Harlem and its history of community engagement

A week passed and Nick, Lisa and I were able to produce the short movie assigned. Synthesizing the content collected from fieldwork proved to be a challenge but building the narrative wasn’t the easiest part either. We had the “Vox Pop” plus two long interviews, one with the executive director of a grassroots organization called Harlem One Stop, and another with two - very proud of their work of enhancing the market value of Harlem - gentlemen from the Harlem Community Development Corporation. So we had to represent three spheres, the community of Harlem’s residents and workers, non-for-profits, and the government. Three players, three opinions, three concerns.

            Harlem has a history of great community activism that is part of its essence. One of the main actors of this movement was West Harlem Community Organization, today called The Hamilton Heights - West Harlem Community Preservation Organization – founded in 1996. The grassroots organizations gain strength from the bottom up and one incident in the first half of the 90s was central to expose the growing community engagement.

Yuien Chin, from Harlem One Stop, a non-profit working on community preservation, tells that when she first moved into the neighborhood the community engagement was so strong, especially the block associations, that through community activism the residents  organized and brought to light a serial rapist. Within three or four weeks the community got together and worked on spreading flyers on doors, posting information and sketches on walls, and soon caught the rapist.  As a consequence of that positive community experience, the residents formalized the discussions about West Harlem. From then on grassroots organizations grew stronger.

However, twenty years later, with the change of demographics, Yuien shows her concern about the loss of Harlem’s identity. The community seems to have left behind the activism that was so special about Harlem’s essence. “You could almost feel it here, you could, and I don’t feel that anymore. On my block, you know, it has been such an overturn of the residents and I don’t know a third of them.”

Yuein’s concerns were capture by the “Vox Pop”. The diversity of the people interviewed revealed that when homeowners and long-term residents moved out, due to the price increase of real estate, gentrification brought young residents that don’t identify with the history of the neighborhood and don’t feel connected with Harlem’s original residents. Although the neighborhood became cleaner and more secure, many long-term residents were also hesitant to connect with the new arrivals. “There is always a level of caution because you never know the intentions of the new person.” As a consequence the spaces are appropriated differently: “We know some people in our building, but not necessarily in our block. Because half of our block is being renovated, and the other half we never really walk on that side of the street,” a new resident commented.

The resistance on engaging with the neighborhood is seen by the HCDC as a consequence of the decrease of homeowners and the increase of tenants that don’t see themselves living for too long in that area: “If you are a renter and you’re looking for the landlord to come and fix X, there may be a different perception of the neighborhood or a different sense of commitment then if ‘I’ own this building on my street and I’m gonna be more active and advocate for that.” Exactly confirmed by a new tenant: “Yeah, I feel if I own a brownstone in this neighborhood I’d be more active with the neighborhood councils.”

Based on these new dynamics, should organizations in Harlem think of new principles of activism? Should a new model of community engagement be explored? Could this be the theme for an intervention?

Although this subject of investigation struck me and left me wondering how much more it could be explored, I found some resistance taking this path. It was a bit too much to explore in a five-minute video. So the group decided to follow a different direction.  I learned for the first time not to get attached to an idea. At least I had taken a picture from the board of Post-its that I so strategically made to organize my ideas.