City From Below

The city from below: call for participation

March 27th-29th, 2009
Baltimore

http://cityfrombelow.org

The city has emerged in recent years as an indispensable concept for
many of the struggles for social justice we are all engaged in - it's
a place where theory meets practice, where the neighborhood organizes
against global capitalism, where unequal divisions based on race and
class can be mapped out block by block and contested, where the
micropolitics of gender and sexual orientation are subject to
metropolitan rearticulation, where every corner is a potential site
of resistance and every vacant lot a commons to be reclaimed, and,
most importantly, a place where all our diverse struggles and
strategies have a chance of coming together into something greater.
In cities everywhere, new social movements are coming into being,
hidden histories are being uncovered, and unanticipated futures are
being imagined and built - but so much of this knowledge remains, so
to speak, at street-level. We need a space to gather and share our
stories, our ideas and analysis, a space to come together and rethink
the city from below. To that end, a group of activists and
organizers, including Red Emma's, the Indypendent Reader,
campbaltimore, and the Campaign for a Better Baltimore are calling
for a conference called The City From Below, to take place in
Baltimore during the weekend of March 27,28,29, 2009 at 2640, a
grassroots community center and events venue.

Our intention to focus on the city first and foremost stems from our
own organizing experience, and a recognition that the city is very
often the terrain on which we fight, and which we should be fighting
for. To take a particularly salient example from Baltimore, it is
increasingly the case that labor struggles, especially in the service
sector, need to confront not just unfair employers, but structurally
disastrous municipal development policies. While the financial crisis
plays out in the national news and in the spectacle of legislative
action, it is at the level of the urban community where foreclosures
can be directly challenged and the right to a non-capitalist relation
to housing can be fought for. Our right to an autonomous culture, to
our freedom to dissent, to public spaces and to public education all
hinge increasingly on our relation to the cities in which we live and
to the people and forces in control of them. And our cities offer
some truly inspiring and creative examples of resistance - from the
community garden to the neighborhood assembly.

We are committed in organizing this conference to a horizontal
framework of participation, one which allows us to concretely engage
with and support ongoing social justice struggles. What we envision
is a conference which isn't just about academics and other
researchers talking to each other and at a passive audience, but one
where some of the most inspiring campaigns and projects on the
frontlines of the fight for the right to the city (community anti-
gentrification groups, transit rights activists, tenant unions,
alternative development advocates) will not just be represented, but
will concretely benefit from the alliances they build and the
knowledge they gain by attending.

At the same time, we also want to productively engage those within
the academic system, as well as artists, journalists, and other
researchers. It is a mistake to think that people who spend their
lives working on urban geography and sociology, in urban planning, or
on the history of cities have nothing to offer to our struggles. At
the same time, we recognize that too often the way in which academics
engage activists, if they do so at all, is to talk at them. We are
envisioning something much different, closer to the notion of
"accompaniment". We want academics and activists to talk to each
other, to listen to each other, and to offer what they each are best
able to. Concretely, we're hoping to facilitate this kind of dynamic
by planning as much of the conference as possible as panels involving
both scholars and organizers.

THEMES TO BE CONSIDERED
0. Gentrification/uneven development
0. Policing and incarceration
0. Tenants rights/housing as a right
0. Public transit
0. Urban worker's rights
0. Foreclosures/financial crisis
0. Public education
0. Slots/casionos/regressive taxation
0. Cultural gentrification
0. Underground economies
0. Reclaiming public space
0. The right to the city
0. Squatting
0. Urban sustainability

PROPOSAL SUBMISSIONS

Please share with us your proposal for workshops or presentations. We
hope to host 15-25 sessions with a mixture of formats and welcome
proposals from groups and individuals. The conference is geared
towards discussion and participation. People are welcome to bring
papers andother resources with them, but this conference is not
oriented to the presentation of papers. There will be 50 and 110
minute sessions. We welcome self organized workshops but will also
work to incorporate individual proposals into panels with others. In
your proposal please indicate how your proposal relates to the themes
of the conference, expected participants, organizing partners and
session format (training, panel, open discussion, video, etc.) and
how long the session will be. We are especially interested in
proposals which combine critique of the urban environment with
discussions of new strategies for its reclamation.

Please send proposals to:

cityfrombelow -at- redemmas.org

Email is preferred, but you can also send a proposal to:

City from Below
c/o Red Emma's
800 St Paul St.
Baltimore MD 21202