Gentrification in Seattle’s Central District about more than pot shop

It’s no secret that Seattle is changing and that change is welcome to some but controversial to others. A Seattle neighborhood is resisting that change and has set its sights on one shop as an example.

“Putting a marijuana shop next to a place that children are (present) is just not right,” Seattle hip-hop artist Draze told Seattle’s Morning News.

Related: Why this Seattle pot shop is allowed next to a teen center and church

Uncle Ike’s Pot Shop stands near the corner of Union and 23rd Avenue in Seattle’s Central District. It’s an area historically known as a home to drug deals — and as Draze notes, where black men were arrested for selling marijuana illegally.

But the issue of marijuana is only one part of the criticism, Draze said. The overall concern is the gentrification of the Central District, known as a predominately African-American community for at least the past six decades. New apartment buildings are rising as steep and fast as rents, meaning many of the locals can’t afford to live in the area their parents grew up in.

“These are the effects of gentrification,” Draze said. “When you have this, you have a cultural clash coming in with differing values, differing cultures, differing ways of thought and thinking.

“When we look at this, we are saying that this was a predominantly African-American community,” he added. “To take their unique experience with America, they are the one group of people who came to this country via slavery. It’s painful; no one likes it. Then you say they are red-lined into a neighborhood; they are forced into this neighborhood and now they are being pushed out. Planting roots and having a legacy is about passing things down.”

Draze notes that although not every person of Chinese descent lives in Seattle’s International District, they have a stake in the neighborhood as part of their culture.

“At this point, we are saying we want to have a major stake in the way it grows and continues to develop. It’s our home,” Draze said. “It’s good for the city to have a vibrant place with a community where people of African-American descent came from. This is the only place where you can look at buildings and they are named after African Americans. You can go to the Douglas Truth Library, Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center.”

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