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Brooklyn’s B-Boy Stance is Losing It’s Cool: A Youth Leader’s Perspective
Brooklyn has changed tremendously over the last few years. With the building of condos and the closing down of stores that have been around for years, it’s no wonder that the folks who were here before are different from who is moving in.
I love Brooklyn. This is my home. This is where I’ve lived my entire life. It’s where I went to school from pre-K to 12th grade. Brooklyn is dying a slow and terrible death, where she is silenced by the tearing down of her walls and the demeaning voices of developers and gentrifies are engulfing her and the rest of us. It kills me to know how money has overpowered the integrity of my borough and my community and what’s good just seems to be falling to the wayside.
FUREE’S been working so hard to do something, anything to help the people living here, since we are the ones directly affected by this change. I don’t live in squalor. I’ve do well at school, help my community, am active in many events to help my community members and my school and yet, I’m being displaced with many other community members. Why should I struggle so hard to find a job, to get into college, to live in my community and to keep my home when others take it so easily from me and mine?
It seems that there is nothing being done to provide what’s really needed in Brooklyn, especially in Brooklyn schools. Many neighborhoods are deprived of bare necessities and education is one of them. How is it that the city and developers have millions of dollars to build condos that are still empty, yet school buildings in my neighborhood and in the surrounding neighborhoods where poor people of color live, are falling apart? Why are school books more than 10 years old? Why are there teachers teaching subjects they didn’t go to school for and aren’t qualified to teach? Why are schools throwing away massive amounts of food every day when there are shelters near with hungry people?
I love Brooklyn. It’s my home. But it’s changed and it’s not for the better. Hopefully as a student entering college, I’ll be able to make even more change in my community.