Is the lack of recreational space making us fatter? Probably. (Among other things)

Americans are getting fatter every day. I’m sure there’s a statistic out there pointing to how every x number of minutes, a person somewhere out in America is determined to be obese. Despite the fact that the City and County of Los Angeles are vast, there is a serious lack of parks to ensure that people have spaces to create community, stay active, and most importantly, stay healthy. Obviously, the problem of obesity in the United States, and especially in communities of color, will not be resolved by simply creating more spaces for recreation, as access to fresh, affordable food is also a key factor, but it would sure help if people in Los Angeles, and other urban cities throughout the country had places to run, walk and play.

In the meantime, as there is less and less available land in Los Angeles for parks, people that are able to get have easy access to open space (and can stay healthier) are those with large yards (keep in mind  that about 60% of City of LA residents are renters), can afford a gym membership of some sort, or are fortunate enough to live near open space (there’s very few of us).

As a kid growing up in South Los Angeles, it was much easier for me to get to Popeye’s and McDonald’s than to Rancho Cienega Park, which was about 4 long blocks from my house, but I had to walk across the train tracks (where the Exposition Line will soon run) and walk Exposition Blvd, where you found a wide assortment of furniture and trash dumped before you got to the park. Keep in mind, the 1990s were a tough time in South LA (i.e. 92′ Civil Unrest and and subsequent years of blight).

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Estate
by Fugitive Images, Paul Hallam, Victor Buchli, Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Lasse Johansson, Tristan Fennell
Paperback, 152 pages
Published September 24th 2010
Please buy direct from Myrdle Court Press
ISBN: 0956353924

This is an incredible book that will move you deeply, even if the true meaning of home and the trauma of losing it hasn’t been burnt into you by life itself. As someone who has experienced eviction and poverty and loss, I confess I have strong feelings about how people write about it, document it, photograph it. But here it is done with a beauty, love, and respect that comes closer to capturing the many shades of what it means and how it is experienced than almost anything I have read. There is no sentimentalization here, no glorification of the working class or a home that after years of landlord neglect has become much less than anyone would wish. Instead it is a deeply felt exploration of meaning from many angles, a teasing out across perspectives, a contextualization of loss and change through words and images and theory.

My favourite section is the first one by Andrea Luka Zimmerman and Lasse Johannson, the experience of living on Hackney’s Haggerston West Estate and watching it slowly emptying of people, introducing the incredible series of photographs from Haggerston and Kingsland Estates, with captions that add another level of depth to what the images make so vivid. Followed by a more literary piece by Paul Hallam, exploring estates in the plural and the singular, winding around the meaning and making of place and poverty, extracting quotes from residents that I confess made me shed a tear or two on the tube. There is much to ponder in Victor Buchli’s Archeology of the Recent Past, and a clear contextualization of the particular within the broader history of Britain’s social housing by Cristina Cerulli.

They come together in a thought-provoking, moving whole. No one can ever have the last, the final, the entire say of what estates mean to those who live in them, what it is like to live in them, what it is like to lose them. That is the point. Estate is simply a gift to those who read it, the gift of a view, a taste, an experience that will make you think and feel deeply.

Related stories:  Privatizing Public Housing, UK and Estate, a book review

This cartoon was created by Dr. Pop and the  Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights (CRNHR), a national organizing effort led by grassroots groups from the across the country who are fighting for a human right to housing in the United States. We also got great critical feedback and help from public housing members of the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN) and Union de Vecinos in Los Angeles and Community Voices Heard (CVH) and the Red Hook Initiative in New York City.

A Clear View of Public Housing is a story about public housing in the United States.  It takes place on a sunny day when three women of different economic classes meet up at a city park along with their young children and then get into a conversation about public housing.

A Clear View of Public Housing was made to be used as a  springboard to conversations and actions led by communities organizing in defense of human rights and, in particular, the human right to housing.

The story will be  available in three forms:

The above Video which you can share by email, post to your  website, or download.  A Spanish Version is also available.

An Interactive Slideshow version of the video, for use in workshop settings, as suggested below. [request]

A Comic Book (coming soon) for door-to-door outreach or to hand out after a workshop

Tips for Facilitators

Here are three simple ways that the Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights has used the story in workshop settings.

1.  Role-Play
Ask volunteers from your meeting or workshop to take on a character’s role and read their speech bubble aloud to the rest of the audience.  We found the results to be engaging and funny.

2.  Practice: “What Would You Say?”After watching the video or slideshow, break up into small groups or pairs to practice answering one or two questions that came up in the story, such as:

What would you say, if someone said this to you:
Housing is a business and the government should stay out of it.  They should leave business to the business people.
or
Public housing over-concentrates poor people into neighborhoods, and that is not good for anybody.
or
Subsidized housing takes away people’s incentive to work hard.  No one should get something for nothing.

The burden is often on public housing tenants and housing rights activists to re-educate legislators and the general public on the issues that we face.  This often means that we must engage in conversations that are full of myths and prejudices.  You can use A Clear View as a tool to practice our side of these conversations, share the results with each other, and build the confidence we need to confront hidden myths and prejudices.

3.  Make Your Own Story!
Before we created A Clear View, we took some time to break down the story that we are being told about public housing.  We found that that exercise gave us a window into the assumptions and vulnerabilities of that story, and helped us get better at building one that reflects our own reality.  To do this, we used the Narrative Power Analysis tool which you can find in smartMeme‘s really helpful book: Re-imagining Change.

For more information about the CRNHR and to send feedback, stories, and suggestions, visit restorehousingrights.org or contact Brittany Scott.  We would love to hear from you!

This is how much the developed countries spent per capita on healthcare a few years ago, contrasted with average life-expectancy:

This is what privatisation with a vast government subsidy looks like–a perfect study in neoliberalism and the truth behind republican free market rhetoric. And it translates directly into how much my family has suffered over years without healthcare, and have continued to suffer even after achieving the insurance dream–large deductions from tiny paychecks, deductibles, unbelievable monthly medication costs.

All this in a country that has spent immensely more per capita on health care than any other, without actually providing it.

All this in a country where HMO profits have reached billions every year, even through the crisis. A desultory google search brings up Minnesota doctors protesting obscene HMO profits this year, the doubling of California profits in 2008, for the Bush years there’s a Senate investigation, and if you really want to vomit, the “good news” that 2010 profits bring and how they are achieved in Florida. All for a life expectancy that just beats Cuba who spends pennies compared to us, but provides what free healthcare it can to all of its residents.

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I’m walking down Calle Carabobo (translation: silly-face street) in Medellin.

It’s a place where volume matters.

It matters to the street vendors –– the “llamada” vendors who offer cell phones for use by the minute –– and the hawkers who shout out to lure you into a shop.

It matters to native son artist Botero who insists that he doesn’t paint fat things –– that “fat” isn’t the medium of his iconic style –– but that his medium is, in fact,  volume.

It matters to the young Hip Hop performers who use attitude to produce volume when microphones are not available.
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