Gentrification and the Coming Class War

IN A HISPANIC NEIGHBORHOOD in San Francisco, kids play soccer on a field where their fathers and grandfathers played. Recently, however, due to business growth, property values in this section of town have skyrocketed, and the suits and ties are starting to move in. As the Song says "Scary guys in suits and ties, romanticize free enterprise, and everything that money buys..surprise..surprise.) Suddenly the soccer field is more popular, and young high tech corporate types on the fast track are starting to show up, demanding use of the field, causing conflict, even, at one point, an all out gang fight. At last report, an agreement has been reached, a detente of sorts. Let's hope it holds; our cities have suffered enough in America. In New York city venerable old Steinway Hall is being torn down and replaced by high end condos for the very very wealthy. In teh quaint old college town of Fayetteville, Arkansas, the rustic, cheap bar college town flavor has been replaced by elite, exclusive shops and restaurants; only the college student sons and daughters of the wealthy can afford to spend much time there. It always seems, at least recently, to be a mad rush of contracts and construction replacing low cost housing and entertainment with upper crust blue blooded culture for the wealthy. the wealthy class and the poor class are growing in America; everything in between is vaporizing before our very eyes and backhoes. People who point out these things run the risk of being accused of "class warfare", as if describing the situation is the same as creating it. There is no country in the world, nor has there ever been, in which the interests of the wealthy and the poor are the same. The greater the inequality, the greater the political gap. Eventually, compromise is no longer possible, and violence resolves all questions. In America, we are now near that.