Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I’ve been hibernating.

While I was aware that Grasslands (not ‘Grassroots’, my bad) has been around since the 90s, your comment has made me realise that Footscray isn’t the only thing that has changed; my definition for ‘gentrification’ has also morphed over the years.

As a teenager, I saw well-maintained Victorian mansions with English gardens and luxury European cars parked in bluestone driveways as being gentrified. Even now, there’s very little of that in Footscray.

Right now, I see gentrification in organic grocers, inner city boutiques that support local designers, and hybrid cars. It’s the luxury of ethics, i.e., having the money to buy the more expensive, organically grown pears as opposed to a box of bruised apples at the end of market day.

Footscray has had Grasslands and a strong community arts centre for ages, but it’s only in the last few years that such initiatives have been embraced by not just the radical left but also the mainstream middle classes. This plus luxury boutique apartments screams gentrification. Being mainstream middle class, born and bred in the gentrified suburb of Camberwell*, with a sudden itch to settle in Footscray, I should know.

TL.

*I’m not white, but that’s a mere technicality.

I was born in Footscray, went to school here, still live here and I’m in my 20s. Everywhere inner-city will become more gentrified over time, but I actually think Footscray has fared pretty well considering how Yarraville and Seddon have turned out.

I understand the fears of Footscray becoming gentrified & loosing it’s cultural heritage. But I also can’t help but feel irritated when the tag is applied by those who don’t live here. Someone I met recently asked if I’d moved here Footscray because it was becoming gentrified. Because a white person with an education couldn’t possibly have been BORN in the suburb! Most white people i know living here are either a) living below the poverty line or b)were born & raised here.

BTW grassroots grocery has been in Footscray for around 20 years! The arts centre was established back in the early 70s. There are a number of long-running ‘socially aware’ groups/initiatives based here and always have been. It’s just that most people didn’t know this about Footscray. Anarchist organisation Food not Bombs used to serve food here a few years back but seem to have stopped for some reason (anyone know about this?)

Weirdly Footscray started off a bougie town full of monarchists! hence why the Western Bulldogs play under the colours red, white and blue… and were originally known as the Footscray Imperials…

Finally, one note in passing on your view that, “If we do not demand of white heterosexual middle-class males a duty to reflect racist, sexist, homophobic values, why should we presume substantive representation of activist minority views from minority representatives?” I believe white heterosexual middle-class male views are pervasive regardless, and that in this context minority representation/visibility is a demand we should indeed always presume regardless. Besides, the two are not really comparable, arising from different trajectories.

Again, the reason why Penny Wong (and people like Obama or even Gillard) cannot be “accountable” in regards to greater cultural, economic, gender or racial equality, and ultimately political equality, is, as you’ve explained, due to the fact that Penny Wong identifies with the ALP first and foremost. The ALP’s parliamentarian, reformist outlook as a bourgeois-worker’s party with roots in the working class via the trade union leadership means that more diversity (although welcomed) amongst political parities is perhaps not the answer.

Extra-parliamentary grass-root movement is (such as the ongoing push for same-sex marriage from below in Australia, which largely explains Penny Wong’s shift in perspective on the issue, regardless of sexuality). This is not to say either that she’s a mere “token” for opportunism on the part of politicians, for the danger which I believe you’ve outlined in your article would be to fall back into an essentialist, covertly racist and sexist undertone dismissing her progressive role within the ALP as a willy-nilly spokeswoman for the lesbian and Asian-Australian community. However, one needs to question capitalism’s ability to repackage (i.e. domesticate) even its most subaltern elements. In the end, Penny Wong is merely an atomised individual, and one that serves the interests of corporate Australia at that, so that we shouldn’t look too much to her for any substantial or radical social change in the future.

Identity: personal/cultural is a morass, especially in a world experiencing the blurring-lines of peoples in transit all over the planet and the fight for ‘country’ and the rights of being a ‘people’ with particular cultural rights.