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      Praise for Dispatches Against Displacement:

      “James Tracy knows that our dysfunctional housing machine is working as it should: working for the rich. This important history throws sand into the gears of that machine. It is a vision of a better housing system. And it is a defiant story, told from the frontlines of citizens fighting for the right to their city, with lessons that matter for any community aspiring to control its own destiny.” —Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved

      “With the insight of a poet and the long-term vision of a seasoned organizer, Dispatches Against Displacement weaves together a powerful, instructive, hilarious, and poignant description of how the working class fights back in the City by the Bay.” —Alicia Garza, National Domestic Workers Alliance

      Praise for James Tracy:

      “James Tracy is a poet and speaker who leaves the audience stunned,

      then energized.” —Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, author of Outlaw Woman: Memoir of the War Years

      “James Tracy isn’t merely a poet-philosopher or philosopher-poet; he’s an architect who uses words to craft a vision of a new, better tomorrow. Then he takes to the streets and builds it.” —Jarret Lovell, author of Crimes of Dissent

      “James Tracy is one of the best public speakers I ever heard. His exquisite speaking skills are matched only by his remarkable and passionate writing about hidden moments of our history.” —Andrej Grubačić, co-author of Wobblies and Zapatistas

      “James Tracy will wake up any audience—they will see their tired assumptions blow away, and be better, happier, and stronger for it.” —Diane di Prima

       Dedicated to the memories of Jazzie Collins, Howard Grayson, David McGuire, Al Thompson, Bill Sorro, and Rene Cazanave. The San Francisco Bay Area has indeed lost some of its finest fighters for the right to the city.

      Welcoming my niece Evelyn Ball-Tracy to the world.

      With love to Juliette Torrez, whose encouragement and insight makes me a better writer and person.

      Table of Contents

      Foreword by Willie Baptist 1

      Introduction: Of Delivery Trucks & Landlord Pickets 3

      Chapter one: Landgrabs & Lies: Public Housing at

      the Crossroads 19

      Chapter two: Slow Burn: San Francisco’s Hotel Residents

      Walk through the Fire 39

      Chapter three: They Plan for Profits, We Plan for People 51

      Chapter four: A Shift toward Stewardship: Is the

      Displacement War Over, If We Want It To Be? 77

      Chapter five: Toward an Alternative Urbanism 95

      Acknowledgments 121

      Recommended Reading 123

      Notes 127

      Index 139

      Foreword

       by Willie Baptist

      In Dispatches Against Displacement: Field Notes from San Francisco’s Housing Wars, James Tracy speaks to the heart of the long-heralded American Dream: a home. This, along with other basic economic necessities, was articulated in the founding creed of this country in the expression of our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—that is, the human right to a house, not a shack, not a shelter, not a street corner. This notion has evolved over history and has become internationally recognized in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, particularly in its article 25, which affirms the right to a decent standard of living and health.

      The matter of housing is very close to me, as I have lived a life of poverty and have spent time on the streets of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, homeless. Moreover, my involvement in the National Organizing Drive of the National Union of the Homeless in the late 1980s and early 1990s made me ever more sensitive to this critical issue. Currently, as a coordinator and educator of the Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary and the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, I have reflected analytically on the injustices of poverty and homelessness as the defining problems of our times. To paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi, poverty is the worst form of violence and a violation of human rights. The worldwide housing and homelessness crises are particularly cruel and extreme manifestations of poverty, especially when we are living in a time of plenty. Indeed, poverty today is unnecessarily expanding and mass abandonment of homes is inhumanely and insanely existing next to an unprecedented and accumulating abundance for the very few. So I have come to understand the absolute urgency and necessity for this problem to be further studied and the solution to be found and fought for.

      Dispatches Against Displacement: Field Notes from San Francisco’s Housing Wars contributes to this central and indispensable discussion and fight.

      Importantly, and as expressed in the insightful Herbert Marcuse quote that opens this book: “The housing crisis doesn’t exist because the system isn’t working. It exists because that’s the way the system works.” Mr. Tracy goes on to describe some of the features of the newly globalizing and urbanizing economic system that is at the same time an exploitative system for the many that concentrates wealth and resources for the few. This poverty-producing system is both life-threatening and life-taking, and it is turning the American Dream into a globalized nightmare with increasing mass evictions and homelessness. Today, the continuing stagnation and devastation of the 2007–8 economic crisis clearly reveals that this globalized crisis is more than cyclical. It is chronic and it is now displacing and pushing sections of the so-called “middle class” into impoverishment.

      This book speaks to the fact that these worsening conditions are multiplying the ranks of the poor and dispossessed, compelling them to unite and fight for their very survival around a common basis of unity: the demand for the human right to housing and other basic economic necessities of life. It also raises to the fore some of the specific means by which the rich and power-wielding few manipulate the historically evolved racial divisions, particularly in the United States, as well as neoliberal and “Neo-Keynesian” policies to pre-empt and prevent this unity.

      Mr. Tracy not only speaks of the plight but also the fight to abolish all poverty and homelessness, a growing global fight of the poor and evicted, which he has joined and to which he is himself committed. He writes about his organizing experiences and, along with his analysis of those experiences, he draws from the wisdom of other leaders of the housing and anti-poverty struggles, offering a number of strategic and tactical lessons for today’s struggle. Tracy provides timely insight into the inescapable reality that looms ahead as the current global housing crisis and the worldwide economic crisis continue to worsen. It is important reading for anyone committed to fighting today’s crises and building a new possibility of life, liberty, and happiness.

      Introduction: Of Delivery Trucks & Landlord Pickets

      I DREAM’D in a dream,

      I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth;

      I dream’d that was the new City of Friends.

      —Walt Whitman

      The housing crisis doesn’t exist because the system isn’t working. It exists because that’s the way the system works.

      —Herbert Marcuse

      First, a disclaimer: this is a partisan book. With the exceptions of the histories that occurred long before I was born, I was either directly in the fray or close by as events unfolded. In order for this book to be useful, I’ve had to turn a critical eye on people, organizations, and movements near and dear to my heart. This should be read as an organizer’s notebook rather than a comprehensive history of the housing fights in San Francisco. Books brimming with New

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