The Right to the City Seminar Fri. 10/24 and Saty. 10/25

RIGHT TO THE CITY SEMINAR

Friday, October 24 * 7:30 pm & Saturday, October 25 * 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Brecht Forum, 451 West street between Bank and Bethune, Manhattan

Urban Struggles & the Financial Crisis

What are we up against? What are our visions & possibilities?
What do we need to do?

A Seminar led by David Harvey

“the right to the city is like a cry and a demand…”
from “The Right to the City” by Henri Lefebvre

Henri Lefebvre’s “The Right to the City” was published in Paris in 1968.

Lefebvre’s approach challenges the primacy of market forces — and the taken-for-granted capitalists’ quest for profit — in determining how and where people live and how government should work and what it should do.

The “Right to the City” is not just about the right just to be in the city, but about fighting for the right to govern and control urban space and the right to live in a society where the needs of our most vulnerable urban residents — not developers — are put at the center of public policy. So, the right to the city includes not only the right to housing and food; but also the right to excellent public education; the right to public space and culture; the right to environmental justice; the right to living-wage jobs and health care; the right to citizenship for all; the right to live without state surveillance and police repression, which historically has targeted people of color, immigrants and women, queer and transgendered people, among others.

An important development here in the United States is the Right to the City Alliance that was formed in 2007 and includes dozens of grassroots organizations across the country dedicated to strengthening urban struggles and fostering regional and national collaborations.

David Harvey is a Professor of Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is author of The Urban Experience, The Limits to Capital, The Condition of Postmodernity, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, Spaces of Hope, and Spaces of Capital, among other works.

Other workshop leaders and speakers for the two days can be found at the Brecht Forum site.

Sliding scale: $25-$45
Friday night only: $10
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