I am not Charlie Hebdo but I have experienced the sharp retaliatory violence that comes from speaking truth to power.

In late 2011 I began writing about teardowns and gentrification in Decatur, Ga., an Atlanta suburb. After writing just two articles on the subject a person who lives in the neighborhood about which I was writing confronted the local historical society’s executive director and demanded that I be banned from the institution’s archive. Why? Because he didn’t like what I was writing. Continue reading →

Thanks for your witness and devotion to justice — Rev. Nibs Stroupe, Oakhurst Presbyterian Church (Decatur, Ga.), Oct. 21, 2014.

After almost four years in Georgia, I am back in the Washington, D.C., area. Back home. The Georgia experience was one of incredible professional and personal growth. We lived and worked in a place where Old South racism mixes in a toxic civic cauldron with New South neoliberalism. Structural racism and privilege permeate all levels of Decatur, Georgia, society from city hall to city streets.

Decatur’s residents have shed their white hoods and replaced them with social media accounts and middle class respectability, PR firms, and false choice urbanism. For me, it was a rare opportunity to go from being an unwitting participant observer in a gentrifying neighborhood to an advocate for economic and racial equity.

The Decatur experience was transformative. I will use what I learned to be better: a better historian, better citizen, and better person. This week I began that journey on a walk with Rev. Jeffrey Thames, founder of Hope Restored, Inc., a Silver Spring, Maryland, nonprofit with a mission to work with the homeless and to open up the pipeline from incarceration back into the community.

© 2014 D.S. Rotenstein

Each year I used to celebrate Groundhog Day with calls to friends and relatives and with home-made cards. People would send me Groundhog Day-themed cartoons and I would add them to my collection. Then, in 1993 Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day movie was released and the holiday went commercial. You just can’t compete with popular culture and I abandoned the annual Groundhog Day celebration. Continue reading →

They are among some of the search phrases used by people visiting the H4H blog this week. If you find any unifying threads, please let me know. Continue reading →