Harrison

Whether you read for inspiration and ideas, for entertainment, or to widen or deepen your knowledge - "Defying Displacement" has something for you. Andrew Lee's book is a charged read that methodically builds the story for how deliberate forces today converge to divide and displace people in the… more pursuit of profit. It builds both slowly and quickly - each chapter moves swiftly, but the attention to detail leaves each page filled with quotes, citations, and stories. It was even enjoyable - with clear and concise truth-bombs like characterizing the present day not just as a war "waged between the robber baron in coattails and the coal-miner in rags, [but that] this war is a class war between those who profit from the gentrification economy and those who do not" (122), to more subtle and even tender moments like "the street whose real name is different than the one on the street signs" (40). The content, tone, and afterglow is the warm one of a fellow co-conspirator, dedicated to a cause we all share.

"Defying Displacement" is organized into five sections: Space, Place, Labor, Terror, and War. Each of these sections builds a self-contained story, interwoven with power dynamics, lived experience, and lessons for people invested in a future that works for the people, not just the powerful. Dutifully citing numerous sources and seamlessly blending together on-the-ground voices with historical fact and movement leaders, Lee's sections are digestible standalones that also concatenate into a bigger picture together. And much like the story of gentrification and displacement itself, the implications for readers is that our interconnectedness is tied to our ability to identify these connections, to internalize these throughlines.

Below are a select set of quotes from each chapter.
- SPACE:
"The net result is that within the gentrifying city, low-wage workers, especially workers of color, remain economically tied to the affluent city core while accessible housing options move farther and farther away." (26)
- PLACE:
"A fight for culture unfolds into a fight over communal as opposed to capitalist ownership, and implicit or explicit critique of market exchange itself." (50)
- LABOR:
"The horror that pushes teenagers onto the Caltrain tracks is not of being a worker instead of an owner. It is a falling from the circle of workers who do well in the new economy into those who do not, from those able to gentrify to those only ever displaced." (95)
- TERROR:
"If struggle against gentrification is to struggle against land as commodity, it must also be a struggle against the government that enforces its commodification. Anti-gentrification movements keep running up against public, private, and non-profit institutions that preach equity and inclusion while ensuring that the parameters of public debate never stray too far from endorsing projects sure to create mass exclusion through gentrification. The struggle against displacement implies a struggle for autonomy." (100)
- WAR:
"We must unfortunately still contend with those whose superficial concern for the oppressed is outweighed by a greater fear of the oppressed developing just such an autonomous power. Neither the benevolence of corporate charity nor the 'proper channels' offered by local representative democracy have proven, in any city in the world, sufficient to halt economic gentrification. Yet the partisans of propriety and moralists of reform continue to insist that those facing displacement and death restrict themselves to permissible tactics proven to fail." (150)

Folks can come at this book from all manner of seats - armchair critics, frontline community organizers, folks that care but can't act, the inquisitive individuals not well-versed but still with questions.... Sharing best practices and lived experiences is the way of community-based resistance committed to itself. Reading and making space for the facts and connections laid out in "Defying Displacement" is in itself a praxis for that kind of commitment to a growth mindset. Each chapter is a gateway or entry point to any level of the discussion, and each creates a useful frame - perhaps a land organizer jumps in on land, while an anti-war activist jumps in on terror - that each inform movement struggles today. Taken together, it's a useful portrayal of the way power infiltrates community to separate people from place and separates the working class from recognizing its interconnectedness; it also explores how to resist that unnatural and manmade push. Read a chapter, share with a friend - "Defying Displacement" should be for everyone, because the opportunities it offers are for us all. less