Gentrification!

Across the street from the closed-down and shuttered shops, is the face of gentrification. Close the shops that catered to Black people so that those ‘whites’ who take up residence in these ‘upscale apartments’ don’t have to see what they don’t want to see.
Fuck this shit!

 

Once teeming with life,
now emptied and shuttered,
waiting on the new tenants
upscale, not down on their luck
from those luxury condos, across the street.
Vacant, I sit with gates closed,
closed to those who were not afraid
to walk through my doors before
the drums of gentrification beat
down on my steel bars
as they sigh and give way
to the pressure of urban renewal.
Where are the people,
the real people?
They have all been moved
across the bridge; out of sight,
those considered, an urban blight!
“Don’t come this way again!”
The new urban dwellers
have no need for discounts
or rotgut liquor and cheap wine.
For them, it is cloth-covered tables
and the choicest meats on which to dine.
They didn’t put this city on the map,
nor will they love her the way my people did.
She is just a trend for them,
these new urbanites;
rich, spoiled whites.
They soil this city
with their bulldozers;
gutting her like she’s a fish.
Assaulting her with their
trendy, upscale shops
and parks for their dogs to play in.
No room for my people
and they want it that way;
these rich, spoiled whites
who were yesterday’s suburbanites.

Written by,
Shelby I. Courtland
©2016 Shelby I. Courtland

As I stroll around Baltimore, I take note of a city under siege. She is under siege thanks to gentrification. This city, like Washington, D.C. had a majority Black population. Washington, D.C. is no longer called, “Chocolate City” because of gentrification and these white shits here are planning the same for Baltimore.

When I left Baltimore years ago, Lexington Street and surrounding streets were teeming with shops; shops that catered to Black people. Fast forward a few years and those stores were made to close down because whites decided that Baltimore was the place to live and to do so, Black people had to go. There could be no ‘co-existing’. HealthCare For The Homeless was moved from the area as well as other agencies that catered to those who were ‘down-on-their-luck’. Black people made Baltimore and now ‘whites’ are trying to run Black people out of Baltimore. Well, I am making it known, here and now, that I am going to do whatever it takes to make sure that Baltimore does not go the route of Washington, D.C. and ‘white’ motherfuckers, you are going to find  out that the Black people in Baltimore are not going to give up so easily. I am on the streets, daily and just so you know, it is on, motherfuckers! I don’t know what the fuck was wrong with those Black people over in Washington, D.C., but you are going to find out that here in Baltimore, we ain’t some weak punk ass bitches. If you don’t know, now you know! Fuck you motherfuckers! Because I am ‘Blackifiying’ YOUR neighborhoods! Yeah! Me and my homeys are in your neighborhoods! All up in your fucking grill! That’s right! We are walking through your ‘gentrified’ shit every single day! So fucking get used to it! Now, where the fuck you gone move???!! Head the fuck on over to D.C., you see-through skinned rejects from hell!

Black Power, If It Did Arise, Would Be Scary As Hell!

Exploitation from Africa to America
Gentrification, another form of annihilation
Exterminate the Negro and plunder his home
Subjugate the male and dominate the female

Fill their minds with false religion
Imprison their bodies behind thick walls
Poison their blood with toxic vaccines
Sterilize the queen and the hive will die

Read them no rights that they never had
Employ against them, our gestapo guards
Litter their environment with hypodermic needles
Shoot them up in Chicago and choke them in New York

They still walk amongst us despite Planned Parenthood
The guns that we gave them, did not finish the job
Hate groups we formed, have failed to intimidate
Black power, if it did arise, would be scary as hell!

Written by,
Shelby I. Courtland
©2016 Shelby I. Courtland

And it so fucking would be if we only knew what to do with the power that we have. We don’t even know our own strength and that is sad. We continuously allow ourselves to be depicted as the poster child for some weird motherfucker’s shit when we’ve been on our own for hundreds of years in this shithole. When will we wake up and stop taking the shit that is slung at us every damn day? When will we stop allowing other groups to hone in on our struggles and tell them just where the fuck to go? When will we ever realize that no one can ever know what we go through but us? We are not some hashtag, nor are we some other motherfucker’s stepping stone to some goddamn rights that they ain’t even denied!

This shithole has been waging war against us ever since they dragged our asses over here and still it continues to this day. Don’t bow down to this ‘politically correct’ bullshit! If you ain’t down with it, tell these shits that you’re not. If something goes against your moral principles, make that fact well known because you are not obligated to like every goddamn body and their fucking shit that’s attached to them.

We are constantly being told that the ‘gay rights’ struggle is OUR struggle. Hell no! It ain’t! We’ve been struggling for rights long before those snakes crawled out of the closet and we continue to fight and now they want to co-opt our struggle and make it their own. Ain’t happening. Not on my motherfucking watch. It ain’t happening. Stand up for you! Don’t let anyone diminish what we are fighting for because goddamn it, we are not fighting over a CHOICE! That’s right, I said, “CHOICE” over whether or not we want to wear a dress today or a suit and tie. We are not fighting for the right to enter a bathroom just because we say that we’ve changed our sex. We were segregated because of the color of our skin and not because we were born with a dick and now, we want it chopped off and so everyone must recognize that we are now, ‘gender re-born’. Hell no! That shit ain’t us! We had no fucking say in coming over here and we damn sure had no say over how we have been treated by this shithole. But now, let some motherfucker with a big ass Adam’s apple claim that he is now spiritually, and cosmically, a woman and break out the federal lawsuits already to get his ass inside a woman’s restroom.

We have men and women who were jailed, hosed down, bitten by dogs, lynched and shot just because they were Black and speaking out against slavery, Jim Crow; the whole nine yards. They were not speaking out against being discriminated against for wearing a goddamn dress with a folded up dick underneath it. We cannot continue to let these creatures get away with suggesting that their perverted cause is our cause because, goddamn it, it ain’t! And don’t you give a good goddam who don’t like it. We don’t like what we have to deal with, but we deal with it every single day. If it don’t sit right with you, then don’t accept it! I’m not and that’s a fact!

You have the power within you, but you just don’t use it. Black folks, don’t keep kowtowing to this shit! We’re better than this! Keep the shit real!!