According to Curbed Atlanta, a bungalow in Atlanta's Edgewood neighborhood, which is about three miles east of downtown Atlanta, has become known as the "teardown house" and is serving as a livable protest against neighborhood gentrification. The house has also become a canvas for local artists, so keeping it painted is not an issue. The home is owned and occupied by Marlon Kautz, who also runs Teardown Community, an activist organization whose members and affiliates use the house as a base to plan resistance measures against what they see as economic exploitation and police brutality.
The home’s facade is purple, and just below the roof, spray-painted in white, is “Cop Watch.” Next to the front door, below a set of windows, you’ll see “NO COPS” in stenciled characters surrounded by yellow paint. “POWER TO THE PEOPLE” is painted just beneath that, in red.
Painted phrases and a paper flyer promoting Edgewood Free Grocery Day adorn the front of The Teardown House.“The Teardown Community is an intentional community,” Kautz says at the property on a recent, dreary weekend. “We build infrastructure for community solidarity and popular struggle. It’s a bunch of fancy words, but basically we help support social and protest movements that are trying to change society for the better. We do work directly in the community, where we’re able to help people who are having a hard time, to promote a sense of people helping each other.”
By and large, Edgewood itself is between hard and easy times, and Mayson Avenue exemplifies how the neighborhood’s newcomers aren’t exactly struggling as much as some residents who may have been there for generations.
