Photo by Peter Maiden
BY ALINE REED
By asking this question some might think this is to be a bash piece against Fresno. In truth, it is quite the opposite.
This is not a feel-good piece either. I ask the question because I truly believe: When you know better, you do better.
When my parents, Milton and Corine Reed, moved into a boarding house on Anna Street in 1948, they were part of the last leg of the Great Migration of Blacks from Texas, looking for a better life in California.
My father served in the U.S. Navy, Pacific Theater, in World War II. They were then redlined into Edison Heights and built a home that was completed in 1950.
I share my family history because early Fresno was founded by Southerners, and people from the South always want to know who your people are.
Look at the past and question your future. Southwest Fresno where slaughterhouses were plentiful and putrid smells polluted the air and that still has a life expectancy 20 years less than residents living in northeast and northwest Fresno.
When former police chief and current Mayor Jerry Dyer can ask Fresnans to comply with ICE agents, there is something seriously wrong with Fresno.
When the current Police Chief Mindy Casto and Fresno Unified School District Superintendent Misty Her asked students to squash their First Amendment rights and not protest ICE activities, something is seriously wrong with Fresno.
While Southwest Fresno is being actively gentrified while having zero pharmacies, zero banks, zero movie theaters, we must state—there is something seriously wrong with Fresno.
Where is the political will to change this scenario? Amnesia occurs when talking about the chokehold developers have on Fresno, or, how if not for Black people, Fresno would not have district-specific City Council seats. No more citywide voting for southwest Fresno (thank you Reich brothers).
I have all the hope in the world that Fresno can turn this around. If true equality and diversity cannot work here, it won’t work anywhere.
Seriously. Our white brothers and sisters have to abandon their comfort zones and acknowledge their white privilege. If Black, Brown and Asian people can live it, surely you can admit it exists.
I was lucky to spend part of my formative years in San Francisco. My school was uber diverse. Love your neighbor enough to be a good and decent ally. For those of you who already are, I am not addressing you. But, those of you who put on and take off your liberal progressive beliefs like a coat, yeah, I’m talking to you.
I want to get to the point where when someone asks, “What is wrong with Fresno?” I can honestly answer, “nothing.”
*****
Aline Reed was born in Fresno and raised in both Fresno and San Francisco. She graduated from Fresno State in 1981. She is former chairperson for the Fresno Freedom School where she is still a volunteer, a member of the Social Justice Book Club and an activist for all things concerning southwest Fresno.
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