"Privilege is when you think something is not a problem because it's not a problem to you personally."

-- David Gaider

A  quiet tension settles between privilege and poverty, a distance that feels deliberate. I live in a comfortable neighborhood in North Little Rock, west of the railroad tracks, on what might once have been considered the "wrong side" of town.

Here, lawns are neatly trimmed, and the soft hum of sprinklers fills the morning air. But just a few blocks away lies Baring Cross--a neighborhood defined not by manicured yards but by endurance. Its sidewalks crack underfoot. Windows are sometimes boarded. Getting by there isn't assumed; it's earned.

Baring Cross carries its history in steel and ash. Once the industrial heart of North Little Rock, it grew beneath the shadow of the Baring Cross Bridge, a massive iron structure that opened in 1873 as the first permanent crossing over the Arkansas River in Little Rock. It was a marvel of its time, a crucial link in the nation's expanding rail network. That bridge still hums with the rhythm of locomotives, now part of the Union Pacific Railroad system, one of the busiest freight corridors in the country.

When industry faded, so too did the fortunes of Baring Cross. Yet the people remained. And what remains with them is resilience--an insistence on being seen, on persisting despite the pressures to disappear. In an era when gentrification reshapes struggling neighborhoods, Baring Cross holds fast. New homes seem to go up each month, rising shoulder to shoulder with aging, sometimes crumbling ones. But people live in those older homes, too: families, elders, children. And I worry that as property values climb, even this enduring neighborhood may be........

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