. Our first community partner of the day, Catalyst Miami, truly put the motive behind our trip into perspective. Since 2016, Catalyst Miami began tackling climate change issues that have impacted the city of Miami and surrounding areas. The nine of us sat and talked with Mayra Cruz for a little over an hour about the services that Catalyst Miami provides for their respective community and the reasons behind the need for the resources that they provide. With 60% of the county being vulnerable to various forms of insecurity, there is no doubt that Catalyst Miami is a much-needed organization. In addition to their diverse approach to community outreach, Catalyst Miami is headed by women of color! It was during this meeting where we discovered that the term “climate gentrification” was first coined by Paulette Richards, a partner of Catalyst Miami, and the term was later popularized by universities who sought to develop further research surrounding its impacts. One of the resources that we talked intensively about is CLEAR, a ten-week 3-hour class that educates members of the community about climate change and gentrification and the ways that the two social issues intersect. The course seems to be providing community members with the lexicon that is necessary for them to understand their communities in relation to climate change and gentrification. The classes also provide community members with public speaking coaching as a method to prepare individuals to speak directly to their legislators about these issues in a persuasive and impactful way. These public speaking lessons highlight the importance of oral storytelling as a tool to mobilize and effect change within even the most marginalized communities. Later that day, we traveled back to little Haiti and visited Rose at Sant La, the Haitian neighborhood center. She talked intently with us about the problems in our own communities and the ways that we can hone our education to create solutions to these problems. Mikayla shared the gentrification that is occurring in her hometown of Philly, Jimin detailed the issues of food insecurity in places globally, and Fatima expressed her frustration with organizations in her hometown of Ottawa that fail to holistically serve the native populations they seek to help. The sharing of these stories illuminated the fact that taking what we learn from this Breakout trip can inform the ways that we may seek to make necessary changes in our own hometowns. Sant La is an organization that relies heavily on the creed that their services are meant to inform and not merely give--with the hope being that individuals within the community of Little Haiti will grow to be self-sufficient. We hastily returned to the Florida Baptist Convention Center to jump into our bathing suits and headed out to the Bill Baggs Cape Florida Park for a beach trip. We attempted to have some fun in the sun, however, due to high winds, most of us settled for enjoying our communal bag of Takis. Nathan celebrated the completion of his midterm paper by enjoying a playful moment in the ocean while Kai and Mahishan joined him. We concluded our jammed-packed day with delicious Cuban food after we briefly walked the streets of South Beach alongside the notorious spring breakers. We hopped in our vans and returned to Hialeah with a lingering question on our minds: have you heard of climate gentrification? - Ashley Hodges '21 Breakout Miami: Day 5 On the fifth day of our Breakout Trip, we got the opportunity to meet with the executive director of FANM, Marleine Bastien. Previously known as the Haitian Women’s Center, FAMN helps to empower a community that continuously is “underserved, marginalized, disenfranchised and discriminated against in South Florida.” During our meeting we gained insight into how a mega-million development called Magic City has already displaced and will continue to displace residents in Little Haiti. The threat of rising sea level draws people to elevated land and consequently pushes the people who already live on this elevated area out. Currently the development of Magic City is paused because developers are working to receive a Special Area Plan (SAP) that would allow them to build at a higher density. The wealth accumulated form this project, right now, is not set up to benefit the people that already live there; it is wired to push them out. FANM is working to raise community awareness about the development and bring people together to confront the issue. They are pro-development because they believe in the necessity of rebuilding the community, but they advocate the necessity of community benefits.
After lunch, a young woman from the organization allowed us to experience the process of canvassing in a section of Little Haiti. Her goal was to inform residents about the Magic City development and to encourage them to attend FANM’s community meeting that would take place in the evening. It was motivating to see how aware people were of the issues of gentrification and how excited they were to get involved in supporting their community. At the community meeting, we were able to understand, first-hand, how residents of Little Haiti wanted to approach the SAP. They were discussing what community benefit plan that they wanted to accompany the SAP. They are not going to allow developers to come into their community without, first, recognizing and attending to the needs of the residents. They are not going to allow developers to tear down a neighborhood that holds so much of their history and culture. And they are not going to allow this development to set precedent for future developments in South Florida that would force residents out of their homes. It was a beautiful and eye-opening experience of community advocacy. Back at home, we reflected on our day over some delicious Italian, shrimp pasta made by Ashley and me. - MiKayla Green ‘22
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