The New York Times has a great requiem for Jimmie Lee Robinson, a Chicago-native blues guitarist/vocalist who fought the gentrification of the neighborhood near U. Chicago where he learned his trade. "A Chicago Bluesman, Reaching Crossroads, Gives Up His Fights."
Watching NYU community gobble up the immigrant neighborhoods of the East Village... replacing genuine ethnic restaurants with the Taco Bells and KFC's that suburban students prefer... it's not hard to understand that Robinson had reasons to fight for a neighborhood that others simply saw as delapidated.
"It was the bullet that killed him, the coroner said, but he had bone cancer and was dying anyway.
Some here say the same about Maxwell Street, the historic and once-colorful strip of merchants and musicians on the city's Near West Side, where Mr. Robinson spent his whole life, playing the blues and, in the end, fighting to stop urban redevelopment and its wrecking crews. In the end, his efforts were futile.
People here call it death by gentrification."
