Course Description: What exactly is ‘gentrification’? By all accounts, it brings new people, wealth and attention into communities. It gets trickier when we ask who benefits and who is harmed. It ‘improves’ things changing a neighborhood’s look and feel but alienates and displaces residents. Is the contradiction irreconcilable? North Brooklyn is our laboratory to research and find answers. Students use practical methods and real time data in their neighborhood to confirm or deny gentrification’s most popular assumptions. We’ll share experiences, collect clues, read book excerpts and newspaper articles, comb the area of the upcoming Bushwick rezoning, explore social structures and power relations and compare and publish our findings. North Brooklyn is our laboratory to research gentrification. Students use practical methods and real time data in their neighborhood to confirm or deny the most popular assumptions. We’ll share experiences in gentrification, collect clues, read book excerpts and newspaper articles, comb the area of the upcoming Bushwick rezoning, explore social structures and power relations, compare and publish our findings.

Dates:
Saturdays 4-6pm @ Mayday Space (176 Saint Nicholas Ave off the L train)
Nov 2nd- Dec 7th, 2019

Cost:
1.) Comrade ticket - $170-$258. Application here: https://form.jotform.com/92455393920159
2.) OG Resident scholarship available. Apply here: https://forms.gle/GK5VWpeyXqQUj9aS8
Sliding scale policy:
***As part of our mission to make our courses accessible to long-term NYC residents facing the threat of displacement, we need to charge a sliding scale rate. This will let us provide free classes for people who have lived here their entire lives and are the most impacted by rising rents.

Comrade ticket: If you consider yourself a newer resident to New York (15 years or less living in NYC), please select the NYC Comrade ticket. Your efforts in attending this class will contribute towards building a base of anti-gentrification activist in Bushwick and beyond. The low end of the sliding scale ($190) means staff and instructors volunteer their time and labor. At the lower end we budget to cover the basic costs of running the class. The high end of the scale ($280) allows us to cover all expenses including printing, labor, use of Mayday, and guest lecturers. Your allyship and tuition at the high end of the sliding scale will directly subsidize full tuition for 1 long-term resident.

OG Resident: If you identify as a long-term working class resident of Bushwick/Brooklyn that would like to apply for a 100% funded scholarship please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/GK5VWpeyXqQUj9aS8
Link to syllabus: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uW2sXsVd0UEea6Tx47Ngb-BZCYoW-Edt/view?usp=sharing
Instructor bio:: Dennis Farr is a lifelong Williamsburg resident and critic of gentrification. He studied religion and graduated from Vassar College in 2006. He has written multiple articles on gentrification and still lives in Los Sures. Read about Dennis’ activism here: https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/06/a-voice-of-williamsburgs-past-warning-against-change/ and research here: https://vassar.academia.edu/DennisFarr
About Mayday Space: Mayday Space is a multi-story organizing center and social hub in Bushwick. It is a neighborhood resource and a citywide destination for engaging programming, a home for radical thought and debate, and a welcoming gathering place for people and movements to work, learn, celebrate and build together.