Infrastructure Pt. 3
"This our park or they park?".... Claiming Open Spaces, directed by Austin Allen (1996)
Since I met Marshall in 2016 or so …. I always try to hit him up when I'm in Columbus, (Ohio). Last time I went he was like, “meet me in Franklin Park”. I put it in the gps and then realized it was that big ass park that was between the MLK library and campus, or like Bronzeville.
I pulled up and shit, I thought it was a “white park”.
Y’all know what i mean... you see a greenhouse and all kinds new shit, no trash…
Soon as I started watching “Claiming Open Spaces” and saw that they was talking bout the same Franklin Park, in Columbus. I remembered what Marshall told me that day… how it had been a white park, then from the 60s-90s it functioned as a place for black folks, whose neighborhood surrounded it - til some mess happen that sort of neutralized or even ended that reality.
The documentary, directed by Austin Allen shows city parks in New Orleans, Detroit, Oakland, Montgomery, and Columbus - and the Black folks who be at them, who steward them and who so fucking beautifully share their memories of them.
It's slow and kinda meditative at times. The interviews are sick, one lady (Ms. Dorothy) over in Oakland said she became the parks president because that's just what her community asked of her. That hit!! We also get to see a young Walter Hood in there, that was special bc I only got hip to him recently from his TEDTALK.
Mr. Allen is a visionary!! The public media and public spaces connection he made…VISION! Even just “US” in media and spaces… Mr. Allen really serves as a type of OG to our strategy. There was a moment during these 5 years of Hood Century where I noticed the “dearth” of this type of media. If we don’t see it or us in it, we make it. Shit, thats where you find us now.
We clipped a couple of favorite moments from the doc on youtube. The full film is linked there too. (Shouts fam who shared the doc to us via dm’s and shouts brother Kofi Boone!!)
PS. We just found a link for the soundtrack by Yusef Lateef, yall spoiled.
-coop.
Written by Coop. Edited by Savannah.
#blackmodernism