Nowhere land: The evicted space of Black tenants’ rights in Montreal

2021 ◽  
pp. 026377582110411
Author(s):  
Ted Rutland
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Property Relations ◽  
Black Life ◽  
New Policies ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

Property relations in 1980s Montreal were a venue of struggle and change. In this period, a well-organized tenants’ movement and the election of progressive governments spawned a series of legal and policy changes that strengthened tenants’ rights in the city. During the same period, however, an emerging police, government and media discourse cast Black communities as criminal ‘ghettos’, and a variety of mechanisms, including new policies meant to protect tenants’ rights, were used to evict criminalized Black tenants. Guided by recent work on property and Black geographies, respectively, this article examines how racial subjects are constituted in struggles over tenants’ rights. The racial limits of tenants’ rights in Montreal, it argues, are traceable to the socio-spatial relations of slavery and the intensifying criminalization of Black life in the 1980s, each of which nullified Black spatial belonging in the city. The tenant, the article concludes, is never just a tenant, but also a racial subject – a subject formed at the edges of blackness. In a terrain forged by slavery and its afterlives, the possibility of expansive tenants’ rights presupposes a right systemically denied in advance for Black people in the Americas: the right to exist here in the first place.

scholarly journals Słowo „Murzyn” jako perlokucyjny akt mowy

2020 ◽  
pp. 195-212
Author(s):  
Margaret Ohia-Nowak
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Neutral Word ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Communication Theory ◽  
Black People ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
African Descent ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Media Discourse

The word “Murzyn”as a perlocutionary speech act Whilst an array of words is used by white Poles to describe and denote Black people both outside Poland and within the country itself, in recent years, a heated public debate has taken place in Poland concerning the on-going use of the term Murzyn in everyday speech acts and in public discourse. The word actively reproduces anti-black stereotypes and racist meanings, and also conceals the prejudice, not least by virtue of the fact that a number of White Polish public persons claim that Murzyn is a neutral word used inoffensively to refer to Black people. Recently, as the demonstrations after George Floyd’s death spread across Europe, the continuing use of the term has been widely protested by Poles of African descent, and a growing number of Polish linguists argue against the word’s assumed neutrality. In this article, I draw upon the internalism and externalism in communication theory as I demonstrate perlocutionary effects of the word Murzyn from semi-interviews conducted with black Poles in 2014 and 2020, and utterance of Poles of African descent from media discourse between 2011 and 2020. With regard to the histories, experiences, and perspectives of Black communities in Poland, I argue that the derogatory meaning of the word depends largely on its effects on thoughts and feelings of the recipient, namely the pragmatic perlocution and the externalist communication theory, and less on the intention of the speaker and the internalist communication theory.

The impact of the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games on the visitor economy: a human rights perspective.

2021 ◽  
pp. 145-159
Author(s):  
Gabriel Marin Vandenbroucke ◽  
Simon Gérard ◽  
Anthony May
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Street Vendors ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Right ◽  
Committee Government ◽  
The City ◽  
Paralympic Games

Abstract The overall findings of this research point to a mix of positive and negative human rights impacts of the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and on the visitor economy of the host city. On a positive note, affirmative action included persons with disabilities and from underprivileged communities in the workforce. New sports and leisure centres were built. Freedom of expression and association was reinforced by protesters demonstrating and using the platform of the event to raise issues. Several initiatives by the Organizing Committee, government, companies, and associations constituted positive mechanisms for leverage of the human rights to education and to participate in the cultural life of the community, albeit with limited long-term impacts. These wider economic and social successes associated with the hosting of the Games can positively contribute to the quality and inclusivity of the visitor economy. redevelopment, the Games' land use displaced thousands of people, violating the right to housing and several other human rights through abusive practices used by the government in the eviction process. Under the pretext of creating safe spaces for visitors and safeguarding their image of the city, the government's violence towards poor and black communities was aggravated, with the militarisation of the city impacting on the right to life, protection, education, and justice. Attempting to mask the city's socio-economic problems and undesirable aspects for sponsors and visitors, freedom of expression was undermined as protesters were targeted by the police and street vendors were driven out of public spaces.

Brown’s Half Light

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derrick Bell
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Black People ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
New Era ◽  
Black Experience ◽  
Educational Rights ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Black Residents ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

The Evening Of May 17, 954, was a night for celebration. An office full of ecstatic NAACP workers in Manhattan, as well as black people throughout the country, were doing just that as they hailed the bright new era all assumed would arrive with the landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education handed down by the Supreme Court earlier that day. The case was not easily won. It was the culmi­nation of two decades of planning and litigation. At the very least, a party was in order. The NAACP staff hailed the high court’s opinion with cheers, toasts, and impromptu dancing, but according to one report, Thurgood Marshall, one of the chief architects of the litigation wandered morosely through the happy throng frowning. “You fools go ahead and have your fun,” he said, “but we ain’t begun to work yet.” Marshall’s prediction was both prophetic and a highly accurate commentary on the black experience. Even so, the staff had reason to celebrate. The orga­nization was doing what its founders had intended. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)was founded in 1909. Its founders, an interracial group of liberal lawyers and socialists, concerned with the nonenforcement of the Four­teenth and Fifteenth Amendments, saw the need for an organization that would effectively press for political, legal, and educational rights. They sought an end to segregation, the right to work, and the right to protec­tion from violence and intimidation. The need for the NAACP was clear. In the previous year, in addition to the several dozen blacks lynched each year, thousands of whites rioted in Springfield, Illinois. They killed six blacks, two by lynching, and burned and destroyed black homes and businesses. Two thousand blacks left the city but none of the alleged riot leaders were punished, although the city obtained indictments following the restoration of order. The white community launched a political and economic boycott to drive out the remaining black residents. After its founding, the NAACP established a legal redress com­mittee, and in the next decades several of its cases reached the Supreme Court.

scholarly journals Do All Black Lives Matter Equally to Black People? Respectability Politics and the Limitations of Linked Fate

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 180-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tehama Lopez Bunyasi ◽  
Candis Watts Smith
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Linked Fate ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Black Public Opinion ◽  
The Right

AbstractCathy Cohen’s (1999) theory of secondary marginalization helps to explain why the needs of some members of Black communities are not prioritized on “the” Black political agenda; indeed, some groups are ignored altogether as mainstream Black public opinion shifts to the right (Tate 2010). However, the contemporary movement for Black Lives calls for an intersectional approach to Black politics. Its platform requires participants to take seriously the notion that since Black communities are diverse, so are the needs of its members. To what extent are Blacks likely to believe that those who face secondary marginalization should be prioritized on the Black political agenda? What is the role of linked fate in galvanizing support around these marginalized Blacks? To what extent does respectability politics serve to hinder a broader embrace of Blacks who face different sets of interlocking systems of oppression, such as Black women, formerly incarcerated Blacks, undocumented Black people, and Black members of LBGTQ communities in an era marked by Black social movements? We analyze data from the 2016 Collaborative Multi-Racial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) to assess whether all Black lives matter to Black Americans.

scholarly journals “We must use every legal means to … put them behind bars, or to run them out of town”: Assembling citizenship deservingness in Toronto

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-49
Author(s):  
Paloma E. Villegas
Keyword(s):  
Policy Changes ◽  
Citizenship Status ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City ◽  
Permanent Residents

This paper examines the assemblage and reassemblage of citizenship deservingness in Canada in the past few decades. By citizenship deservingness, I refer to the ways immigrant and racialized persons are accorded value and opportunity to access and retain formal citizenship status, including the right to remain in Canada. In order to make this argument, I examine the response to a 2012 shooting in Scarborough, an “inner suburb” of Toronto, Canada. I situate the shooting responses alongside policy and discursive changes that have made it easier to deport permanent residents from Canada if they have committed certain criminal acts. As scholars have noted, the targets of such policies are often the same individuals profiled and typecast as committing criminal acts—namely, immigrant and racialized men. In the Scarborough shooting, Jamaican men were specifically criminalized and targeted for exile from the city and country. My analysis demonstrates how, through this process, discourses of race and space came together to produce and legitimate policy changes that continue to erode the rights accorded to permanent residents and citizens.

Some Aspects of Identity Politics of Kharkiv Local Authorities After 2013

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-81
Author(s):  
Denys Kutsenko
Keyword(s):  
Development Strategy ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
New Policies ◽  
National Flag ◽  
The City

AbstractThe paper analyzes the transformation of identity politics of Kharkiv local authorities after the Euromaidan, or Revolution of Dignity, the annexation of Crimea, and the War in Donbass. Being the second largest city in Ukraine and becoming the frontline city in 2014, Kharkiv is an interesting case for research on how former pro-Russian local elites treat new policies of the central government in Kyiv, on whether earlier they tried to mobilize their electorate or to provoke political opponents with using soviet symbols, soviet memory, and copying Russian initiatives in the sphere of identity.To answer the research question of this article, an analysis of Kharkiv city and oblast programs and strategies and of communal media were made. Decommunisation, as one of the most important identity projects of Ukrainian central authorities after 2014, was analyzed through publications in Kharkiv’s city-owned media as well as reports from other scholars. Some conclusions are made from the analysis of these documents: Kharkiv development strategy until 2020, Complex program of cultural development in Kharkiv in 2011–2016 (and the same for 2017–2021), The regional program of military and patriotic training and participation of people in measures of defense work in 2015–2017, Program of supporting civil society in 2016–2020 in Kharkiv region and the city mayor’s orders about the celebration of Victory Day (9 May), the Day of the National Flag (23 August), the Day of the City (23 August) and Independence Day (24 August) in 2010–2015.

Art, Idleness and Food: The Ethics of War Communism and the Origins of Production Art, 1918–1919

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 273-287
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Early Production ◽  
Policy Measures ◽  
Soviet Ideology ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Further Development ◽  
Theory Of Production

The article examines the impact of the discourses concerning idleness and food on the formation of “production art” in the socio-political context of revolutionary Petrograd. The author argues that the development of the theory and practice of this early productionism was closely related to the larger political, social and ideological processes in the city. The Futurists, who were in the epicenter of Petrograd politics during the Civil War (1918–1921), were well acquainted with both of the discourses mentioned, and they contrasted the idleness of the old art with the dedicated labor of the “artist-proletarians” whom they valued as highly as people in the “traditional” working professions. And the search for the “right to exist” became the most important goal in a starving city dominated by the ideology of radical communism. The author departs from the prevailing approach in the literature, which links the artistic thought of the Futurists to Soviet ideology in its abstract, generalized form, and instead elucidates ideological influences in order to consider the early production texts in their immediate social and political contexts. The article shows that the basic concepts of production art (“artist-proletarian,” “creative labor,” etc.) were part of the mainstream trends in the politics of “red Petrograd.” The Futurists borrowed the popular notion of the “commune” for the title of their main newspaper but also worked with the Committees of the Rural Poor and with the state institutions for procurement and distribution. They took an active part in the Fine Art Department of Narkompros (People’s Commissariat of Education). The theory of production art was created under these conditions. The individualistic protest and “aesthetic terror” of pre-revolutionary Futurism had to be reconsidered, and new state policy measures were based on them. The harsh socio-economic context of war communism prompted artists to rethink their own role in the “impending commune.” Further development of these ideas led to the Constructivist movement and strongly influenced the extremely diverse trends within the “left art” of the 1920s.

A utopia do direito à cidade: Possibilidades de superação da dicotomia favela-bairro no Rio de Janeiro

GEOgraphia ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (14) ◽  
Author(s):  
Márcio Piñon de Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
The Other ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

A utopia do direito à cidade,  no  caso específico do Rio de Janeiro, começa, obrigatoriamente, pela  superação da visão dicotômica favela-cidade. Para isso, é preciso que os moradores da favela possam sentir-se tão cidadãos quanto os que têm moradias fora das favelas. A utopia do direito à cidade tem de levar a favela a própria utopia da cidade. Uma cidade que não se fragmente em oposições asfalto-favela, norte-sul, praia-subúrbio e onde todos tenham direito ao(s) seu(s) centro(s). Oposições que expressam muito mais do que diferenças de  localização e que  se apresentam recheadas de  segregação, estereótipos e  ideologias. Por outro  lado, o direito a cidade, como possibilidade histórica, não pode ser pensado exclusivamente a partir da  favela. Mas as populações  que aí habitam guardam uma contribuição inestimável para  a  construção prática  desse direito. Isso porque,  das  experiências vividas, emergem aprendizados e frutificam esperanças e soluções. Para que a favela seja pólo de um desejo que impulsione a busca do direito a cidade, é necessário que ela  se  pense como  parte da história da própria cidade  e sua transformação  em metrópole.Abstract The right  to the city's  utopy  specifically  in Rio de Janeiro, begins by surpassing  the dichotomy approach between favela and the city. For this purpose, it is necessary, for the favela dwellers, the feeling of citizens as well as those with home outside the favelas. The right to the city's utopy must bring to the favela  the utopy to the city in itself- a non-fragmented city in terms of oppositions like "asphalt"-favela, north-south, beach-suburb and where everybody has right to their center(s). These oppositions express much more the differences of location and present  themselves full of segregation, stereotypes and ideologies. On  the other  hand, the right to  the city, as historical possibility, can not be thought  just from the favela. People that live there have a contribution for a practical construction of this right. 

Property in Land in Roman Provinces

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgy Kantor
Keyword(s):  
Local Property ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Technical Literature ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
Property Relations ◽  
Roman Provinces ◽  
Legal Regimes ◽  
The Right ◽  
Property Regimes

Roman concept of dominium has been fundamental in the formation of concepts of ownership in European legal tradition. It is, however, often considered outside the context of Roman imperial rule and of the multiplicity of legal regimes governing property relations in Roman provinces outside Italy. This chapter starts from the classic passage in the Institutes of Gaius, claiming that the right of dominium did not exist in provincial land, where it belonged to the Roman state. Gaius’ statement is often dismissed in modern historical scholarship as a ‘conveyancer’s fantasy’ (A.H.M. Jones). It is argued here that, on the contrary, this passage and other similar statements in Roman juristic literature and technical literature on land-measurement, show an important facet of Roman ideas of ownership as a socially contingent right, dependent on civic status of the owner, status of the territory within the empire, and Roman recognition of local property regimes.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document