OK, so this is my first post here for ages ... it's been a crazy few weeks! Hopefully I've now got some time to catch up on various things that have been going on around the place.
First up, graffiti stuff. Back in October and November, I ended up talking on graffiti and street art at three different events. These three events were really interesting examples of different approaches to trying to contest the escalating war on graffiti -- one was the launch of a book documenting a legal graffiti project trying to advocate on behalf of alternative policy approaches, one was a group small of graffiti writers at a hip hop summit trying to figure out collective strategies, and one was at a giant state-sponsored exhibition of graffiti and street art in Sydney which attracted over 50,000 visitors. So, here are some extended reflections on it all...
Zero Tolerance - The Blue Mountains Street Art Collaborative
The first event was the launch of Zero Tolerance, a book published by the Moutains Youth Service Team about the Blue Mountains Street Art Collaborative (BMSAC). BMSAC is a collective of Blue Mountains street artists that has sought to negotiate legal opportunities for large-scale graffiti and street art. The project was coordinated by Jarrod Wheatley, and it has had quite a bit of success. As the book shows, BMSAC has produced lots of terrific work, and in the process it has gained positive press in the local newspapers and won a Greater Western Sydney Community Services Award.
Posters at the Zuccotti/Liberty Park Occupation (source: demotix)
There's been lots of discussion in the media about the risk of 'debt contagion' over the past few months. It would seem that mass protest against austerity is contagious too...
For several weeks now, a protest camp has occupied Zuccotti Park, around the corner from Wall Street, in New York City. The occupation has inspired several other similar actions in other US cities. It has taken explicit inspiration from the occupations of squares and parks in Tunis, Cairo, Madrid, Athens, London and elsewhere that have been underway over the past 12 months.
Today, on the same day that thousands went on strike and marched in Athens against austerity measures, several unions joined the Wall St occupiers in a march through New York City, which Anjali Mullany of the New York Daily Post tweeted as a 'game changer': "The energy is thru the roof & the message is united." We'll see if it's a game changer, but it's certainly a good excuse to post some resources and reflections on what's going on...
The Occupy Wall Street website contains useful information about the occupation. It is self-described as the "unofficialde facto online resource for the ongoing protests happening on Wall Street", put together by an affinity group involved in the protests. On that website, Occupy Wall Street is described as a:
leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.
We are the 99% is a website where all sorts of folks are uploading pictures of themselves holding up some words about why they are fed up with the status quo:
We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.
The thumbnails of all the pictures and messages posted so far are achived here, in what to me is a really powerful image which visualises the diversity of folks involved...
Screen Grab from We are the 99% website
The action on the ground is being 'organised' through 'NYC General Assemblies'. These Assemblies are facilitated through an on-line networking tool, which those involved describe as:
an open, participatory and horizontally organized process through which we are building the capacity to constitute ourselves in public as autonomous collective forces within and against the constant crises of our times.
As the actions spread, the Occupy Together website is collecting and disseminating information about occupations taking place in other parts of the United States.
For some reporting on events, The Guardian in the UK has published a few articles reporting on what is going that are worth a look: check this one from September 21 for a bit of an introduction to what has been happening, and this page which collates all their reporst and articles on the protests.
Keeping up with all mass occupations and protests happening across the world over the past 12 months would be a full-time job in itself! But here's a few thoughts-in-progress ...
On the 15th of September, the Sydney Alliance had its Founding Assembly. Over 2000 people packed the Sydney Town Hall for the occasion, drawn from the ranks of the 45 member organisations made up of non-government organisations, trade unions and religious organisations.
The stated goal of the Alliance is to "bring together diverse community organisations, unions and religious organisations to advance the common good and achieve a fair, just and sustainable city." It's part of the wider international network of citizen coalitions affilliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation, which includes coalitions such as the Seattle Sound Alliance and Citizens UK. It was seed-funded in 2007 by Unions NSW, the peak body for trade unions in NSW. With its strong trade union involvement, the Sydney Alliance also explicitly positions itself within an Australian tradition of community-union alliances such as the green ban movement of the 1970s.
The Founding Assembly was an exciting night for me, on lots of levels. The National Tertiary Education Union has joined the Alliance, and I was one of several NTEU members there on the night. I've also been actively involved in the Alliance's Research-Action Team on public transport for a few months now, and had a small speaking role in the Assembly on behalf of that Team. They are a fantastic bunch of people, and it was a real thrill to represent them on the night and watch the whole thing go down from up on the stage. (Yay Team Transport!!)
More broadly, I think it was also an exciting night for the city. The Assembly very publicly staged the Alliance in all its diversity and ambition. In this regard, two moments stood out for me. The first was the opening "roll-call" in which someone from each of the 45 member organisations stood up to deliver a brief message about their organisation and why it had joined the Alliance. As members of each organisation stood and spoke to cheers and applause from the crowd, I actually got chills ... it was a powerful display of unity and common purpose across difference, and a real highlight of the night.
The second moment was the speech given by Amanda Tattersall, the Alliance's Director. At one point, she noted that we the people had been "sliced and diced and categorised" in various ways by political parties and the media and corporate interests --- as 'Howard's Battlers', as 'working families', as 'consumers', etc. "But from tonight," she concluded, "we go by a new name. We are the Sydney Alliance!" I think this part of Amanda's speech spoke to one of most important aspects of what the Alliance is all about -- the creation of a new political subject in and of this city.
All of which brings me to the subject of coalition-building in the city more generally. This issue has re-emerged as a central concern of recent urban activism and theory concerned with rights to the city and/or spatial justice. So, in what follows I want to offer a few thoughts on the on-going work of the Sydney Alliance through a dialogue with two recent books by Ed Soja and Mark Purcell. Both of these books strive to move beyond critique of neoliberal urbanisms by thinking about the kinds of movements that might articulate (and hopefully even realise!) visions of a more just and democratic city.
Along with taking on the public sector unions, here in Sydney the NSW State Government is also planning to introduce yet another round of tougher penalties for graffiti offences, including the removal of driver's licenses for repeat offenders.
N4T4, May Lane
As I've argued elsewhere, anyone who knew anything about graffiti would probably not think that forcing more graffiti writers onto public transport is the best way to reduce graffiti!
Anyways, ABC Television screened a story on the issue tonite, featuring an edited version of a short film called 'Unrequited Art' made by Merryn Calear and Jake Lloyd Jones.
It features some great pics and interviews, and a bit of footage of some middle-aged academic trying to sound like he's down with the kids (... yes, that's me ... cringe!).
Various bits and pieces, May Lane
Here's hoping that Labor and the minor parties stick to their guns, and reject this legislation for the second time next week.
Today in Sydney, around 30,000 public sector workers and their supporters gathered in the Domain and marched on Parliament in protest against public sector job cuts and pay cuts.
School teachers across the city and the State went on strike for the day, and industrial action was also taken by significant numbers of nurses, fire-fighters, police, and ferry staff.
Rally at the Domain, Sydney ... a decent turn-out for a drizzly day!
As in other parts of the world, here in New South Wales we are beginning to see (the return of?) a more punitive phase of neoliberalism. This has involved a simultaneous attack on the both the levels of state expenditure and the working conditions and unions of public sector workers.
Last month, the newly-elected conservative Government passed legislation giving itself the power to cap public sector wages growth to no more than 2.5% per year without productivity offsets. With inflation running at around 3.6%, that is a significant pay cut.
Earlier this week, the Government announced there would be 5000 jobs cut from the public sector. This was accompanied by the usual weasel words about the bulk of these jobs being 'back room' jobs which will disappear painlessly through natural attrition and voluntary redundancies. But of course, this is rubbish -- there will be forced redundancies, and the workloads of staff left behind will inevitably rise. And given that many workers in Australia are already feeling the harmful consequences of the 'productivity squeeze' in their everyday lives, this is no small matter.
Gotta love a rally involving fire-fighters ... look at all those trucks! My son was impressed with this pic...!
I'm not the first person to point out that such cuts to state spending on public services stand in stark contrast to the generous taxpayer-funded bail-outs and guarantees provided to the private sector during the GFC.
While some other Australian states have been relatively sheltered from the fall-out of the GFC thanks to income derived from the on-going mining boom, the NSW economy was more seriously exposed, due to its dependence on property prices, tourism, retail, and globally-oriented service industries for revenue.
Predictably, the Government would prefer to blame its budgetary problems on a public sector wages blow-out, which it says was allowed to occur by a rotten Labor Government. While the Labor Government sure was rotten, so too is the claim that public sector workers in New South Wales are overpaid -- as demonstrated by this bit of research conducted by the Sydney Uni Workplace Relations Centre earlier this year.
Anyways, it felt good to be in a big and rowdy crowd today. Surprisingly enough (for me at least), the best speech of the day was given by a representative of the Police Association. In an effort to head-off concern about its public sector wages policy, the Government exempted police from the new arrangement. But the Police Association aren't having it, and were well-represented today. And in her speech, the PA rep argued that even if police were exempt from the pay cuts, they were not immune from public sector cuts more generally. She went on the list the ways in which a range of of social issues -- like domestic violence, mental health, and school truancy -- end up becoming police issues when there aren't social services, teachers and nurses to deal with them appropriate. In my frequent rages against the ways that police often do intervene in these kinds of issues, it's easy to forget that the police staff themselves have their own critique of criminalisation. (And the fact that police were involved in the rally meant that the policing of the rally was pretty low key compared to other large protests in Sydney recently! It also meant that for once, union and police estimates of the crowd were actually the same!)
But as ever, it's hard not to leave a rally asking: what's next? Given the legal difficulties of taking conventional industrial action these days, I think there's a lot of work to be done to figure out how public sector workers can make their presence felt politically. I wonder if there are ways that we can work, as well as refuse to work, in ways that demonstrate the significance of public services by cooperating with 'the public' while not cooperating with the state? For example, years ago Jack Mundey asked whether bus drivers would have more political impact if they drove buses and refused to collect fares, rather than going on strike? What are the equivalent opportunities today across the public sector?
Meanwhile, one issue to keep an eye on over the next few days will be the immediate ramifications of the old-fashioned industrial action that was taken today. The NSW Teachers' Federation strike was declared illegal by the Industrial Relations Commission, after an application by the Government (yes, the same Government that has just denied public sector unions access to the Industrial Relations Commission for the purposes of settling wage disputes!) Today, the Government talked tough about imposing at $20,000 fine on the Teachers' Fed. And the Fed vowed it would fight any such action. I think/hope that any attempt to impose this fine will generate a lot of heat. Clarrie O'Shea revisited? Probably not! But ...
Not surprisingly, when riots happen in London and other major English cities, they attract plenty of commentary by the 'heavy-hitters'. This is partly because they were significant events involving thousands of people over several days, and it's partly because events in London are assigned 'global significance' thanks to London's pre-eminent position in the network of capitalist 'global cities'.
So, here's some links to commentary pieces on the riots in by some high-ish profile left-leaning academic folks, mostly sourced via other blogs and lists. I think I found the Gilroy and Hatherley pieces the most interesting, probably because they are the ones that are most engaged with some of the actual places where this stuff went down...
-- Zygmunt Bauman says the riots are "consumerism coming home to roost" here ...
-- George Ciccariello-Mayer makes a case against the denigration of those involved as an irrational mob here ...
-- Richard Florida argues that riots are "a feature, not a bug, of cities in the global era" here. His solution: extend the promise of creativity to all ... of course! (OK, not so left-ish I know, but very interesting to see Florida rage against the inequality of the "corporate remaking of cities"...
-- Paul Gilroy considers the differences in context between the 1981 and 2011 riots here ...
-- David Harvey argues that the problem is not feral kids but feral capitalism here ...
-- Owen Hatherley writes a really interesting piece on the urban geography of it all here, noting the particular geographies on inequality in English cities where rich and poor are spatially proximate to each other, and yet don't really live in the same 'place'...
-- Owen Jones argues that the conservative right are likely to be strengthened by the riots here ...
-- John Keane situates the riots within a wider malaise of representative democracy undercut by the marketplace here ...
-- Naomi Klein discusses the "nighttime robbery" of the riots alongside the "daylight robbery" of privatisation, bail-outs, bonuses and austerity here ...
-- Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson (authors of The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone) respond critically to the notion that family breakdown is a causal factor in the events here ...
-- Nina Power writes on the context that should not be ignored here, and on how David Cameron is making things worse here ...
-- Richard Sennett and Saskia Sassen make the link between budget cuts and broken windows here ...
-- McKenzie Wark gives a Situationist take on the logic of riots in the society of the spectacle here ...
-- Slavoj Zizek argues that both conservative and liberal interpretations fail to see what's really going on here, suggesting that the enigma of the riots is that they "demanded nothing" ...
A few posts ago, I wrote up an account of a conference held here in Sydney recently on the ‘Right to the City’. In putting together a paper for that conference, I re-read parts of Lefebvre’s Right to the City for the first time in a while. I got heaps out of it … as with most of my previous efforts to read Lefebvre, I found myself not quite sure what the hell was going on in some passages, and completely inspired by other passages. Not only was it really helpful in interrogating some of the do-it-yourself urbanisms that were the subject of the conference, but I’m sure it’s also going to be incredibly productive in approaching the green bans as I continue to work my way through the archival material on that.
Anyways, I also started putting together a bit of a list of secondary sources on the concept and how it is being approached and used today. So, I thought I’d post that list here (in chronological order), just in case it’s useful to anyone else.
I haven’t made my way through everything listed below, and it’s by no means an exhaustive list of people who have engaged with the ‘right to the city’, but it’s not a bad start. I've tried to keep the list to pieces that engage with the meaning and politics of the 'right to the city', rather than pieces which mention the 'right to the city' only in passing (of which there are lots).
So, if you think I’ve missed anything, let me know. And of course, it goes without saying that if you have trouble accessing any of these in your neck of the woods, get in touch: kurt[dot]iveson[at]sydney[dot]edu[dot]au
Rosalyn Deutsche (1999) Reasonable Urbanism, in Michael Sorkin (ed) Giving Ground: The politics of propinquity, New York: Verso.
Engin Isin (2000) Introduction: democracy, citizenship and the city, in Engin Isin (ed) Democracy, Citizenship and the Global City, New York: Routledge.
Mark Purcell (2002) Excavating Lefebvre: The Right to the City and its Urban Politics of the Inhabitant, GeoJournal, 58(2-3): 99-108 (this is one of several great articles Mark wrote before his 2008 book came out – see below).
Mustafa Dikeç (2002) Police, Politics, and the Right to the City, GeoJournal, 58(2-3): 91-98.
Eugene McCann (2002) Space, Citizenship and the Right to the City: a brief overview, GeoJournal, 58(2-3): 77-79.
Don Mitchell (2003) The Right to the City: Social justice and the fight for public space, New York: Guildford.
Tovi Fenster (2005) The Right to the Gendered City: Different Formations of Belonging in Everyday Life, Journal of Gender Studies, 14(3): 217-231.
Edésio Fernandes (2007) Constructing the ‘Right to the City’ in Brazil, Social and Legal Studies, 16(2): 201-219.
David Harvey (2008) The Right to the City, New Left Review, 53: 23-40.
Mark Purcell (2008) Recapturing Democracy: Neoliberalisation and the struggle for alternative urban futures, New York: Routledge.
Liette Gilbert and Mustafa Dikeç (2008) Right to the City: Politics of Citizenship, in Kanishka Goonewardena, Stefan Kipfer, Richard Milgrom and Christian Schmid (Eds) Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre, New York: Routledge.
Peter Marcuse (2009) From critical urban theory to the right to the city, City, 13(2-3):185-197.
Jackie Leavitt, Tony Roshan Samara and Marnie Brady (2009) The Right to the City Alliance: Time to Democratize Urban Governance, Progressive Planning, 181: 4-12.
Margit Mayer (2009) The Right to the City in the context of shifting mottos of urban social movements, City, 13(2-3): 362-374.
Marcelo Lopes de Souza (2010) Which Right to Which City? In defense of political-strategic clarity, Interface, 2(1): 315-333.
Edward Soja (2010) Seeking Spatial Justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Margaret Crawford (2011) Rethinking ‘Rights’, Rethinking ‘Cities’: a response to David Harvey’s ‘The Right to the City’, in Zanny Begg and Lee Stickells (eds) The Right to the City, Sydney: Tin Sheds Gallery.
Andy Merrifield (2011) The Right to the City and Beyond: Notes on a Lefebvrian reconceptualisation, City, 15(3-4).
There are also some relevant collections, for instance:
·the special issue of GeoJournal in 2002 (58: 2-3) on Social Transformation, Citizenship, and the Right to the City, edited by Lyn Staeheli, Lorraine Dowler, and Doris Wastl-Walter (in which a couple of the articles above were published);
·International Public Debates: Urban Policies and the Right to the City, UNESCO, 2006;
·Ana Sugranyes and Charlotte Mathivet (2010, eds) Cities for All: Proposals and Experiences towards the Right to the City, Santiago: Habitat International Coalition.
And of course, there are some great books out there on Lefebvre which provide some broader intellectual and political context for the concept – I’ve enjoyed both Stuart Elden’s and Rob Shield’s books on Lefebvre.
Update #1
Tony Samara wrote to let me know that in Feb 2012 a new collection is coming out, edited by Michael Peter Smith & Michael McQuarrie, called Remaking Urban Citizenship: Organizations, Institutions, and the Right to the City, Transaction Publishers. Thanks Tony!
Update #2
Following James Duminy's comment below, I found the following two pieces:
AbdouMaliq Simone (2005) The Right to the City, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 7(3): 321-325.
Susan Parnell and Edgar Pieterse (2010) The ‘Right to the City’: Institutional Imperatives of a Developmental State, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 34(1): 146-162.
Unlike most of the pieces in the list above, neither of these explicitly engage with Lefebvre's work on the topic ... but as James' comment hints, the fact that I have applied this criteria has produced a list mostly restricted to northern theorists (although Marcelo's piece on the list above is an explicit attempt to rework Lefebvre's concept from the perspective of urban social movements in Latin America and Africa). Thanks for the heads up on those pieces James!
