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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSinging While Black: Oakland choir threatened with ‘nuisance’ fines, gentrifiers complaining.
Oakland choir threatened with nuisance fines after tech workers enter neighborhood
Members of a black church choir are blaming an influx of affluent tech workers for their group facing thousands of dollars in fines.
Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in West Oakland received a cease-and-desist letter from the city threatening them with $500 a day in fines plus a $3,500 nuisance fee, CBS San Francisco reports. Church members believe the sudden complaints about the choir are due to the fact the area is becoming gentrified.
Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in West Oakland received a cease-and-desist letter from the city threatening them with $500 a day in fines plus a $3,500 nuisance fee, CBS San Francisco reports. Church members believe the sudden complaints about the choir are due to the fact the area is becoming gentrified.
Kind of hard to believe because weve been here about 65 years in the community and all of a sudden we get some concerns about the noise, Thomas A Harris III, the pastor at Pleasant Grove, told the local CBS station.
The church just happens to be in a neighborhood full of the Victorian homes that characterize the Bay Area, and theyre being snapped up by wealthy tech industry workers, church officials told CBS.
Those persons who are just new arrivals should not come and try to change the culture that existed before they arrived here, George Holland, president of the local NAACP branch, told CBS. We cannot have people come attack churches about music.
The NAACP is also criticizing the way the city is handling the matter by simply slapping the long-standing church with threats instead of seeking a dialogue between the church and people making the complaints for a resolution.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/singing-while-black-oakland-choir-hit-with-nuisance-fines-after-tech-workers-enter-neighborhood/
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Singing While Black: Oakland choir threatened with ‘nuisance’ fines, gentrifiers complaining. (Original Post)
ariesgem
Oct 2015
OP
Downwinder
(12,869 posts)1. Freedom of Religion does not apply to a church choir?
Recursion
(56,582 posts)6. We lived next to a (white) Pentecostal church in Dallas
We called the cops on them most weekends because they were so damn loud, well past midnight. (Those of us on the block basically had a sign-up sheet for who would call on a given weekend.)
Lulu Belle
(70 posts)2. I would be happy to listen to the singing!
There's nothing like good, godly music to make a person feel great!
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)3. k&r
Oakland deserves better.
lpbk2713
(42,697 posts)4. That is interfering with their freedom of expression.
And they were expressing themselves that way years before the whiners moved in.
2naSalit
(86,083 posts)5. Inappropriate complaints
should be fined.
Liberal_in_LA
(44,397 posts)7. Kick
Prism
(5,815 posts)8. Oakland's about to get very interesting
And, to a lesser extent, Berkeley.
Igel
(35,199 posts)9. Here's a winning comment.
"Those persons who are just new arrivals should not come and try to change the culture that existed before they arrived here."
I keep hearing this. Sometimes it's considered evil, narrow-minded, exclusionary; sometimes enlightened, expansive, inclusionary.
A = A.
Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)10. Singing to sky fairies has no place in a modern secular nation!
logosoco
(3,208 posts)11. The music and
architecture are the few things I honestly like about religion.
I would be planning a lot of Christmas caroling if I was in this church!