Mustafa Abdul-Salaam
Mustafa Abdul-Salaam remembers how tough it was to include his neighbors’ voices in the development of New Haven’s Science Park — and is bringing insights gained back then to a last-stand anti-gentrification battle in the nation’s capital.
Abdul-Salaam spoke about those insights and that quest during an interview on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.”
Abdul-Salaam has been spearheading a grassroots effort to insert a citizens’ agenda into investors’ and city officials’ plans to redevelop Washington, D.C.’s 8th Ward. That district is one of the last overwhelmingly Black areas in a city once known as “Chocolate City” until new investment and gentrification pushed people of color and working families out of other neighborhoods.
“D.C. is ground zero for gentrification. There are more cranes in the sky than birds,” said Abdul-Salaam.
Ward 8, historically a “dumping ground for low-income people” on the other side of the Anacostia River from the heart of the capital, is expected to see building to accommodate 15,000 new residents over the next decade thanks to an expansion of the nearby federal homeland security complex, Abdul-Salaam said.
A battle has ensued about how to avoid a repeat of what happened elsewhere in D.C.: displacement and a lack of opportunities for existing residents to share in that growth. (Read more about the battle for the future of the area here and here.)
Enter Community Economic Development Partners. As the group’s managing partner, Abdul-Salaam obtained support to conduct a years-long “bottom-up” plan with Ward 8 neighbors about the changing neighborhood. They’ve now completed that plan, which calls for entrepreneur coops, downpayment assistance and credit repair for aspiring homeowners, a housing improvement fund for current homeowners, industry-specific back-office help and technical assistance for existing small businesses, youth opportunities, workforce development, and universal guaranteed basic income.
Now the task is to convince public officials and developers to negotiate with the group on the plan.
Back in the 1980s, when the Science Park tech incubator emerged from the ashes of the old Winchester rifle factory complex in New Haven’s Newhallville neighborhood, officials met with some neighbors and heads of organizations to describe the plans and ask for support. But they didn’t have a clearly defined group of organized neighbors with a developed agenda to engage with, Abdul-Salaam recalled. And that mattered.
Abdul-Salaam was there. He grew up in New Haven, was a UConn basketball star in the mid-1970s. When Science Park started, he led a community nonprofit called the Newhallville Restoration Corporation.
“The missing piece was the lack of community involvement,” he recalled. “True community engagement” goes beyond just “telling people what you want to do” and asking them to “sign off on it,” he said.
“When you come into a community like Ward 8 or New Haven, it’s who you talk to” and how “you partner with us.”
Part of the challenge: “The community has to be well-organized” so officials and builders know whom to deal with and so they have concrete proposals to consider, Abdul-Salaam continued. That requires community organizing, which requires “resources.” In lower-income neighborhoods that’s an extra challenge, because neighbors “engage in day-to-day struggles for survival” that can crowd out time or energy for long-range communal agenda-setting.
Since that time, Abdul-Salaam has made a career out of working on that community-powered development agenda-setting. Now that he and his D.C. neighbors have a plan in hand, he’s hoping to accomplish what eluded Newhallville back in the day.
“If you invest in communities from the bottom up,” he argued, “they can take care of themselves.”
Click on the video to watch the full interview with Mustafa Abdul-Salaam on “Dateline New Haven.”
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