Global Organizing for Rights to the City: An Antidote to Corporate Rule and Political Polarization

• In Event: 30480 - Mobilization and Contemporary Democratic Elections: Coping with Violence & Extremism

Abstract

Decades of economic globalization and austerity have fueled inequalities that have long stoked the deeply polarized divisions in U.S. and other societies and undermined democratic institutions around the world. While much media and scholarly attention has focused on right-wing populist mobilization, little work has explored the solidaristic grassroots responses to global economic and political change that have long been emergent around the world. This paper draws from my participatory research with the global and trans-local movement for rights to the city. I consider how this movement helps support democratic capacities and inclusionary politics that can build social cohesion by mobilizing diverse alliances to address the basic survival needs of people and communities. Drawing from my work in Pittsburgh, I discuss how community organizing for affordable housing mobilizes global human rights ideas and allies in support of local struggles for community control over basic needs. Because access to housing is a key driver of the economic insecurities that fuel our polarized politics, work to advance housing (and other essential needs) as globally recognized human rights can neutralize and reverse today’s dangerous anti-democratic trends.

Author

• Jackie Smith, University of Pittsburgh