Dream and Hustle

Ground Floor Analysis of the Atlanta “Pittsburgh” Area Featured in that Anti-Gay Beatdown Video

In a previous article, I discussed several business models from beatdown videos and one of the videos featured a very vicious and premeditated attack on a brotha targeted for appearing effeminate here in the Atlanta area. I mentioned that the corner store was a little bit of everything and wondered what the heck is going on and this business running so many different operations? I saw Laundromat, corner store, fried food all up on the signs and this was unusual to see one building and one business doing all of this store-within-a-store stuff.

The video has gone viral and they are chasing down these cats in the video who kept saying they are Jack City and stuff and no homos on their corner. I read some coverage on this on the Within the Black Community blog and this is what he wrote:

About 3 summers ago when I reported on the conditions of the community that I had to drive through every day to take my children to summer camp – I was talking about this same area – which is why I am so familiar with it. The Salvation Army center is about 4 blocks away from the crime scene.

As I drove these streets I noticed the number of people who stood out on the streets and they eye contact that they always made as I drove by. I swear they thought that I was either the police or a “customer” of whatever they were “selling” – males and females. This made it hard for me to pull out my camera to snap a picture of the action as I sought to provide pictorial evidence to back up my words.

There is no question that the “idle time” invested by many of the (young) people in this area was a gateway for trouble. The constant background threat of violence and/or vice ensured that the “police/community relations” would remain tense. The same police department that is a scoundrel for their harassment would the next day become the hero for “saving” a member of the community from the acts of another member of the community.

The fact that the beating of a gay man by a Street Pirate Gang has turned all eyes to this community ONLY advances the notion that “The Gays” are off limits. This being proven by the fact that other violent enforcement actions of the “1029 Jack City Gang” go on without such concern.

I am not surprised to see that the “Civil Rights Pharisees”, unable to find a gun to protest against – instead chose to go into the store and tell the owner that they are “gunning” to shut him down because THE STORE is a center of violence.

I drove by the “crime scene” yesterday. (Twice – going and coming home from work). Let me assure everyone that if Brandon White had been walking out of the “food desert” grocery store a block up the street, the co-op laundry further up the street or the nail salon across the street from it – he STILL would have gotten his ass kicked by the “1029 Jack City Street Pirate Gang”. The location was happenstance. The Street Pirates just happened to converge on the victim due to timing and opportunity. That tire that they threw upon him could have easily been a basket of clothing snatched from a woman walking out of the laundry.

Source Link: http://withintheblackcommunity.blogspot.com/2012/02/analysis-ironies-of-response-to-civil.html

Reading this article while sipping my green tea, I just wished Within The Black Community blog had some pictures about this location I could have seen to get more insight on the community to see if Constructive Feedback was correct about the conditions. From what he stated, he saw cats staring back at him so he couldn’t provide pics and I also thought about Constructive Feedback safety in that area where the 1029 Jack City gang roam about.

So I decided to go down there to the Atlanta “Pittsburgh” myself on that exact corner and get out of my car and take a deeper look at the community and the economic conditions. There was a rally going on by the Change Atlanta, the Black gay organization and I wanted to get there before they did to see what’s up. So I got there, parked in the church lot across the street and looked around and walked around.

Just a little side note but I was standing on the corner and the local cats were still going to the corner store and then they started talking ish towards me taking pictures talking about cats like me are there only because that incident. Then he looked at me and said we kick people asses here all the time and I just looked at him back. This is his community and his hood and I’m going to at least give him that respect so I said nothing and understood where he was coming from with what he was saying.

This article is not really focused on the actual beating of the effeminate brotha – cats get their ass beat down in the hood randomly all the time but the media do not cover it. It’s funny that the Atlanta news did not pick up this story until the Smoking Gun picked up this story because Atlanta is too focused on covering White cats getting robbed at Georgia Tech than the everyday crime that goes on in Southeast Atlanta which is not far from Morehouse, Spellman and Clark-Atlanta University.

What we are going to focus on is the same thing Within the Black Community Blog focused on which is the community itself. We at Dream and Hustle have developed the skills and the expertise to look deeply at the community and see the real picture going on and that is what we will bring to the table in this article about the “Pittsburgh” area in Atlanta.

Corner-nomics 101 for the Atlanta “Pittsburgh” Area

I want to get one thing out of the way and that is with these “Jack City” cats which is they would have gotten dumped somewhere and made an example out of if they pulled that ish up North what they did to that effeminate brotha. I know cats who got straight hunted down and killed by their own people doing some ignorant attention-getting crap like that on a corner. Where I’m from on the West Side of Chicago, the corner is all a cat got to hustle on and you mess with his/her corner, you messing with everything that corner hustler live for and risking dying for.

Let’s just do some “corner-nomics” on what these cats beating up that effeminate brotha done. First of all, they brought all kind of attention to that corner and now that corner can’t be used to move weight anymore. So that means whoever was the boss running that corner can’t make money on it. And if they can’t make money on it, they can’t make the funds to re-up and pay their people right. That’s why I said these ignorant ass cats down here in ATL would gotten their ass served by their own people by messing up the money on their own corner with this ignorant ass beat down video crap. Way more street cats in Chicago gotten killed or snitched on for messing with the paper of their own people than gang rivalry.

With that said, the only thing this so-called “Jack City” cats posted on WorldStarHipHop is that they are sloppy and probably inspired some cats up North to come down and take these corners from them. Cats up North in full scale warfare over low-margin corners and this exact corner in Atlanta on McDaniel Street is right off the expressway exit where cats can push kilos of weight to suburbanites. But cats on this SE Atlanta corner instead of locking it down, doing stupid “cyber banging” ish like beating up cats and filming that ish to post online bringing attention to themselves and the corner.

If those cats were real bosses, real street cats then they would have never done this kind of ignorant ass distraction like this beatdown and that tells me and everybody else they not moving anything real on this corner. The drug dealers and street cats know you keep a block peaceful and quiet and don’t cause anything to attract unnecessary attention to them and their business. I’m not trying to put down cats but this ain’t smart because we got cats up North who are 16 year old who can come lock this block down a lot tighter than this nonsense, real talk.

The Neighborhood

My first impression of the Atlanta “Pittsburgh” neighborhood is it looks exactly like Detroit where all of the houses were boarded up. I was on the corner and looked around and almost every home was basically boarded up and empty! This is a very important detail that no one has mentioned and the media is leaving out!

But here is the thing I’m going to say – this is not a “hood” by my definition. I actually think this is a very beautiful area and part of town that has been neglected and divested for decades and decades. This is not a ghetto either because a ghetto is high density cramming but these are homes and this used to be a vibrant Black Atlanta community that is now decimated. The next question is what happened?

What I mean by what happened is these homes are pre-World War II homes. I believe these homes were owned by African Americans since the early 1900s and should have been passed down to future generations of African-Americans like the up North cities. Maybe it was home equity loans or something else but something causes this area to straight collapse.

But what I really saw was opportunity that I have never seen anywhere before for Blacks to migrate to. This exact area in Pittsburgh mimic the same kind of Northern communities African-Americans migrated to from the South. This would be a perfect community for up-North African-Americans to begin the reverse migration down to the South and start up a new life. Then if you look at Google Maps, you see all kind of parks in the area where you can throw a summer picnic party with all kind of brothas and sistas coming down to Atlanta.

I’m just being honest, this Pittsburgh area in Atlanta is the most perfect economic-development ready area I’ve seen in all of America that is just ripe for young brothas and sistas to migrate to and pay for a $3000 home and walk without a car and start a new life from that crazy ish going on up North. Remember, this is Atlanta and the weather is way warmer down here than those snow storms cats have to deal with up North.

The Scapegoating and Ignoring the Underlying Issue

Okay, I parked my car in the church parking lot and all of the rally cats showed up and I decided to stick around and see what they were talking about. I ran into a few politicians, including John Lewis who I always acknowledge with respect every time I see him and just say “thank you” for what he done during the Civil Rights Era. He gave his speech and he lectured us like little kids and I just had to be amazed because I’m hearing someone from Martin Luther King era and he has that same dialect as Martin Luther King, Jr when he speaks, even as he lectured us on his back in the day moment.

But some cats who ran the Murray funereal home got up there and he had that same Frank Ski light-skinned, curly hair Boule uppity attributes and he appeared to condescend the young generation, labeling all of them as not being inspired and educated, throwing me off for a minute with a WTF expression. Then he started going into the kids walking around with their pants sagging and he stated he get looks from the young generation when he tell them to pull their pants up. I hope Mr. Murray funereal home dude realize most of the cats who sag their pants were the Black gays in that crowd he was speaking to. I think he did realize it and maybe that why he ran from the area to his car saying he dropping another $1,000 in reward money to catch the rest of those cats who did the beatdown. He should have given $2,000 for being an arrogant a-hole with his speech.

But then I heard the most interesting and that was some tired looking old dude who stated he was some local politician for that community for over twenty years. He started giving this speech stating the store across the street used to be some upstanding business back in his days when they were driving around in the Ford Model T or whatever, that’s how old he looked to me.

WTF closing the store got to do with keeping the schools open? He kept saying that illogic!! So the old politician dude started blaming the corner store guy and said they looking to close that store down. He tried to get the audience to chant with him to close the corner store down and he went into this tirade blaming that corner store for the problems in the community. As this old dude politician was blaming the corner store for the crime/degenerate youth problems in the community, I just looked at all of the boarded up homes and looked right back at him because he was the one who just told me he was the politician of this area for the past 20 years.

The Real Issue Here

I could not help noticed the overall hypocrisy of this whole rally and the coverage of this story I was seeing and that opened my eyes to what’s going on in Atlanta. The core underlying issue is economic divestment and economic neglect of the local politicians and business community regarding this area. All of these people and politicians are speaking and talking and not one of them mention anything about the economic conditions and all of the boarded up homes around them.

Note: These are not board-up houses far from each other – all of these boarded up houses are right next to that corner store!

The City of Atlanta and local Black politicians economically ignore this Black community and focus on Midtown and Buckhead except when election year come around and pander to these Pittsburgh Black folks to vote for them. The local Black politicians is 10% of the blame here, however 80% of the blame goes back to the older Black generation who failed to establish an economic framework, failed to pass any legacy down to the future generation such as those homes that should not be boarded up but passed down to someone who great-grandparents used to live in that house. The remaining 10% of the blame goes back to Dream and Hustle readers who don’t post comment to elevate some form of constructive discussion on this topic.

So when economic resources are not there and the community is blighted, then the youth is trapped and they have nothing to do but go primal and street thuggery which is basic instinct. So let’s not be intellectually dishonest and go into this community and blame one corner store and blame the youth when the real issue is economic.

I was kind of offended when I heard that one Murray funereal home character basically dissed the Black youth and stereotyped them as some sagging pants generation. Our younger generation needs our support and guidance, not these Boule looking cats dissing them and I wanted to yell at him like a 30 Rotten Dissident but it wasn’t the time and place. I also was shocked at the hypocrisy of that one politician who been representing that community for 20 years and can look at the economic devastation all around him that went on while he was elected and try to blame some corner store instead of himself. I really wanted to call him out on that like a 30 Rotten Dissident but decided to just observe.

The only good thing I can think of is the fact I was there as I’m the one working on the Locations Wiki for this blog. I’m the one who is creating an economic blueprint for this area and all this rally done was show me how so full of sh*t our politicians and pundits and preachers are when it comes to our community and how they put on filters.

Again, if you go to that same block, every goddamn house is boarded up and these cats are making speeches talking about everything and scapegoating except that fact they have no economic development plan for the “Pittsburgh” area of Atlanta. But Dream and Hustle do and the time has definitely for us to do for ourselves, our people and our community because the rest of these cats are full of crap, even the local cats.

Note: I did recorded video but after review, I realize I may be a little much and too raw for airplay. I need to tone down before putting out any videos because I’m 1000x worst on video in real life presentations than I am when I’m writing.