Julian Castro Has Raised Issues No One Else Has, But He Won't Be on Stage Tonight
ATLANTA—In 1883, as the promises of Reconstruction were fading finally to nothing, and the curse of Jim Crow white supremacy was entrenching itself for the new century, African-American citizens in Georgia, most of them aging freedpeople, settled a neighborhood in Atlanta. It was on a ridge hard by a number of the factories that had sprung up in the wake of General Sherman’s extensive urban renewal program back in 1864. The new residents thought it looked a lot like what they’d been told about Pittsburgh and its steel mills, so that’s what they called their neighborhood: Pittsburgh.
As is the case with a number of neighborhoods in Atlanta, and as is the case with a number of neighborhoods in a number of American cities, Pittsburgh is under the squeeze of development and gentrification. The longtime residents are being priced out. Kamau Franklin and his Community Builders organization is helping to push back against these powerful forces. On Wednesday, Julian Castro stopped by and walked the neighborhood with Franklin and a few of his volunteers. One of them was Gabriel Mont-Reynaud, who is a story in himself.
A former IT whiz, he found himself unsatisfied with the work and, at the suggestion of a friend, he went to Liberia to work on an experimental farm. Through that, he found his batteries recharged and, eventually, he got into the field of aquaponics—an innovative combination of aquaculture and agriculture in which the waste of farm-raised fish is used to nourish plants which, in turn, purify the water back into the fish tank. It is simple and, in one form or another, it’s been in use for decades, especially in Asia. Gabriel has set up a small aquaponic garden in the backyard of the Community Building HQ in Pittsburgh. He took Castro back, and they looked into the fish tank, and then took stock of the garden that accompanies it.
“It’s a very logical way of growing food,” Mont-Reynaud said. “It requires quite a bit of expertise and in-depth knowledge of how the system works. I’ve always been interested in marine biology and marine life in general so, to be able to garden and work with fish, so this seemed to be a no-brainer for me. It’s not a new idea, but backyard aquaponics is a new thing.”
Castro spent most of the morning listening to Gabriel and to the other people who are trying to save their neighborhood. He spoke about those days as mayor of San Antonio and about how simply chasing a bunch of corporate headquarters is not the way to build a livable city. “Every day,” Castro said, “it seems like I read about another corporation relocating its headquarters to Atlanta, and that’s a good thing for Atlanta. But it seems to me that we have to develop a holistic way of going about it. What will this new company, and the jobs that come with it, mean for a city’s housing, its traffic, or its educational system? We need a holistic way of urban development that takes into account the lives of the people who are already there.”
Julian Castro was not going to be on the stage when some of the other Democratic candidates debated each other on Wednesday night. In its infinite wisdom, the Democratic National Committee devised a set of rules that virtually guarantees that the field will be winnowed by numbers and not by votes, by cash balances and poll results, and not by human beings.
So, on Tuesday night, Julian Castro, who already has brought to the campaign issues that no other candidate has, including those of the lives of poor people, and the national crisis of police violence, would not be there. But Tom Steyer—and his money—were invited, and so was Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, whose campaign is a mechanism for a freak show. This all may work, but it also may not, and it guarantees that people who live in places like Pittsburgh, in Atlanta, go partly unheard. There has to be a better way than this.
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