2010 Responding

Interface: a journal for and about social movements Response to Harvey Volume 2 (1): 287 - 297 (May 2010) Shepard, It's all about organizing

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Responding to Harvey: It's all about organizing

Benjamin Shepard

It is hard not to concur with a great deal David Harvey’s “Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist Transition,” the notes for his new book The Enigma of Capital, especially the essay’s implicit critique of neoliberalism. His basic point, of course, is given the current financial crisis capitalism as we know it appears headed down a one way superhighway toward oblivion. Yet what this unsustainable future looks like - no one is quite sure. In the absence of a clear movement leading the charge, Harvey identifies a few of the obstacles, impediments, and limitations of current economic and organizational models. Of course, most of these are born of capitalist social arrangements, which increasingly separate the masses and classes. While effective theories of change tend to take shape as an interplay between any number of practices and theoretical assumptions, such programs only gain validity when they take shape on the ground, as living and breathing modes of lived theory and engagement (Duncombe 2003; Schram 2002). Some of the essay does this more than others. This short response to Harvey considers some of the essay’s core arguments and assumptions in terms of current activist practices taking shape here in New York.

Obstacles

Probably the most compelling aspect of this essay is Harvey’s succinct analysis of what has happened to capitalism since the 1970s. Much of this argument builds on his work over the last 15 years, particularly his 2005 A Brief History of Neoliberalism as well as his recent writings on ‘the right to the city.’ Through these works, the writer describes what has gone wrong and ways to addressing these conditions from the perspective of social movement activity. For the last decade, global justice activists around the world have declared ‘another world is possible’ the essay beings. “The current crisis offers a window of opportunity to reflect on what might be involved” Harvey suggests, sounding very much like a leader of the vanguard. Such movements could be well served by, “defining how another socialism or communism is possible and how the transition to these alternatives is to be accomplished.”

Much of the current crisis was born of the steps used to address the economic crisis of the 1970s. These include: a) a well choreographed assault of the labor movement and the business labor accord of the previous four decades, b) a global concentration of corporate power, with resources moving from the middle to the top tier of income distribution, c) an attack on the environment and on environmental protections born out of the movements from the early 1970s, “thus sparking de-industrialization in traditional core regions and new


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forms of (ultra-oppressive) industrialization and natural resource and agricultural raw material extractions in emergent markets.”

d) This environmental exploitation is followed by new forms of primitive accumulation, or “primitive globalization.” This includes heightened reliance on “accumulation by dispossession” as a means to augment capitalist class power. Here, the poor are increasingly displaced from homes and communities, from New Orleans to Chicago to Brazil. The new rounds of primitive accumulation are augmented by asset losses of the lower classes. The sub-prime housing market in the US which meant huge losses of assets for African American populations was only the latest expression of this long term trend, born of red-lining and predatory capitalist practices dating back decades. (For a detailed review of the impact of red-lining on one community, see Wilder 2001).

e) The final ingredients include the growth of debt levels which were a disincentive to creating viable government-supported, safety net provisions to keep poor people from falling through the cracks. Reagan’s first budget director famously noted that the long term budget deficit would be their administration’s gift to future administrations which would have to govern within an environment of debt rather than in an environment in which there was cash to create programs that would limit the damage of the administration’s assault on the gains of social movements from Civil Rights to the Environment. This phenomenon extends around the world. f) Given current circumstances, Harvey suggests that sustained 3% economic growth is no longer viable without a little creative accounting, or in his words “the construction of whole series of asset market bubbles, all of which had a Ponzi character, culminating in the property bubble that burst… These asset bubbles drew upon finance capital and were facilitated by extensive financial innovations such as derivatives and collateralized debt obligations.” One needs to look no further than the current circumstances in Greece to find evidence in support of this claim (see Story et al. 2010).

Since the 1970s, these innovations have helped usher in a set of transitions which “had a distinctive class character and clothed themselves in the vestments of a distinctive ideology called neoliberal.” This political philosophy, “rested upon the idea that free markets, free trade, personal initiative and entrepreneurialism were the best guarantors of individual liberty and freedom and that the ‘nanny state’ should be dismantled for the benefit of all.” And the role of the state shifted into a subservient role in the support a better business climate. This impulse superseded human needs. “The interests of the people were secondary to the interests of capital and in the event of a conflict between them, the interests of the people had to be sacrificed…The system that has been created amounts to a veritable form of communism for the capitalist class.” Here, the private ingests the public – be it hospitals, water, schools, and services – as the public sphere contracts and dwindles.

There are obvious limitations to this model. Capital can only accumulate so much. There are only so many trees which can be chopped down, bluefin tuna fished to extinction, or taxes to be cut. The polar ice caps are already melting


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and ‘weather events’ related to global warming are only becoming more and more frequent. The last two “recoveries” failed to produce the jobs or wage based products to actually drive economic activity. “At times of crisis, the irrationality of capitalism becomes plain for all to see.” As neoliberalism accelerates, it takes on increasingly an carcinogenic dynamic. The social body of cities, people, and the environment feel these effects in immediate ways. After-all, for this system to prevail, “the people will have to surrender the fruits of their labor to those in power, to surrender many of their rights and their hard-won asset values, and to suffer environmental degradations galore.” Under this system working people are forced to cope with, “serial reductions in their living standards which means starvation for many of those already struggling to survive at rock bottom.”

“All of that may require more than a little political repression, police violence and militarized state control to stifle unrest”, Harvey notes, acknowledging the need for police forces maintain social order in an environment of exponential income stratification. After all, since fiscal crisis of the 1970s, governments have become increasingly tone deaf when it comes to responding to the sounds of social movements. Instead, we have witnessed “the creation of consent.” “The mix of authoritarianism, monetary corruption of representative democracy, surveillance, policing and militarization, media control and spin suggests a world in which the control of discontent through disinformation, fragmentations of oppositions and the shaping of oppositional cultures.” Here, “the promotion of NGOs tends to prevail with plenty of coercive force to back it up if necessary.” Subsequently, “[m]ost of the governmental moves to contain the crisis in North America and Europe amount to the perpetuation of business as usual which translates into support for the capitalist class.”

What to Do

So, what is to be done, muses Harvey? What are movements for social change to do? Writers, thinkers, and activists all seem to have different solutions. It is hard to imagine a more coherent articulation of what is wrong than what Harvey has spelled out. Yet for Harvey, the prescription for a solution becomes messier. “The uneven development of capitalist practices throughout the world has produced, moreover, anti-capitalist movements all over the place,” Harvey writes acknowledging the “[h]orizontally networked as opposed to hierarchically commanded systems of coordination between autonomously organized and self-governing collectives” organized to respond and create do-it-yourself solutions to a myriad of these challenges. “But a global anti-capitalist movement is unlikely to emerge without some animating vision of what is to be done and why,” argues Harvey.

Here in New York, he has linked a lifetime of writing, scholarship, and participation in social movements with Henri Lefebvre’s call for a “The Right to the City” helping organize the Right to the City Alliance (www.righttothecity.org). Yet, the tension remains about how to connect such


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analysis with movement action, especially when the writings of Henri Lefebvre seem miles away from the lived experiences of many activists on the ground. Just as Harvey diagnoses the problems with neoliberalism, he highlights the limitations with movement organizing, suggesting current movements have failed to advance effective alternative visions or solutions which in turn could ignite movements for change. His critique of current movements is searing. Here he suggests that current movements lack theoretical understanding or incoherent message or program; they fail to respect technical or administrative skills, instead relying on a compromised psychic prison like non-profit organizations (although much of the critique of non-governmental organizations is that they are over bureacratized, favoring administrative rather than direct action based solutions).

These are all generally legitimate (if somewhat contradictory) claims, yet they bring up the larger question of intellectuals and movements (see Duncombe 2003). Do movements need intellectual leaders or engaged practices, which effect everyday life? I would argue the former. Foucault long ago said movements do not need intellectuals to lead them. They do just fine by themselves (Foucault and Deleuze 1977). It is hard to disagree. This is not to suggest these are diametrically opposed points. They are not. You cannot swing a dead cat without hitting a graduate student or sociologist at many of the current global justice protests. “Grassroots leadership collectively requires many skills sets, and then more importantly the ability of participants to share their skill sets with each other,” argues San Francisco organizer James Tracey (2010). “So yes intellectuals need to be PART of the leadership of movements--but only one of many parts.” Tracey describes leadership based on the group as a brain with multiple forms of intelligence and knowledge to be shared, not monopolized.

While Harvey honors the work of organizers as ‘organic intellectuals’, he still sees feels compelled to critique the collective intelligence of movement practices. Herein lies the tension. “The effectiveness of all these movements (leaving aside their more violent fringes) is limited by their reluctance and inability to scale up their activism into large-scale organizational forms capable of confronting global problems,” observes Harvey after dismissing the current anti-corporate globalization movement’s near allergic aversion to “negotiation with state power.” Again, it is certainly hard to disagree with this sentiment. While the global justice movement has often been overly criticized for failing to effectively paint a picture of what “another world” might look like, it has often treated efforts to create alternative structures to the social welfare safety net provisions or services as a lesser calling to street fighting, or Storming the Bastille (see Davis 2002). Government can, in fact, support certain efforts aimed at change. Conversely, it is less productive to condemn those who would rather confront cops or dance in the street, to negotiating with the state. Creating change is not a zero sum game. As Brooke Lehman, the founder of New York’s Direct Action Network, explains:


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I think there is value in having progressives in government and there is value in having people doing street pageantry. What I’m most against is people throwing things out with the bath water constantly. When they find out something wasn’t the be-all and end-all, they want to throw out whatever they have been involved in or the little others have been involved in. I’m looking for the ways for those different strategies to work together (Shepard, in press).

Many activists argue movements need as many tools as possible at our disposal; these include a wide range of approaches to direct action, community building, and even some play. Lehman explains:

I mean, I don’t think that this movement is sustainable unless people have a sense of humor. I think part of the strength of the playfulness has been to bring joy into people’s experiences, but in countering the other extreme which is as alluring, but not a useful way to do mass organizing, which is to create a militant and even militaristic-seeming direct action organizing skills. I think when you are looking for energy, those are sort of the two poles that people get pulled into. And I’d much rather get pulled into the silly, creative side, even if it’s regarded as cheesy and sort of less serious. I think the more serious tends to mimic what we are fighting against too much (Shepard, in press).

The point is, movements benefit from multiple approaches to social change. A little flexibility could certainly yield a richer image of a true diversity of tactics. Yet, if one wants to honor the work of organic intellectuals, such as Lehman, involved in actually organizing as Harvey suggests he does, then their organizing efforts must be respected and engaged. The day-to-day life of movement organizing is anything but simple or smooth. It is not helpful when intellectuals condemn or fail to acknowledge their complicated decisions or challenges to organizing. Still Harvey suggests: “The presumption that local action is the only meaningful level of change and that anything that smacks of hierarchy is anti-revolutionary is self-defeating when it comes to larger questions.” Yet, in a world of complicated messy conundrums, some of the most vibrant organizing examples include the community gardens, syringe exchanges, community development corporations (CDCs), bike repair shops, free clinics, community banks, sustainable agriculture programs, land trusts, and other examples of globally informed, yet neighborhood based organizing efforts. “[T]hese movements are unquestionably providing a widespread base for experimentation with anti-capitalist politics,” Harvey acknowledges.

A few words about the context of some of this organizing is instructive. In the years before a community organizer was elected president of the United States, countless observers suggested that community organizing was an obsolete method. Yet for many people, such organizing remains a vital tool. Two decades ago an organizer with the Chicago-based Developing Communities Project contrasted electoral campaigns with community economic development. “In my view, neither approach offers lasting hope of real change for the inner city unless undergirded by a systemic approach to community organization,” explained Barack Obama (1990). “This is because the issues of the inner city are more complex and deeply rooted than ever before. “Blatant discrimination has been replaced by institutional racism; problems like teen pregnancy, gang


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involvement, and drug abuse cannot be solved by money alone.” To get to the bottom of such issues, Obama called for “grass-roots community organizing, which builds on indigenous leadership and direct action.” Many agreed with this sentiment.

Throughout the last two decades, activists working on the ground have helped articulate a practice based approach to organizing strategies for creating power. Almost a decade ago, I interviewed Sara Schulman about her approach to organizing (Shepard 2002). “I’ve always been interested in political movements that have concrete political goals, that have issues for campaigns, that mobilize people, that create countercultures--that stuff has attracted me,” she explained, describing her own activist praxis. “The theory is not complex. You have to have an idea that is winnable. You have to have a campaign that is viable. And you have to follow every step of it. It’s quite easy.” Yet, Schulman cautions, “If your goal is not winnable then you are in trouble. And if you don’t have an idea of how to reach [your goal], you’ll never reach it. It sounds simple, but it’s very hard to get people to follow it.” While many movements face a struggle to bridge a gap between political wanderlust and an effective program to create change, there are any number of current struggles from environmental organizing to queer/AIDS activism which work from the ethos Schulman describes. In doing so, such community organizing remains a vital resource for those with little other access to social and political power to create changes, both large and small.

Take Jean Montrevil, a Haitian immigrant who lives in New York City. Montrevil was detained for deportation to Haiti on the morning of December 30, 2009, at a routine check with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This occurred despite the detail that Montrevil has been a legal immigrant in the United States since 1986, the husband of a U.S. citizen, and the father to four U.S. citizen children. The government’s actions stemmed from a 20-year old conviction, for which he had long since served his sentence. Such actions are typical of current immigration policy in the US in the post 9/11 context (Sen 2008). These actions became the public face of the latest flare up in a generations old controversy over the rightful role of immigrants and outsiders in US life.

What the ICE agents did not count on when the detained Montrevil was how connected Montrevil was. A long time community leader and activist, Montrevil is well known. Mr. Montrevil is a leader in a variety of immigrant rights groups including Families for Freedom and the NYC New Sanctuary Movement (NY NSC) and Detention Watch Network. In his fight for justice on behalf of all immigrants, Mr. Montrevil has gained the support of U.S. Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Nydia Velasquez, NY State Senator Thomas K. Duane and NY State Assemblywoman Deborah Glick.

On word of his detention, Montrevil’s family and friends and immigration activists around the country busied themselves getting the word out about what had happened, writing letters, leading sermons, and mobilizing supporters. In other words, they started organizing. The NYC New Sanctuary Coalition


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immediately called for an emergency vigil at 6 p.m. outside the Varick Street ICE Detention Center at Varick and Houston Streets, which ended with a procession to Judson Memorial Church for a service where they demanded that Mr. Montrevil be released and that ICE stop separating families and communities. Mr. Montrevil’s wife and children as well as his many community supporters were present at the service. Inside a detention center far from home, Montrevil joined a hunger strike with other immigration detainees in York, Pennsylvania in solidarity with the Fast for Our Families, a group of five community members in South Florida who took their last meal on New Year’s Eve. “I am fasting side by side with nearly 60 other detainees to take a stand against this horrific deportation and detention system that is tearing families apart,” Montrevil reported. The Fast for Our Families and Montrevil both asked the Obama Administration to stop separating immigrants from their American families. Churches around New York City helped get the word out about the situation. Clergy and politicians demanded Montrevil’s immediate release and called for reform to the immigration laws, organizing an action.

Throughout the week, the coalition speaking up about Montrevil expanded. Prominent clergy and elected leaders called on the federal government to return Montrevil to his wife Janay and their children. “Jean represents all that is right about our nation and wrong with the deportation system,” argued Rev. Bob Coleman, of the historic Riverside Church and a leader of New York’s New Sanctuary Movement, a faith-based coalition for immigration reform that Montrevil himself co-founded in 2007. “He made a mistake. He paid his time. He represents a restored life. Who benefits by stripping him of his legal status?”

Montrevil entered the U.S. from Haiti in 1986 as a legal permanent resident. Homeland Security, on the other hand, was trying to deport him because of a 1989 drug conviction, for which Montrevil served 11 years. He has had an exemplary record ever since. He became a national spokesperson for the Child Citizen Protection Act, a bill moving through the House of Representatives that would bring due process into the deportation system by allowing immigration judges to consider the best interests of American children before deporting a parent. The proposal is part of Representative Luis Gutierrez’s recently introduced bill, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Act (H.R. 4321).

Following Montrevil’s detention on December 30, 2009 hundreds of supporters from across the country called David Venturella, Acting Director of ICE’s Office of Detention and Removal Operations, urging Montrevil’s release and the suspension of his deportation. “Contrary to the claims of ICE leadership that the agency will be transparent and accountable in its implementation of immigration laws, it has not responded to Montrevil or his attorney Joshua Bardavid," said Andrea Black, director of the Detention Watch Network. “There is no excuse for their silence.”

“Jean has been nothing less than an inspiration. His work on behalf of immigrants being torn from their families across the country has been prophetic,” explained the Reverand Donna Schaper of Judson Memorial


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Church, where Montrevil worships. “On Tuesday at 12:30 pm, I will join other people of faith at 201 Varick Street, the detention center in New York, and demand that ICE respond to us. We will no longer accept silence as an answer.” She was not alone.

January 5, 2010, at 12:30pm, clergy and parishioners from Jean’s church converged outside of New York’s Varick Street Detention Center. Singer Dan Zanes was on hand to add a little cultural resistance to the mix. Singing, ‘We Shall Not Be Moved” as they blocked new detainees from entering the center, eight clergy were arrested. Before the arrests began, Rev. Schaper stated: “I am being arrested because it is a moral outrage that our government would do this to such a great man and father. These immigration laws that destroy families contradict the values we should uphold as a society. They need to change now.” Throughout the day, local television showed a loop of the members of the congregation speaking up about Montrevil’s situation (Edroso, 2010; NY1, 2010).

The following week the movement continued to escalate. “The Fasters in Miami are fighting to keep families together, my husband and me are fighting to keep families together, so we will fight together!” exclaimed Jani Montrevil, Jean’s wife. “Our son keeps calling Jean’s cell phone, hoping Daddy will pick up. He asks me, 'Why are they pretending Daddy is bad, so he will go back to Haiti?' … Jean made mistakes before we started building a family together. Homeland Security wants to turn me into a single mother.”

The movement to keep families together was spreading across the country, with solidarity actions taking place in Texas and New Hampshire. On January 14th, the coalition held another rally, attended by elected representatives as well as community leaders. Many carried signs declaring, “We Will Not Forsake You” and “Keep our Families Together.” Rev. Michael Ellick, one of Mr. Montrevil’s pastors at Judson Memorial Church, stated: “It is outrageous that ICE is trying to tear this good man from his children at this holiday season. We will not rest until Jean is released and returned to his family and until immigration agents stops tearing our families and communities apart.” And that was just it, everyone at the event seemed most distraught that so many families and communities were being torn apart. The New York Times prominently covered the event (Semple 2010).

Within a week, they had succeeded in getting Jean Montrevil out of detention. Jean was back at Judson the following Sunday to sing and tell his story. When he stood, the church gave him standing ovation. He expressed gratitude to those who had spoken out for him; conversely, he voiced concern for earthquake survivors in Haiti and the other twenty-six immigrants still detained in the detention center in York Pennsylvania who lacked the support system he had. It is hard to imagine ICE was aware of how well connected he was when they sought to detain him.

Much of the work of Montrevil and his supporters highlights themes which help pull together the kind of coordinated campaign Schulman describes. These


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include: 1) A clear demand – “Set Jean Free”, “Keep Families Together”, 2) Research on Jean’s situation to frame the action, 3) A mobilization strategy which began at the Judson Church with the news of Jean’s arrest, and included multiple meetings to bring together stakeholders from across the city, 4) Direct action, including the civil disobedience on January 5th, 2010, 5) A media strategy, which used the direct action mobilization story to propel Jean’s story from local news coverage onto the national stage, 6) A short and long term legal strategy, linking Jean’s release to a reform of the immigration laws, and 7) finally a little fun, play, and culture, including Dan Zane’s lament, as well as the Freedom Songs such as ‘We Shall Not Be Moved.” Direct action does tend to get results, yet none of the fast work of the campaign would have been possible if Jean was not part of an expansive community.

Much of the challenge for today’s organizers is about connecting individual experiences and stories with broader social forces and networks as Montrevil’s supporters were able to do. And certainly organizing efforts must do more than manage poverty while leaving current oppressive structures in place. But, we cannot overlook everyday injustices either. While the social worker in me wants to address the bleeding, the organizer wants to support a paradigm shift toward a more systemic approach. Community psychologist Bill Oswald suggests one strategy for addressing the endemic inequalities Harvey describes. It involves imagining a three legged stool, in which each leg represents an approach with which to intervene: 1) remediation in which we fix what is immediately broken, 2) amelioration in which we address the root cause of what is going on, and finally 3) capacity building in which we help strengthen networks of people and communities. This is the shift from managing poverty to challenging the social conditions which create the harm (Totten 2008). After, all, between now and the anti-capitalist future Harvey anticipates, there is a great deal of work to be done.

For Harvey, social change takes shape “through the dialectical unfolding of relations between seven moments within the body politic of capitalism viewed as an ensemble or assemblage of activities and practices.” These include: “a) technological and organizational forms of production”, “b) relations to nature”, “c) social relations between people”, “d) mental conceptions of the world”, “e) labor processes and production”, “f ) institutional, legal and governmental arrangements”, and “g) the conduct of daily life that underpins social reproduction.” Many of these dynamics can be found within current movements for change. “Change arises, of course, out of an existing state of affairs and it has to harness the possibilities immanent within an existing situation,” Harvey argues. The organizing around the Montrevil’s case is just one of many such current situations in which organizers have taken an issue and turned into this a broad campaign for change.

Like Marx before him, Harvey has done a striking job at describing what is wrong; what seems to be missing is a link between his critique with a feasible strategy toward action and a coherent approach toward capacity building. In this, every organizer could do more. And much of this begins with organizing


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for power, to build networks which sustain those on fault lines such as Montrevil and many others, and finally to support alternative models of mutual aid and care. While Harvey concludes that “Another Communism is Possible” I would argue we would be better served by looking at what activists and organizers are building on the ground. What models have become outmoded? What best practices can be expanded? Through such questions and considerations, we get to where the real action is at – in between theory and activist practice.

I would like to thank Steve Duncombe, James Tracey, and Lesley Wood for their thoughtful feedback and suggestions for this essay.

References

Davis, James. 2002. "This is What Bureaucracy Looks Like". In Eds. Eddie Yuen, George Katsiaficas, and Daniel Burton Rose. The Battle of Seattle: The New Challenge to Capitalist Globalization. New York. Soft Skull Press. p.175-82.

Duncombe, Steve. 2003. "The Poverty of Theory: Anti-Intellectualism and the Value of Action" in Radical Society (30/ 1).

Edroso, Roy. 2010. 10 Arrested at Protest Over Detention of Immigration Reform Advocate - Village Voice blog. Accessed Jan 5, 2010 from http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/01/10_arrested_at_1.ph p

Foucault, Michel and Deleuze, Gilles. 1977. Intellectuals in Power: A Conversation between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. In language, counter-memory, practice, selected essays and interviews by Michel Foucault, Edited by Donald Bouchard. Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press.

Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford.

NY1. 2010. "SoHo Detention Rally Ends In 10 Arrests - NY1 News". http://ny1.com/5-manhattan-news-content/top_stories/111547/soho- detention-rally-ends-in-10-arrests, accessed January 5 2010

Obama, Barack. 1990. "Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City". In Center for State Policy and Leadership, After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois. University of Illinois at Springfield: 35-40

Schram, Sanford. 2002. Praxis for the Poor: Piven and Cloward and Future of Social Science and Social Welfare. New York: New York University Press.

Shepard, Benjamin. 2002. The Reproductive Rights Movement, ACT UP, and the Lesbian Avengers: An Interview with Sarah Schulman. In Shepard, Benjamin and Hayduck, Ron (eds.). From ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization. New York: Verso


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Semple, Kirk. 2010. Demonstrators Press for Haitian Advocates Release. New York Times. 15 January. A22.

Sen, Kenku with Fekkak Mamdouh 2008. The Accidental American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization. San Francisco: Berrett Koehler.

Shepard, Benjamin. In press for 2011. Play, Creativity, and Social Movements: If I Can’t Dance, Its Not My Revolution. New York: Routledge.

Story, Louise et al. 2010. "Wall Street Helped To Mask Debts Shaking Europe, Nations Skirted Rules, Complex Deals Allowed Greece to Overspend Fueling a Crisis." New York Times. 14 January: A1.

Totten, Vicki. 2008. Re-Framing the Problems of Poverty and Homelessness: A Paradigm Shift. Mid-Atlantic Consortium of Human Services. 5 April.

Tracy, James. 2010. Correspondence with the author.

Wilder, Craig. 2001. A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn. New York: Columbia University Press

About the author

Benjamin Shepard, PhD, is an assistant professor at New York City College of Technology/ City University of New York. He is the author/ editor of six books including Queer Politics and Political Performance: Play, Pleasure and Social Movement (Routledge 2010). His writing can be found at http://www.benjaminheimshepard.com/

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2010 Responding