by JackTheBandit

Here’s the thing: I grew up here in Fort Greene. I grew up here in New York. It’s changed. And why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers in the south Bronx, in Harlem, in Bed Stuy, in Crown Heights for the facilities to get better?

Then comes the motherfuckin’ Christopher Columbus Syndrome. You can’t discover this! We been here. You just can’t come and bogart. There were brothers playing motherfuckin’ African drums in Mount Morris Park for 40 years and now they can’t do it anymore because the new inhabitants said the drums are loud. My father’s a great jazz musician. He bought a house in nineteen-motherfuckin’-sixty-eight, and the motherfuckin’ people moved in last year and called the cops on my father. He’s not — he doesn’t even play electric bass! It’s acoustic! We bought the motherfuckin’ house in nineteen-sixty-motherfuckin’-eight and now you call the cops? In 2013? Get the fuck outta here!

This is a personal issue as I was born, raised, and still reside in the South Bronx. I was here when it was still shit. I've watched activist after activist, community after community, try and make these places better and see little success.

It's infuriating when the people already there trying to improve it just get shuffled around and ignored until its a convenient human interest story. Only to have some real estate developers and the same government officials who ignored you transform the neighborhood for an influx of white people who want to live the "big city life."