Category Archives: Urban Studies

Home, Labor Studies, Urban Studies

Video Seminars: Organizing Responses to the Pandemic

The Departments of Urban Studies and Labor Studies/CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies invites you to join us for the following video seminars to discuss some of the organizing responses to the pandemic:

Tuesday, April 14, 7-9 pm: “Urban Warfare: Housing Justice Under a Global Pandemic” with Raquel Rolnik (University of São Paulo, former UN Rapporteur on Adequate Housing), Daniel Aldana Cohen (University of Pennsylvania), and Cea Weaver (Upstate/Downstate Housing Alliance). Co-sponsored by NYU Urban Democracy Lab, NYC-DSA, Verso Books, and Departments of Labor and Urban Studies, School of Labor and Urban Studies/CUNY. RSVP HERE​

Thursday, April 16, 6:30-8pm: “Labor Justice” with Mohamed Attia (Street Vendor Project) and Ilana Berger (Hand in Hand Domestic Employers Network); Member of Amazonians United; Frontline healthcare worker. Co-sponsored by NYU Urban Democracy Lab and the Departments of Labor and Urban Studies, School of Labor and Urban Studies/CUNY. RSVP HERE

Stay tuned for a confirmed date for “Justice for Immigrants” with Aamnah Khan (DRUM: Desis Rising Up and Moving and Arts & Democracy), Victor Monterossa, Jr. (Covenant House, New Jersey and Immigrant Workers for a Just Response) and Paula Chakravartty (NYU Gallatin and New Sanctuary Coalition). Co-sponsored by the NYU Urban Democracy Lab and Departments of Labor and Urban Studies, School of Labor and Urban Studies/CUNY.

Questions: Please contact Stephanie Luce, stephanie[dot]luce[at]slu[dot]cuny[dot]edu

Photo via flickr by Dan Nguyen (cc-by-nc)

Home, Urban Studies

SLU Instructor Jacob Carlson Advocates for Rent Moratorium in NYTimes

Economic pressures of coronavirus bearing down increasingly on people living in the United States. Unemployment has skyrocketed. And rents are due. In a NYTimes opinion column today, SLU Urban Studies instructor H. Jacob Carlson, along with NYU’s Gianpaolo Baiocchi, argued that the moment demands nothing short of a rent moratorium:

We need Congress to enact an immediate, 90-day national rent moratorium — a temporary suspension of rent payments that will keep families in their homes before other dominoes start to fall.

This would be a bailout for people — for the countless families already facing difficulties making their next rent payment and who soon will face the real prospect of eviction. If we do not act now, people will lose their access to housing. The social impact of evictions on individuals, families and communities will be brutal.

They observe that 47 percent of renters spend more than a third of their income on rent, and that, “57 percent of renters could not afford an unexpected expense of $400 with the money they have on hand.” Given the precarious situation renters were in before the crisis, the current situation is utterly untenable. And the measures in place aren’t enough.

The eviction moratorium in states like New York is a crucial start but only delays the inevitable. After June 20, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 90-day stay will have lifted, renters will face unpayable debt of months of back-rent and fees, as well as damaged credit. Housing courts will swell with the backlog, and many people will be evicted. Similarly, while freezing rents going up for lease renewal is useful, it will not be enough for families unable to pay current rent prices.

Read the full column here.

Home, Student Stories, Urban Studies

SLU Students in Action: KenDell Jackson

KenDell Jackson is a graduate candidate in the URB MA program, and recipient of a 2019 University Student Senate Graduate Peer Mentor Scholarship. KenDell was interviewed by SLU Advisor Samina Shahidi.

What is the University Student Senate Graduate Peer Mentor Scholarship, and how did you get involved with it?

The University Student Senate Graduate Peer Mentor Scholarship is a recognition for students that have shown academic excellence, scholastic dedication and overall contributions to the improvement of student life.

The CUNY SLU advisement team provides frequent updates on upcoming activities and opportunities. Like many of us being so busy, I ignored many of the previous emails suggesting that students apply for Graduate Mentor Scholarship opportunities. I hadn’t considered the Scholarship as a viable option. I was certainly wrong. I decided to submit an essay describing my journey and how working with youth via Track & Field is my unique contribution to improving my community. It started with just training my daughter and it blossomed into working with over 50 young people in the Bronx. Continue reading SLU Students in Action: KenDell Jackson →

Home, Labor Studies, Murphy News, Urban Studies

SLU Graduate Nicolas Pineda Featured on DC37 Radio

After graduating with a BA in Urban Studies, Nicolas Pineda, Jr. was the undergraduate speaker at SLU’s very first commencement ceremony this past spring, This coming fall, he’ll be starting his advanced certificate in Labor Studies. His has been a sometimes surprising journey into city work and then the labor movement — and SLU has played a pivotal role in that journey. Pineda shared his story, and the story of studying at the Murphy Institute as it transitioned into SLU, and what it’s been like to study under labor greats like Ed Ott on the DC37 radio show a few weeks back. It’s an illuminating listen. Check it out here.

New Labor Forum, Urban Studies

New Labor Forum Highlights: July 1st, 2019

The New Labor Forum has a bi-weekly newsletter on current topics in labor, curated by the some of the most insightful scholars and activists in the labor world today. Check out some highlights from the latest edition below.

The 50th anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion — commemorated yesterday as New York City hosted World Pride 2019 – offers an opportunity to reexamine the demographics and political goals of the contemporary LGBTQ movement in the U.S. While the media has for decades conveyed the image of the gay world as a white, middle-class, even affluent, one, the data simply doesn’t bear that out. According to a study by UCLA’s Williams Institute, the poverty rate of LGBTQ adults is, in fact, higher than for heterosexual adults. And nearly one in five members of same-sex couples in the United States are people of color. For just that reason, activists in the gay liberation movement a half century ago explicitly linked their struggle to broader movements, sometimes even anti-capitalist ones, fighting for social and economic equality. Since the 1990s, however, a sizable portion of the movement came to train its sights more narrowly on legal rights, especially the right to marry and join the military, in part conforming to the normative expectations of middle-class America.

The fact that yesterday’s enormous World Pride/ Stonewall 50 commemoration in New York City included the Queer Liberation march — an anti-capitalist, racial justice-infused alternative to the main Pride march — indicates a growing critique of the mainstream, assimilationist politics of the LGBTQ movement. We offer here two New Labor Forum articles on precisely these issues, one by Richard Blum, entitled Stonewall at 50: Whose Movement Is It Anyway? assessing the two marches and their diverging politics and constituencies; and another by Amber Hollibaugh and Margot Weiss, making the argument that the majority of LGBTQ people are poor and working-class and that the labor movement should take this fact into account as it seeks to organize in low-wage sectors where LGBTQ people make up a disproportionately high percentage of workers. And we close with an arresting poem Frank Bidart.

Table of Contents
  1. Stonewall at 50: Whose Movement Is It Anyway?/ Richard Blum, New Labor Forum
  2. Queer Precarity the Myth of Gay Affluence/ Amber Hollibaugh and Margot Weiss, New Labor Forum
  3. Queer/ Frank Bidart, Metaphysical Dog

Featured photo by samchills via flickr (cc-by)

Home, Urban Studies

Video: Rights in Transit

On Friday, March 8th, members of the SLU community gathered to hear Professor Kafui Attoh in conversation with Eric Goldwyn of NYU’s Marron Institution. The conversation cenetered on a fundamental question: Is public transportation a right? Should it be?

Check out the full conversation here:

Is public transportation a right? Should it be? For those reliant on public transit, the answer is invariably “yes” to both. For those who lack other means of mobility, transit is a lifeline. It offers access to many of the entitlements we take as essential: food, employment, and democratic public life itself. Rights in Transit offers a direct challenge to contemporary scholarship on transportation equity. Rather than focusing on civil rights alone, Rights in Transit argues for engaging the more radical notion of the right to the city.