Stealing Home: Eminent Domain, Urban Renewal, and the Loss of Community

This article describes how the historic destruction of the Chavez Ravine neighborhood in Los Angeles--to build Dodger Stadium--paved the way for students to understand changes in their own neighborhood. Through slideshows, poems, newscast transcripts, field trips, and classroom activities, students navigated the complex history of Chavez Ravine to learn about gentrification, eminent domain, and urban renewal and to dispel the idea that oppression always happens at a distance. They learned how the residents of Chavez Ravine did not go silently from their homes but fought back. The author notes that, as a language arts teacher, her duty is to teach students to read and write effectively, but one cannot write without learning how to think about the world, to step back from individual pain and ask questions and find patterns. (Contains 4 resources.) [This is the second of a two-part article on "Stealing Home," a unit about ways the homes of people of color and poor people have been stolen through "race riots" and urban renewal. The first part, "Burned Out of Homes and History: Unearthing the Silenced Voices of the Tulsa Race Riot," was published in the fall 2012 issue of "Rethinking Schools," and found at EJ987597.]