Metropolitics

Miscounting Americans Correctly: Post-Truth as a Guide to Race and the US Census

Gregory Smithsimon — 2018-06-12T15:11:04Z

Paul Schor's book Counting Americans demonstrates that, in the hands of the US Census Bureau, the concept of race has consistently been both tenacious and malleable. In this review, Greg Smithsimon explores the census as the “hidden abattoir” of a deeply racialized American society, a renderer of categories that, while seeming clear and self-evident in daylight, are the contingent product of brutality.
As the best available portrait of an increasingly diverse and multiracial country, the US

- Reviews / United States, history, race, population, demographics, census, data, ethnic identity, US Census Bureau, racial classification

Climate Change and Social Change

Gregory Smithsimon — 2018-04-03T05:30:00Z

Cities are home to more than half the world's population and the source of most global CO2 emissions—and yet often occupy vulnerable sites particularly sensitive to the effects of climate change. Out of necessity, cities have therefore become pioneers when it comes to responding to these changes. In this series, we examine not just the different strategies they deploy but also the associated social issues, and more specifically how questions of social justice and equity are taken into

- Series / environment, social justice, urban ecology, energy, climate change, sea-level rise, climate action plans, environmental justice, climate justice

The French Republic and the Paris Spring

Gregory Smithsimon — 2016-09-06T05:00:00Z

Has the French Spring arrived yet? Gregory Smithsimon documents La Nuit Debout, a self-named social movement that has taken root in one of Paris's main squares, where demonstrators have gathered since March 31 to protest the rollback of labor rights, repressive national security and refugee policies, political corruption, and indifference to ecological crisis. The main challenge for such movements, he argues, is to bridge the divide between the newly disenfranchised and those who were never

- From the Field / France, public space, ethnicity, intégration, social movement, Paris, protest, race, integration, Occupy

Disarm the Police

Gregory Smithsimon — 2015-09-29T05:00:00Z

In the current political debates about discriminatory policing, there has been a lack of serious discussion of disarmament. Gregory Smithsimon argues that disarming the police is not only an obvious way to avoid more deaths at the hands of officers, but also a means towards cultivating more respectful relationships between the police and communities of color.
Responding to protests against repeated, blatant police abuse, politicians have met demands for meaningful change with an array of

- Debates / inequalities, police, discrimination, violence, brutality, disarmament, civil rights, police violence, Ferguson, Missouri, New York, Oakland, Baltimore, Featured

The Right to Public Space

Gregory Smithsimon — 2015-03-10T05:55:00Z

Many of the commonly defended human rights (freedom of expression, of assembly, of information, of movement, etc.) depend on the availability of physical public space. Their absence, especially in the suburbs, routinely hinders the rights of citizens. For this reason, Gregory Smithsimon argues for a formal right to public space.
At the center of virtually every major protest movement in recent years has been a central public space. Anti-Mubarak protesters filled Tahrir Square in Egypt, just

- Debates / public space, United States, suburbs, human rights, right to the city