Stanford University Urban Studies &
Urban Summer Fellowship
Student perspectives of community-engaged learning and research across the United States
Hello! Just to quickly re-introduce myself, I’m Flora, a rising junior, working at the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (AEMP). I have one more week left at the AEMP, so I have been wrapping up the projects I have been working on this summer. One of the projects I worked on was the Dislocation Project, which is documenting the Black Exodus out of San Francisco through different perspectives, such as environmental racism, art and culture, and redlining. I focused on education, looking at demographic data of the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) from the past half-century. To gather this data, I had to go to the History Room in the San Francisco Library and go through boxes of files since the information I needed was not digitized. With this data, I have been creating various maps, such as the sending/receiving schools during the busing period in the 1970s, asthma rate and the Black population in SFUSD schools, and a timeline of how the Black population percentage has dramatically shifted over the past 50 years. Through this project, I appreciated getting a taste of the whole process of gathering data to cleaning/manipulating the data to finally mapping and visualizing it. Another project that I have been working on is creating a story map of subsidized housing in San Francisco. In the story map, there are definitions and explanations of various kinds of subsidized housing (ie. public housing, project-based Section 8, housing choice vouchers), data in the form of maps, charts, and infographics, news about the federal budget cuts on housing, and an oral history. This project is in collaboration with the Eviction Defense Committee (EDC) to provide this resource for their clients as well as other people who want to learn about this convoluted system. Through both the Dislocation and Subsidized Housing projects, I worked a lot with data in various forms. Since the AEMP does work on both data and narratives, I had also hoped to be able to get a taste of the narrative side by conducting an oral history. Unfortunately, because the AEMP was not actively working on any oral histories this summer, and because I was preoccupied with other data projects, I did not take the initiative to try to find someone to interview despite getting trained to conduct one. I figure, though, that I would still be able to take these skills and have a conversation with someone, perhaps someone that I know personally, informally to hear their stories and thoughts about displacement. Apart from the data and mapping work, something that I had not anticipated coming into the summer but something I greatly appreciated was attending various actions. Over the course of the summer, I have been to three different city halls (in San Francisco, Oakland, and Fremont) and supported stricter owner move-in regulations, community budgets that favor housing over policing, and rent control. Going to the Fremont city council meeting was especially eye-opening because it was the first time I saw so many people so vehemently opposed to rent control. Many of the small landlords showed up to testify against rent control. In San Francisco and Oakland, already with rent control, many of the people who testified in front of the supervisors and city council were tenants who shared their personal stories about displacement or threat of displacement. I appreciated seeing these different cities and when each one is at in regards to housing policy. Another thing that greatly contributed to my experience was the environment and structure of the AEMP. The organization is volunteer-based; members of the AEMP work on projects on the side in addition to their day jobs. Because of this, I can see how passionate and dedicated these people are about the work of the AEMP. In the future, I can definitely see myself coming back to the AEMP to help out with projects, especially since it is so easy to come in and out of the organization. With Slack, I will be able to stay in touch and keep up with the projects that the AEMP will be working on. I will definitely keep up with the Dislocation Project, which is set to be finished in April, and will hopefully be able to attend some of the events showcasing the project. Later this week, the other interns and I are presenting the work we have done this summer and giving a mini-training on the mapping skills we have gained for people who are interested in learning. This would also allow people to learn and to see where we are at in our various projects so that other people could pick up where we left off. Even though I knew about gentrification in the SF Bay Area, having grown up here and taken classes in school about it, this summer has taught me so much about communication (through storytelling and data visualizations), action (through organizing for city council meetings and other demonstrations), and persistence, in addition to the data skills I gained. I will miss working at the AEMP and the people that I have gotten to know this summer. - Flora Wang Here is a picture with some of the other interns during an ice cream run, a block away from our office in the San Francisco Tenant's Union- I'm the second on the right. :)
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AuthorThis blog is authored by Stanford University students engaged in summer fellowships through the Cardinal Quarter and the Program on Urban Studies. All writings and thoughts belong to the Fellows and do not represent the opinion of the sponsoring programs. Archives
September 2018
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