Dr. Anika Whitfield, a podiatrist who’s been among the most outspoken in the central Little Rock neighborhood targeted for demolition to build the taxpayer-financed Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce spec technology park office building, has more to say today, inspired by the demolition of Ray Winder Field for a UAMS parking lot.
Why not look there for Technology Park acreage, she asks.
She also talks about the meaning of blight, inspired by a recent lecturer at the Clinton School, Dr. Mindy Fullilove, a writer and teacher at Columbia University. To those cheering the destruction of residential neighborhoods for an office building, the project is “blight removal.” (And we’ll worry later where the human element of that blight will rest once they are made home clearance refugees.) Comments Whitfield:
Dr. Fullilove proposes that blighted really means to those who use it, “not mine”. In other words, as long as something is not yours and you don’t see the value in it, like someone else’s home, it is ok (or at least one tries to justify that it is ok) to destroy it, redefine it, and mistreat it because after all it is “blighted” (doesn’t belong to me).
That captures the insensitivity with which the powers-that-be view this neighborhood. Just an obstacle to a bit of real estate speculation and corporate welfare.
Joyce Williams, another of those human beings interested in preserving a residential neighborhood, has also distributed a note responding to Whitfield’s and commenting on those who decide the fate of neighborhoods.
They wear suits, have great material resources, plan in private and make every effort to present a civilized public face but have proven they are will run their planned agenda at the expense of the community.
Both notes follow in full. Whitfield has received one response from city officials, from City Director Joan Adcock:
Thank you for your email, I agree