Take a look at the more than 500 people whose photos are online at https://www.flickr.com/photos/182436693@N06/ . More than 500 of these individuals posed for a photo in Brighton (02135) [a few were in other zip codes] holding the sign that says, "We the People want affordable housing for ALL. To get it we aim to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor."
Look at these people! If you live in Brighton they are your neighbors. They are the people you run into while shopping. You probably will recognize some of them--look and see (there are several pages of photos on line to look at.)
Among these 500+ people you don't see big time lawyers or professors or Big Business types. You see working class people--who are the vast majority in neighborhoods like Brighton (such as Allston and the other Boston neighborhoods.)
The sign these people are holding makes it clear what they want. But I know, from having asked them (it was I who took the photos), that they think it is impossible to remove the rich from power. They'd love for that to happen, but they don't think it ever will. Why not? It's because they think too few people want to make it happen. And they know it will take LOTS of people to remove the rich from power. What they DON'T know is this: LOTS of people already want it to happen. That's why it was so easy for me to take so many photos of people saying they want it to happen.
Few, if any, of the 500+ people in these photos are activists in the neighborhood for things like more affordable housing and an end to the proliferation of luxury housing (i.e., gentrification). Why not? It's because they feel hopeless. They don't think anything they could do would make a real difference because, as they know full well, we live in a fake democracy that is really a dictatorship of the rich; and they don't think it is possible to remove the rich from power. But it IS possible. Read how here. It's possible because the vast majority of people want it to happen, and they will--once they KNOW they are the vast majority in this aspiration--build the egalitarian revolutionary movement aiming to make it happen. We need to help people discover they are the vast majority in this regard. Then hopelessness will turn into hopefulness and activism.
Right now, unfortunately, the activists in our neighborhood are the big time lawyers and professors and Big Business types. These kinds of people are the leaders in organizations such as the Brighton Allston Community Coalition (BACC). They only PRETEND to fight to make the neighborhood better for its working class residents (as I discuss here.) They believe (or pretend to believe!) that the way to make the rich and powerful (the haves) grant at least some wishes of the have-nots is by being--to use the BACC's favorite word--"civil": this means NEVER saying the truth about how we live in a fake democracy; it means politely expressing our views as if the Mayor were truly our representative and just needed to know what we wanted; it means telling the rich developers how they can STILL make a profit [see item #3 here about profit] by including more affordable units; it means NEVER saying "We aim to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor," because that would frighten the rich and powerful and not be "civil" and would make us lose "credibility" [go here about "credibility."]
Contrary to what the big time lawyers and professors and Big Business types tell us, the way--the ONLY way!--to make the haves yield at all to the have-nots is by the have-nots making the haves FEAR what may happen to them (being removed from power) if they don't stop treating us like dirt. This is how the have-nots won Social Security in the 1930s (read about it here.) This is how Americans abolished the racist Jim Crow laws [read about it here.]
Please go here to see what good people in Brighton and Allston are doing to stop the obscene proliferation of luxury housing (i.e., gentrification) that is driving working class folks out.
If you agree with the people in the photos, then please join the NO RICH & NO POOR email group. Directions for how (it's easy) are here.
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