What makes people powerful? Is it the level of resources they wield? The amount of knowledge they possess? Or, perhaps, is it their ability to get lots of different types of people to come to a party they are throwing?

In this interview with Valdis Krebs, founder and chief scientist at orgnet.com. you will learn about the power of informal networks and personal relationships in shaping our world. Through a quick introduction to network analysis, Valdis shares powerful ideas that can help us understand society as well as our ability to change it.

As Gilda explains in the DIT video below, these ideas can lead to serious breakthroughs in everything from neighborhood organizing to global movement building.
 

Valdis, how did you become a social network analyst?
I actually started in human resources, as a systems person. From there I got into technology and began to notice how new technologies were changing society. They were shifting both what and who were important. And as society grew more complex, I saw that we increasingly needed technology to analyze society.
 
The software I developed was originally created for IT project management. Only later did it take on its current use. After working for a series of large corporations, I started my own business in 1995.

What keeps you excited about doing this work?
I really like taking on new and different applications for the work. For example, one day I received a call from a CDC epidemiologist. He thought that the TB data he had could be visualized through my network analysis method. So we worked together to see if that was true. Ultimately, his data was presented at a major public health conference and the room loved it.

Calls like that are the best, where someone says “I’ve got this situation and wonder if your method can help.” This is how I originally met Gilda, aka Dr. Pop. She wanted to map organizations and nonprofits working on housing in LA. Eventually one of her staff members, Andrea, got into the conversation and the original focus changed to understanding how LA slumlords were working. By analyzing slumlords’ connections and networks, Gilda and Andrea got a new research approaches to fuel their organizing.

This points to what I see as the secret of innovation –– taking something that’s known technology in one area, and applying it to another area where it is currently unknown.
 
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Gene Sharp’s slim volume, From Dictatorship to Democracy, outlines why and how non-violent struggle is the warfare of the 21st century, and builds a template for thinking and acting strategically to remove dictators and build democracy.

The book has been a powerful influence within movements that have toppled dictatorships over the past two decades.

Sharp, is the founder and senior scholar of the Albert Einstein Institution.  He wrote the book (which you can download for free above)  in the 90s for the democracy movement in Burma.  It was first published there with the help of the Committee for the Restoration of Democracy in Burma.

If you had any doubts about the fact that social change is largely about the battle of ideas, at that time, Burma’s military dictatorship did not.  They renounced the book and people were condemned  to seven-year prison sentences for simply having it in their possession.

The book was translated into Indonesian by Indonesians. It was translated into Serbian by Serbians and became a major touchstone for Otpor, the Serbian student movement organization that led the nonviolent revolution that brought down Milosovec.

That struggle and Otpor’s actions and strategies were studied by the Egyptian student movement.  Online.  On youtube.  Then Otpor leaders came to Egypt to meet with them. And Egyptian student leaders went to Serbia to receive training in non-violent strategy and action from the Serbian students.

And in the process, the book was translated into Egyptian and became a resource for actions that are now known as Arab Spring.

A more much longer volume on non-violent struggle and strategy by Sharp is Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential, which briefly describes over 20 nonviolent struggles of the 20th century, including the Russian Revolution of 1905, Montgomery bus boycotts of the 1950s, School boycotts in South Africa in the 1980s, and the removal of Milosevic in Serbia at the end of the century.

Sharp methodically assesses these events as a foundation for his argument and methodology of strategic thinking, planning, and action to create a more deeply democratic world.

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

By: Manning Marable

Hardcover: 608 pages

Published: April 1, 2011

ISBN: 0670022209

One of the most highly anticipated books of 2011, Manning Marable’s last book, released just days after his death, is perhaps the most thorough and unequivocal account of the life and death of Malcolm X ever written.

A book whose origins date back to when Marable was a freshman in college, he details the evolution of Malcolm X as an individual and as a political figure. Thanks to the disclosure of government documents detailing the FBI’s surveillance of the NOI and Malcolm X himself, transcripts of speeches, interviews, and oral history, Marable re-tells the story of Malcolm’s life, and most importantly, makes him human and tangible to us all.

We realize the Autobiography of Malcolm X was written from the perspective and political motives of Alex Haley. Its purpose was to serve as a cautionary tale of what we presume to be Malcolm X’s life from street hoodlum to prominent figure of the Nation of Islam (NOI). As Marable describes, “Self-invention was an effective way for him to reach the most marginalized sectors of the black community; giving justification for their hopes.” Each layer of his life really is expressed through the various names given or self-imposed throughout his lifetime: Malcolm Little, Homeboy, Jack Carlton, Detroit Red, Big Red, Satan, Malachi Shabazz, Malik Shabazz, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. Each identity cannot exist without the other.

Much of the controversy around the book focuses on a few pages of the book, which really does no justice to the amount of research conducted over a span of two decades, describing what may have been a casual relationship between a young  Malcolm and a white man. What is most significant about Malcolm X youth is that it is marred by tragedy, poverty, and racism—the reality of growing up black in the United States.

What is most fascinating about this book are not the accounts of the the inner-workings of the NOI, nor Malcolm’s emergence as a reluctant figure during the civil rights movement of the 1960s (well, ok a little bit), but rather how he struggled and fought to find an ideology that would allow for personal liberation and serve as an inspiration for black folks struggling to survive during a very tumultuous time in the 20th century.  The last sentence of the Acknowledgements and Research Notes section sums it up best: “Without erasing his mistakes and contradictions, Malcolm embodies a definitive yardstick by which all other Americans who aspire to a mantle of leadership should be measured.”

I have no set idea of what Utopia looks like and I blame my youth on this.


In fact, I can point to the day at my grade school, 61st Street Elementary in South Central, when, if there ever was a chance for such to seed, that notion was shattered. Our teachers hipped us to the Dewey Decimal system so we could find books in different categories in our well-stocked school library. Thus mentally armed, me and the other kids were let loose in the library and I recall vividly seeking out 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. To this day, decades later, I can’t tell you why I knew about this book. Disney had made a film in ’55 with Kirk Douglas and James Mason, but at that point at eight or nine, I’m pretty sure I hadn’t seen it on TV.

The book, a science-fiction novel, was first published in 1869. It’s about the mysterious Captain Nemo and his ocean spanning submarine the Nautilus. The brilliant biologist and mechanical engineer Nemo (Latin for “no one”) is sinking war ships in his crusade to end war. Revealed in a follow up novel of Vernes’, Mysterious Island, Nemo is actually Prince Dakkar, son of a raja, and has devoted his life to battling injustice and imperialism, particularly the British Empire for conquering his native India. Thus he is both freedom fighter and terrorist, seeking to enact his vision for a better world Okay, so that’s not exactly a utopian dream, but in sci-fi novels, the road to utopia, made as it is by flawed humans, oft derails into dystopia.

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The year is 1984 and I am on a bus riding through the green pastoral landscape of Northern Spain’s Basque country with about 30 other American educators, organizers, and social entrepreneurs.

For most of us, this wasn’t just a study tour. It was a Quest. We were on our way to visit the Bali Hai of cooperation, a place where the logic of “capital hires workers” has been turned on its head. A place whe workers have been hiring capital for the past 55 years.

We were on our way to Mondragon.

Twenty-five years later, while other “advanced” economies in Europe and the U.S. spiral into a tail-spin, there has been a revived interest in learning from Mondragon’s network of 100,000 workers and 100 worker-owned cooperatives which, in turn, own the Caja Laboral –– a bank that finances their current and future economic endeavors.

Back then, we pull up to the Polytechnic, where it all started, hoping to receive secrets of the universe. The lady who was starting a cooperative micro=brewery asked the instructor leading our tour:

“What do you teach here?”
“Accounting”, he responds, simply

Dissatisfied with this response, one of the educators probes further:

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Almost no one writes about what happens after the victory, the hard work and daily struggle after the barricades, the factory occupations, the mass mobilizations. So I’m rather fascinated by the few that do, especially when they do it both deeply and beautifully.

The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin is much loved and much discussed in certain circles and almost entirely unknown in others, making it hard to know where to start when writing about it. I shall never do it justice, but  it is undoubtedly one of the books that changed how I think about the world when I first read it, and that offers up new insights every time I go back.

In brief the planet Urras is as much like Earth during the cold war as an imaginative and richly described future world could be. Some two hundred years before the book’s events, a woman named Odo led an anarcho-syndicalist rebellion on Urras, successful enough to win the moon of Anarres for an anarchist settlement ruled through consensus rather than hierarchical government.

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Guest blogger, Susan D. Anderson, is the author of Nostalgia for a Trumpet: Poems of Memory and History, and has written, taught and lectured widely on African American history and politics. She is Curator, Collecting Los Angeles, at UCLA Library. Her literary blog is The Obsessive Reader’s Cultured Ghetto. Susan is currently completing a novel.

As a Californian, I have lived in the shadow of Utopia all my life. My mother’s family arrived from New Orleans on one side; and Louisville on the other.  It was at the turn of the 20^th century; already the state’s image was of the “Land of Sunshine” – physically, psychically, as well as in the skies.   Within the perceived paradise of California, real utopias were being built, Kaweah Colony, Llano del Rios, Halcyon and others.  According to historian Robert Hines in California’s Utopian Colonies , “From 1850 to 1950 California witnessed the formation of a larger number of utopian colonies than any other state in the Union. In this period at least seventeen groups embarked on an idealistic community experiment in California.”

One of the least known American utopias is Allensworth, California, an independent black town, established in 1908, forty miles north of Bakersfield, in the great, agricultural San Joaquin Valley.  You approach Allensworth today on a road that is desolation itself. The soil is alkaline, unstable, dust puffing into waves above the horizon.  At this time of year, the cold is profound. Thick Tule fog has you driving in blindness, it rolls by, shrouds your car. Sounds are muffled by the great stone walls of the Eastern Sierra Mountains. You drive past dead fields and trailer heaps, ramshackle ranch homes on isolated lots. Then, in the distance, tidy small buildings and the incongruous ranger station. You crunch your car to a stop in a gravelly parking lot.

It’s possible to feel overwhelmed when you finally arrive at Allensworth. Especially if you know something of the hidden history of America. The U.S. past is littered with the remnants of thousands of communistic societies;  the Utopian enterprise was universal across the states and territories. Americans took their various interpretations of The Promised Land and tried to implement them. Utopianism was constructed out of the deep yearnings of a fugitive, impatient, pragmatic people to inhabit the City of God. Now.
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One of the most inspiring episodes of popular uprising to me was the Paris Commune, a brief but visionary period of communal governance of the city of Paris by its people.

The commune was established in March 1871, and arose in large part out of the devastation and anger of the people of Paris in the aftermath of France’s defeat in Franco-Prussian War.  During the war, poor and working class Parisians had fought the Prussian army in defense of the French republic.  Many felt they had been betrayed by their generals, some of whom supported a monarchist form of government and fought only half-heartedly for the republic.  On a broader level, the gap between rich and poor in Paris had been growing for decades, and the city had become increasingly segregated along income lines.  30 years earlier, another set of urban insurrections, culminating in 1848, led the famous urban architect Baron Haussman to embark on total reorganization of the city aimed at controlling its populace and preventing street rebellions.  By 1871, Haussmann’s lavish remodeling of Paris was contrasted starkly by the destitution of the city’s urban poor.  Another critical piece of the context for the Paris Commune was that Parisians did not have their own municipal government.  Much the same as Washington D.C. today, Paris was the national seat of power and it was France’s national government, rather than a city council, that exercised control over local affairs in the city.

According to Arthur Arnould, an anarchist member of the communal council and a member of the International Worker’s Association:

“During [the Commune’s] short reign, not a single man, woman, child, or old person was hungry, or cold, or homeless… It was amazing to see how with only tiny resources, this government not only fought a horrible war for two months, but chased famine from the hearths of the huge population which had had no work for a year. That was one of the miracles of a true democracy.”

The Paris Commune started when, in mid-March of 1871, hundreds of Parisians faced off against the French Army that had been sent to reclaim possession of canons leftover from the war.  When the soldiers on duty defected and allowed the people to capture and kill their general, the national government fled to Versailles, leaving the people of Paris to call for immediate elections of a new local government on March 26^th.  Two days later, The Paris Commune was declared.

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A piece of my heart will always live in Glasgow. It is a city of incredible warmth and beauty and humour, one that welcomed me when I was sad and tired and burned out from years of work in LA. I worked in a shop where we took pride in what we did and the managers would stand up for staff against bullying customers, something utterly unknown in all of my years experience working for minimum wage. With a single question to start them off, cabbies would break down the privitisation and development of the parks or public housing in the wee hours of the morning. I remember walking the city with Bob, who could tell me the radical history of every building we passed. He also told me once that for an artist there never was a colour to equal the glorious colour of a tube of vermilion paint under Thatcher. As though Thatcher, and all who have followed her, crafted a world where the poor live in shadows and shades of gray, and it remains to us to fight for vermilion.

For a writer? The Scottish use of language is pure dead glorious. Like my beloved Spanglish, it twists English into its own cadences and rhythms, and is full of words that I have never heard the like of. Both of them are languages of resistance in their power and playfulness and refusal to bow to a dominant grammar.

Small wonder that the history should match the rest, or better said, small wonder that I should love it so, shaped by history as it is. A history that human beings have taken into their hands to wrestle into shape, to wrest from it some kind of justice for themselves, their families, and their communities.

What is Red Clydeside? A city in revolt. Known principally as a primarily socialist uprising of workers during World War I, my own favourite stories are those of the women. With the influx of workers to the munitions plants, many landlords saw the opportunity to profit from the war and drastically raise rents. A spate of evictions followed, and owners also confiscated possessions to cover arrears. Business has always been business for business people.

In 1914, Independent Labour Party (ILP) councillor Andrew McBride, and Women’s Labour League president Mary Laird, formed the Glasgow Women’s Housing Association. It was Mary Barbour, however, who made of it a movement of active resistence, forming the South Govan Women’s Housing Association in June of 1915. The third child of seven, she had worked as a thread twister and carpet printer, and been part of the Kinning Park Co-operative Guild. The South Govan Housing Association worked through a collection of committees, physically preventing evictions and ‘hounding’ the Sheriff’s officers. I’m not entirely sure what this hounding consisted of, but knowing the proud women of Glasgow as I do, I can testify that it was without doubt both terrifying and effective.

Govan proved to be an inspiration quickly taken up by all of Clydeside, with evictions everywhere being forcibly resisted. The rent strike commenced. The Independant Labour Party and the Labour Unions came to the support of the women in demanding not simply a moratorium on rent increases, but the building of social housing, this is what solidarity looks like (if nothing else, just read the top paragraph of the second column):

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Last year I read The City and the City a sci-fi detective story by China Mieville, which takes place in two cities that are in some places adjacent to each other, and in others, actually occupy the same physical space.  To manage and maintain the distinct existence of the two cities, their inhabitants have adopted a deep cultural practice of “unseeing”   — the ability and requirement to recognize, but not-see, things in the other city.  Things that are actually there, but cannot be.  The inevitable infractions of this law are called a “breach,” which is the highest crime imaginable by either city.  These crimes against the unseeable are managed by their own transborder police force, called the Breach.

It’s a great read, which I highly recommend for lovers of great fiction.  But I bring it up here because of how well this idea parallels one of the most poorly understood resistance movements of recent U.S. history — the resistance by unions, employers, and elected officials to the actual enforcement of affirmative action, specifically and particularly in the building trades which, when accessible, provide some of the best-paying jobs to working class Americans.  Forty years later, organized labor and employers still “unsee” the value of black workers in a manner that might even challenge the imagination of Mr. Mieville.

This history is reframed and ably presented in a recently published anthology edited by academics David Goldberg and Trevor Griffey called Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative Action, and the Construction Industry.  Each chapter offers detailed descriptions of events between 1963 and 1973 when redevelopment projects and affirmative action programs collided with complicated movements by black communities to control the development of their neighborhoods and gain the right to work.  The leaders and citizens of these cities-in-the-cities were all African American.

The stories in Black Power at Work include inspiring accounts of the bold innovations that these movements produced to transform the distribution of opportunity between the races in the United States in a meaningful way.  Those elevated moments are, however, tempered by the despair of possibilities that are to this day unfulfilled. It is this history, reframed and reproduced that explains the importance and common sense of the current initiative to create a Black Workers Center in Los Angeles.  (an important a story, deserving its own piece, coming soon).

Black Power at Work is framed around some big themes that are elaborated in detailed case studies of key events in Brooklyn, Newark, the Bay Area, Detroit, Seattle, and Chicago, including: Read More…

At the same time that protests have erupted all over France regarding national cutbacks of the country’s historic social safety net, there is a local example of experimenting with policies to redress inequality.

I recently visited the French city of Lille where I was struck by the citywide initiatives to create a more socially and spatially just place for its residents.

(Wikimedia Commons-Author: Manchot Sanguinaire)

Situated in the North of France, practically on the Belgian border, Lille is at the heart of a region that boomed during the industrial revolution primarily through its word-renowned textile industry as well as important coal, mechanical and chemical production. The region essentially knew steadfast economic growth until the deindustrialization crisis hit in the 1960s-1970s, when jobs moved to Asia and left the northern textile region in ruin. It has been struggling ever since to recover its economy and its declining population as well as dealing with an important legacy of environmental degradation born out of its heavy industrial production.

Aerial view of Lille  (Wikimedia Commons – Author: JÄNNICK Jérémy)

Lille has faired better than most other industrial cities in the region thanks primarily to a slow conversion to a service-based economy with the arrival of the Eurostar in 1993, but also, thanks to a string of ambitious socialist mayors who have governed the city since the late 19^th century. (Note: “socialist” in the French context refers to the main leftist party of France, The Parti Socialiste, and not to what U.S. tea-party-people would call socialism…).

Euralille: the symbol of Lille’s conversion to a service-based economy (Wikemedia Commons – author: Ad62)

Despite huge efforts to rebuild the economy and reclaim an identity for itself however, Lille and its surrounding urban region continue to suffer from higher than average unemployment rates and lower per capita incomes than the national French average. There are still many poor ex-industrial areas which suffer from poor housing, poor services and infrastructure as well as the repercussions from is sometimes refered to in France as the “lost generation” – the generation of factory workers who lost their jobs during the post-war crisis and never got them back.

However Lille’s mayors, particularly the current one Martine Aubry, have made important efforts to ensure that the redevelopment of the city and its economy benefit all “lillois”, rather than accepting the first offer that comes in order to make a few quick bucks (see for example the way Detroit has been run since its automotive collapse)

In this way, important efforts have been made to create a more inclusive and more sustainable city for all.

Last July, my research took me to Lille where I interviewed several local actors, including Ari Brodach, the City’s Director of Sustainable Development.  He told me an anecdote that beautifully encapsulates Lille’s efforts to create an “eco-social” city.

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Free Film Screening and Discussion

Bogotá Change

EVENT DETAILS
DAY:  Sunday, September 12
Film: 4 PM
Discussion: 5 PM
Place: Busby’s East
5364 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90036

street parking

What does fun have to do with social change?

How can mimes, super-hero costumes, and artistic interventions help to transform a city?

Join Dr. Pop for a lively screening of Bogotá Change, a documentary that tells the story of how Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa reshaped an entire city through creativity and an incredible commitment to being human.

After the movie we will share ideas on what this has to do with L.A. and the creative work we are already doing.

Bring your best plots, schemes and dreams.

A few weeks ago, Aiyana Stanley Jones was killed by the Detroit police, who raided her home while she was sleeping.  The incident passed the national media’s “if it bleeds it leads” rule and was even more tragic because Aiyana was only 7 years old.

Five days later, 20-year-old Damion Gayles was shot and wounded by the police only a few blocks away.  The community was outraged and the media picked up that outrage as well.

But what is less known about Detroit is how the people in this city that has been under economic, political, and police siege for so long, have been gradually building an infrastructure for peace and promise from the grassroots.

When violent crime and police brutality spiked in the 90s, the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality was formed to document acts of policy brutality and misconduct, to create greater accountability and justice from law enforcement, and to advocate for a police force that is more racially diverse, more respectful, and more adept at dealing with and serving people of different backgrounds and abilities.

One of the Coalition’s core organizing strategies is to form “Peace Zones for Life” across the city in which mediators are called in to arbitrate conflicts between neighbors and families rather than the police.  Their idea is to “put the neighbor back in the hood” and to transform tragic events into community-building efforts for safer futures.

The killing of Aiyana and shooting of Damion have sparked the creation of new Peace Zones  across the City.  The shootings are tragic, but the innovation and tenacity of the Peace Zones deserve celebration.

Another kind of peace zone are the spaces and places being made where youth can participate in change-making and thrive.  Central to such efforts are veteran activist Grace Lee Boggs (who will be 95 in July) and the Boggs Center, which was established in 1995 by friends and associates to honor and continue the revolutionary legacy of theory and practice of Grace Lee and her husband, James Boggs, now deceased. Read More…

This is our city!

People are resisting the assault on our city. Detroiters are standing up against the schemes of Mayor Bing, Emergency Financial Manager Bobb and powerful foundations who are plotting to take our land, close our schools, sell our last public hospital, destroy whole neighborhoods and are putting everything they can think of up for sale.

Behind closed doors they are making plans that will affect our city and our children for generations to come. They refuse to share their plans in open forums, refuse to support the elected school board and challenged court orders questioning their powers. The private foundations supporting this secrecy are not accountable to any one, using their money to dictate winning and losing neighborhoods.

We are outraged by this assault on our city and on democracy. We know there is a better way. Across Detroit, long abandoned neighborhoods are coming to life with gardens, art projects and new businesses. Schools are resisting the effort to turn our children into mindless test takers, creating imaginative life affirming programs supporting community growth. We are restoring community ties, turning war zones to peace zones for life.

These activities have caught the attention of national and international media, telling the story of a new Detroit resurgence.    These activities have also attracted the attention of those who see another opportunity to make money by shifting public resources into private hands. This is our city. These are our children. No one has a right to determine our future without us.

We demand

• An immediate halt to school closings.
• Open meetings in community centers, churches, civic organizations and block clubs to discuss the future of our city.
• No use of eminent domain to take land for private use.
• Full disclosure of foundation board members economic interests in our city.

Join us to

• Turn all our schools into neighborhood resource centers, where young people develop their minds, hearts and imagination solving the problems facing our communities.
• Maintain open land for small community gardens.
• Turn vacant houses into neighborhood resources.
• Reconnect generational ties through public art, urban gardens, community restoration projects.

Support

• The right of Detroiters to make our own decisions about our future.
• Innovative schools transforming education in service to our communities.
• The imagination of teachers, activists, small businesses, urban farmers, artists and young people who are already rebuilding Detroit from the ground up.

Detroiters for Dignity and Democracy

This year I’m celebrating Mother’s Day with a mashup about Julia Ward Howe a founding mother of U.S. Mother’s Day, and the astonishing Hissa Hilal, the first female finalist on Poet of Millions, Abu Dhabi’s poetry version of American Idol.  

Julia Ward Howe saw a natural connection between motherhood and the struggles to abolish slavery, achieve women’s suffrage, and win international peace.  Her 1862 poem, written after visiting a Union Army camp, was published in the Atlantic Monthly and became the lyrics of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, a Union Army anthem.

Howe no doubt saw an alignment between the fight to abolish slavery and the idea of a “just” war.   But that was hard to sustain. The Civil War was the bloodiest in American history, claiming more American lives (620,000) than any other U.S. wars from the Revolution through Vietnam.

So, in 1870,  Howe proposed a “Mother’s Day for Peace” and wrote the Mothers Day Proclamation — a call to mothers everywhere to take a stand against war and for peace on an international scale.   Howe organized a first “Mother’s Day” as an anti-war observance in New York on June 2, 1872.  But it wasn’t until 1913 that Congress officially declared the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

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This Mothers’ Day I would like to pay special tribute to (you Mom, of course), but also to the women known as Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In March 1976, then-President of Argentina Isabel Perón was deposed by a military coup. This marked the beginning of a military dictatorship known as the “Dirty War” which would last until 1983. During that time, an estimated 30,000 people “disappeared”, mostly young women and men struggling for the return of constitutional rule, for the freedom of their country from its subjugation to U.S. interests, and for the respect of the U.N.’s Declaration of Human Rights. It was later discovered that most of these young “desaparecidos” had been abducted, tortured and killed for allegedly “corrupting Christian and Western values.”

“Que Digan Donde Estan” – Pictures of those who disappeared during the “Dirty War”

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James Rojas is an urban planner who devotes a lot of his time to translating the impenetrable maps and language of land use planning into a activities that are visual, tactile, and playful — the language of how we actually experience the world.

James’ basic goal is to create environments that elicit ordinary people’s ideas and solutions to urban problems.

“I’m always amazed by people’s ideas and solutions — its mind-boggling how many creative ideas people have.”

To James, ideas are the golden currency of city-building.

Imagine that.

Here’s a 3-minute video that runs you through the process and its party spirit.  A more detailed explanation follows as the article continues below.

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When thinking about urban environmental repair, there is perhaps no better place to start than in what may seem to be the most unlikely of places: Detroit, MI.  Yes, the ex-capital of the auto-industry is rewriting the rules of urban regeneration as we know them and Detroit residents are creating a whole new way of thinking city-life.

As Rebecca Solnit says, Detroit’s best-known recent history is one of urban apocalypse characterized by “deindustrialization, depopulation, and resource depletion”

One third of the population lives beneath the poverty line and local officials estimate unemployment to be near 50% (the official figure is 30%).

Since the mid 1950s, the population has gone from nearly 2 million people to less than 900,000. Thirty percent of Detroit’s land is currently vacant – roughly the size of San Francisco in square miles. On top of this, the entire city of Detroit has become a  “food desert” — there is not one produce-carrying supermarket in the City. The endless rows of abandoned buildings and houses of what was once Motor City offer an eerie glimpse into a “post-American” future.

Flickr/tronics

Flickr/bobjagendorf

But out of this land, another story is emerging, in which the people of Detroit are re-inventing their city as the urban agriculture center of the country.

I recently met Asenath Andrews, the principal of the Catherine Ferguson Academy, a high school for young mothers and pregnant teens who raise animals and organic fruits and vegetables.  The school also offers classes on beekeeping and more to the community..

The conversation opened a window for me upon Detroit Green.

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Here’s another little Havana/L.A. mashup about art and redevelopment.

One of my other favorite places in Havana is the Callejón de Hamel, a small alley near the University of Havana that is an explosion of color, afro-cuban imagery, and sculpture — produced by Cuban artist Salvador Gonzales Escalona.

Salvador started making murals and sculptures in the street in 1990, using scrap objects and whatever paint was available, including car enamel (good paint is in short supply in Havana).. Inspired by the support of local residents and visitors, he continued painting and sculpting and the street is now a jewel of a place that also serves as an active Afro-Cuban center. Children can take painting workshops there, and every Sunday Rumba musicians and dancers perform (it has become a tourist attraction, hence the nickname “rumba alley”).

The street is still Salvador’s artistic headquarters. Here is a lovely Havana Cultura video interview with the artist (sorry its just in Spanish, but even for people who don’t know the language, it is visually engaging, and gives you a sense of his personality):

I didn’t have to go far to see what L.A. has to offer along the lines of Callejon de Hamel.  I live a stones throw from St. Elmo’s Village, which is now celebrating its 40th anniversary year as a live/work space for artists and as a community arts center.

The Village, as its residents call it, was founded by artists Roderick and Rozell Sykes and is run today as a non-profit by Roderick and his wife Jacqueline Alexander-Sykes.

City Mask by Roderick Sykes

Like Callejon de Hamel, St. Elmo’s offers art classes for children, and also hosts a weekly open house, frequent tours for local schools, and hosts the Poetry in Motion festival each fall.

Last month I had the privilege and rare opportunity to visit Cuba, traveling along with the FourStory crew, friends, and family.  A dozen or so people –  mostly writers, a few academics, artists, an architect, a developer, a high school teacher, a graduate student, and a lady barber.  Good traveling companions.

I confess to tourist status.  What I appreciated most from my short visit was the art, the music, and, of course, the people.  As is often the case, one benefit of the trip was returning with a new lens that lets me  appreciate some things at home with new eyes.

So here is one of my favorite Havana places, with a trackback to home.

Fuster

This is a photo of our team entering the amazing home of José Fuster, a disneyland of colorful tile and whimsical comfort.  It is also a deeply political location, in terms of the owner-builder’s idea and practice of art-as-redevelopment in the Jaimanitas neighborhood of Havana.

Read More…

For a general introduction to the theory and practice of restorative justice, check out:
Restorative Justice online.

I sat next to an astrophysicist on the flight to South Africa, one who was on a mission to observe the first stars as they formed. How does one look back millions of years to the moments when stars were first coming into being? Well, apparently you just need a very sophisticated radiotelescope in an area with very little interference. My neighbor in the aisle seat, a scientist and professor at Berkeley, was taking advantage of a much larger project called the Square Kilometer Array. By tuning into certain frequencies, this man and his colleagues would be able to gain key insights not just on how stars form, but on the dawn of the universe itself.

In order to understand this project at all, I had to change the way I understand time and space. Here is the thought exercise I was given on that flight: Think of the universe as a balloon. As more air goes into the balloon, it expands. What we experience as time is the expansion of the balloon, moving everything outwards as it goes. Earlier moments in history, like when stars first formed, are really just points that are further out on the balloon. By looking outwards towards those points scientists can capture information that has taken millions of years to travel back to us. This information can then be analyzed, put into equations, and used to fill out our contemporary understanding of the expanding universe, its origins, and perhaps even its future directions.

The balloon metaphor is an imperfect one, but it’s a start. I like it because it challenges me to think about my travels, and my life, in a totally different way. I am not growing older. Time, at least in the traditional sense, is not passing by me. Rather I am moving outwards, with a first-class seat in an expanding universe. Of course, none of us is on this journey alone. All of existence is in it together, at different phases and stages of becoming. Once I landed in Johannesburg I began to enter a new phase in my own unfolding life, one marked by political education and peer learning, by the fruits of other people’s struggles and by my own bonds with a group of trouble makers who call Chicago home.

I was heading to South Africa as part of a restorative justice delegation from the Windy City. Our group brought with it a diverse history of activism, action, and hustling for change. Some of the delegates were working to transform the disciplinary culture of the public school system, others were community leaders deeply rooted in neighborhood life, several had been working for decades to reform the ways our society responds to domestic violence, and many in the group had dedicated their lives to working with young people to shift power in their communities. All of us were practitioners of conflict resolution methods like peace circles, and all of us shared a basic belief in the power of groups to come together to address difficult issues, to deal with the conflicting forces in our lives.

For 2 weeks we meet with like-minded folks in Capetown and Johannesburg, interacting with an incredible array of people, places and projects. We connected with students, principals, teachers turned into police, preachers turned into organizers, community groups, and a whole host of amazing folks. We were there for the 20th anniversary of the release of political prisoners during apartheid (February, 2nd 1990). We were there as South African cities scrambled to ready themselves for the FIFA World Cup. We were there as much of the world heard about the marital and extra-marital exploits of the current ANC leader. We were there to listen to the Soweto Youth Choir, and to hear Hugh Masekela and Sibongele Khumalo perform together live at the Market Theater. But mostly we were just there, riding the balloon together, taking things one van ride and one conversation at a time. Read More…

I recently attended a public lecture given by Andrew Simms, the Policy Director of the new economics foundation, a UK-based think tank that develops new ways of thinking about our planet, our economy and our lives.

You may have heard of Simms and his nef colleagues; they’re the people behind the über-popular and increasingly ubiquitous “Happy Planet Index”, which measures countries based on the size of their ecological footprint, the length of their inhabitants’ lives, as well as their citizens’ declared levels of happiness.

The talk (hear the podcast) presented, in an unconventional way, nef’s guiding principles in rethinking the world as we know it. The ultimate goal was to retool the way Western nations’ economies operate by reducing our carbon emissions, our dependence on oil and the never-ending consumption and waste “treadmill” that propels the first two variables in this equation.

In order to do this, he suggests three ways to move towards a more sustainable planet and more people-oriented economy:

First, we must figure out more robust, yet still realistic, standards that are aimed at gauging people’s well-being and measuring their ecological footprints (the ethos behind nef’s Happy Planet index).

Second, we should place a ban on advertising in our public spaces, a move which, he argues, would further nef’s goals of reducing consumption and waste, as well as promoting happiness – all of which he views as inextricably linked. Simms points to the Brazilian metropolis of Sao Paolo as proof positive that this ad-free-zone strategy actually works.

Finally – and this I found particularly interesting – we have the idea of moving towards shorter workweeks. By reducing our labor hours (and again, Simms is specifically talking about Great Britain and the U.S.), we could not only potentially resolve the paradoxical situation we currently face — e.g., the simultaneous societal conundrums of overwork and unemployment – but we could also boost our general level of well-being while simultaneously reducing our consumption and waste, thus promoting more sustainable lifestyles. It’s a call to arms for a simpler life, one in which people would ideally spend more time with their friends and family, learning new skills or doing hobbies.

Decreasing work hours is a concept that has actually been around for a long time. It was one of the driving principles of labor movements during the industrial revolution, during which agitating workers demanded fewer hours to prevent fatigue. It’s also an argument that is being mobilized today to combat the current recessionary unemployment levels– an idea borrowed from the influential 20th century economist John Maynard Keynes, who believed a shorter working week was the “ultimate solution” to unemployment. Read More…

In US cities today, our public safety officials typically respond to violence by locking people up, by moving the offender far away from their families and their communities. This process of removal is almost always handled by the police, the only government officials that many US residents will ever see. And whether the people involved in the incident are youth or adults, the official response is roughly the same.

Alternatively, there may be no real response to violence at all. This is especially common in cases where weapons are not involved. Neither of these two extremes –police-led removal and inaction – does anything to address the underlying causes of violence. Neither accounts for the pain, neglect, or stress that can drive people to harm one another. Moreover, neither extreme deals with the hurt caused to others by an act of violence, the survivors, victims, witnesses, and loved one whose lives are forever changed by the event .

This begs the question, what is so public about public safety? Is it just that criminal justice employees are paid with tax payer dollars? Can real public safety be achieved without meaningful public involvement? Restorative justice is a philosophy that emphasizes the critical importance of involving parents, brothers, sisters, lovers, friends, children and other community members in the peacemaking process following a violent incident. It focuses on repairing the harm caused by crime and conflict, healing broken relationships, and addressing the underlying reasons for any offense.

A common saying in restorative justice circles is that “hurt people, hurt people.” This phrase suggests that healing is, in and of itself, an act of violence prevention.  Like a wild fire that can only spread when surrounded by dry conditions, violence can only thrive when hurts go unhealed. Extending this belief, restorative justice supporters argue that our streets can be made safer simply by creating community spaces to lovingly confront past pains. For restorative justice folks, healing is prevention.

It was precisely this understanding that guided Chicago’s first “Day of Healing” on December 8^th of 2009. Called by the Community Justice for Youth Institute, the day was initiated as a response to the more than 50 youth killings that happened between January and November of 2009 (see map below).  Thanks to the work of over 30 community organizations and schools, the day was organized in a matter of weeks. All across the city, from the South Side to the Wild West to the North Pole, these groups brought together youth and adults whose lives have been seriously impacted by violence.

Map by Andrew Greenlee

More than 40 peace circles  were successfully organized on that day, each one providing a safe space where people volunteered to sit down with one another and to share whatever was in their heart. Some circles explored the root causes of school fights, some provided a safe place for people returning from prison to share about their personal journey, while others brought together community leaders to reflect on the peacemaking work they’ve been doing for years.  Since that day, all of the circle organizers have met again and are planning to coordinate similar days of healing on a regular basis throughout 2010.

Chicago’s “Day of Healing” model offers a prime example of what peace and safety can look like when neighborhood leaders take charge. Whether you are a high school student, a teacher, a grandparent, or a non-profit worker, you have the ability to organize and facilitate peacemaking circles. You have the power to change the culture of justice at your school, on your block, and in your neighborhood. It is not enough to outsource safety to the police, or to simply ignore violence when it occurs. Real public safety requires the regular involvement of the real public. And that means us.

To learn more about peacemaking circles, restorative justice, and Chicago’s “Day of Healing,” go to:

http://cjyi.org/

http://healingchicago.wordpress.com/

http://www.livingjusticepress.org/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-koehler/power-with-power-over_b_312935.html

From 2006 to 2008, at the tiny age of 22, Ashok Kumar served as a Supervisor of Dane County, in Madison, Wisconsin.  He was endorsed by both the Greens and the Socialists and managed to pass some pretty fantastic stuff.  He’s a great storyteller, and despite his heavy hittin’ background, he’s not as serious as he sounds!  Today he’s a fellow student at the London School of Economics, where I interviewed him for my column, Really Serious Things.

Celine:

The theme for our blog is “Flipping the script,” so we are telling stories of people taking back the city and rethinking who the city is for and what it looks like.  You, Ashok Kumar, are someone who has done that.  Let’s start with the legislation you passed in Wisconsin, tell us about that.

Ashok:

That’s interesting.  I guess as an activist who was able to wiggle his way into public office I was trying to ‘flip the script’, but I never thought about it that way.

Our election campaign was always about harnessing the collective power of peoples’ movements within Dane County to assist in shifting the power relations.  And if some good policy came out of it, great! But that wasn’t the goal.  The policies we chose to fight for were always about localizing struggles as well as addressing community concerns in their own right.

Third-Party Candidate

From the beginning our relative success came as a result of me not running as a Democrat.  Ours was a district where it was still possible to win even if you ran to the left of the Democrats. It’s not intrinsically problematic to be a Democrat, but it’s usually difficult to affect change if you do since you owe your success to the party in power along with those vested interests that support that party.  In running as an insurgent third-party candidate, I was able to continue this adversarial role while in office.

Immigrants Rights

Two weeks after my election there were 25,000 people marching for immigrants’ rights in Downtown Madison.  Out of this national fight for immigrants’ rights, we worked with community organizations to institute full housing protections for undocumented immigrants. We ran a campaign for the county to offer id-cards for the undocumented, and organized immigrants and allies against a racist sheriff who targeted immigrants despite us passing a sanctuary law which made it illegal for county sheriff’s deputies to enforce or assist with federal law enforcement of immigration laws.

This was our model.  Gauge where the community stood and work in solidarity on policies that built power as well as win concessionary demands.

Section 8 Housing

A few other examples of policy campaigns include the ending of Section 8 housing discrimination.  This was a campaign that low-income, mostly black, community organizations had organized without avail for over a decade, against racist landlords who refused to accept Section 8 vouchers and had led to a systemic ghettoization of ‘Section 8ers’ as they were called.  Our law made it illegal for landlords to refuse these vouchers, and doubled the housing options for over 3,000 low-income families on Section 8 housing assistance.

Making Bad Contracts Good

Other laws included permanently ending millions of dollars in public and private jail profiteering, an outgrowth of years-long campaigns by the urban churches of Dane County. We also passed a law making it illegal for the county to contract with violators of labor laws, which coincided with long-standing campaigns taking place by the labor unions UNITE-HERE and SEIU who were organizing low-income laundry and janitorial workers at the time.

Ear to the Ground

Laws included expanding full housing rights to transgender people and people with criminal records that passed as a result of these communities directly confronting do-nothing supervisors. We also recognized Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day because Wunk Sheek and other Indian organizations demanded it, which created quite a stir on right-wing radio.  My point is that policy-making is about keeping your ear to the ground and responding appropriately, not seeing yourself as the torchbearer.

Domestic Partnership

Another big campaign that was taking place simultaneously in many states at the time, including Wisconsin, was “vote no” on the marriage amendment–campaign.  We lost.  After so much organizing the results were devastating to many who had organized tirelessly around the issue. Following this, I wrote the Dane County Equal Benefits Ordinance, which required all contractors and subcontractors of the county to recognize domestic partnerships as equivalent to marital benefits.  This affected thousands of Dane County businesses and workers.  The organizing around the law was more about peoples’ ability to not be demoralized after such a mammoth campaign at the state-level.  Winning can sometimes serve that purpose, and provide the necessary short-term fuel to continue struggling. People organized and the law passed.  It was the strongest most expansive domestic partnership law in the country and has been used as model-legislation in a number of cities and counties around the country.

Wisconsin to Venezuela

The last law I was able to pass was the sister-agreement with Andres Eloy Blanco Municipality, Venezuela.  Many saw this as a shout-out to my people on the left, but I and others who I organized with saw it as more representative of our broader internationalist philosophy.  I don’t want it to seem as if the solution is to work on electoral campaigns and pass a bunch of laws.  It’s about something bigger, more structural.  The sister agreement was about building solidarity ties with similarly minded communities in the Global South.  It was about learning from their struggles and looking at our own local struggles within a global context.

Legislating from the Movement Up

All in all I was able to write and pass over a dozen laws because of the social movements that these laws were bound with.  This will also result in their actual enforcement, unlike many laws that pass through backroom deals.  The fact that people of color, working class people, women, LGBT and other historically marginalized people organized and forced the power structure to recognize their humanity serves a multiplicity of purposes, most important of which is the collective knowledge within these communities that hegemony is socially constructed and organizing is the key to winning.

Ultimately, I think, many in the community concretized the idea that real democracy takes place in the streets, not on the legislative floor. The latter is just a tool for organizing the former; we’re taught it’s the other way around.  In that sense, I think we were able to ‘flip the script’, at least just a bit for people in Dane County, when it comes to the narrative sold by the power structure, and internalized by us, about what’s actually possible in our communities.

Celine:

Related to that actually, there is an article about you which describes your “philosophy as a politician” which is you saw yourself as “an extension of Dane County’s social movements, the real agent of progressive change.” I really like that. It’s so rare, so refreshing…

Ashok:

Well yes, although this might be ‘flipping the script’ on conventional notions of what’s possible within representative government I don’t think this is necessarily ‘the model’.  You have to consider the demographics of my district and Madison in general.  Dane County is the second largest county in Wisconsin after Milwaukee.  I represented Downtown Madison, arguably one of the most progressive districts in the country.  Even though I ran with the Green Party, almost every union – with the exception of the sheriff’s deputies union – supported me.  That isn’t normal in other areas around the country.

Taking the Streets into the Supervisors’ Chambers

Even though I ran in the most contested election in the county, against two Democrats and a Republican, I was still supported by the Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women.  This doesn’t happen in most places.  Nonetheless, although Madison is progressive, the same cannot be said for the other 64 cities, towns, and villages that make up Dane County.  Before I was elected my supporters and I had been organizers in campaigns that involved building occupations, hunger strikes, and other forms of direct action.  We modeled our county campaigns around a similar strategy.  Through marches, direct confrontation, public shaming, ‘packing meetings’, and targeting financial support our campaigns were able to bring reluctant Supervisors kicking and screaming to our side.

Media Critics

This also led to a barrage of media criticism from radio to print to the blogosphere about our ‘tactics’.  I don’t know what I can say about that… maybe we could have been a bit more tactful about what we said and did, but I just think that the media in most places in America sucks, that’s all.  Plus many of these operate at the behest of powerful interests that we were confronting on a daily basis.  They served the interests of the chamber of commerce, apartments association, builders, realtors and others who felt genuinely threatened by movements and progressives in power.

Celine:

Yes you did come across harsh critics along the way, but you did great work! You put a spin on politics-as-we-know-it in the U.S., by not using the usual “my hands were tied” cop out plus you gave people a platform on which to be heard, to elevate their struggles which in turn brought about legislation that is completely outside of the “leftist” gamut of “things that can be done in our communities”. You guys rocked! Any closing remarks on collective action/organizing/coalition building…

Ashok:

Hey thanks!  All three of those are key components to not just ‘winning the policy’ but building capacity for movements.  Progressives in power need to see that as their role.  It’s about building infrastructure for the long haul.  For example, if you get elected in a place that doesn’t have much movement culture, work to pass a law that eases the rights of workers to organize rather than a budget amendment for a Purchase of Service Agency.  Put your energy where it is most effective.  The latter may help a few people, but the former builds capacity for movements to develop in the future.  That’s just one example, but I think you see what I’m getting at.

In Dane County, we had the worst black-to-white disparate incarceration rate in the country.  The black community of Madison has been organizing around issues of racist policing for decades.  The newer immigrant organizing also targeted the sheriff department’s policies.  In seeing the intersectionality of these issues and one common target these movements were able to coalition and make gains in ways that aren’t normally possible.  The white power structure pits low-income communities of color against each other, fighting over limited housing, social services, and resources – the crumbs.  The best use of local policy campaigns is as a tool to highlight the intersectionality of our movements, which will build lasting alliances between these communities.  In looking at local elections and policy campaigns I think people on the movement-left should see the value of them, ultimately, as tools for political education.  So, my point is that the victory is in the struggle. …but actually winning some demands sometimes is good too.

More about Ashok:

A guy at the water cooler: Ashok Kumar talks about being socialist in public office

Critics ignore Kumar’s progressive strides

What makes mathematicians good mayors?

They solve problems!

People using too much water? Taxi drivers taking folks to the wrong locations? Too many men acting violent at night? Frustrated drivers unable to communicate with each other? Urban dwellers crossing the street in dangerous ways?

In this videoblog urban planners from Colombia tell the story of two creative independent mayors who found new ways to address old urban issues. The mayors – Antanas Mockus from Bogota and Sergio Fajardo from Medellin – worked to change the way that residents relate to one another and to public space. With the help of mimes, super hero costumes, and artistic interventions, they helped to create a ‘culture of citizenship’ in their respective cities.

As you listen to Catalina Ortiz and Diego Silva tell the story of these two mayors, you’ll learn how former mathematicians became some of the most innovative politicians in Colombia’s recent history. And their efforts are far from over. Amidst Colombia’s unfolding presidential race, Mockus and Fajardo are both trying to bring their alternative messages to the national stage. While Fajardo’s campaign has been gaining steam in the mainstream, Mockus is focused on fueling a new grassroots movement built on trust between informed citizens. What is his campaign slogan amidst the violence plaguing the country today? “Life is Sacred.”

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For more on Mockus and Fajardo check out the links below:

Mockus in Bogota:

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/03.11/01-mockus.html

http://www.neohouston.com/2009/03/antanas-mockus-and-a-multi-regulated-society/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antanas_Mockus

http://povblog.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/participaction-notions-on-cultural-agency-and-antanas-mockus/

Fajardo in Medellin:

http://colombiapassport.com/2009/09/30/sergio-fajardo-still-on-the-move/

http://latintrade.com/2009/06/sergio-fajardo-the-mathematical-answer/

http://www.newsweek.com/id/69623http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpPZ6EgYZ0w

This is a post from last September 2008, from Brazil. where I attended my first annual meeting as a Synergos Senior Fellow and had the privilege of spending time in discussion with about 40 social advocates from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Inida, Kenya, Mexico, Namibia, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, U.S., and Zimbabwe.

Synergos is the brainchild of Peggy Dulany, a person who chose to turn her inherited wealth, influence, and networks outward to shape new alliances and tools to reduce world poverty and inequality.  Steady work.

A high point of the week for me was a keynote address (transcribed below) by Brazilian industrialist, philanthropist, compulsive social entrepreneur, Oded Grajew.

Oded’s resume presents a counterpoint between power and social justice.  A former toy manufacturer, and a succcessful one, he started the Abrinq Foundation for Children and Adolescents Rights while he was President of the Toy Manufacturers Association of Brazil.  He is Chairman of the Board of the Ethos Institute of Business and Social Responsibility, and was instrumental in creating several other initiatives that promote education, accountable development, and responsible entrepreneurship.

Most recently, he helped forge Movimento Nossa Sao Paulo (Our Sao Paulo Movement), which he describes in more depth below, providing food for thought for our U.S. Right to the City movement.

Oded is the founder of the World Social Forum and still sits on its Board.

He is a special advisor to the popular Brazilian President Lula (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — today Brazilian newspapers report a 77.7% approval rating — across all Brazilian classes).  Oded is also a member of the Advisory Board of the United Nations Global Compact. Read More…