back in the day when i was an environmental justice organizer in one of san francisco's poorest and most polluted neighborhood i came up with a pithy little acronym - TWIMBY - to describe what appeared to me to be the aggressive emiseration of working class communities and communities of color even as the elites were enriching themselves.
as our country hurtles toward an economic abyss and is buffeted by the winds of the shock doctrine it seems to me that the term is becoming all the more relevant.
TWIMBY was intended as a take off of the Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) activism prevalent in most metropolitan areas as generally wealthy communities resist affordable housing and other development in order to maintain their illusion of separateness from the rest of society. but it was meant to be far more than a sarcastic little saying.
living in a poor part of san francisco i saw first hand the horrible disinvestment in public housing, the shunting of pollution into virtual "environmental sacrifice zones," segregation, general misery all the while the city boomed and the budget swelled. TWIMBY seemed to be the perfect way of describing such a geography
and TWIMBY now seems appropriate for understanding what our country has become these past eight years. cities drowning, income inequality rising, the natural environment exploited and desecrated to the brink of collapse, all the while our elites party and feast from the public trough. just like in those other places that we consider
as many of the folks here, i have a great deal of hope that we can reverse the slide. but i am also increasingly worried that our elites - the ones in power who ostensibly support us and our aims - are simply not up for the task of keeping us from sliding into a very deep hole.
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