An Abraham Lincoln lookalike visited Fort Greene on President’s Day to promote Quicken Loans. They promo team was offering $25 to put a photo of the ersatz Abe and #quickenloans on your Facebook page. I tried on my cellphone without success. The young girl gave me a card for trying and I was to have the extra money, which I used at the Latino liquor store to purchase two bottles of wine for $10.

Some things never change.

Spike Lee doesn’t feel the same way about Fort Greene with good reason.

At a speech at Pratt Institute the film director attacked gentrification as an invasion of uncool white motherfuckers who call the police to quiet his jazz playing father and white couples bogarting Fort Greene like it was their birth right.

He’s actually very funny about how realtors changed Bushwick to East Williamsburg, why there’s more police protection and better schools.

This telling of the truth was met with anger by the newcomers and Uncle Tims like John McWhorter of Time Magazine without any mention of economic cleansing of Harlem, the Lower East Side, the East Village, and Brooklyn.

Spike Lee was speaking about reverse migration and affordable housing.

“Where are we going to go?”

“People can not afford to live here anymore.”

I know the story.

I was moved out of my place on East 10th Street.

I had lived there almost thirty years.

They and we know who they are don’t want us here.

In Russia they call it a pogram.

‘They’ want the poor, minorities, and the disenfranchised to leave without a forwarding address.

Well, we ain’t going right yet and I applaud Spike Lee telling the truth.

It has to be said and said by ‘us’.

Not them.

It’s not a question of race.

It is a question of class.

To see Spike Lee’s speech at Pratt Institute please go to this URL