Herta Pitman, Dec 2019

Night has fallen. Golden light beckons through the palladian windows of The East Side Freedom Library (ESFL), where community members are assembling for the “East Side’s First Housing Summit.” A curling railing and foot-worn stairs draws neighbors up to the homely, single door. Inside, they join the collections already inhabiting the space, arrayed around the circular circulation desk on colorful carpets: attendees, art, The Hmong Archive, teapots made by a Freedom Rider. The books tower, housed on honey-colored shelves. Purpose weaves with the practical and comfortable, balancing between order and disarray. The library feels familiar, both ordinary and majestic. Instead of a hush, voices buzz. Smell coffee. Eat empanadas. Over a circle of rocking chairs, fliers flutter pegged to a high line, making proclamations: “Kneel, Stand, Fight; Justice for Philando; Love, Hope, Rise.”

The invitation to this summit explained that the agenda would be two-fold: “documenting and collecting community stories [to create materials] to raise awareness of the issues around housing on the East Side,” and “to create some working language around needs and goals […] in housing on the East Side.” Since March, a coalition of organizations – ABC Realty, Metropolitan Interfaith Council on Affordable Housing, Dayton’s Bluff Neighborhood Housing Services, Cookie Cart, Home Ownership Center, Blue Green Alliance, and ESFL – have been meeting about housing inequality, and have brought in government agencies and Twin Cities Public Television, to work together to solve housing issues affecting the East Side community.

About sixty people provide the energy for the summit. Peter Rachleff welcomes everyone, and he and ABC Realty’s Seanne Thomas make some opening remarks and introductions. Seanne introduces filmmaker Daniel Bergen. Daniel talks about making the film “Jim Crow of the North” and about the Twin Cities’ historical systemic racism, from origins in stolen Dakota land, to restrictive covenants, redlining, and continued cultural barriers. Leon Wong works to build a list of self-descriptions, generated by members of the group. It grows to over 40 identities or roles. The list includes: homeowner, renter, episodic and long term homeless survivor, nurse, teacher, student, senior, artist, activist, community council representative, banker, realtor, landlord. Next, the group crafts a list of individuals and groups not present: homeless youth, Metro State, immigrant communities, nearby neighbors, more.

When it’s time for the “putting community to work” part of the night, the gathering breaks into four smaller groups with facilitators: Story sharing (recorded by TPT); Homeownership; Homelessness; and Rental.

Tonight’s event is taking place at the ESFL on the east side of St Paul, Minnesota, on land where Dakota people lived for centuries, and near the ancestral Dakota burial grounds on the cliffs above the Mississippi River. Immigrants began building lives in this vicinity over 150 years ago. The neighborhood that was home to them, and is now known as Payne Phalen, has been, and remains, home to many newcomers from around the world. The Arlington Hills Library served the public of Payne Phalen in this building at the corner of Jessamine and Geranium until 2014, when it relocated to a new building a few blocks away.

The ESFL now lives in the original Arlington Hills Library building, at the heart of Payne Phalen. The ESFL is an innovating, non-public, community library. The ESFL, founded in 2013 by Macalester professors Beth Cleary and Peter Rachleff, with a mission to “inspire solidarity, advocate for justice and work toward equity for all,” acquired and created this new resource, hoping to incubate new solutions for old human problems. The ESFL’s ambitious goals are playing out in opportunities for scholars to consult the collection, for the local and broader community to forge connections. These goals are perhaps made most visible in the ESFL events calendar. In just the six days before the housing summit, the ESFL hosted: workshops about community engagement; a class about immigration and the making of St Paul; an author talking about his book on the business of treaties; performances of “Contempt,” and “School’s no Place for Kids;” History Day workshops; training for Community Journalism; an exhibition of Karen weaving; and a conversation about challenges and prospects of Ethiopia. The ESFL has hosted two weddings, and just a week after the housing summit, witnessed an engagement, where one Hmong man proposed to the author who was about to present his book about experiences of gay Hmong men.

Community members spend about forty minutes in small groups. “Homeownership” group participants brainstorm about: the difficulty of finding resources and learning about ownership from neutral sources, the mismatch between wages and the cost of homeownership, and seniors who can’t afford to leave their homes. A neighbor says that the East Side is chronically underrepresented at the legislature and needs better representation. The Homelessness; and Rental groups are generating ideas in other corners of the library. Storytellers are being recorded by TPT, near the children’s books. Ben Warner, another of the event organizers, has difficulty calling everyone back together for reports of the breakout sessions. The chatter dies down slowly and incompletely. The Rental breakout group generates ideas about decommodification of land, power and protection for tenants, and “development without displacement.” The Homelessness breakout group emphasizes a need for more visibility, and messaging about “housing as a human right.” Ben says the summit has a much wider impact than just those present; that thousands of people are engaged with the event in some way. For the rest of the event, the large group generates ideas, while Ben takes notes. Participants imagine: connecting information to resources, creating effective messaging, crowdfunding sustainable housing, applying personal and group pressure for transformative change, seeing selves as resources, and more. Success would be, in part: wages and resources would at least equal cost of living, the creation of a message that can be spread to many constituencies, multiple kinds of new housing developed.

The conveners promise to keep thinking as a team about how to move forward, to figure out a way to open up meetings, and share plans, events, and results. This night the ESFL builds on a foundation of history, some found within its walls, to frame plans, nourish the community, shape supportive housing policy, and ultimately homes.

Days later, Katie Carpenter, one of the event conveners and a writer for TPT, replied to a question about what is being planned next. She said, “A small group of us are working to create a report that will demonstrate a summary of all of the different voices we heard and key themes that resonated. We’re planning on using the report to gather together a working group of folks and determine a community-centric agenda around fair housing and the steps to achieve it. That could include a graphic novel style piece of media to elicit a more accessible dialogue around fair housing on the East Side.” Seanne Thomas added, “The community has the answers to their housing needs and just requires the resources and creativity to execute. All too often, the development of housing happens to communities rather than by communities which results in market driven solutions rather than community based solutions.”

Love, Hope, Rise.

At the end of the “East Side’s First Housing Summit,” the gathered community broke from their clusters, and emerged from the warm embrace of the ESFL. Outside it was cold for mid-November. The wind bit, and insisted that winter is coming. The wind emphasized the urgent need for shelter, and reminded these kindred spirits again that not everyone tonight would be going home. The wind pushed them apart, and most drifted alone into the full-moon-blue light. They started up cars, and headed home.

%d