by Alicia Kamil

“I wrote this piece around gentrification in Chicago. This then trigged the idea to start a series documenting/commentating on the racist institutional devices that tragically are imbedded within our city. Words hold power, and I want to use mine to further the foundational conversations about what we can do to heal our city, take it back from our oppressors & exist in our Black liberated & abolitionist based future.”

Gentrify Series Part 1: A Home for a Home.

Gentrification is one of the most prominent & life-altering diseases to hit, & displace black people.

What’s a home,

without knowing your stay there, is temporary.

A foundation built on flight

Your movement, based on the fear from others.

The suspicious looks, the clenched grips.

How the skip of an intersection determines the safety of your livelihood. We exist in the crossroads of juxtaposition.

Life or death.

A street name turned headstone.

playground turned empty lot

that will soon become stranger to us,

& full to others.

Land marked with bullet residue,

now a residential complex.

Project turned into a completed product,

Absent of bodies used as the stepping stones.

The attraction that brought so many possessive eyes here in the first place.

What’s a home,

without knowing your next move lies in the back pocket of someone’s mind? One police call, turned into eviction notice

One test score away from school closing turned into new coffee shop. From corner store into university campus.

Our bodies know change so much, we understand the profit behind our displacement. Knew of auctions, way before it had anything to do with houses.

What’s a home,

without surveillance

without knowing everything comes with fine print.

Without existing just to fill in the space for the person coming after you. An understudy to ownership.

What’s a home,

without having to find comfort in the eye of a hurricane.

without seeing your childhood being demolished

Without knowing your entire existence can be erased in paint.

Learn more about Black Life Everywhere’s work here