Sincere Bellamy
Tonight’s town hall meeting was in the multipurpose room in a church a block away from the development site.
A long table with a cheap plastic skirt sat at the front with a microphone on a stand in the middle.
Handwritten signs were taped on the walls that read: NO LUXURY, YES COMMUNITY! WE ARE NOT FOR SALE!
Me, Legend, Icon, and Saint slipped through the back doors while somebody at the mic was already talking. There were about fifty people in the room.
We stood in the back, listening.
A woman in her mid to late forties had the mic. “We’ve seen this before. They come in talking ‘investment’ and ‘revitalization,’ and next thing you know, rent is three times what it used to be and half the block is gone. I don’t care what they say about ‘affordable units.’ Affordable for who?”
People murmured and nodded in agreement.
This was why I’d wanted to be here, to hear what they were actually scared of.
Then a woman near the front turned her head and saw us. Then she started to whisper to the person sitting next to her. Soon, the whole room was turning around to see what the others were looking at. You could immediately feel the hate spread. I saw recognition click in a few faces.
The woman at the mic kept going, but her voice was angrier now. “We’re not against development. We’re against being pushed out. We’re against people with money making decisions without us, then acting like they’re doing us a favor!”
She stepped back and applause filled the room.
The moderator took the mic. “Next we’re gonna hear from Alderman Kai Richardson.”
Saint blew out a frustrated breath as Kai walked up with his politician smile on, wearing his crisp suit and pocket square. The room clapped louder for him.
He leaned into the mic, saying, “First of all, I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight. This is what community looks like. We are not going to let decisions get made about us without us ever again.”
As there was more applause, a couple people stood up to clap harder.
“I’ve been reviewing the plans for this proposed development on 83rd, Project 83.
On paper, it looks good. But we’d be fools not to ask: at what cost?
We are in the middle of a gentrification wave.
You all see it. You see white people walking dogs on streets that used to be too ‘dangerous’ for you.
You see your rent going up while your paycheck stays the same.
And now we got a so-called ‘mixed-income’ building coming, backed by what?
” He paused again as his eyes swept the crowd. “Backed by blood money!”
The room reacted with gasps and murmurs. Someone said, “Mm-hmm!” like they’d been waiting on that.
My blood ran cold.
“What happens when we allow people who made their fortunes off drugs in our neighborhoods, off bodies in our streets, to come back with shovels promising they are legit? We are supposed to forget the funerals because they hired an architect?!”
“Hell no!” somebody shouted.
“No!” others echoed.
“I am calling for a temporary moratorium on this project!” Kai shouted.
“There will be no permits or shovels in the ground until we have a full, transparent review of who is behind this deal, where the money is coming from, and how this community will actually benefit. Not just ten years from now, but right damn now!”
Claps turned into stomps. Some folks in the front row stood and started a chant. “NO CARTEL CONDOS! NO CARTEL CONDOS!”
My heart pounded in my ears. We had done everything right on paper. The ownership entity on that building wasn’t tied directly to their last name. That was the whole point: to build something real without this exact bullshit.
“How the fuck they know?” Saint asked under his breath.
I didn’t answer because I had no clue. I ran through the list in my head of the select few in-house who knew the whole structure. Someone had talked, or someone had dug deeper than I thought they could.
Kai raised his hands like he was calming the room.
“Now, I’m not here to point fingers without proof.
I’m not saying I know every detail.” A slick, practiced smile spread across his face.
“I’m just saying when there’s smoke, we have a right to ask where the fire is coming from.
” Then he finally looked directly at us.
The moderator took the mic back and opened the floor for comments. People lined up at the side aisle. One after another, they spoke about rising rent, about fear of being pushed out, about not trusting “mysterious investors.”
A younger dude stood up near the aisle. He had a phone in his hand, already recording us. Before I could fully process it, he walked straight down the aisle toward the back of the room.
Legend shifted so he was slightly in front of me, but none of us moved away. Running would look like guilt, and posturing would look like threat. We needed neither.
The dude stopped a few feet from us with his camera pointed right at our faces.
“Look who in here,” he spat loudly. “The Cartier’s don’ showed their faces!”
Heads turned, and chairs squeaked.
He stepped closer, with his phone damn near touching my nose.
“Who’s really paying for this, huh?!” he demanded. “Who’s funding these condos? Your drug money?!” He shifted the camera from me to Legend to Icon to Saint and back. “Your rich asses are padding your pockets while our people are about to get pushed out. Answer me!”
Somebody had fed them just enough truth to cause some potentially dangerous problems.
That was all it took to turn my biggest project into a loaded gun pointed at us.