Capitalism and Displacement
To counter the perpetual anti-poor propaganda in Asheville targeting our unhoused neighbors, we've put together books that examine the oppressive structures and systems (spoiler alert: capitalism) that causes poverty and displacement. We've also included books that suggest how living as a community could be!
“Despite being proven right by history, scant analysis has been published about the antiglobalization movement of the late 90s and early 2000s. Rothaus’s book—a blend of memoir, critique, and manifesto—provides a street-level view of the tensions, joys, disappointments and lessons of pro-immigrant, anti-fascist, and anticapitalist struggles. With humour and humility, Another War Is Possible is a must-read for anyone who fights for, and longs for, a better world.”—Rachel A. Rosen, Antifa International
Schaller offers a critical unpacking of the BID ethos, which draws on the language of economic liberalism (individual choice, civic engagement, localism, and grassroots development), to portray itself as color blind, democratic, and equitable.
"Rothstein’s comprehensive and engrossing book reveals just how the U.S. arrived at the ‘systematic racial segregation we find in metropolitan areas today,’ focusing in particular on the role of government.... This compassionate and scholarly diagnosis of past policies and prescription for our current racial maladies shines a bright light on some shadowy spaces."―Publishers Weekly
"The Communist Horizon raises questions I have been struggling with for some time: How do we change our fundamental relationship to land? How do we engage social movements to connect globally and resist the transnational power of corporations and state governments? Taylor and Brehmer have affirmed the international collaborations that many of us are involved in is the road to the realization of a Right to the City, a true and long-overdue urban emancipation."—Rob Robinson, Special Advisor at Partners for Dignity and Rights, NYC
Defying Displacement opens up an exciting theory of the state and capitalism, while showing how people struggling over cities, neighborhoods, and homes are poised to overthrow them. More than a right to the city, this book shows how a fight for the city can mean the fight for total liberation, and is a needful resource for all those who fight for and dream of a better world.”—Vicky Osterweil, author of In Defense of Looting
"In Encampment, Helwig casts an unapologetic gaze at how our government and society fail to provide homeless people with the basic necessities of life, spotlighting the beliefs and rationalizations that lead to these failures, and the dire implications for the health and well-being of unhoused people."—Christina Palassio, The Philanthropist Journal
"Feeling At Home makes a compelling political case for something housing movements seem to forget: more homes, even very affordable ones, will not dismantle a fundamentally harmful and exploitative system. Gotby points toward a new horizon where housing can be a means of radically reshaping family, care, and society."—Leslie Kern, author of Feminist City
"Part social history and part community organizing manual, Fighting for Space details the decade-long fight to establish North America's first medically managed site for injection drug users. It's an amazing, inspiring, and sometimes harrowing read."—Los Angeles Review of Books
"This book lays the groundwork to build a shared language to fight for housing justice while offering digestible entry points into key debates in housing politics... Written without borders and with abolition in mind, readers will find themselves returning to Housing Justice time and time again as both an essential reference work and as an inspiring source of transformative ideas.”—Mary Shi, coeditor of Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance
“This book isn’t just a story about the so-called ‘addict,’ the demon drug of OxyContin, or, even, the most evil people in the pharmaceutical industry (meet the Sacklers!). It is, at its core, a crime story about capitalism: how capitalism makes addicts of all of us but how the true addict is capital itself; how this dead but dominant paradigm destroys personal lives, but also planetary life."—Mikkel Frantzen, author of Going Nowhere, Slow: The Aesthetics and Politics of Depression
"In Defense of Looting is a clear and damning indictment of the origins and evolution of property rights, race, and policing in the United States. Ultimately, Osterweil demands we not only overcome the respectability politics animating our desire for 'peaceful protests,' but that we ambitiously work to abolish the racial capitalist logics at the heart of American empire."—Zoé Samudzi, coauthor of As Black As Resistance
"When three emergencies -- climate, political and social - build together into the storm of our present we need to start thinking from the ground-up. In this we have no better guide than AG. Lifehouse constructs a much needed, hands-on strategy for urban care. Read it and start planning."—Eyal Weizman, author of Hollow Land