After watching the movie “My Brooklyn”, my reaction towards it was anger. This movie was a perfect example of gentrification in Brooklyn, and how minorities and the lower and middle class always end being the losers. The film starts describing around the great depression they started to red line neighborhoods and neighborhoods with more than 5 percent of blacks in the area the neighborhood were given a D rating, in a sense that these neighborhoods were bad or low down, primarily based on a race. Fast forward to the 2000s Downtown Brooklyn to outsiders is this run-down area but to the minorities that live and shop there it’s a vibrant community full of life. Suddenly the city and developers realize the potential of Downtown Brooklyn and start reshaping the characteristics of it.

What upset me the most about the changes that occurred was that there was no compensation to the people that were already there. For example the bagel shop and barbershop were given 30 day notice to leave, where they have been working for years. So now they have to figure how they are going to find another place to rent, where they are going to put their equipment, and how are they going to survive. Or how when the community the ban together to be involved with the new development, all their concerns were disregarded. How can you displace people like that, or view them as unimportant. Then on top of that develop buildings that don’t help the community that’s already there. And it seems whatever the community tried to do was just dismissed.

At the end of the day as a minority it’s hard watch a movie like this because it’s so accurate to what we face today. For someone to view my neighborhood as an area that needs to be upgraded, but the only way to do that is to kick out everyone that looks like me is messed up. Minorities constantly can’t catch a break and people have the nerve to ask why we are mad? I’m not saying that change is bad because it does have benefits but developers and the city needs to work with what’s already there. Don’t see minorities as a problem because Downtown Brooklyn was always the same, it’s everyone else that that saw what everyone who was already there saw. That’s why we need to stay aware of what’s going around us, because this is our Brooklyn