James Baldwin is one of my heroes.  His book Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone is one of my favorites.  In 1963 he took a trip to San Francisco to analyze the deeper aspects of the Black community in a city that professes (still to this day) to be a stronghold of progressive thought, but can’t always deliver on that promise.

This documentary is amazing (fullscreen version here).  I’ve never seen video of James until I saw this video posted at Africa is a Country blog. It’s also amazing to see the old film footage of San Francisco, in neighborhoods that I work in today, dealing with some of the same issues.

This is San Francisco at the start of the redevelopment project, a project that has left a deep scar on the face of the city. It’s not necessarily a visible scar unless you knew what was there before, but you can get an idea of where we’re at right now by watching this and this.

… but it seemed that today, from the older black man who said, “happy Obama day young man,” to my co-workers who seemed poised to take on the challenges of uplifting the youth of our community with new vitality and motivation, people were really ready to embrace the precedent that the new president has set out for us!  As we’ve been saying, we are the change!