3/24/2018 0 Comments Final Outing! - Friday (3/23/18)In the morning, we began the day with a trip to the Homefront main center. This space includes the organizational space and the office that organizes all of the operations that Homefront encapsulates. We began with an insightful tour of their office, hearing the history of Homefront’s efforts in the community. We were then led on a tour of the warehouse of the organization, which stocks and takes inventory for further distribution of the donations of furniture, food, and art supplies.
Our main purpose of being at the facility was to volunteer in the Sewing Space, which is similar in operation of the Art Space in the other campus we had explored earlier in the week. This donation-run artistic space serves to allow free expression of any feelings artists may experience. There are also teachers to educate the clients on how to sew, knit, and crochet. This offers endless possibilities with the acquisition of a new skill in a practical art, which often leads to an extra income for the clients, who can now sell their work, also granting a sense of fulfillment. I personally took great pleasure in sorting out donated fabrics while listening to the Lion King soundtrack with my new friends. The other members also noted their newfound tranquility while painting donated chairs. After we completed our service, we also were gifted greeting cards and small mementos as a token of appreciation for our efforts. Later that evening, we took a trip to the Trenton Public Library. This was an amazing opportunity because we were not just looking at books, but actually studying archives of Trenton’s historic past. I was personally marveled by the relics of this city, coming from a city of past industry, myself. My small city called Brownsville, Pennsylvania is strikingly similar in the structure and history of Trenton, so I was very intrigued to see patterns of immigration and the decline of the city’s hustle and bustle. We were shown various genealogy books from Trenton residents, allowing me to truly interpret the immigrant makeup of the city’s past residents, and when they moved around and eventually moved away. I also was astonished at the striking photographs of Trenton’s busiest streets from the 1800s to now, especially in the Roaring Twenties. One would think this was New York City by looking at the photographs and negatives, so this comparison to what we see now has only solidified the effects of gentrification in my view. I was quick to identify the new suburbs and white flight that took place in Trenton just by looking at the aerial photographs, also looking at the new infrastructure being placed throughout the city in order to facilitate the daily commute of the new suburbs. Gentrification is real and evident. It may not be seen in one day or one month, but it is a real phenomenon that is happening and detectable. Personally, this was one of my favorite activities we did. It has only made me want to pursue sociology more, so that I may understand how things like gentrification occur. – Brandon Dunlevy '21
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Despite the icy weather’s attempt to impede upon our journey to learn about the Trenton community and the effects that gentrification played into its current state, our breakout group was welcomed with open arms by Roland Pott, long time Trenton resident and President/Founding member of Trenton Makes – a social hub that provides studio spaces to not only empower commercial retailers to kickstart their endeavors, but also to allow aspiring entrepreneurs, artists, and dreamers to have a platform through which they can implement their innovative ideas for a brighter future for Trenton. We discussed the extent to which Pott’s efforts to re-develop and essentially revitalize the blighted infrastructure are only as effective as the weak tax base endow. Once a powerhouse in producing rubber, metals, and government jobs, Trenton was a model city of growing influence. However, during the mid-1940’s, an abrupt decline in population and manufacturing jobs prompted an increase in the disparity of resources as well as an unstable economic system.
One of Pott’s many neat revitalization of infrastructure projects involved an abandoned house in his own neighborhood. He and a couple of partners invested in it, remodeled it, and eventually sold it to a fellow Princeton Professor! Efforts such as Pott’s Trenton Makes are providing robust economic leverage for Trenton to readily bounce back. However, there is an incongruity in this do-gooder/idealistic approach to revitalize the framework of the city; people come to Trenton for its affordable rental prices but they are unwilling to participate their capital to increase the tax base, the government does not incentivize changes in economic developments surrounding its plethora of offices, and public hearings about changes in the community are not inclusive to all Trentonians who are working day to day to support their families. Moreover, since a majority of Trentonians rent, and absentee landlords often neglect to inform their renters of the changes surrounding their developments, gentrification isn’t fought, rather the people of Trenton ignore it because they often find themselves “fighting for the remaining scraps.” The latter part of the day, we had the privilege of speaking to Abdul Wiswall, the owner of Trenton Coffee House and Records and – full personal bias in play – provider of the best Ethiopian coffee in all of Mercer county. Abdul is a native of North Jersey but has lived in Trenton due to how much it compliments his and his family’s needs. What started as a small bike cart entrepreneurial endeavor coupled with his love for roasting coffee aged into a space that now acts as a form of inspiration for him just as well as it has for local Trentonian artists and creative thinkers. Abdul focuses his interests, not on the aggrandizement of capital, as do competitors Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts do, but rather on the goal to provide top of the line coffee at affordable prices in a safe space for people’s ideas to enter into an ebb and flow of growth together. Abdul extrapolates that despite the difficult violence and constant crime in Trenton, there exists an intrinsic sense of community within Trentonians which juxtaposes the former. Non-Trentonians may have a negative view of the city (for example, at how state workers or passersby don’t choose to visit Abdul’s roastery due to its “unsafe” location in Trenton), however there is an underlying affinity that tethers Trenton’s inhabitants together – as shown by support for the Muslim lifestyle of Abdul and his family. The people of Trenton don’t bat an eye at the differences between their peers, rather they bask in the fact that such diverse inhabitants coexist. Lastly, Abdul accentuated that “the opportunity to revitalize oneself exists here [in Trenton].” Trenton’s passion and creative minds are incandescently apparent when stepping into this coffee house, presented as a clear idea hub. The coffee shop welcomes all Trentonians: Latino immigrants working at Princeton’s surrounding area and local policemen preparing to patrol the streets of Trenton enter “early in the morning,” slowly shifting to “Tattoo artists, Punk artists, writers” livening up the house at around 10:30, the local everyday customers sporadically enjoying their cup of Ethiopian and Colombian coffee until it’s closing time. This pluralistic hub offers Trentonians a special space, a space where for the short time that they succulently sip foreign imported coffee beans they not only forget the violence and poverty within their city, but also bask in their freedom as people to explore their gifted minds. – Abraham Cruz-Pena '21 Three Takeaways
Why did I choose to be a part of this trip?
We woke up early today to prepare for an impending snow storm. Having driven back to the University to pick up winter clothing (boots and jackets), we headed over to Mercer Street Friends. MSF spearheads the community response to hunger in Mercer County. Though it was cloudy and a bit foreboding outside, the staff at MSF brightened our day.
Denalerie Johnson-Faniel, MSF’s Food Bank Director, gave us a tour of the food bank facility. We followed her through a garage filled with stacks of packaged food, enormous refrigerators and lively volunteers. The amount of food being shipped out was astounding. In the administrative section of the building, warm and cheerful smiles welcomed us as well. Only an hour in and we already felt at home. After the walk-through, we sat down with Denalerie and James ‘Butter’ Allen, the vice chair of MSF’s Board of Trustees, to talk about the challenges their organization tackles. Food security is crucial to combatting the exclusionary forces of gentrification. “A community response to hunger” ensures the basic nourishment of Mercer county that leads to the community’s own revitalization. Local commitments and co-operation rebuild the community and retain its members. Once we had talked through the theory behind the practice, Denalerie had to get back to work. Butter stayed with us, though, and gave us some invaluable lessons as a life-long activist. He first stressed the personal, subjective nature of his suggestions and made the clear distinction that he wasn’t giving us advice. Advice is limiting and controlling while suggestions encourage us to question the past and explore possibilities for the future. He pushed us to question him in our very meeting and in all our other avenues of learning and serving. For Butter, questions are the basis of any kind of investigation that challenges people in power and keeps them accountable. Any activist is fundamentally asking questions. We followed suit, engaging in a two-hour-long discussion with Butter’s knowledge and experience. Impact is all-important for Butter, an impact that goes beyond himself and never abandons his own community. He explained how most of the time, people just want to leave their homes and make it big somewhere else. He told us, however, that people never escape their ‘tigers’, their difficulties, until they slay them. In fact, what people try to avoid only gets worse. “Every tiger I didn’t slay, I met again, and it had grown.” So, to face the problems in his community, Butter asks daily: “Did I leave something better than I got it?” He’s concerned foremost not with totally solving an issue but with planting a seed for future generations to nourish and grow into a sustainable solution. “It doesn’t matter if you’re the first unless there’s a second.” While we can’t expect to fully fix problems, public servants need to leave a firm foundation behind for others to build upon. When we asked him about his work with NGOs and how we can get involved in non-profit work, he replied, “Don’t seek the job, let the job seek you. Let your work speak for itself.” He also warned us about letting titles get to our heads. “I wear my college not on my rings, but on my heart and tongue.” Status with excessive pride can inhibit our capacity to help others. This point was essential for us Princeton students, already operating on a mountain of privilege and prestige, to hear. Our day with MSF was rejuvenating. We were inundated with a river of hard-won wisdom that has motivated us to dig deeper with more conviction into our unpacking of gentrification. Until tomorrow! - Akash Kushwaha '21
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Trip DescriptionFounded in 1719, the city of Trenton, New Jersey has seen many community shifts throughout its history. These shifts continue today with Pace Center Community Partner In-Residence, Pastor Karen Hernandez-Granzen, lifting up "Unpacking Gentrification" as the focus for this year's First-Year Breakout Trip. Recent news reports describe gentrification as a dirty word in many urban neighborhoods across the country. This Breakout Trip is focused on learning what gentrification looks like and how it is positively and negatively affecting the Trenton community. Specifically, we aim to garner an understanding on how a sense of community can be maintained as the neighborhoods undergo this change. We look forward to engaging in discussions with government officials, community organizers, and city activists as we learn more about this increasingly prevalent issue. Categories |