From Block busting to Gentrification

Stanford University

Urban Studies 105 (study of East Palo Alto)

Spring Fall: 2020

 Instructor: Cecil Brown 

“I’ll be Standing on the Corner of 12th Street and Vine,” -

The Urban  Storyteller as Ethnographer 

This course is told through the AR and VR Technologies

Cecil brown

The  storyteller tells stories about his people in rural towns. Now the urban storyteller tells stories not only in the traditional forms, but also he uses films, podcasting,  and even data itself.

Using Video cameras, audio recorders, cell phone cameras, police body cameras, Big Data, social media, theatrical films, podcasting, Avatars,  the urban storyteller narrates the history of our urban centers, and memorializes the influence of art and culture on the soul of our cities.

The urban storyteller tells stories that are place-based. These place-based stories help him to unite the various elements of artistic and political groups. They influence Social Movements, like Oscar Grant, Occupy Oakland, and Black Lives Matter.  Thus, the Urban Storyteller is both an observer and a participant, filmmaker and novelist, historian and blogger—one who speaks to us about race, ethnicity, hip-hop, and gentrification in the American City, such as Oakland.

The Corner is the place-based site for the intersection of oral and digital culture.

Through the process students will create an “audio postcard” that invites listeners into an experience or insight that combines theories, facts and feelings into a single space of empathy. (for example…)

Integrating into a Burning House:  The Ghost Ship Fire. What is the of the artists living in Fruitvail, Oakland?

Corner of Fruitvale and International Boulevard. (see photo)

Stories of the Drug War and Mass Incarceration.

Corner of 19th street and San Pablo (see photo and HistoryPyn)

Stories of Repeal and Replace tragedy in Black Music and Art. Each of these three clubs were Jazz, Soul music and blues, have all been repeal and replace by White country music, white rock N roll, and Latin music respectively.

There are three corners.

a) Fifth Amendment, (North Oakland)

b) Serenader Club, and

c) Eli’s Mile High Club. (West Oakland)

The Church and the Pool Hall

Some of them are fixed (like urban rhymes like hip-hop narratives), others are improvised motifs (like personal stories of immigration from the South or foreign countries). Some of these narratives are non-verbal but consists of gestures, movement, and voice—such as in dance, music schools, and sing in the church.

The Alice Center Dance Studio

Students will construct a polished piece of storytelling based on careful investigation and analysis.  The premise of the class is that humans are storytelling animals and history is a storytelling discipline that with new technologies can move beyond the written word.  Having students construct an historical story unites the elements of design, creativity, investigation, and performance and creates a product of lasting significance.

The microphone is a dynamic tool of inquiry—an extension of a student’s curiosity about a topic. A good podcast invites the listener into an experience or insight that combines theories, facts and feelings into a space of empathy—a rewarding experience both for the storyteller and the listener.

Podcasting retrieves an oral method of conceptualizing events. When you have no access to a written culture, you have to use singing and songs to tell your story. You have no pencil or paper to commemorate events, so you organize your experience in narratives.

The narratives organized the people’s experience into a causality, motifs, events, and music (rhythm, rhyme). These narratives are unique in themselves. Some of them are fixed (like urban rhymes like hip-hop narratives), others are improvised motifs (like personal stories of immigration from the South or foreign countries). Some of these narratives are non-verbal but consists of gestures, movement, and voice—such as in dance, music schools, and sing in the church.

American cities seen through the eyes of Hollywood and early television was a place where whites lived. When James Baldwin came to San Francisco in 1963, he visited the Bayview, a predominately black area. 

“This is the San Francisco,” Baldwin said referring to Bayview, ”that Americans pretend doesn’t exist. They think I am making it up.”

  This observation is an excellent example of the storyteller’s story of the city.

From the Hollywood production films of the Bay Area, to the cellphone copy of Oscar Grant’s murder, we let the images tell the stories. From 2009, with the event of the cellphone video, we let the social media tell the story. We can now use the data from social media to tell the story of Big Data. Storytelling from the point of view of data from social media is a new and vibrant way for students to study the digital soul of their cities. 

COURSE DESCRIPTION 

The goal of this course is to teach students how build an audio story out of interviews, archival materials, and sound recordings. To immerse themselves in a particular culture of urban Oakland; to alight on, capture and share the voices of a city. To interrogate the present and the past of one urban space. Through the process students will create an “audio postcard” that invites listeners into an experience or insight that combines theories, facts and feelings into a single space of empathy. (for example…)

This course will introduce undergraduate students to the theory and methods of the geospatial history (and humanities), understood broadly as the application of GIS (Geographical Instructional Systems) techniques and other quantitative methods in the humanistic study of social and cultural patterns in past and recent settings. 

Students will examine the city as reflected in films, both positively and negatively.  Recently, the storyteller has turned to the city and its relationship to incarceration of Black populations and how the “New Jim Crow” has affected the lives of urbanites is a source of social movements like Black Lives Matter.

Some historians have studied the “New Jim Crow” using traditional methodology.  However, these traditional disciplines are becoming outmoded, because digital technology has largely taken their place.

According to Paulo Ciuccarelli, author of Visualizing the Data City, social media is a more effective tool in studying social movements because the data is people-based, ie. relying on interactivity and amateur participation. The author concludes It has been shown that one can study gentrification and social movements more effectively using social media tools than what the traditional research techniques have allowed. 

Using social media ( Podcasting, twitter, tumblr, historypin, and instagram) and technical methodologies, such as Google Street view, and Tagging Collectives, this course looks at social movements through geo-spatial History. 

COURSE OUTCOME 

By the end of the course, committed students will have demonstrated a command of the relevant theoretical literature by applying these concepts to hands-on research projects in the geospatial humanities (Urban Studies and African American History--race and ethnicity--in the City, i.e., Oakland.) 

Each student will work on a project-based component. These projects, which will be the focus of a theoretical rigor, will analyze patterns of change in time and space -- with respect to a range of questions relating to social change as it takes shape in space and historical time. 

What are the underlying warrants for picking a particular method? 

How does one make use of the geospatial statistics in relation to social, historical and cultural change? How does the student add critical commentary on the results of their study? 

These are the type of questions that will guide the studentsʼ research. 

COURSE COMPONENTS AND GRADING 

The texts that the student will read will be both technical and humanistic. Visualizing The Data City will prepare the student for methods to evaluate the City of Oakland, which the students will visit in week Seven.

The humanistic reading material consists of Ms.Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, which is about the mass re-incarceration of the black population after the Civil War. From the dislocation of Blacks out of the city,  the course tracks how the absence of the black people have affected the story of the inner city blight and urban ruin.

This has contributed to the present day ghettoes of Ferguson and Baltimore. 

For current students, this geo-spatial history, this movement of blacks (from Africa to the New World; from the South to the North, from Fillmore District to Hercules suburbs) presents a unique challenge. 

Students will be able to use examples from Social Media to question and critique social movement like the Greensboro Sit in, The Oscar Grant, the Occupy Oakland, and Black Lives Matter by using the techniques learned in the first weeks of the class. Students can make exhibits to show how Whites moving into Black areas bring the culture of the suburbs with them. 

Special guest: Pendarvise Hashaw, filmmaker, social media analyst, works for Policy Link as commutation expert, is a graduate of U C School of Journalism, 2014.

The Overview of Blacks in the City. 

FIELD TRIP TO OAKLAND 

The class will visit Youth Radio (1701 Broadway) and learn how internet radio uses media to inform and shape the identity of the city population on issues of gentrification, specially the Westside Stories series. 

They will also visit SPUR (organization for housing) and learn to use media platforms to shape the city’s image of itself.

At U C Berkeley, they will also visit Terner Center for Housing Innovation. 

Readings 

My Avatar, My Self, and My Identigty in the Video Role-Playing Video Games by Zack Waggoner

Placed-based Film Stories

FILMS AND VIDEOS ON the city (Oakland in particular) BLACK SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

San Francisco:1- “I am Not Your Negro,” and “If I had a Hammer “(James Baldwin)

Oakland: 2-Fruitvale

Oakland 3-The Mack

Oakland 4-Stay Woke by Jesse Williams

Black Cities 5-13th by Ava DuVernay

Greensboro, NC 6-A&T Greensboro Sit in, NC (1985) 

Virgina, 7-The Birth of A Nation (NAT TURNERʼS REVOLT), 2016 

Los Angeles 8-How the City Plays Itself (Los Angeles seen through the eyes of Black Film makers)

GRADING 

Students will complete three interconnected assignments (Modules). Each completed module is 30% of the final grade. Another 10% for participation. Unexplained absences minus 5%. 

Schedule of Classes and topics 

Week 1

Introduction to methods of GIS in the D Lab. Podcast tutorial in the Storytelling center.

Week 2 Introduction and demos on GIS # 2 The Failure of Reconstruction and Segregation sets the stage for social movements. 

Week 3 

Guest speaker Richard Rothstein: Incarceration  and Public Policy 

2 Reading: The New Jim Crow

A &T College Sit in in Woolworth. This social movement is the opposite of the later movement called Gentrification. The Woolworth Diner was Off limit to Blacks. It was White Only Space. 

Week 4 

Images of Social Unrest in the Popular Media

Film about A & T Sit in (produced, directed by Whites) 

Reading: The New Jim Crow

James Baldwinʼs essay about the student movement to desegregate the South, “They cant Go Back,” summer, 1961. 

Week 5 

The Spreading of the Black student Movement to the West Coast 

The Student Movement for Black Studies at Merritt College, Oakland. 

Mario Salvioʼs trip to the South during Freedom Summer, and the influence it had on the Free Speech Movement at U C Berkeley. 

Reading: The New Jim Crow

Week 6 

Ronald Reagan's hand in Shaping Berkeley 

The Ronald Reagan Control over the University and Eldridge Cleaver (1968) Sept 21 The Third World Strike Fight at U C Berkeley. 

Reading: The New Jim Crow

Week 7 

A Walk in Oakland: The Birth of African American Culture 

The Class visits Oakland. Walking Through Oakland.The class visits the Spur Office in Oakland. We meet with Boots Riley (hip- hop and political artist, Radio DJ Block Report. Students collect “items” images (still and moving) recordings, sketches. Students meet DJ Kook Kyle, self-proclaimed “White Negro.” 

Students become like Walter Benjaminʼs ʻRagpickers,ʼ as they record images, record interviews, and other “items” to be used later in constructing their projects. 

The Bakke Decision and the Rise of Ward Connelly. 

Reading: The New Jim Crow

Week 8 

Decline in Black enrollment

Racial Implications of Proposition 209 

The Passages of Proposition 209 and the Decline in Black enrollment and the rise in Women Status 

Reading: The New Jim Crow

Week 9 

Police Brutality - History & Theory

Rodney King and the Rise of the Hip-hop Group NWA 

“Straight Outa Compton”. Class discussion of the filmʼs impact on social movements. 

Reading: The New Jim Crow

Week 10 

The Killing of Oscar Grant and the Rise in Cell Phone video movement. 

The Hero and Martyrs in Urban Life: The Hero (Oscar Grant) and the City (Fruitvale. )

Homelessness in Oakland: The Occupy Oakland Movement (And Occupy Berkeley and UC Davis Movements)