Fight to Win: Inside Poor People's Organizing - A. J. Withers

Descriere Fight to Win: Inside Poor People's Organizing - A. J. Withers

\nAJ Withers draws on their own experiences as an organizer, extensive interviews with OCAP activists and Toronto bureaucrats, and freedom of information requests to provide a detailed account of the work of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP). This book shows that poor people's organizing can be effective even in periods of neoliberal retrenchment. \n \nFight to Win tells the stories of three key OCAP homelessness campaigns: stopping the criminalization of homeless people in a public park; the fight for poor people's access to the Housing Shelter Fund; and a campaign to improve the emergency shelter system and the City's overarching, but inadequate, Housing First policy. \n \nThis book shows how power works at the municipal level, including the use of a multitude of demobilization tactics, devaluing poor people as sources of knowledge about their own lives, and gaslighting poor people and anti-poverty activists. AJ Withers also details OCAP's dual activist strategy -- direct-action casework coupled with mass mobilization -- for both immediate need and long-term change. These campaigns demonstrate the validity of OCAP's longstanding critiques of dominant homelessness policies and practices. Each campaign was fully or partially successful: these victories were secured by anti-poverty activists through the use of, and the threat of, direct disruptive action tactics.\n

Detalii

Brand

Fernwood Publishing

Categorie

ENSTK

EAN / GTIN

9781773634814

Magazine

1

Disponibilitate

in stock