Old and Failed

This week I read an article about the demolition of an art deco smokestack and Pullman dormitory in the Amtrak yard by 30th Street Station. As I waded through the often acerbic comments section, one comment in particular from kelprod1 jumped out at me:

"It is called progress. Tear it down and build anew. The free market works
flawlessly, if it is allowed to let the old and failed disappear- and
let the new supply fill the needed demand"

Keeping that quote in mind, the Mirabal article almost read as a direct refutation of that philosophy. The gentrification in the Mission District of San Francisco characterized by Mirabal was not simply an instance of 'the old and failed [disappearing]' but instead was a free-market assault on the past and present. The 'whitewashing' of the Lilli Ann mural
by a real estate developer to be replace it with an ad for the new dot-com tenet as a textbook example.

Again, this is where I could reiterate what exactly the activism a (public) historian engages in could look like. In a neighborhood where there's an active erasure of the character and history of a place, sometimes just being there to tell or document a story is good enough. I was disappointed that the piece wasn't a little more of an anatomy of the the oral history project itself. It was a fascinating read on the community and great demonstration of the types of forces historians can be pitted against. Excerpts from the oral history project were used to color the narrative about gentrification but didn't go quite as deep into the politics of constructing the community history as I had hoped.

I assume the Eric O'Keefe, New York Times article is grouped in the 'community engagement' portion for its blatant lack thereof. Harrisburg mayor Stephen Reed spent a staggering $7.8 million for 3,800 artifacts for the museum seemingly unbeknownst to his constituency. Ultimately one persons vision alone cannot suffice, at least with the use of taxpayer money. More voices and checks and balances in the process could have possibly prevented a fiscal loss.