Related stories:  Privatizing Public Housing, UK and Estate, a book review

This cartoon was created by Dr. Pop and the  Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights (CRNHR), a national organizing effort led by grassroots groups from the across the country who are fighting for a human right to housing in the United States. We also got great critical feedback and help from public housing members of the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN) and Union de Vecinos in Los Angeles and Community Voices Heard (CVH) and the Red Hook Initiative in New York City.

A Clear View of Public Housing is a story about public housing in the United States.  It takes place on a sunny day when three women of different economic classes meet up at a city park along with their young children and then get into a conversation about public housing.

A Clear View of Public Housing was made to be used as a  springboard to conversations and actions led by communities organizing in defense of human rights and, in particular, the human right to housing.

The story will be  available in three forms:

The above Video which you can share by email, post to your  website, or download.  A Spanish Version is also available.

An Interactive Slideshow version of the video, for use in workshop settings, as suggested below. [request]

A Comic Book (coming soon) for door-to-door outreach or to hand out after a workshop

Tips for Facilitators

Here are three simple ways that the Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights has used the story in workshop settings.

1.  Role-Play
Ask volunteers from your meeting or workshop to take on a character’s role and read their speech bubble aloud to the rest of the audience.  We found the results to be engaging and funny.

2.  Practice: “What Would You Say?”After watching the video or slideshow, break up into small groups or pairs to practice answering one or two questions that came up in the story, such as:

What would you say, if someone said this to you:
Housing is a business and the government should stay out of it.  They should leave business to the business people.
or
Public housing over-concentrates poor people into neighborhoods, and that is not good for anybody.
or
Subsidized housing takes away people’s incentive to work hard.  No one should get something for nothing.

The burden is often on public housing tenants and housing rights activists to re-educate legislators and the general public on the issues that we face.  This often means that we must engage in conversations that are full of myths and prejudices.  You can use A Clear View as a tool to practice our side of these conversations, share the results with each other, and build the confidence we need to confront hidden myths and prejudices.

3.  Make Your Own Story!
Before we created A Clear View, we took some time to break down the story that we are being told about public housing.  We found that that exercise gave us a window into the assumptions and vulnerabilities of that story, and helped us get better at building one that reflects our own reality.  To do this, we used the Narrative Power Analysis tool which you can find in smartMeme‘s really helpful book: Re-imagining Change.

For more information about the CRNHR and to send feedback, stories, and suggestions, visit restorehousingrights.org or contact Brittany Scott.  We would love to hear from you!

This is how much the developed countries spent per capita on healthcare a few years ago, contrasted with average life-expectancy:

This is what privatisation with a vast government subsidy looks like–a perfect study in neoliberalism and the truth behind republican free market rhetoric. And it translates directly into how much my family has suffered over years without healthcare, and have continued to suffer even after achieving the insurance dream–large deductions from tiny paychecks, deductibles, unbelievable monthly medication costs.

All this in a country that has spent immensely more per capita on health care than any other, without actually providing it.

All this in a country where HMO profits have reached billions every year, even through the crisis. A desultory google search brings up Minnesota doctors protesting obscene HMO profits this year, the doubling of California profits in 2008, for the Bush years there’s a Senate investigation, and if you really want to vomit, the “good news” that 2010 profits bring and how they are achieved in Florida. All for a life expectancy that just beats Cuba who spends pennies compared to us, but provides what free healthcare it can to all of its residents.

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I’m walking down Calle Carabobo (translation: silly-face street) in Medellin.

It’s a place where volume matters.

It matters to the street vendors –– the “llamada” vendors who offer cell phones for use by the minute –– and the hawkers who shout out to lure you into a shop.

It matters to native son artist Botero who insists that he doesn’t paint fat things –– that “fat” isn’t the medium of his iconic style –– but that his medium is, in fact,  volume.

It matters to the young Hip Hop performers who use attitude to produce volume when microphones are not available.
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Over the past few years, there has been an incredible rise in popularity of the far-right in several European countries, including Belgium, Austria, Denmark and Italy. This is also the case for France, where recent election opinion polls show Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National, as the runner-up of the 2012 presidential elections.

from The Economist, May 9 2011

Le Pen fille has an edge that her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen – founder and leader of the party from 1972 to 2011 – never did. A younger, smoky-voiced, charismatic speaker, the aspiring presidential candidate has modernized her father’s extremist discourse, replacing anti-Semitic hate speech with talks on the “Islamization” of French culture. For critics, she’s difficult to pin down as she seamlessly blends traditional images and ideals from both the Left and the Right. By simultaneously critiquing capitalism and the private sector on the one hand, and promoting isolationism and a “separate-but-equal” type welfare system for the French and non-French, Le Pen is appealing to a whole new section of French society. And it’s pretty terrifying.

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There is a longstanding debate regarding the role of white folks in the struggle for racial and economic justice.  Should they be part of strategic decision-making?  Should they always be there with us, standing side-by-side, in marches and acts of civil disobedience?

I may not have the right answers to these questions, but there is one important lesson that I have learned from the work of previous generations –– we cannot do it alone.

On  May 16, PBS aired Freedom Riders, a documentary chronicling six months in 1961 when young activists embarked on the “Freedom Rides,” challenging Jim Crow laws in the Deep South. Organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Freedom Rides were intended to bring attention to the discrimination endured by African-Americans when they traveled by bus or train, despite the Supreme Court rulings outlawing segregation, and to mark the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

We are taught in school that the Kennedys played an important role in the civil rights movement, however we learn from the film that they were, in fact, reluctant to delve into the issue at the time.  The United States was in the middle of the Cold War with the USSR and the Kennedy administration’s priority was to prevent nuclear war and “spread freedom throughout the world.”  The Civil Rights movement was considered a nuisance to the administration. How could we spread “freedom” throughout the world when people of color in this country weren’t even free?

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