@Evan Parker
1. Do you think gentrification is an issue? YES.
2. Do I struggle with the reality that I am part of pricing people out of their communities? NO.
3. Do I ever think of it that way? YES.
4. Do I feel bad about contributing to the gentrification of communities? NO.
5. What are the alternatives? FEW TO NONE.
I've answered your questions, Evan.
Now let me tell you a story and ask you something.
I'm Greek, born in Greece of ethnic Greek parents, Greek citizen, speak the language, lived, worked, and paid taxes there for seven years as an adult.
In the year 1452, the Ottoman Empire invaded Constantinople and took the city, the capital of the Greek world. Those parts of the Greek world that were not already being subjugated by various Italian principalities and the Ottoman Empire fell under the full control of the people who self-identified as Turks. The people were oppressed by outrageous taxes, many children were snatched away from their families, there were forcible religious conversions, widespread sexual slavery to the polygamous Turks, many churches were turned into mosques, and all the Greek people of the capital of Byzantium and its hinterland were declared subject forever to Mehmet the Conqueror and his issue
Approximately 400 years later, in a series of bloody wars that lasted the better part of a century, the Greek people (with a great deal of help) succeeded in winning back approximately HALF of what were their ancestral lands, the western half.
Ready for my questions, Evan?
1. Are you ready to march by our side when we invade what is today the Republic of Turkey to take back the rest of our ancestral lands?
2. Will you be there, cheering us on when we force Turkey to give up what it their largest and most splendid city today, Istanbul, the city that they stole from us, and all the most valuable lands in the west of the Asia Minor landmass?
3. Tell me, Evan, when was the last time you gave two s**** about the centuries-long plight of the Greek people?
4. About our long enslavement, about the social problems that continue to plague the half-formed country after 400 years of slavery, the long-term knock-on effects of being the impoverished, denuded, robbed, and cheated father of all of Europe, of all of western civilization?
Let me guess, you didn't even know most of this story (and of course there's a lot more). You don't want to know. You have more important things to worry about than justice for my people.
Because we're a minority in this country, and our many problems don't directly affect you.
No, we the Greeks have been well and properly screwed by history from 1452 to the present day, because the world is an unfair and cruel place to those who think there really are such things as decency and justice, rather than just shadows on a wall and lies used by the strong to maintain the status quo that exists and endlessly profits them.
In this world, justice, right and wrong, only matter between parties of equal power. Other than that, the strong do whatever they want and the weak suffer whatever they must.
Get strong, Evan, and stop asking after justice.
