Dispatches Against Displacement: Field Notes from San Francisco's Housing Wars - Softcover

Tracy James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1849352054 ISBN 13: 9781849352055

Publisher: AK Press, 2015

Synopsis

"We are all too well adjusted," says James Tracy, "to an economic system that evicts, downsizes, pollutes, and imprisons. This same system also comes equipped with a well-oiled public-relations system calibrated to rob us of something even more profound: our ability to imagine a different state of affairs." In San Francisco, that system is eroding the city with waves of cash flowing north from Silicon Valley. Recent evictions of long-time San Francisco residents, outrageous rents and home prices, and blockaded "Google buses" are only the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath the surface is a long arc of displacement over almost two decades of "dot-com" boom and bust. A housing activist in the Bay Area since before Google existed, Tracy excavates that history, exploring the battle for urban space-public housing residents fighting austerity, militant housing takeovers, the vagaries of federal and state housing policy, as well as showdowns against gentrification in the Mission District. From these experiences, Dispatches Against Displacement draws out a vision of what alternative urbanism might look like if our cities were developed by and for the people who bring them to life and keep them running.

About this title

About the Author

James Tracy is the co-author of "Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times" (Melville House Publishers) and the co-founder of the San Francisco Community Land Trust. His articles have appeared in "Race Poverty and the Environment," "Shelterforce," "Street Sheet," and "Z Magazine."

Edition details

• Publisher: AK Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1849352054
• ISBN 13: 9781849352055
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 150