Metropolitics

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

The Black Radical Imagination in a Rural Forgotten Space

Brad Stephens & Chris Stephenson & Max O. Stephenson Jr. — 2024-01-16T06:00:00Z

How does the Black Radical imagination manifest in “forgotten places” amid shifting populations? Brad Stephens, Chris Stephenson, and Max Stephenson, Jr., attend to this question by considering the role of “communitas” in the work of St. Paul's College 4 Life, a group working to reimagine the possibilities for a shuttered historically Black college in rural Lawrenceville, Virginia.
---- Series: Black Power and Black Self-Determination in a New Time and New Spaces On the surface,

- From the Field / Black Power, Black politics, university, space, race, Blackness, United States, Virginia

Self-Determination for Who?

John Arena — 2023-11-17T06:00:00Z

Newark mayor Cory Booker garnered national accolades, and tens of millions in foundation funding, to advance his neoliberal reform agenda for the city's public schools. Locally, though, he was met by a wave of popular opposition to his privatization drive and thus decided on an exit to the US Senate. His successor, Ras Baraka, rode that opposition to the city hall, though the demands of this movement also conflicted with his economic development agenda. John Arena looks at how Black

- Essays / Newark, Black Power, New Jersey, mayors, neoliberalism, self-determination, Black politics

Black Power and Black Self-Determination in a New Time and New Spaces

Akira Drake Rodriguez & James DeFilippis — 2023-10-31T06:00:00Z

Black Power organizing in cities in the United States and around the world has a long history. This special series of articles focuses on efforts for Black political and economic power in the contemporary period, while drawing upon the efforts of those who have come before.
---- ▼ Jump to the list of articles in this series ▼ There is a long history of Black Power organizing in cities in the United States and around the world. While the language of Black Power is sometimes limited to a

- Series / Movement for Black Lives, Black politics, Black Power

We Are From Nairobi (#panthershit): Black Power Spatial Imaginaries in Silicon Valley

Kimberley S. Johnson — 2023-10-17T05:00:00Z

East Palo Alto's Black, Latiné and Pacific Islander residents deploy #panthershit—a Black Power spatial imaginary as a means of resisting the gentrification and displacement triggered by Silicon Valley's tech industry, thereby reclaiming a “right to their city” based on a recognition of the deep roots of past political activism and organizing that emerged during the city's Black Power era.
---- Series: Black Power and Black Self-Determination in a New Time and New Spaces Using the hashtag

- From the Field / Black Power, Black politics, Silicon Valley, tech sector, Big Tech, California, Northern California, United States, East Palo Alto

Displacement, Demobilization, and Democracy: Current Eviction and Historic Dispossession in Richmond, Virginia

Kathryn Howell & Benjamin F. Teresa — 2020-02-04T06:00:00Z

High eviction rates in Black Richmond neighborhoods must be understood in the context of a long history of political and physical displacement that has suppressed activism in these neighborhoods.
In April 2018, the Princeton Eviction Lab released a nearly nationwide dataset of eviction filings and judgments between 2000 and 2016. From this work, a New York Times article identified Richmond, Virginia, as having the second-highest eviction rate of large cities in the United States. Five of the

- From the Field / Black neighborhoods, Black politics, democracy, displacement, race, race and space, United States, Richmond, Virginia, evictions

The Evolution of New York City's Black Neighborhoods

John Mollenkopf — 2017-05-09T06:00:00Z

Especially in the central cities of the Northeast, neighborhoods that were once identified with black politics and culture are growing more ethnically diverse, and wealthier. John Mollenkopf examines demographic data from New York City's Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant and reflects on their implications for electoral politics and the fates of economically vulnerable black households.
New trends are influencing American cities. Particularly notable is the falling-off of African-American

- From the Field / immigration, gentrification, New York, Brooklyn, Black politics, Black neighborhoods, Manhattan, Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant

Remaking Black Political Spaces for Black Liberation

Akira Drake Rodriguez — 2016-12-01T06:00:00Z

What are the political implications of the redistribution of the Black population in the US? Akira Drake Rodriguez looks back at the long-running strategies of Black political mobilization and the political economic contexts that have hindered them. She calls for moving beyond place-based electoral strategies with a full embrace of the Movement for Black Lives policy platform.
Following a politically volatile and racially charged election, this moment marks a particularly precarious state for

- Essays / gentrification, elections, race, space, Blackness, electoral geography, Black politics, political geography