By Nayaba Arinde
Editor at Large
Brooklynites are known for boldness, definitely always ready for a fight for survival for the streets and in them. In between finding ways to tackle inner city violence in these pre-summer weeks, confronting the life-defining, rent-exploding gentrification, is the conversation about being a part of Black Brooklyn fighting for community control.

Every few years the discussion comes up regarding never was it more apparent that a comprehensive workable Black Agenda is needed to be decided, ratified, and enacted.

This, alongside the acknowledgement of stark population change, 22,000 Black Brooklynites have left the area, and 200,000 Black people have left New York since 2010.
Schools, churches (with ever-decreasing congregations), community boards, even supermarkets etc., are seeing the effects of the influx of a new white population which economics has led to something of a Black exodus from areas like Brooklyn and Harlem, where their families have lived for generations.
This June, a panel of community advocates and experts will be looking into, if not stemming the flow, at least addressing a way to retain Black Brooklyn community control

The Center for Brooklyn History (CBH) is hosting a panel on Black Brooklyn Fighting for Community Control on June 18th, 2026 (at 128 Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn). 6.30pm). They said, “As Black residents of Brooklyn neighborhoods like Brownsville and East New York continue to confront displacement, inequality, and questions of who has the power to shape community life, what can earlier movements for self-determination teach us about the present moment? And how can literature amplify the cause?”

CBH said that the evening will bring together organizers, educators, cultural workers, and community leaders. The event, they stated, has been inspired by the publication of Abigail Savitch-Lew’s novel Livonia Chow Mein, “This conversation explores the long history of community control movements in historically Black Brooklyn neighborhoods, from the Ocean Hill-Brownsville school struggles of the late 1960s, to the culturally and politically groundbreaking organization The East in the 1970s, to today’s community land trust movement.”

“We have been asking the question for decades: Who should control the institutions, politics, businesses, resources, and schools within Black communities?” Assemblywoman Latrice Walker told Our Time Press. “From my perspective, the people who live in communities of color like Brownsville and East New York should be at the forefront of every decision that affects community well-being, especially the issues of displacement and inequality.

That includes combatting predatory practices like deed theft that results in robbing our families of home ownership and generational wealth. It also includes control of the schools in our community, so that we can make sure our children not only master the necessary academic tools, but also have the cultural competency to succeed.”

The Assembly District 55 rep, covering Brownsville, and portions of Ocean Hill, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Crown Heights concluded, “This was at the crux of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville battle over schools in the late 1960s. In many ways, the same issues remain.”



The CBH panel includes organizer Mark Winston Griffith, founding Executive Director of the Brooklyn Movement Center, moderating this discussion with Savitch-Lew; Debra Ack founding member of East New York Community Land Trust; Lumumba Akinwole-Bandele, educator and cultural activist, who grew up within The East; and artist Monifa Edwards who was a student during the historic Ocean Hill-Brownsville teachers’ strike.

CBH said the panel discussion will ask, “Who gets to shape a neighborhood’s future? What does self-determination look like across generations? And what can communities build for themselves in the face of systemic inequity and displacement?”

With the relocation of thousands of individuals, couples and families, in areas like Central Brooklyn, where gentrification is rampant, entitled bad actors seek to completely change the essence of the neighborhoods, and real estate groups are building market rate properties in every space available, or demolishing mom-and-pop stores to build–this is an ongoing topic citywide.
In the decade between 2010 and 2020, over 22,000 Black residents left their homes in Bed-Stuy, while almost 30,000 white residents moved in.

Some locals have charged that the inception of this startling demographic shift has been the doubling and tripling rents both caused by–and leading to–increased overwhelming gentrification; and the political inability or unwillingness to build sufficient real affordable housing over the years; and unchecked real estate developers building with massive tax breaks and corporate encouragement, as opposed to embracing public housing responsibility.

The Black Exodus over the last two decades saw New York City as a whole losing roughly 200,000 Black residents. Activist Carla Marie Davis noted on social media that in Central Brooklyn, the Black population share shrank from nearly 70% in 2000 to just over 47%. She declared that the demographic shift, “is a direct result of policy decisions that place greed over the needs of the people instead of making meaningful investments in deeply affordable housing and mental assistance.”

Back in 2021, the online newspaper Patch wrote that the 2020 Census showed that “Harlem gained more than 18,000 white residents since 2010 while …the neighborhood’s Black population declined by 10,805 people between 2010 and 2020… The number of Hispanic people dropped by 2,015.”

The “New Great Migration” has pushed people out of New York areas like Bed Stuy to neighborhoods like Canarsie, which has seen a steady increase in its Black population.
“For Black Brooklyn to have community control, we must continue to build our institutions. It is in our hands,” CBH panelist Lumumba Akinwole-Bandele told Our Time Press.

“Fighting for community control is in our history with The East. But, now, we are facing mass gentrification with some people who feel entitled to have access to our spaces, and have an active opinion on how we operate within our own neighborhood. It is not possible to detach this entitlement from white supremacy.”

How to challenge this programmed strategy?
“The trajectory we are on is to continue building our institutions, that is what will lead to our self-determination. Giving us hope and a blueprint is streets like Tompkins Avenue in Bed Stuy. It has the most Black woman-owned businesses in Central Brooklyn. This is an example that should be duplicated, so that in supporting these Black stores and organizations, gives us the self-empowerment that we need to move forward, and keep control of the communities in which we have lived for generations.”

Former City Councilman and former Assemblyman Charles Barron told Our Time Press, “The idea of community control is solid. The first edict of the ten point program of the Black Panther Party (in which I was a member), was that we wanted the power to control the destiny of our Black community. We must control all of the institutions which govern our lives.”
Politics can be part of the solution, he said.

“We do have the power to win local, city council and state assembly seats across the city and the country.” The oftentimes controversial, self-named “elected activist” suggested that the solution lies in creating a “Strong Black radical, revolutionary movement to control the local electoral politics…Consolidating community power is the real equalizer.”