COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...

12 It was important for me to be truthful in my representation of myself and associate myself as a student.
In doing so, I gained important insight into how individuals in the neighborhood perceived my “newcomer
status.”
13 “Ghettoization” is the process when groups of people are locked into cities, sometimes into the same
cities, and locked into the poverty areas of cities, areas that have poor institutional services and poor
housing (Moore 1981:280).
14 Anderson (1990:167) explains the ghetto symbolizes persistent poverty and imminent danger, personified
in the men who walk the streets.
15 The St. HOPE Corporation is an outgrowth of St. HOPE Academy and was founded in 1989 by
basketball star Kevin Johnson, who was raised in Oak Park. The St. HOPE Corporation has since grown
into a multi-faceted organization focused on economic, social, and intellectual redevelopment (Simpson
2004:119). In 2008, Kevin Johnson was elected mayor of Sacramento.
16 Amin and Graham (1997:422) states, “the difference between public spaces as a source of threat and fear,
and public spaces as an arena of active civic life rests to a considerable degree on whether they, and the
general urban and social and political milieu enveloping them, are spaces of social interaction.”
17 “Being in the city is not about claiming abstract rights or about an essentialized ideal that transcends
race, gender, and sex and it is not about an imagined or perfect ideal state shared by all. It is about the right
to citizenship for all, the right to shape and influence” (Amin and Thrift 2002:142). Deutsche (1999:195)
also argues, “It is about the ‘equal right to politics for all people’” (Deutsche 1999:195).
18 Pseudonyms have been used to keep the anonymity of liquors stores in Oak Park.
19 A couple of the same Board members who were coordinating the Neighborhood Association meetings
from 2005-2006 are currently Board members.
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