Operation Brownsville: Why an Area of Pensacola that Has Been Begging for a Clean-Up Effort is Finally Getting It

Hint: It's the Economic Potential of Downtown Development, Stupid!

Timothy Sexton, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Feb 11, 2007 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

Operation Brownsville is an organized attempt to ambush and drive out drug dealers, prostitutes and other unsavory elements from one of the oldest and most historic sections of Pensacola, Fl. My formative years were spent in Brownsville, in a house on Mobile Highway with my grandparents, mother, uncles, aunts and cousins. My grandmother was a palmist; the oldest and longest-lasting palm reader in Pensacola's history. Back then, and we're talking the 1960s, Brownsville was dominated by mostly lower class white families. It was a nice place to live, during a time when you could count on your neighbors to help you out. I had my very first crush when I was living in Brownsville; one of my Uncle Henry's girlfriends. It was a time when kids could get more enjoyment out of playing with the box that a new refrigerator came in than kids today get from Nintendo and Playstation game consoles. Over the decades as the neighborhood stores that dotted the neighborhood were forced to close with the influx of this newfangled consumer idea called a "mall" Brownsville began to deteriorate. By that time my family had long since moved elsewhere. Brownsville was still mostly dominated by lower class white people who could depend on each other, but a newer element had mad themselves known.

The same streets that I had played in as a kid were now habitually populated by prostitutes; not your Disneyfied Julia Roberts type, but ones even uglier than her. Drug deals took place at every hour of the day. Recently, a decomposed body was discovered that apparently had been there for several months; it was the smell that tipped the locals off. This past week Operation Brownsville was announced. It is a concerted effort to drive out drug dealers, tear down dilapidated buildings and essentially bring the area back to respectability. The question, of course, is why? Why now? Why has it taken so long for Pensacola to focus on a low income area that has been loudly-even shrilly-crying out for help for years?

I think I can answer that, with a little help from Mr. Marx. Karl Marx has said that all of history has been driven by class struggle. Free marketers and capitalists scoff at this idea, of course, perhaps because it hits just a little too closely to home. I'll tell you why Operation Brownsville is taking place now and I'll tell you why it took so long and I'll tell you how it is that 19^th century writer Karl Marx could have predicted this series of events. Last November Pensacola city residents took to the polls and voted in a controversial initiative to turn a spot of land in downtown Pensacola into a tourist's Valhalla, complete with a multimillion dollar baseball field despite the fact that Pensacola hasn't been able to adequately trump up interest in supporting a minor league baseball team since before I was a kid playing in Brownsville. Millions upon millions of dollars are going into this idea and not just in the park itself. All along the watchtower, as it were, condos are going up at a spectacular rate. On just about every major artery from the outskirts of Pensacola to the downtown area, these monstrosities are being built faster than you can say "kickbacks to politicians."

Mobile Highway, the aorta of Brownsville, is the major line that takes visitors from I-10 to the downtown area where this tourist Mecca will be built. Brownsville is, without question, an ugly stretch of town. And I'm not just talking about the hookers. It doesn't make Pensacola look good. And so, this concerted effort to drive out the bad element.

Of course, bad pennies always turn up somewhere and a bad check will always come due. Somewhere in Pensacola there is a neighborhood that isn't a main artery from the interstate to downtown development. And the ugly hookers and the drug dealers will wind up there. Meanwhile, within a few months the historic old houses and schools and churches of Brownsville will more than likely disappear as new ugly steel monstrosities that current day residents cannot afford begin popping up. You know, those 800 square foot condos that proudly advertise themselves as "Starting from $200,000" as if this is something to actually be proud of. Most people in Brownsville are renters, not owners, so they won't benefit at all from selling these houses and this land for a big profit to greedy land speculators and condo builders. Where will these people-these good, hard-working people-wind up?

Probably on that stretch of land where the hookers and drug dealers will be. Just another example of how Karl Marx was right about so very much.

Published by Timothy Sexton - Featured Contributor in Arts & Entertainment

Timothy Sexton was named this site's very first Writer of the Year. Today he has several columns on Yahoo Movies and a weekly column on The Simpsons on Yahoo TV. He has published over 8,000 articles coverin... View profile

Operation Brownsville: Why an Area of Pensacola that Has Been Begging for a Clean-Up Effort is Finally Getting It

Hint: It's the Economic Potential of Downtown Development, Stupid!

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