User:Ikandula/sandbox

Final Articles for Wikipedia Project (What I Did)

The Right to the City Alliance Wikipedia page was essentially a stub when I first started, so I made the entire page. I also started a Wikipedia page for Causa Justa :: Just Cause. For the Chinese Progressive Association page, since it's already pretty well defined, I expanded upon two untouched topics in its Activism category.

Chinese Progressive Association

Health

The Chinese Progressive Association does grassroots level research and work to protect the health of low-wage workers and communities of color. They acknowledge the fact that many come to America because they believe that it gives them a better life, but they often fall through the cracks of the system and do not get the media attention they deserve. Due to this, CPA creates publications and data reports, called community-based participatory research, to educate people of the little-known stories of the low-income and working-class immigrant Chinese community in San Francisco. Several of these reports showcase that many immigrant workers are struggling to survive in sweatshop-level working conditions that are often hazardous and stressful. CPA is advocating for healthier jobs for immigrant restaurant workers in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Wage Theft

CPA fights against restaurant workers paid below minimum wage, denied overtime pay, deducted pay when sick, and not paid at all. They believe that, even though labor laws exist, they are not enforced enough. In their 2010 report, they revealed that almost 60% of workers reported wage theft in one way or another and 1 in 2 workers received less than minimum wage. CPA called for a Wage Theft Task Force after the report and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors created the taskforce on June 12, 2012 to address their concerns amidst others addressed by various community organizations.

References

(All references at the bottom of the page).

Causa Justa :: Just Cause

Causa Justa :: Just Cause (CJJC) is a grassroots social movement organization that focuses on achieving justice for low-income San Francisco and Oakland residents. CJJC is a collaboration between St. Peter’s Housing Committee and Just Cause Oakland. CJJC is a member organization of Right to the City Alliance because it works towards housing and racial justice for African Americans and Latinos. Their approach to social justice is tackling tenant issues, immigrant rights, and housing rights through grassroots campaigns.

History

CJJC started in 2010 from a merger between two community organizations: St. Peter’s Housing Committee and Just Cause Oakland. Both organizations work toward housing and racial justice for Latinos and African Americans in the Oakland and San Francisco community. They strategically merged together in order to become a stronger and more powerful grassroots force through consolidation of resources, streamlining of systems, and wider demographic reach.

Current Work

Housing Rights Campaign

The Housing Rights Campaign is CJJC’s specific call-to-action to fight gentrification. CJJC aims to build the power and agency between the Black and Latino working class communities so that they can stop displacement, know their rights, and assert their power in order to keep their homes. CJJC is part of the Plaza 16^th Coalicíon, which is working to ensure that a development on the corner of 16^th Street and Mission Street will work for the needs of the residents, instead of the needs of the developers. CJJC has worked to push anti-tenant harassment policies on ballots in Oakland in order to bar landlords’ attempts to illegally evict tenants.

• The work that CJJC has done has yielded the following successes in their community:
• Establish a rent cap in Oakland so that rent can only increase up to 10% in a given year
• Remove debt service so that property owners with negative cash flow cannot pass on as much as 95% of their loan payments to tenants
• Pass the Tenant Protection Ordinance
• Won the buyout legislation and Ellis Act relocation ordinance in San Francisco
• Pushed back timeline on a major development
• Started a movement called Yes on G

Immigrant Rights Campaign

CJJC’s work with immigrant rights is done through their immigrants rights campaign committee, the body that decides on what local policy fights to take on. Their main goal is to advance the rights of immigrants and fight back against criminalization of immigrants. CJJC also has Rights Based Services that educate and reach out to the community through schools, community centers, and multi-unit buildings to help people figure out their rights.

References

(All references at the bottom of the page).

Right to the City Alliance

The “Right to the City Alliance” (January 2007-present) is a social movement that emerged as a response to the mass displacement of people because of gentrification. RTC is an alliance of over 45 racial, economic, and environmental justice organizations that share common guiding principles and framework of change. The name was inspired by Henri Lefebvre’s book Le Droit à la ville (Right to the City). RTC’s human rights agenda focuses on 12 platforms, is composed of 45 member organizations, and possesses 23 ally organizations.

Right to the City

The right to the city is a concept coined by Henri Lefebvre in his 1968 book Le Droit à la ville. Lefebvre has an idea of space that encompasses perceived space, conceived space, and lived space. He believed that the everyday concrete environment we live hinges on our mental representations of the space as well as our social relations within that space. Thus, for him, city planning was not the singular placement of material space within a city, but the consequences of these material spaces in the urban life. Two central themes in Lefebvre’s work is the idea of the city as an “oeuvre” (a collective artwork) and appropriation within a city. Lefebvre considered a city actively shaped by the people within it through participating in public life and appropriation of time and space in the city. By appropriation, Lefebvre meant that everyone should have the inalienable right to use any and all space within the city for his or her daily life. He believed that the appropriation of the space was more important than who owned the actual space, thus prioritizing use value over economic value. He believed there was a centrality to space, where inner cities should be the epicenter of all interaction and creativity.

Lefebvre’s idea of the “right to the city” has been integrated into modern, urban movements as a plea for a new kind of urban politics and a critique on urban neoliberalism. The most common modern interpretation of his concept comes from David Harvey in his article “The right to the city,” where he notes that the phrase ‘right to the city’ is an empty signifier that lacks meaning. Harvey does not believe that the right to the city is a privilege that already exists, but a collective struggle people face to produce and create life within the city and decide the kind of urbanization they want. He believes capitalist urbanization lacks ‘the right to the city.’ The RTC uses ‘the right to the city’ as a call to action for people to produce the living conditions that meet their need by taking back their cities.

Formation

RTC arose when the Miami Workers Center, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, and Tenants and Workers United convened a meeting in Los Angeles amongst 20 community organizations from 7 cities to start the alliance . Since then, RTC has a national governance structure, a network of regional member organizations, and thematic working groups that engage with academic, professional, and community leaders. RTC continues to follow their model of a more democratic form of democracy in their internal processes. They hold annual meetings with their steering committee, staff, and representatives to discuss the vision for RTC where everyone has to reach a consensus through trust, reflection, and listening.

The Right to the City Platform

The RTC’s platform to urbanize human rights consists of the following principles of unity:

Land for People vs. Land for Speculation

The right to land that serves the interests of the community and not of the market.

Land Ownership

The right to permanent ownership of land for public use.

Economic Justice

The right of marginalized communities to an economy that gives them the same opportunities as other communities.

Indigenous Justice

The right of indigenous people to their ancestral lands.

Environmental Justice

The right to sustainable and healthy cities and reparations for the legacy of toxic abuses.

Freedom from Police & State Harassment

The right to safe neighborhoods and police force that works for all communities.

Immigrant Justice

The right of immigrants to housing, employment, public services, and protection against deportation.

Services and Community Institutions

The right to have transportation, infrastructure, and services that support working class communities.

Democracy and Participation

The right of the community to have control over its city and governance to have full transparency and accountability.

Reparations

The right to communities of color receiving reparations from institutions that have exploited or displaced them.

Internationalism

The right to support cities in different nations, without state invention.

Rural Justice

The right of rural communities to protection against environmental degradation and economic pressures that force migration to urban areas.

Taking Action

Working groups

RTC holds urban congresses in various cities so that people can share frameworks and models for change with each other. Currently, their priorities are working groups on civic engagement, ecojustice, and Boston and Los Angeles regional organizing.

Homes for All

RTC launched Homes for All (HFA) in response to the housing crisis through their Land and Housing Working Group. HFA is a national campaign that is looking to put together a comprehensive housing agenda that talks about issues of public housing, homelessness, and rentership in American cities. Their mission to protect, defend, and expand housing for low-income communities is three-fold: engage in local and national-level organizing efforts, change local policies, and shift current housing conversations away from foreclosure and towards public housing.

Member Organizations

ACE Alternatives for Community and Environment

ARISE for Social Justice

BWA Boston Worker’s Alliance

CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities

Causa Justa::Just Cause

Centro Autonomo

Chainbreaker Collective

Chinese Progressive Association

Colorado Progressive Coalition

Community Justice Project

Community Voices Heard

Cooperation Jackson

CLVU City Life/Vida Urbana

DARE Direct Action for Rights and Equality

Detroit People’s Platform

East LA Community Corporation

Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island

Esperanza Community Housing Corporation

Esperanza Peace and Justice Center

FFLIC Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children

FIERCE Fabulous Independent Educated Radicals for Community Empowerment

FUREE Families United for Racial and Economic Equality

GOLES Good Ole Lower East Side

JFREJ Jews for Racial and Economic Justice

Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance

Miami Worker’s Center

Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment

Neighborhoods Organizing for Change

Neighbors United for a Better Boston

New England United for Justice

New Florida Majority

New Virginia Majority  (Statewide)

Nobody Leaves Mid-Hudson

Occupy Our Homes Atlanta

Padres y Jóvenes Unidos

People’s Coalition for Equality and Justice

Picture the Homeless

Queens Community Civic Corporation

Right to the City Boston

Right to the City Vote

SAFE Standing Against Foreclosures & Evictions

SNOL Springfield No One Leaves

Strategic Actions for a Just Economy

Teachers Unite

Tenants and Workers United

VOCAL NY

Well House