“I’m an East Atlanta nigga, I don’t really like strangers.” 

Growth is for everyone. Growth takes space and experience and love and a beginning. Growth is chiastic, always returning to its roots for more. Growth is change. Growth is changing. Change is nature, the part that we can influence and incur. It starts when we decide which things are important. The ability to decide is a necessity that has been commodified into a luxury, a luxury that many people in East Atlanta are having stripped from them. Gentrification is what happens when growth isn’t equitable. 

Throughout the publication of the first issue of Tribe Magazine, The East Atlantan, my mind was transfixed on awareness and education. I was eager for anyone to see what was happening and for those experiencing it to know that they were not alone in their struggle. Save Zone 6 is not a cry for help, rather a call to action. And following the success of the issue, I immediately began to feel guilt. Guilt that my star was ascending quicker than the problems were being resolved. Did I want to be the guy known for getting rich and famous off campaigning against gentrification? At what point did I become more the cause? I tenuously accepted my press, stressing the importance of my cause over myself and my story. Yet, as Good Morning America and other outlets scrambled to emphasize my accomplishments, I could feel my initial intentions slipping away. Recognition from East Atlanta celebrities such as 6lack felt premature. I even had some supporters calling me the “Fred Hampton of East Atlanta,” a title I do not feel as though I have earned yet. Was there enough space for me to succeed without capitalizing off of the issues I aspired to fight against? 

When I started the Save Zone 6 campaign I didn’t know where to start. I knew there were people I wanted to help. I knew my community was changing into something I did not recognize. I go through the neighborhoods I’ve grown up in and watch new luxurious lofts spring up while the people who truly forged community continue to be left behind. The phrase “fight gentrification” continued to arise in my mind. The same old American story, the same OLD American frontiersman coming in and claiming something pure and smoothing it over and over again until it’s a sweet nothing. I see the young white man leave his sparkling new apartment and jog past the old black man sleeping in the gutter and I’m filled with rage. Gentrification is a pollutant that at times feels like an infection but it’s not the catalyst for all the problems in my community. The intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and economic stability come to a head when gentrification is introduced to the mix. Gentrification exacerbates the problems and accelerates the degradation of resources and expunges any facade of equality but my people have not had space for quite some time. When I say “my people” of course that could be interpreted as “black people” but it does not end there. “My people” are the people without, a people without any skin color and landless, without borders. Space is the issue, space in the minds of those who have and the space to create for those who have not.

I find myself wondering if there is an East Atlanta in Heaven, if God has enough space for us. The way it has been presented to me, Heaven at times has small doors and skinny corridors and sharp edges. East Atlanta has been a round, soft, and cerebral community to me for quite some time. I know there is a heaven in East Atlanta. I know it, when I eat wings. I know it when I see, feel, and hear the expression. I know it when I see the beauty. When I see East Atlanta as it has been promised to me, I see a garden. A garden for creativity and intimations of intense investment into the space promised to my people. All life is creation and all creation is art and all artistic processes are prayer. But life is more urgent than art. Life squeezes and intimidates and belabours people until they don’t have the space to live it. Save Zone 6 is not only about fighting gentrification. It is about ensuring equity for everyone, everywhere. Save Zone 6 is about spreading resources until life and art slow into a singular moment in which they can be engaged with. Art, creation, and life holding the same gravity for everyone but starting with my people is my goal.

The problem is that East Atlanta seems to be trending in the opposite direction of my vision. Some days, I feel as though I may as well be on Mars. And other days, I feel like I couldn’t possibly be closer to home. When pondering my approach to this issue, I wasn’t sure how much more I had to say about gentrification and what had changed in the few months since the campaign had officially launched. I needed a different feel this time around, for it to be more than a magazine. I had already outlined some actions that could be taken to help halt gentrification. I had already explained why gentrification happened. I had already given a short history on gentrification. I had already shared how it was affecting the East Side. Being informative was not enough, I needed to explore what Save Zone 6 means spiritually.

Last night, I went and got some wings. 10-piece, lemon pepper dry, all flats, side of fries, bleu cheese, with  a peach-lemonade drink. And I went with my brother to Golden Glide Skating Rink and sat down and ate them in the parking lot. Each delectable bite was familiar, exactly what had been prescribed to me. When I went inside after I finished eating, I saw a horde of happy black East Atlanta people swaying around the floor in symbiotic circles. Each person with their own flair and style. It was discordant and chaotic and peaceful. A garden grew under every spinning and dancing wheel that night. I looked out amongst my people and thought there was no way anyone could come in and defeat this. It was too big and too special, had too much heaven in it. Gentrification eats its own and we simply need to be too big, too wide, too whole, too fulfilled to eat. That can only happen when we all have space to be whatever we want.