Housing Justice/Housing Futures

This conference brings together housing scholars, city planners, tenant organizers, architects, designers, and artists and creatives whose work centers on the creation, preservation, and distribution of land and housing as a response to community needs. Drawing on years of collaborations facilitated by BCRW’s Housing and Poverty Working Group and the Undesign the Redline Exhibition project at Barnard, we will explore visionary models of housing that foster and support the continuation of health and wellbeing, cultural heritage, intergenerational relationships, and shared resources. We will highlight foundational projects that nourish creativity and thriving among Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, immigrant and LGBTQ+, disabled, poor and houseless populations who have resisted exclusionary policies and practices. From concept to demonstration, we hope to inspire imagination and action toward the dream of sustainable, equitable forms of housing for all people.

The event opens on Friday with a performance of the signature choreopoem “Purple: A Ritual in 9 Spells” by Sydnie L. Mosley (Sydnie L. Mosley Dances) and closes on Saturday with a keynote conversation between Dr. Rhonda Y. Williams (Vanderbilt University) and Dr. Keisha-Khan Perry (University of Pennsylvania).

Program

Friday, February 24

6-8 p.m.: "PURPLE," a multimedia dance installation by Sydnie L. Mosley Dances

Saturday, February 25

9:30 a.m.: Breakfast and registration

10:00 a.m.: Welcome by Premilla Nadasen

10:10 a.m.: Opening Plenary: Dreaming of Housing Justice with Oksana Mironova (Community Service Society of New York), Tela Troge (Law Offices of Tela L. Troge), Elora Lee Raymond (Georgia Tech), Akira Drake Rodriguez (University of Pennsylvania), Jacqueline Paul Sims (Affordable Housing Resources, Inc.), and Lisa Lee (National Public Housing Museum), moderated by Mary Rocco (Barnard College)

11:30 a.m.: Lunch

12:00 p.m.: Breakout Workshops: Session One

Participants are invited to choose one workshop from the options below.

Self-Publishing and Agitprop for Housing Justice with Vanessa Thill (Barnard College) andJenna Freedman (Barnard College)

This workshop will focus on housing justice zines. Facilitators will highlight the importance of self-published media in the context of liberation struggles. “Self-publishing” as a framework is important because it’s about our ability to tell our own stories, archive knowledge and resistance, and circulate agitprop (agitational propaganda) to inspire and draw others into struggle. During the session, we will look at examples of zines as organizing tools. Participants will have the opportunity to make stickers that playfully communicate justice concepts for use in their own on-the-ground outreach. Participants will also be provided with a zine syllabus for further browsing on housing issues within the Barnard Zine Library collection and beyond.

Reclaiming Futurity: Radical Possibilities for Public Housing with Save Section 9 Organizers

Save Section 9 is building a coalition across various states fighting to preserve federal funding for public housing and stop privatization. This session will review the social and legislative history of public housing through an intersectional lens (race, class, gender, ability, etc.) and from an anti-colonial stance to understand the current state of public housing across the country. We will highlight collective solutions, as well as popular education and lobbying strategies to orient allies/folks who live outside of public housing but want to join and/or support our work. Experiences in the private housing market can illuminate the need to invest in and expand public housing. We hope participants leave our session with the knowledge and skills to meaningfully engage their representatives on Save Section 9’s Collective Solutions platform. Moreover, we hope participants leave with a clearer understanding of how they can participate in the larger struggle for housing justice.

Designing for Democracy with April DeSimone

Description to come

1:00 p.m.: Break

1:30 p.m.: Breakout Workshops: Session Two

Participants are invited to choose one workshop from the options below.

I Love Bed-Stuy: Preservation of Our Neighborhood Through Community Activism, with Renee Gregory (The Brownstoners), Nicole Greaves (Bridge Street Development Corporation), Sekiya Dorsett (filmmaker, I Love Bed-Stuy), Michael Williams (Nostrand Willoughby Block Association), and Stephanie Zinerman (Assembly member 56th District New York), moderated by Obden Mondsir (Barnard College)

Historic Bedford Stuyvesant has a rich history and culture that has created a vibrant neighborhood, which has continued to transform over the years. In the last census, BK Reader reported that, “Bed-Stuy Lost 22K Black Residents Last Decade”. While many were shocked at the statistic, it didn’t reflect the historical organizing of the community or the ways in which the community can and does address change. From Shirley Chisholm to now, we explore how organizing has impacted the Bed-Stuy community, how current policy can help to empower homeowners and tenants and the ways in which community can generate a narrative beyond statistics. Panel participants will share strategies to organize effectively in our changing times.

Housing Justice and Engaged Scholarship with Mary Rocco (Barnard College), Akira Drake Rodriguez (University of Pennsylvania), and Lisa Bates (Portland State University)

Engaged scholars will facilitate this session around the scholar-community interface with a focus on methods for building, maintaining and leveraging community-university relationships to achieve goals for public impact. During the workshop, facilitators will hold a roundtable discussion on network building and strengthening through shared partnerships and research agendas rooted in principles of social justice in the housing arena and through feminist scholarship. Participants will have the opportunity to map networks, issues, and assets inherent in their scholarship and activist work and collaboratively engage their own and others’ resource-mapping exercises to practice facilitating connections that are essential to successful partnerships in the broader context.

Collaboration & Care in Mapping Displacement & Resistance with Ariana Allensworth (artist), Sam Rabiyah (THE CITY and Anti-Eviction Mapping Project)

In this workshop facilitated by long-time members of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, participants will explore ways that data and technology can be leveraged to embolden and work alongside housing justice movements. Mainstream digital media traps the lives and stories of displaced and housing insecure folks inside of biased tropes, numbers in charts, dots on a map.  Using recent projects from the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (multimedia data visualization and storytelling collective), Staying Power (a platform dedicated to amplifying a people’s history of public housing), and other counter-mapping initiatives, participants will discuss creative media practices that seek to make data actionable to movement organizers and weave tenant voices of resistance more fully into the stories we tell about displacement.

3:00 p.m.: Closing Keynote: A Conversation with Rhonda Y. Williams (Vanderbilt University) and Keisha-Khan Perry (University of Pennsylvania)

4:30 p.m.: Dance Party with DJ Kay Kay

Accessibility

This is an in-person event, free and open to all. Please review our COVID safety guidelines. RSVP is encouraged.

ASL interpretation will be provided. Please email any additional access needs to skreitzb@barnard.edu.

You can learn more aout the event here.