Metropolitics

Marielle Franco and the Fight for the City Statute in Rio de Janeiro

Ty Redden — 2025-02-14T06:00:00Z

Marielle Franco's 2018 assassination roiled social media and sent shockwaves through activist communities. The subsequent investigation revealed that her death was a part of a larger land-grabbing plot enacted by militias and enabled by local politicians. This case study explores the City Statute and its relationship to housing struggles—particularly, how the City Statute has forged a brutal partnership of oppression in Rio de Janeiro's most vulnerable neighborhoods.
---- Series: Horizons in

- Essays / Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, militias, favela, informal settlements, local politics, politics, race, gender, activism

A Place for Women

2025-01-21T06:00:00Z

For over 40 years, a feminist association called Apiaf, based in Toulouse in southwestern France, has been working with female victims of domestic violence. In this interview, members of the association talk about the central role of non-mixity in accommodating and assisting these women, thus guaranteeing a space of protection and emancipation.
Interview conducted by Pauline Delage.
Apiaf (Association pour l'Initiative Autonome des Femmes; "Association for Women's Autonomous Initiative") is

- Interviews / violence, women, non-mixity, associations, gender, feminism, activism

Education Myths, Black Self-Determination, and University Accountability to the City

Christopher R. Rogers & Laura Wolf-Powers — 2024-03-08T06:00:00Z

Laura Wolf-Powers interviews scholar and community organizer Chris Rogers about his extensive work in Philadelphia. They discuss his journey to Penn and activism against the University of Pennsylvania's “parasitic relationship to Black Philadelphia,” including policing on campus, housing struggles, and efforts for payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs).
---- Series: Black Power and Black Self-Determination in a New Time and New Spaces I'm Laura Wolf-Powers, a professor of urban planning at CUNY

- Interviews / Philadelphia, education, Black Lives Matter, Black politics, university, self-determination, housing, activism, Black Power, Movement for Black Lives

Feminist Non-Mixity: For Women or Against Men?

Alban Jacquemart & translated by Oliver Waine — 2023-10-10T05:00:00Z

For women, the choice to gather together serves a variety of objectives within feminist mobilizations. Looking back at the history and significance of these militant practices helps to counteract preconceptions associated with non-mixity.
“It is wrong to claim that non-mixity does not fundamentally impregnate the vision of the world and society of those who turn to this notion, and that it cannot encourage the temptation of withdrawal into a given community. How can we believe that there is

- Essays / feminism, women, history, activism, non-mixity

Teacher Unionism and the Bargain for the Common Good

Claire Cahen — 2021-07-06T05:00:00Z

Rank-and-file teachers across the United States challenge their unions to embrace social democratic ideals, and fight for equal access to social goods, such as quality public schools and safe tap water. Drawing on the case of Newark, New Jersey, this essay questions the liberal democratic norms and policies that continue to treat teacher unions as narrow economic organizations.
A decade ago, teacher unions were minor political players in US cities, focused primarily on negotiating educator

- Essays / Newark, New Jersey, United States, trade unions, activism, teaching, education, public education, water, common good

Inciting Hopes for the Future: Civic Activism in London, Mumbai, and Paris Amid the Covid‑19 Crisis

2021-06-08T05:00:00Z

Ethnographic research in London, Mumbai, and Paris during Covid‑19 lockdowns reveals how civic associations filled the void left by state withdrawal and offered visions of hope for socially excluded populations.
Our current global “human, economic and social crisis” (UN 2020) was driven by a deadly virus and deepened by governments' dedication to market-oriented solutions and to disempowering people deemed to be obstacles to those solutions. The neoliberal state's initial reactions to the

- From the Field / associations, lockdown, Covid-19, coronavirus, activism, civic organizing, civic activism, London, Paris, Mumbai, pandemic, India, United Kingdom

“Every Eviction is an Act of Violence”

Tara Raghuveer & Joshua Akers — 2021-03-23T06:00:00Z

Josh Akers interviews researcher, organizer, and activist Tara Raghuveer about her work with KC Tenants in Kansas City, Missouri, and with the Homes Guarantee. They discuss housing issues and activism in Kansas City and at the national level, and what the Covid‑19 pandemic has meant for housing struggles and the future of housing movements.
---- Series: Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research In early December 2020, Metropolitics editorial board member Josh

- Interviews / activism, video, housing, rental housing, tenants, community organizing, evictions, Covid-19, coronavirus, pandemic, United States, Kansas City, Missouri

Fighting for Housing Justice: An Interview with Two Youth Organizers in Curtis Bay, Baltimore

Nicole Fabricant & Carlos Sanchez & Terriq Thompson — 2021-03-16T06:00:00Z

Two Baltimore youth organizers discuss the importance of community land trusts, for housing and beyond.
---- Series: Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research Free Your Voice began as an informal after-school program inside Baltimore's Benjamin Franklin High School. It has evolved into a powerful youth-led movement to end incineration, build community land trusts, and push for zero waste and just transition in Baltimore.
The group organized between 2012 and

- Interviews / community land trusts, community organizing, activism, mobilization, youth, youth organizing, housing, affordable housing, housing justice, Baltimore, United States, Maryland, land use, land rights

Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research

Joshua Akers — 2021-03-12T07:00:00Z

In this series, Metropolitics focuses on the intersection of organizing, technology, politics, and policy in urban rental housing struggles. It seeks to place the increasing salience of contemporary housing struggles in the context of the transformation of urban housing markets following the financial crisis and the additional precarity induced by Covid‑19.
---- ▼ Jump to the list of articles ▼ The US federal eviction moratorium will expire at the end of March. The original moratorium, issued

- Series / housing, activism, community organizing, Covid-19, crisis, financial crisis, housing crisis, coronavirus

The Financialization of Rent-Regulated Housing in New York City after Rent Reform

Benjamin F. Teresa — 2020-12-04T06:00:00Z

In New York City, rent-controlled housing stock has been progressively deregulated over the last three decades, to the point where it is now wholly in the hands of financial investors. In this paper, Benjamin Teresa analyzes how tenants' associations have been fighting back against these landlords, who have let housing fall into disrepair while simultaneously hiking rents.
---- Series: Cities in the Age of Financialization In June of 2019, the New York State legislature stunned the

- From the Field / housing, right to housing, financialization, rent control, rent, tenants, New York, United States, activism, urban knowledge, public policy, housing policy