The Invisible People of Plumsted, NJ
Lennar’s Private “Gated Community” Is Symbolically The Same as Trump’s Wall
Faux California winery & upscale Inn subsidized, while working people neglected
Is the intent to drive out the Invisible People and gentrify the town?
Trailer park in Plumsted NJ – note the fine trimmed lawn, proud flag & orderly homestead, virtually shouting out “dignity”.
Out of respect for their human dignity and privacy, I am not going to post photos of the Invisible People of Plumsted, NJ. We’ll just post some photos of a “Tale of Two Towns”.
I use the term “Invisible People” more broadly than Ralph Ellison’s 1952 timeless classic “Invisible Man” – to include not only race but class and collective political invisibility.
This runs counter to classics in photography, including the 1890 groundbreaking “How the Other Half Lives” by Jacob Riis, to New Deal photographers with the federal art project, who sought to capture the essential dignity of working people struggling day to day with poverty and oppression:
I’ll just show you where the invisible people of Plumsted live – and how their neglect is contrasted by the efforts of local officials to subsidize the lavish lifestyles of “the other 1%”.
delusions in Plumsted
Take a look at how the Invisible People live:
Look closely at that last photo – don’t you just love the hens in the front yard?
Plumsted officials rhetorically pride themselves as an agricultural town – but that means a lot more than the 6 acre “gentleman’s farm” horse farms.
It means working agriculture –
And working agriculture means agricultural workers – the Invisible People – and the housing and community services they need.
Ironically, Mid-Atlantic growers, an operation that employs lots of the Invisible People, maybe less than a quarter of a mile from Lennar’s gated community “Greenbriar at Crosswicks” – literally adjacent to it. Will Lennar build fences along the perimeter?
The Lennar “private gate” at the entrance to their development will serve the same symbolic function as Trump’s Wall.
I wonder if the Lennar marketing people considered all that in their “business plan”:
Market conditions … the effect of which, as reasonably determined by the Redeveloper, would materially or adversely affect the Redevelopeer’s ability to market and sell units at such prices and in such quantities as would enable the Redeveloper to achieve the unit sales, cash flow, and/or return on equity assumptions set forth in the Redeveloper’s business plan as included in its application for the Financial Agreement.
Salinas California farmworkers – Invisible People
The Invisible People have no activist support network or resources – a similar 454 unit housing development on a farm (with a new sewage treatment plant discharging to a small headwater stream) in Hunterdon County would bring out hundreds of opponents, environmental groups, media coverage, and lawsuits.
The Invisible people have no environmental group support, there is no local media, and only about 6 local people (including myself) spoke out in opposition to the project at the Land Use Board.
The Land Use Board expressed more concern for spooking the horses on the nearby horse farms than the interests and impacts on the Invisible People.
How will the Invisible People afford to pay thousands of dollars in legally mandated sewer connection fees and a new $100 a month sewer bill?
Or is the intent to drive out the Invisible People and gentrify the town?
Instead of addressing the needs of the Invisible People, Plumsted officials – including religious leaders and State Legislators – seek to provide public taxpayer subsidies and government approvals to private “gated communities” and faux California wineries and fancy upscale Inn’s.
So let’s take a look at that:
How do these conditions and gross inequalities exist side by side is such close proximity?
If this outrage doesn’t pique the interests of some investigative reporters and social justice activists out there, we’ll do some additional work and explain how the inbred and self serving Dancer crowd and Ocean County Republican machine have pulled this all off, under color of State and local government powers.
