So when I met some activists who were involved in Save Central Square, I got involved.

At issue was the destruction of a large building on the corner of Mass Ave and Prospect street. There was a slew of locally owned businesses there, most of which had been in operation for decades. More than that, it was a kind of community nexus point. There was a nifty cheap old diner, a leftist book collective, a corner store owned by a local family, an old fashioned cigar shop, and locally owned clothing shops that had been there for decades. A wide variety of folks from the neighborhood were there daily. So people were up in arms over the proposal to raze the building, kick out all the little shops and businesses, and put up eleven stories of high-priced apartments and shopfronts in its place.

I first participated in the anti-Starbucks protest across the street. This was an offshoot of the larger struggle to save the center of Central Square from destruction, since the new Starbucks signified the gentrification that was happening. For months I stood out front in sun, rain, and snow. At first, I told people not to go inside. But as time went on, I started asking why they wanted to. A few owned stock, liked a product, or even liked the company. But the vast majority would say, yes, its too bad what's happening here, all the mom and pop businesses shutting down. Great! I'd say, and give them a list of local coffee shops nearby. And they'd sigh, pull out their wallets, and say, Yes, but there's nothing I can do. I never forgot that sense of disempowerment people seemed to have about the destruction of their own neighborhood—they didn't think that the money they were spending was a kind of power.

Many of the people involved in Save Central Square were facing eviction—either legal, or de facto because of the rents that were tripling and quadrupling overnight. This gave a kind of desperation and unhappy passion to the proceedings. Not only were they going to lose their homes—there wasn't even going to be this familiar place to gather. Many of the folks I met had lived there for decades—there was a very intense sense of community in Central Square, back then.

We tried to get concession after concession passed to save all those places. Measures for affordable units, binding clauses so the businesses would be given back their spaces when the new building was complete, provision for a courtyard that wasn't fenced in and guarded… we wrote traffic reports, local business reports, sun and shade reports, all to no avail.

Zoning board meetings were like a circus. The first one I went to was more like a Gallery performance, complete with orations, poetry, artwork, and even a song or two. The room was packed. As the debacle progressed, the poetry vanished and was replaced by demands and angry outbursts. The Holmes representatives said different things each week, banking on what they thought the Board wanted to hear, and had even exaggerated the size of the apartments they were building. Someone from our group got inside and measured them after construction began. And of course, the folks at Holmes Trust had prepared a plan for something much worse than what they actually wanted, in order to scare the zoning board into letting them build what stands there today.

I met one fellow when we got in touch to build a phone tree, in order to call people in to fight evictions. He fought eviction from his place for years. Next l met another, who was getting evicted, too. Then there was the committed activist living in the increasingly expensive YMCA. Not to mention the man who slept outside for a year to qualify for affordable housing. These are some of the few who managed to remain in the area, after many battles—tooth and nail. The others were scattered to the winds.

The only concession we got can be seen today—the green marble Facade over CVS. As a last-ditch measure to try and stop the building, David (our housing-activist lawyer friend) threw in a historic preservation request to save the Facade. It's practically a joke, and it's all that remains. CVS is the only original business to remain on the property. They had high-paid corporate lawyers, instead of a good-hearted but tattered group of people facing eviction, to help them negotiate with the Holmes Trust.

If you go to the 1369 coffee house, you can see a tiny, hand-painted poster, with the real date and place of one of the last zoning board meetings, in the mural on the cafe's wall. Its one of the last remains of that community, in many ways. Central Square is a shadow of it's former self. Corporate chain stores like the Gap, Payless, and Supercuts line the streets. And instead of a thriving bustle of local shops and affordable eateries, the new Holmes building is the dreary home of a bank, a cellphone store, and a couple fast food windows.

There is a tradition of locally-owned food and retail establishments functioning as informal centers for local people to gather and engage in dialogue. Most corporate chains are designed to actively discourage this behavior in favor of the quick, focused sell. While this has enabled them to pay the insane rents in Central Square, it has also helped erode a deeply unique community that was decades in the making. After all, who gathers together in cell phone stores and bank lobbies?

What community ever grows in such drab, utilitarian houses of commerce? And in such a high-rent district as Central Square has so tragically become, can community ever really form? lt's a question huge property owners need to consider, as whole communities like ours are torn down for their profit.