‘Gas Planting’ is a poem for everyone buried around, or displaced and overshadowed by, development at Tropicana Field

We are raised. This was my experience as I wrote the poem “Gas Planting” a few years ago, back in 2021. I had been kindly and generously offered the opportunity to construct a poem as a part of a video pitch for an architectural firm’s land bid. During the time, the Tropicana Field Baseball Stadium property was up for negotiations. I learned, however, that the land that housed the current Tropicana Field was actually once a thriving Black neighborhood–the Gas Plant District. As I learned more about this history, including the Black cemeteries that are now underneath the Tropicana Field parking lot, the people who had been erased both literally and figuratively, spoke to me. 

Channeling is something that I think many artists would agree is part of the artistic process. While using various mediums as tools to create our art, we simultaneously offer ourselves up as mediums to convey the spirit, the life of our subject. This spirit can come in the form of a singular, or at times, it comes in the form of a collective. And the collective spirit and voice of those who were displaced and buried became the heart of my poem. I couldn’t ignore them.

When I sent a draft of this poem to the contact person, they responded with the request to reduce the presence and mention of the Gas Plant District, its residents and the history from my poem. They informed me that the production team creating the land bid video were also directed to eliminate any interview footage about the Gas Plant District. This person shared with me that the overall focus of the poem needed to be about the new development that was about to take place.

My intention isn’t to malign this contact person—they were very nice to me and they were the one who first told me about the history of the Gas Plant District. But I feel I must share this experience to highlight the continual pattern of the erasure of historically marginalized communities, how this pattern operates in both direct and indirect ways and how often, wider wrongs are perpetuated by nice people who are simply doing their jobs.

I declined the opportunity, although it may have led to other opportunities and I really needed the money. But in the process of writing the poem, my client was no longer this architectural firm—it was the people who had been buried, displaced and overshadowed. They couldn’t pay me financially but what they had to say meant much more. I also believed that my action to stay true to my principles, while seemingly foolish in the immediate sense, would be beneficial for my long-term vision and process of becoming a better version of myself.

Interestingly, one year later, I was commissioned to write a poem for a different business and for a much larger sum—25 times the amount, to be exact. This offer was completely unexpected—it came from a person who I hadn’t spoken to in 8 or 9 years. And I was able to express myself in a way that was true to my spirit. It was a lesson from the universe that reinforced how this all works.

But universal law isn’t always followed by those who often have the most access to economic wealth and societal power. This lack of moral guidance is demonstrated through the fact that additional measures to protect ordinary citizens and members of historically marginalized communities only come after a fierce battle is waged by activist groups and ordinary citizens to assert those protective measures. Within the redevelopment efforts of the Gas Plant District, as well, additional protective measures for citizens only came after the political and business leaders’ feet were held to the fire.

We could say this is the importance of dialogue, if we view those types of interactions as such. Like Buddhist philosopher and educator Daisaku Ikeda writes, “It is important to have the courage to clearly say what needs to be said when it matters most.” And what’s important is to ensure that we’re always working on the side of ordinary people while challenging unchecked greed that seeks to prevail. The same greed drives an incessant desire for more new real estate developments and more new people to move into our region. All the while not allocating the same energy nor resources towards ensuring the safe and habitable dwellings of many existing renters.

Because our eyes see out, we may have a hard time recognizing that the source of wealth and vibrancy already exist within our own communities. This obsession with seeking to revitalize an area by bringing in new people is indicative of a lack of wisdom and creativity. It’s a dangerous tendency born of the lack in recognizing the value of the lives we already have.

It’s this effort to remind ourselves—myself included—of the need to respect ourselves on a wider scale. And because this can be difficult and the tides of evil are insidious, the truest respect we can summon forth requires a vow. It takes a vow because it’s deeper and stronger than any promise that is given to us externally.

This is like the vow of the Bodhisattvas of the Earth, who emerge to demonstrate the positive transformation of their own life-state with the aim of encouraging others to do the same. While all along, this transformation was actually more of a revelation of what was already there. Similar to the lives that speak to us from beneath the soil, there is buried wisdom asking us to listen.

I’m inspired by the filmmakers of RAZED: A Film About the Gas Plant District because they’re showing what it looks like to truly listen to and respect the voices of those who have been trampled. At their film premiere on Feb. 22 in St.Pete, they will ensure those lives and voices are raised–this time, for good.

“Gas Planting” by Yuki Jackson

the promise was a field of dreams
like when you strike out
after a pitch of promises
that hiss gas-lighting
or rather, Gas Planting

like when fuel towers are bulldozed
and convert into energy
of ancestors growing under the dirt

this is where the plot of land thickens,
the same field that buried us
is now the landscape we paint
as we plant seeds and reap community

we are now what grows from this earth
and we will always remember our roots—
we are the promise

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This article appears in Jan 16-22, 2025.