Lets go Obama!

Suggest looking at the Detail plan Mr. Dixon supplied ATRU Transit plan
As well as Atlanta Progressive News he provided for more info.

The Transit plan is really interesting. Cities represent, Atlanta is just one example, a legacy of incredible wealth that is daily taken out through speculation and land holding. Transit systems are prime examples of privatization wich allows wealth to grow, unearned by wealthy transit systems. Transit systems have always had this issue as they crossed the country. Public land goes up in value and is privatized creating massive leakage of urban wealth.

The only quarrel I have with Dixon’s article, and it’s really more implied by Mr. Dixon’s other writings, is that this is NOT an African American problem per se. The hoarding of common wealth has been going on for a couple of centuries, and race has nothing to do with it. That said, Dixon has written a short, but important piece here. There is much more that can and has been written on this problem.

I really like the way some people in Atlanta are taking back their common wealth and their voice.

PS while I think a case can be made for Apartheid, it may not be the best title. I think we’re talking about colonization through the privatization of the commons. Again, I just don’t think this is a race issue just because the people who happen to live in Atlanta are black. This would be going on regardless of color (and has).

I lived in Atlanta for 20 years, all of it ‘in-town’. So the title of the piece caught my eye. But, since I don’t live there any more, I’d like to have known some of the details of the ‘carjacking’ he mentions but fails to describe. And I’d like to have known some of the details of the alternative plan … instead of just the rhetoric of the supporters.

But, criticism aside, if I still lived in Atlanta, I do know I’d be on the side of Mr. Dixon and his friends.

One thing does bother me quite a bit. This constant referral to ‘gentrification’. I’m sorry, but this is starting to sound extremely racist to me. It essentially sounds like saying no one but blacks are welcome in a ‘black’ neighborhood. It sounds eerily like what I used to hear the white racist say when they were threatened with a black person moving into the neighborhood. Even down to the detail of saying ‘if they come here, they’ll destroy the property values’.

Sorry, but I support the basic idea of freedom. And that says that anyone aught to be able to live where-ever they want to live. And that I’d like a world where the neighbors greet a new arrival warmly. Not a world where hatred greets someone of a different color who tries to move it.

There’s nothing wrong with someone paying fair market value for a house. There’s nothing wrong if someone happens to choose a good investment that goes up in value.

What I will say is this. One thing we should get rid of is property tax assessments. Base property taxes entirely on one thing. The last value at which the property was purchased. It should never change while the same person continues to own the property. It doesn’t matter what is happening to the neighborhood until someone sells the property and that sets the new property tax value for the next owner.

That way, if people are living in a neighborhood that is ‘gentrifying’, then they are free to continue to live in that neighborhood. They’d pay the bank the same mortgage payment they’d agreed on. And they’d pay the government property taxes based on what they originally bought the property for. That way, they could enjoy the improvement of the neighborhood and continue to live there. Then, when they decided to sell they could make a nice junk of money from the new higher property value.

Sorry, but this is just starting to get under my nerves. I’m a white guy who lived in the middle of Atlanta for 20 years. I rented in the middle of the city until one day I could afford to buy a house. When I could afford to buy a house, I bought one where I like to live … which is in the city instead of the suburbs. The house I bought was at the time in a row of houses that were all rental property. Yes, the neighbors were almost all black. I even had a real honest to goodness crack house about 4 doors down.

Yes, the neighborhood did eventually fill out with more white people. By the time I left, every house on the street was owned by the occupants … even the remodeled crack house. And yes, I sold the house for more than I paid for it.

Sorry, but I don’t see a damn thing wrong with that. And I’m getting really sick of what to me are blatantly racist attitudes that essentially just say that they don’t want white people to move into their neighborhoods.

Like I said, I grew up hearing white racists complain if a black person was looking to buy in their neighborhood. And the exact words they used were ‘they’ll destroy the neighborhood’. The similarity to hearing people complain of white people moving in and destroying the neighborhood is just too striking.

Sure, work to make it fairer. Do what I suggest with property taxes so people don’t get run out of their homes. There should probably be efforts to help overcome a legacy of white racism by encouraging renters to buy the buildings they live in. That way they’d make money when the values go up. But, I’m just getting really sick of hearing very racist statements that essentially say white people are not wanted because of the color of their skin. Thats just wrong no matter which way it goes.

Like I said, if I was still in Atlanta, I’d be supporting the ATRU. I earned that right. As a broke college kid, then as a college drop-out working in Atlanta, I spent many, many hours riding that transit system. And, as someone who paid the 1-cent MARTA sales tax for 20 years, I’d be pissed if the state and the surburbs came in and took what I’d paid for with my taxes and my fares.

I want to thank you for writing one of the very best pieces I’ve ever read on DV. You not only illuminated the problem but you provided a formidable approach to it.

And what’s more, you have familiarized me with an important source of solidarity!

Max