Metropolitics

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

Create, Don't Destroy: Laying the Foundation for a Public Discourse on Racial Justice in Germany

Janina L. Selzer — 2020-09-15T05:00:00Z

A night of violence left Stuttgart, a usually peaceful German city, with many unanswered questions. While politicians immediately condemned the violence as an attack on liberal democracy, some journalists saw the event as an uprising by young men of color against systemic racism. In this article, Janina Selzer makes a case for moving past these partial framings by accepting the possibility of a chaotic, multifaceted, and intersectional explanation for a destructive night.
In the German

- Essays / violence, Germany, racism, justice, racial justice, race, Stuttgart, riots, urban unrest

Marielle Franco and Brazilian Democracy at a Crossroads

Natália Alves & Isabella Gonçalves Miranda & Felipe Magalhães — 2018-06-26T05:00:00Z

Marielle Franco's life and death raised questions about the limits of Brazil's New Republic. It revealed the rising stakes, particularly for women and people of color, following the 2016 coup. In this piece, urban activists Isabella Gonçalves and Natália Alves and geographer Felipe Magalhães place Franco's embodied politics as a direct challenge to the regressive policies and aggressive austerity of the current regime.
We live in times when a culture of violence is a vocal minority of the

- From the Field / social movement, security, violence, corruption, neoliberalism, Latin America, Brazil, LGBTQ+, feminism, activism, Rio de Janeiro, queer, critical racial awareness, austerity, militias, queer theory, state violence, coup

When Does Police Violence Cause Urban Unrest?

Cathy Lisa Schneider — 2017-11-14T06:00:00Z

In the summer of 2014, police killed Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York. Both men were black and unarmed. Both their deaths sparked national outrage. And both cases were turned over to a grand jury whose members failed to indict. But while the first case provoked weeks of violent police–community confrontation, the second initiated constructive political action. Drawing on interviews with people close to both men, Cathy Schneider argues that the difference amounts to the

- Debates / racism, United States, police, New York, violence, brutality, police violence, urban unrest, riots, police accountability, St. Louis, Ferguson, Missouri

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

Gentrification as a driver of social and racial tensions: the case of Brixton

Amélie Bertholet & translated by Oliver Waine — 2013-10-16T04:55:00Z

(In)famous for the various riots that have occurred there since the 1980s, the working-class district of Brixton in south London has recently seen an influx of middle-class residents who prize the area for its diversity and tranquillity. However, as Amélie Bertholet shows, this trend does not mean the end of the area's troubles.
Brixton, a neighbourhood in the inner-London borough of Lambeth, has been marked by a strong Jamaican presence since the end of the Second World War. This “[ethnic]

- From the Field / gentrification, social diversity, London, violence, minorities