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Freedom School “Insurgent Ground: Land, Housing, Property” in Los Angeles

It was a privilege for me to participate in the Institute on Inequality and Democracy’s Freedom School “Insurgent Ground: Land, Housing, Property” in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago.

A collective of old and new friends and comrades, doing housing justice work across geographies. We spent so much time sharing generous scholarships and organising at UCLA but also at Union de Vecinos and with my good friends at the Los Angeles Poverty Department.

One of the best moments for me was sharing reflections with Elizbeth Blaney and the inspiring, wonderful Lisa ‘Tiny’ Gray-Garcia on her poverty scholarship work. Her writings and insights are really meaningful.

I also have some time to plot future things with Ananya, who has done an amazing job, together with Terra Graziani and their colleagues, to set up the School. Watch out for the open-access volume that will be produced with all the contributors!

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Two weeks in LA at the Skid Row Archive and Museum

I spent the last two weeks in Los Angeles, as a guest of the Skid Row Archive and Museum. This is a community archive and museum managed by the Los Angeles Poverty Department, a performance group closely tied to the city’s Skid Row neighborhood. It was founded in 1985 by director and activist John Malpede, who runs it with associated director and producer Henriëtte Brouwers. Its members are mostly homeless or formerly homeless people.

I was the first time at the LAPD pre-pandemic, in 2019 and I always wanted to go back to them to dig up some of the community organising history available in the archive and to spend more time with John, Henriëtte, as well as with Henry and Zach (two of the archivists working there). The Archive has an extensive number of resources on Skid Row History – including planning documents, articles, videos, oral histories, audios, interview transcripts and more – available for research. The archive documents the culture that developed on Skid Row—an activist culture, artistic culture and recovery culture— that offers a useful model for other communities navigating gentrification pressures.

While in LA, I also gave a short seminar to PhD students at the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA, hosted by Ananya Roy. I really enjoyed being there and discussing with colleagues and organisers ideas and practice about emplacement, homing and housing justice. I look forward to be back this coming July for the Freedom school at UCLA.

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Joining the Unequal cities network @UCLA

I am thrilled to join #UnequalCities Network at UCLA as a core partner. This is one of the most exciting housing justice initiative bridging research & activism out there at the moment http://unequalcities.org. A big thank you to Ananya Roy for the invitation!

I am also happy to share this with a couple of Radical Housing Journal’s core Editors (Erin MC EL and Melissa Garcia Lamarca) www.radicalhousingjournal.org (and of course, there is also the amazing Desiree Fields in there too!)