Understanding Urban Unrest


Book Description

Mob violence - often an interracial expression of the urban poverty found in major cities in the United States - is a phenomenon that has plagued this country repeatedly in the twentieth century. From Reverend King to Rodney King, historical figures and incidents have shed new light on circumstances that bring about violence and the political context in which federal policy responds to the seemingly intractable social and economic problems that underlie the violence. In Understanding Urban Unrest, author Dennis E. Gale compares the federal programs that have been tested since 1966 and makes observations about the probable political response to urban interracial violence and poverty in the future. In addition, he contends that place-based patchwork policies are not effective and that only fundamental changes in the United States's economic structure and federal policy agenda can offer any real solutions for the nation's cities and its poor.




Police Power and Race Riots


Book Description

Three weeks after Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a New York City police officer shot and killed a fifteen-year-old black youth, inciting the first of almost a decade of black and Latino riots throughout the United States. In October 2005, French police chased three black and Arab teenagers into an electrical substation outside Paris, culminating in the fatal electrocution of two of them. Fires blazed in Parisian suburbs and housing projects throughout France for three consecutive weeks. Cathy Lisa Schneider explores the political, legal, and economic conditions that led to violent confrontations in neighborhoods on opposite sides of the Atlantic half a century apart. Police Power and Race Riots traces the history of urban upheaval in New York and greater Paris, focusing on the interaction between police and minority youth. Schneider shows that riots erupted when elites activated racial boundaries, police engaged in racialized violence, and racial minorities lacked alternative avenues of redress. She also demonstrates how local activists who cut their teeth on the American race riots painstakingly constructed social movement organizations with standard nonviolent repertoires for dealing with police violence. These efforts, along with the opening of access to courts of law for ethnic and racial minorities, have made riots a far less common response to police violence in the United States today. Rich in historical and ethnographic detail, Police Power and Race Riots offers a compelling account of the processes that fan the flames of urban unrest and the dynamics that subsequently quell the fires.




Understanding Urban Politics


Book Description

In Understanding Urban Politics: Institutions, Representation, and Policies, Timothy B. Krebs and Arnold Fleischmann introduce a framework that focuses on the role of institutions in establishing the political “rules of the game,” the representativeness of city government, the influence of participation in local democracy, and how each of these features influences the adoption and implementation of public policies. Part 1 lays the groundwork for the rest of the book by exploring the many meanings of “urban,” analyzing what local governments do, and providing a history of American urban development. Part 2 examines the organizations and procedures that are central to urban politics and policy making: intergovernmental relations, local legislatures, and the local executive branch. Part 3 looks at elections and voting, local campaigns, and non-voting forms of participation. The four chapters in Part 4 focus on the policy process and the delivery of local services, local government finances, “Building the City” (economic development, land use, and housing), and policies affecting the quality of life (public safety, the environment, “morality” issues, and urban amenities). Krebs and Fleischmann bolster students’ learning and skills with guiding questions at the start of each chapter, which ends with key terms, a summary, discussion questions, and research exercises. The appendix and website aid these efforts, as does a website for instructors.




Revolting New York


Book Description

"For many, the appearance of Occupy Wall Street seemed so sudden and so surprising it seemed to have come out of nowhere. But Occupy Wall Street was in some sense not unusual: it was part and parcel of a long history of riot, revolt, uprising, and sometimes even revolution that has shaped the city and the larger histories and geographies of which it is part. The history of New York is, in significant part, a history of revolt. Many citizens, activists, and scholars know pieces of that history, but nowhere has it been put together in something close to its entirety. The effect is that each revolt or uprising seems almost sui generis, always surprising, disconnected from both its long- and near-term history and social geography. Revolting New York brings together the historical geography of revolt in New York in its fullness, from the earliest uprisings of the Munsee against Dutch occupation of Manhattan to Occupy. All in a style accessible to a broad as well as academic audience The book will show that there is a continuous, if varied and punctuated, history of rebellion in New York that is at least as vital as the more standard histories of formal politics, planning, economic growth and restructuring that largely define our consciousness of New York's evolution and the structuring of life within it" --




The Great Uprising


Book Description

Offers a rich description of the impact of the 1960s race riots in the United States whose legacy still haunts the nation.




Urban Rage


Book Description

A timely and incisive examination of contemporary urban unrest that explains why riots will continue until citizens are equally treated and politically included In the past few decades, urban riots have erupted in democracies across the world. While high profile politicians often react by condemning protestors' actions and passing crackdown measures, urban studies professor Mustafa Dikeç shows how these revolts are in fact rooted in exclusions and genuine grievances which our democracies are failing to address. In this eye-opening study, he argues that global revolts may be sparked by a particular police or government action but nonetheless are expressions of much longer and deep seated rage accumulated through hardship and injustices that have become routine. Increasingly recognized as an expert on urban unrest, Dikeç examines urban revolts in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Greece, and Turkey and, in a sweeping and engaging account, makes it clear that change is only possible if we address the failures of democratic systems and rethink the established practices of policing and political decision-making.




The Harlem Uprising


Book Description

In July 1964, after a white police officer shot and killed an African American teenage boy, unrest broke out in Harlem and then Bedford-Stuyvesant. Protests rose up to call for an end to police brutality and the unequal treatment of Black people in a city that viewed itself as liberal. A week of upheaval ensued, including looting and property damage as well as widespread police violence, in what would be the first of the 1960s urban uprisings. Christopher Hayes examines the causes and consequences of the uprisings, from the city’s history of racial segregation in education, housing, and employment to the ways in which the police both neglected and exploited Black neighborhoods. While the national civil rights movement was securing substantial victories in the 1950s and 1960s, Black New Yorkers saw little or uneven progress. Faced with a lack of economic opportunities, pervasive discrimination, and worsening quality of life, they felt a growing sense of disenchantment with the promises of city leaders. Turning to the aftermath of the uprising, Hayes demonstrates that the city’s power structure continued its refusal to address structural racism. In the most direct local outcome, a broad, interracial coalition of activists called for civilian review of complaints against the police. The NYPD’s rank and file fought this demand bitterly, further inflaming racial tensions. The story of the uprisings and what happened next reveals the white backlash against civil rights in the north and crystallizes the limits of liberalism. Drawing on a range of archives, this book provides a vivid portrait of postwar New York City, a new perspective on the civil rights era, and a timely analysis of deeply entrenched racial inequalities.




Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France


Book Description

This lucid and wide-ranging survey is the first study in English to identify a distinctive urban phase in the history of the early modern crowd. Through close analysis of the behaviour of protesters and authorities in more than fifteen seventeenth-century French cities, William Beik explores a full spectrum of urban revolt from spontaneous individual actions to factional conflicts, culminating in the dramatic Ormee movement in Bordeaux. The 'culture of retribution' was a form of popular politics with roots in the religious wars and implications for future democratic movements. Vengeful crowds stoned and pillaged not only intrusive tax collectors but even their own magistrates, whom they viewed as civic traitors. By examining in depth this interaction of crowds and authorities, Professor Beik has provided a central contribution to the study of urban power structures and popular culture.




Millennial Movements


Book Description

In these brief and accessible case studies, Costa Rican millennial leaders draw from global solutions to address local problems, inviting students of these emerging social movements to apply similar strategies to their communities at home.




City Unsilenced


Book Description

What do the recent urban resistance tactics around the world have in common? What are the roles of public space in these movements? What are the implications of urban resistance for the remaking of public space in the "age of shrinking democracy"? To what extent do these resistances move from anti- to alter-politics? City Unsilenced brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars and scholar-activists to examine the spaces, conditions, and processes in which neoliberal practices have profoundly impacted the everyday social, economic, and political life of citizens and communities around the globe. They explore the commonalities and specificities of urban resistance movements that respond to those impacts. They focus on how such movements make use of and transform the meanings and capacity of public space. They investigate their ramifications in the continued practices of renewing democracies. A broad collection of cases is presented and analyzed, including Movimento Passe Livre (Brazil), Google Bus Blockades San Francisco (USA), the Platform for Mortgage Affected People (PAH) (Spain), the Piqueteros Movement (Argentina), Umbrella Movement (Hong Kong), post-Occupy Gezi Park (Turkey), Sunflower Movement (Taiwan), Occupy Oakland (USA), Syntagma Square (Greece), Researchers for Fair Policing (New York), Urban Movement Congress (Poland), urban activism (Berlin), 1DMX (Mexico), Miyashita Park Tokyo (Japan), 15M Movement (Spain), and Train of Hope and protests against Academic Ball in Vienna (Austria). By better understanding the processes and implications of the recent urban resistances, City Unsilenced contributes to the ongoing debates concerning the role and significance of public space in the practice of lived democracy.