From the Community

Community Servings Launches Thanksgiving Fundraiser with Support from Whole Foods

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Community Servings, a Jamaica Plain based nonprofit provider of medically tailored meals and nutrition services, is running its annual community bake sale-style fundraiser that helps feed chronically and critically ill neighbors across Massachusetts. The 28th annual Pie in the Sky fundraiser’s sponsor is Whole Foods Market, which will also donate proceeds from sales of select pies in stores ahead of Thanksgiving. “Pie in the Sky has been our most successful fundraiser historically, and, with the help of Whole Foods Market and other longtime sponsors and supporters, we won’t let the challenges of 2020 hinder our mission. In fact, this year calls for more pie!” said David B. Waters, CEO of Community Servings. “‘More pie’ means helping us make more nourishing meals that improve the health and well-being of thousands of individuals who we serve with deliveries from our Jamaica Plain kitchen.

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Arts
Kiki D reaches out to a fan as she performs at the River of Life Church stage at JP Porchfest, Saturday, July 9, 2016.

Photos: Hyde, Jackson Celebrate Porchfest

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Saturday's Jamaica Plain Porchfest drew thousands to porches, churches and parking lots all over the neighborhood. Here are photos from venues in the Hyde and Jackson Square areas during the third annual event. More Porchfest 2016 coverage:

Watch Julia Martin, 87, Slay the Electric Slide
Photos: Hyde, Jackson Celebrate Porchfest

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Neighborhood Life

Fight Over San Francisco Neighborhood’s Mural Has Lessons for JP

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The resolution of a community-dividing dispute in a San Francisco neighborhood has lessons for JP, one sociologist told the crowd at the most recent JP Forum. Beth Roy, a longtime mediator in the Bay Area, gave a talk titled, “Mediating Gentrification: How One Community Created Unity Out Of Divisiveness.”

Roy shared how she helped mediate an eight-year dispute in her own changing neighborhood of Bernal Heights. The San Francisco neighborhood is similar to JP, with an "urban village" feel, according to the San Francisco Gate. In 1980 the community branch library created vibrant murals on its exterior walls. And 30 years later, the adored branch library was being renovated.

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The patio outside the Harvest Coop on South Street
Business

Whole Foods is Killing the South Street Harvest

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SECOND UPDATE: The Coop announced it will close the South Street store in mid-April. UPDATE: The Harvest Coop board has announced it has made a decision — but hasn't made that decision public yet. ~~~~~

Members of Harvest Coop packed a board meeting Monday night to talk about the possible shuttering of the communally-run grocer's South Street location. Only members of the coop were allowed in to the tiny Forest Hills Street room where the meeting was held. As resident Kendra Nordin reports, the meeting was held in two shifts to accommodate all 60 people who showed up.

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Development
The back of a Hyde Square billboard still sports remains from what is probably an anti-displacement sign from the era of the Whole Foods battle

Tattered Banners, Ghosts of Gentrification Battles Past, Still Hang Over Hyde Square

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While walking to a meeting Monday night, I glanced at the back of the billboards above JP Knit & Stitch. Shreds of banners from the 2011 Whole Foods fight hang there still. That was the year the Whole Foods Market in Jamaica Plain became a flash point for the debate over the neighborhood's gentrification. The banners appeared in March 2011, as neighborhood discussions focused on the proposal for the upscale grocer to move in to the Hi-Lo Foods space. The owners of Hi-Lo sold after many years serving a primarily Latino clientele.

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Whole Foods Market in Jamaica Plain.
Police and Fire

Gazette: Documents Show Cops Monitored Whole Foods Protests

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The Jamaica Plain Gazette reports that newly-released documents detail how the Boston Regional Intelligence Center kept tabs on Occupy JP meetings, protests against Whole Foods moving to Hyde Square and even a vigil for one local activist's son. One JP resident who was a target of the surveillance, Robin Jacks, said the revelation made her feel a lot less safe, knowing that perfectly legal civic meetings were being watched while officials missed actual dangers like the Tsarnaev brothers. I'm quoted extensively in this piece about BRIC's monitoring of #OccupyBoston. http://t.co/xKymW6oT4M @onekade @fara1— Robin (@caulkthewagon) June 3, 2014

For the entire story, please click through to the Gazette.

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