Gentrification fliers in Central District dismiss Jewish history

A pot shop run by a Jewish man in a formerly Jewish neighborhood is gentrification? “Jason and Burns” aren’t buying it.

Members of an activism collective taped flyers on the windows of a number of 23rd Avenue Businesses and development projects in the Central District, calling them gentrification “citations.” Among the businesses hit with this “karmic infraction” were Uncle Ike’s pot shop and CommuniTea Kombucha.

Spent the night with @afroneonblues putting up these anti-gentrification flyers around #seattle’s CD.

A video posted by Yeni Lopez Sleidi (@real_person_with_feelings) on Sep 5, 2016 at 11:47pm PDT

Uncle Ike’s owner Ian Eisenberg told The Stranger that he was concerned that the activists were the same people who shouted anti-Semitic epithets at him during a protest last year. He was also concerned about an article about Israel on the activists’ Wwwayward site. One of the activist artists, who was visiting Seattle from Miami, said her organization is not anti-Semitic and that Uncle Ike’s was targeted “because people of color had centered the cannabis shop in the conversation about gentrification.”

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However, the Central District has seen its demographics change for more than a century, as it started as predominantly Jewish in the early 1900s. In May, Eisenberg told KIRO Radio that his own family’s ties to the neighborhood reach back for more than 100 years.

“I’m from the central area, I live in the central area. I’ve owned the property where Uncle Ike’s Pot Shop is since 2010,” Eisenberg said in May. “My family, to my great-great grandparents, lived on 23rd and Cherry at the turn of the century. I’m very familiar with the neighborhood.”

Dissecting the gentrification flier

With all that said, Jason Rantz and Zak Burns dissected the alleged infractions committed by Uncle Ike’s.

• Being an unapologetic gentrifier.

Burns: He moved into an empty building, so there was no business there, which would raise the property values, but would you rather have an empty building there or a business?

Rantz: I would rather have a business, even if it is a legal pot business.

• Unchecked white/ class privilege.

Rantz: The guy is Jewish.

Burns: They’ve been oppressed, so I hear.

Rantz: I have never personally experienced what my people have experienced, but apparently it was not so good.

• Destroying Black and Brown communities.

Rantz: Not exactly sure how this particular pot shop has done that. It’s a legal business. … The thing is, we pretend gentrification is bad. It can be bad to certain people in certain circumstances, but when you actually look at the data the studies don’t back up the complaints.

Burns: If gentrification happens organically, that’s obviously going to be better for the residents who live there. It’s when gentrification happens via some sort of government involvement where people are forcibly displaced via eminent domain or something like that.

• Making mortgages and rent affordable.

Rantz: Not the case just yet in the Central District. Or at least not the direct result of Uncle Ike’s.

Burns: Uncle Ikes isn’t a Starbucks or something like that. Just because one moves into a neighborhood, rent is not going to be inflated greatly.

Rantz: Certainly not in the short term. If you’re going to make that case, you’re going to actually have to give it some time. And it’s not the businesses themselves doing this, it’s the people choosing to move into these neighborhoods because they see homes, townhomes and apartment buildings cheap enough for them to afford. They go in droves and that gives a hint to the landlords to raise the rates. That’s when the businesses generally come in.

Burns: Maybe I’m getting used to recreational marijuana being legalized but, to me, it’s nutty town to think that the basis of a new rich white neighborhood is going to be Uncle Ike’s legal weed.

• Exasperating [Note: exacerbating?] income segregation.

Rantz: A pot shop?

Burns: I don’t even know what that means.

Rantz: I think it just means creating more income disparities, making people poor as a result, which is almost never the case when we’re talking about new businesses coming in. Because that usually means jobs are coming in.

• Stealing black culture while displacing black people

Burns: This one bugs me the most. Black people don’t own weed. Weed is for all of us.

Rantz: I would not say any culture owns weed. There have been cultures that have highlighted weed. Rap culture highlights weed, but also white stoner kids in suburbia. The basis for this flyer, the basis for a lot of the complaints about gentrification I feel are motivated by racism. It’s a dislike of white people. They resent white people, or in this case, Jewish people moving into a predominantly black neighborhood. They want something that is theirs, which I totally understand, but they resent the color of the skin of these businesses and the people who are moving in and that is what is fueling the anger. They are not mad at gentrification, per se. If well-off African Americans or Latinos were coming into the neighborhood and started to change the culture or identity of the neighborhood, they wouldn’t be nearly as angry as a white person moving in.

• Fines will be collected along with reparations in the revolution.

Burns: They don’t actually have any legal authority to collect these fines.

Rantz: Are you sure? It was on a flyer. There was clip art on it.

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