West Side Stories (review)

Oral history has always been concerned with capturing the voices of the voiceless, and new technologies are enabling oral historians to preserve and present these memories in new and exciting ways. As the ongoing dispossession of San Francisco Bay Area residents erases countless individuals and communities from the landscape, two projects are intervening by joining oral history and digital mapping software. Both Youth Radio’s West Side Stories and the various maps created by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project use oral history to work against this disappearance, not only preserving memories but also attempting to preserve the communities themselves. Their use of oral history is both novel and instructive for how oral historians everywhere can present their work in productive and innovative ways.

West Side Stories, developed by Oakland-based media production company Youth Radio, tells the story of gentrification around West Oakland, directly across the bay from downtown San Francisco. The website’s landing page explains the importance of the histories presented: “We tend to talk about gentrification as one story: newcomers displace longtime residents, erasing history and disrupting culture in the process. But living through dramatic neighborhood change always brings up many stories. . . . If you’re new to a place, it’s good to know a thing or two about its history” (West Side Stories, Youth Radio, accessed May 1, 2016, www.youthradio.org/westsidestories). The website presents these stories together—narratives of longtime residents and newcomers—finding moments of connection between them and offering a nuanced understanding of the process of change.

West Side Stories presents glimpses into the lived reality of gentrification, showing a variety of perspectives. Across an interactive map of the city, it brings together artwork, text, videos, and audio snippets that offer a snapshot of the changes happening throughout the Bay Area. One icon plays clips of interviews from an open house in a rapidly changing neighborhood. Another plays a history of the area dictated by Black Panther Ericka Huggins and includes a snippet of Angela Davis’s iconic Vietnam War speech. At an icon located in a West Oakland transit station, the website offers a history of turf dancing, a street dance commonly seen on the trains that ferry people between the East Bay and San Francisco. Below the text a video shows a handful of young people performing on the train, interspersed with snippets of dance lessons and local history. Together these peeks into the daily life of various Oakland residents and newcomers paint a complicated picture of the changes happening in and around the city. Allowing visitors to listen simultaneously to locals hoping to stay in the city and out-of-towners looking for a little excitement, the website offers a powerful tool for understanding the inner workings of gentrification on the smallest of scales.

Expanding to encompass more of the Bay Area, the Narratives of Displacement and Resistance map from the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project shares stories of people whose lives have been disrupted by the gentrification of their neighborhoods and the increasingly common eviction notices plastered on front doors around the area. The project is invested in memory work but goes further, aiming to intervene in this disruption in the present by providing data and analysis that can be used to help organize resistance. The website explains, “By collecting oral histories the project creates a living archive of people and places, documenting deep and detailed neighborhood and personal histories”; the aim is to create “a counter-narrative to more dominant archives that elide detail and attention to legacy, culture, and loss in the city” (“About the Narratives of Displacement Oral History Project,” Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, accessed May 1, 2016, http://www.antievictionmap.com/about-the-narratives-of-displacement). Focusing both on changing the way the present plays out and the way it is remembered, the project is an excellent example of oral history engaging in the real world.

The...