Chinatown Community Development Center:
Modern Marxist Approaches to Community Development
1. Introduction
Poverty is clearly a problem that plagues modern society. Some have speculated that poverty is the major obstacle of our generation. No matter what political, religious and ideological background one may associate with, the facts of poverty are undeniable and clearly undesirable. However, despite this common understanding that poverty exists, many have sought to explain the origins of poverty—and this is where many diverge in views. Ted Bradshaw explains the myriad of views—of which he defines five major views: poverty caused by individual deficiencies, poverty caused by cultural belief systems, poverty caused by systemic and structural discrimination, poverty caused by geographical disparities and poverty caused by cumulative and cyclical interdependencies (Bradshaw, 2003, 317). The San Francisco Chinatown has been historically recognized as a place of culture and heritage, however also, as a place of blight and poverty. However, there are two approaches in explaining Chinatown’s poverty. The first explanation attributes poverty and crime in Chinatown as a result of the deficiencies of Chinese and immigrant culture. This clearly is found along the lines of the theory of poverty as caused by cultural belief systems. The second explanation seeks to expose the geographical and spatial disparities that result as a “spatial expressions of the capitalist system” (Bradshaw, 2003, 327). The Chinatown Community Development Center (CCDC) adopts this explanation of poverty, as a spatial expression of capitalism (and ultimately, exploitation of the underclass)—clearly rejecting the former theory of poverty as cultural. As one enters into the discussion of mitigating poverty in such a place, one must turn to the contemporary efforts of the Chinatown CDC, a community development corporation, and community development as a field of study. This is crucial in understanding the ideological and theoretical perspectives applied to this line of work (community development). In a case study of Chinatown and the CCDC, this community development organization seeks to mitigate the effects of poverty through a modern Marxist lens (Cornel West and Pierre Bourdieu) of spatial and geographical exploitation by the means of local control, building physical capital and Bourdieu’s use of symbolical resistance.
2. The Chinatown CDC as a Community Development Corporation
In order to understand the basic approaches to deal with poverty, the Chinatown CDC is a good example of spatial theory of poverty applied in the community development field. Background information (legal status, organizational structure, funding sources etc) is necessary in understanding this case study. In this case study, the CCDC is an organization that clearly engages in community development, maintains a organizational, structural commitment to the poor, and seeks funding from major sources in order to acquire projects of scale, ultimately affecting more low-income families.
2.1 Clearly, a “Community Development” Organization
The CCDC engages in community development. The Chinatown CDC seeks “to build community and enhance the quality of life for San Francisco residents” (ChinatownCDC.org). The center also works in North Beach and the Tenderloin with 22 building projects containing over 2,200 affordable housing units. Along with working for affordable housing, the center acts as a “community development organization with many roles, serving as neighborhood advocates, organizers, planners, as developers and managers of affordable housing” (ChinatownCDC.org). A holistic approach to community development, grassroots political mobilization and a commitment to low-income families and individuals, drives the CCDC in several projects. An example of a housing preservation of Namiki Apartments (a affordable housing project for senior residents) demonstrates a glimpse of what the Chinatown CDC does. In 2002, the Chinatown CDC worked with various other groups including the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency to officially acquire the Namiki Apartments. Gordon Chin, the Executive Director of the center commented that the "Chinatown CDC is committed to acquiring expiring use developments to preserve their long-term affordability. For low-income families and seniors on fixed incomes, the effects of losing their housing could be devastating” (Vodak). The Chinatown CDC clearly demonstrates an example of community development as a local permanent organization that builds physical, social and political capacity for low-income families. As a non-profit 501(c)(3), this organization is clearly non-market based as well as non-governmental. The organization, originally starting in 1977 as a conglomeration of five grassroots organizations, is a level one organization with paid staff with a funding source spanning from individuals to corporations to funding foundations.
2.2 Structural Commitment to the Community and the Poor
The Chinatown CDC’s organizational structure is elaborate and reflects the type of work the center engages in the community. The decisions of the organization are made by a Board of Directors with 27 members according to the organization website (ChinatownCDC.org). Board members consist of mostly local residents with experience in law, finance and housing development. Mostly notably, board members have significant positions in other community-based organizations and non-profits such as Cai Zhong Li, President of the Community Tenants Association, Gregory Chin, a consultant for the Bay Area Local Initiatives Support Corporation, Christabel Cheung, the Director of Diversity for the American Society on Aging and Ken Nim of Goodwill Industries. This reflects the organizations commitment to the low-income and marginalized community, in contrast to CBOs that mostly consist of business elites and politicians. In addition to the Board of Directors, the organization has 51 paid staffs, which are divided into 10 categories. There are Executive staff, Administration staff, Fiscal and MIS staff, Housing Development staff, Resource Development staff, Property Management staff and Programs staff. The Programs staffs are subdivided into four teams for their respective programs of the Youth Team, Tenant Service team, Planning team and Community Organizing team. Through a multi-faceted approach, advocacy, planning, community organizing positions are all examples of the CCDC’s commitment to the poor outside of the main housing development approach.
2.3 Major Funding: Needed But Not Swayed by Outside Interests
Funding sources come from a variety of individuals, foundations and corporations. While funding might been seen as an indicator of whether a CDC can maintain community interests in contrast to outside business interests, the CCDC maintains a community-based ethos through finding multiple and major funding sources in order to acquire projects of scale. Major funding sources (banks, businesses and multi-national corporations) is needed in order to maintain 2000+ affordable housing units. A smaller CDC may resist bank and business funding sources to mitigate outside interests. However, the CCDC is such a large organization that it needs engage in such a task. The organization finds much of its support deeply rooted in the local community of San Francisco, reflecting the organizations success and reputation among residents and local community members as well as business owners and politicians. Notable funders include Washington Mutual, the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Foundation, Department of Public Health, Lucas Film Ltd. and a myriad of other corporations, foundations and individuals found on the organizations website (ChinatownCDC.org). While notable funders include banks, businesses and wealthy individuals, the CCDC maintains a modern Marxist understanding of poverty and seeks to maintain a community-based ethos as demonstrated by the following arguments.
3. Modern Marxism and Spatial Theory of Poverty Applied by the CCDC
The Chinatown CDC engages in a spatial and geographical understanding of poverty through modern Marxist underpinnings of capitalism. This is demonstrated in three ways: engaging in local control, physical capital and symbolic resistance. First, local control ensures that the underclass retains power to resist exploitation and serve self-interests. Second, building physical capital acts as a means to protect low-income families and individuals from the effects of gentrification and displacement. The gentrification of communities (where the poor are displaced by the way of the wealthy moving into the community resulting in housing prices becoming too high) is seen as a result of the natural flows of a capitalist system. Third, symbolic resistance is a necessary tool used by the Chinatown CDC in order to dislodge popular understandings of Chinatown as a place of cultural disparity and inherent poverty.
3.1 Local Control as a Means of Resistance
Local control is the concept that the community participation happens on a place-based (versus individual based) level in or through community-based organizations like CDCs and CBOs in order to maximize the voice of local residents in a local community. Local control is crucial in community development because “community self-determination should help to ensure that the felt needs of community members, not the self-interest of service providers or policymakers, guide the setting of priorities” (Ferguson, Stoutland 51). This sort of community self-determination is a crucial step in mitigating the effects of poverty by resisting outside interests.
The Chinatown CDC enhances local control of residents and community members—particularly youth—in a modern Marxist (Bourdieu) understanding of power. This is demonstrated by the AAA (Adopt-An-Alleyway) youth empowerment program, which is put on by the Chinatown CDC. The AAA trains and teaches youth (middle school, high school and college) how to keep Chinatown Alleyways clean through cleanups and trash pickups. Also, the AAA empowers students and youth through giving tours of Chinatown Alleyways for tourists and visitors. Considered one of the best tours of San Francisco, youth lead a tour group through Chinatown explaining the history and cultural importance of street names, Chinatown landmarks and alleys (ChinatownCDC.org). While one might argue that local control is only maintained at top positions and office, through the AAA (a Chinatown CDC program) Chinatown youth participate in local control through the creation of symbolic capital and symbolic resistance by reclaiming historical and cultural significance of “place-based” Chinatown in Bourdieu’s analysis of class and power. Symbolic capital can be defined as “the capacity to use symbols to create or solidify physical and social realities” (Allan, 2006, 176). Essentially, symbolic capital is a legitimate form of power relations. However, symbolic resistance needs to take place in reaction to symbolic violence, which is defined as the “invisible power which can be exercised only with the complicity of those who do not want to know that they are subject to it or even that they themselves exercise it” (Allan, 2006, 174). Here, local control is needed in order to combat symbolic violence. By this definition of symbolic violence, AAA tour guides and Chinese youth volunteers participate in symbolic resistance and protecting the interests of low-income and poor families in Chinatown. While local control is usually viewed in a top down manner, the Chinatown CDC demonstrates a bottom-up example of local control through the production of symbolic capital and resistance.
3.2 Physical Capital as a Tool of Mitigating Exploitation in Capital Markets
Engaging in physical capital is intimately tied with race theory as a means of modern Marxist approaches to mitigating poverty and fighting exploitation. Dr. Cornel West, a contemporary social theorist and race theorist draws from modern Marxist theory in his understanding of capitalist markets. He argues that capitalist markets are expansive “vertically (accessories for an existing product), horizontally (new products within a market), and geographically (extending existing markets to new social groups)” (Allan, 2006, 368). As capitalist markets expand geographically, it “drives commodification, the process through which more and more of the human lifeworld becomes something that can be bought and sold” (Allan, 2006, 368). This is to say that basic human entitlements (housing and physical capital for example) become commodified in capitalist market expansion. Physical capital can be bought and sold at the whims of market patterns and trends. This is crucial as the geographical space of Chinatown (the living space of many ethnic Chinese and racialized Asian Americans) is subject to capitalist exploitation.
Thus, the Chinatown CDC seeks to engage in building physical capital as a major means of resistance to capitalist exploitation in a geographical and racial sense. However, resistance can only be understood through the historical and contemporary developments of racial formation and racial movements in the United States in relation to Asian American nationalism (a social movement that seeks to reclaim culture, not as deficient but as celebrated). This is particularly crucial in understanding community control in response to racism. Omi and Winant demonstrate that Asian Americans fought for community control “to prevent commercial areas (such as San Francisco), Manilatowns, Japantowns had been destroyed by urban renewal schemes which had dispersed residents. Always a popular tourist attraction, Chinatowns have historically been the site of continual political battles over low-cost housing versus commercial development” (Omi and Winant, 1994, 109). Cleary here, Dr. Cornel West’s understanding of expansive capitalist markets through geographical commodification can be applied to Chinatown’s affordable housing stock. Chinatown faces the dangers of expansion and the commodification of housing in and near San Francisco’s rapidly growing downtown, as businesses and outside developers encroach on this ethnic territory. The Chinatown CDC, thus, acquires affordable housing sites in order to protect the poor and low-income individuals from the effects of gentrification and displacement.
3.3 The Dual Edged Sword: Symbolic and Physical Capital in Rebuilding the I-Hotel
The Chinatown CDC engages in resistance to capitalism through building physical capital (affordable housing) but also through the cultural nationalist approach of reclaiming legitimacy, history and place simultaneously—a dual edged sword of physical and symbolic capital. An excellent example of this dual edged approach of building physical and symbolic capital is demonstrated through the rebuilding of the I-Hotel in Manilatown, San Francisco. In 1977, 50 or so Asian immigrants (mostly farm workers from the Philippines were evicted from the I-Hotel to make way for a new commercial development. There was much political struggle and protest that occurred, but ultimately resulted in loss. The single-room occupancy (SRO) hotel was razed two years later. The Chinatown Community Development center rebuilt the I-Hotel “On Aug. 26, nearly 26 years later, 104 studio and one-bedroom apartments for low-income seniors are scheduled to open at 848 Kearny St., at Jackson Street, the same address of the original building. Handicapped-accessible with roomy bathrooms and kitchenettes, the units are vastly better than the crowded 10-by-10 rooms of the old building” (Estrella, 2005). The CDC ensures that the building remains affordable for seniors and low-income residents by setting an age restriction and income cap. Also the new I-Hotel ensures quality of life for low-income families through a learning center, community center, a small bookstore, a performance stage and other amenities (Estrella, 2005). In addition to all this, the new I-Hotel pays tribute to the old I-Hotel, the old Manilatown and to the previous struggles of the 1970s. This historical and ideological tribute to the past is crucial in understanding Chinatown CDC’s approach to symbolic resistance in addition to building physical capital. The new I-Hotel stems from an ideological struggle and thus symbolizes the victory and liberation from the oppressive structures of capitalism and commercial interests. This is directly tied to the Asian American (and cultural) nationalist movements of the 1970s, stressing the importance of community control in ethnic enclaves of Chinatown, Japantown, Manilatown, Little Saigon and other Asian American place-based communities. The material and cultural struggles of Chinatown and Asian Americans cannot be separated. Racial struggle is intimately tied with community development. Community development will never be culturally neutral. Thus, alternative institutions that address the geographical commodification of ethnic neighborhoods like Chinatown need to emerge. In the way of a prophetic voice of social justice, Omi and Winant explain that there is a need for “Asian Americans [to seek] to build alternative institutions which would more adequately address the needs of community residents than could the state or the existing conservative community leadership” (Omi and Winant, 1994, 109). The Chinatown CDC is an example of such alternative institutions that tie the material and spatial needs of a racialized community and the cultural, symbolic forms of capital in order to disrupt the rapidly expanding capitalist market.
4. Conclusion
Chinatown, San Francisco, faces the dangers of an expanding downtown and commodifcation of essential needs (affordable housing). This is compounded by issues of poverty and domestic race issues that have plagued Chinatown for centuries. However, the Chinatown CDC seeks to mitigate the effects of poverty through a geographical and spatial understanding of the capitalist system. As Shaw explains, “Space is not a backdrop for capitalism, but rather is restructured by it and contributes to the systems survival” (Bradshaw, 2003, 327). Thus, instead of prolonging the survival of a system built on spatial exploitation the CCDC engages in resistance. This is employed by a series of strategies and tactics, which seek to overthrow the exploitative nature of capitalist markets and western society. This includes a level of community and local control, building physical capital and engaging in symbolic resistance. This modern Marxist approach of the Chinatown CDC combats a cultural explanation of poverty through approaching the work of community development along the lines of spatial expressions and resistance of market expansion.
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