The End of the World as We Know It?: Crisis, Resistance, and the Age of Austerity by Deric Shannon

Author:Deric Shannon [Shannon, Deric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: political science, Political Economy, Political Ideologies, Radicalism, Business & Economics, Economic Conditions, Labor, General
ISBN: 9781849351874
Google: ag8wCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: AK Press
Published: 2014-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

A Call for Success

The housing movement, like most social movements, is messy. Often, a great idea is enough to spark a great movement marked by high profile actions and romantic defiance, but that does not take it past the initial fireworks. To give the movement longevity, there needs to be clear self-reflection and an analysis of successes and failures.

For one thing, this means high levels of organization that centralize education and democratic decision-making. The process of research, legal study, and outreach that is required to do things like locate appropriate houses for liberation and involve affected people is extensive. It is easy for certain people to end up taking on more authority in movements because knowledge is unequally distributed, undercutting the ability to become a real movement “by the people,” as there will be unequal levels of possible participation.

At the same time, many of the people who have the time and energy to organize do so less because they are directly affected, and more often because they have a moral and intellectual impetus for it. This can often lead movements like Take Back the Land to simply be a “radical charity,” where some benevolent anarchist superheroes break into houses and deliver them to needy people. While this may be a socially positive thing for an afternoon, and does present an element of mutual aid, it is by no means the seed of a movement that will extend beyond itself and change the ways neighborhoods operate. Here it is critical to keep the movement focused on the people who are actually in situations of foreclosure and homelessness.

If growth is going to be successful, it means moving beyond working only with homeowners, to whom which these movements are often limited, since the avenues to dealing with foreclosure evictions are a little easier to follow. This means working with renters, public housing tenants, and people in unconventional housing situations. It also means moving past the “case-by-case” approach and beginning to look at tenant syndicalism in large rental properties. For tactical inspiration, we can look to sectors where principles like solidarity and direct action have been used successfully, such as employing radical union strategies in housing complexes.

We might also include looking toward counterlegal institutions to provide as tools in the box. One of these tools is the land trust, which is essentially a legal entity that has the ability to hold land. When a homeowner is going through foreclosure, the community can negotiate with the bank to donate to the property to the land trust, legally a nonprofit organization, for a tax write-off in the amount of the market value of the house. As these properties begin to accumulate in the land trust, they can then be held for the community, allowing neighborhood councils to form, to make decisions collectively. This is, again, not a final solution, as land trusts can also be opened up to developers and used against homeowners, though bylaws can be established as protections. Instead, this is simply a tool that can be used to enhance a community organizing effort.

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