Homes for All, Cages for None: Housing Justice in an Age of Abolition

In 2016, the Barnard Center for Research on Women assembled a Poverty Working Group to examine New York State’s neglect and abandonment of poor people, people of color, and people with disabilities. The group asks how can we deepen our understanding of and resistance to the ways that neoliberal states and social systems create targeted communities who live their lives under the constant threat of surveillance, control, and even mortal danger.

In the first public event of this series, scholars and activists who work on issues of housing and homelessness in New York City imagine how we can take an abolitionist approach to resistance and how we can begin to build social systems that offer safety and equal resources to all. Participants include Craig Willse, author of The Value of Homelessness: Managing Surplus Life in the United States, and Christina Heatherton, professor of American Studies and author of The Color Line and the Class Struggle: The Mexican Revolution, Internationalism, and the American Century (forthcoming).