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Something has snapped, and it has been a long time coming

Something has snapped, and it has been a long time coming

One of the most succinct and intelligent descriptions of ‘urban regeneration’ was a film by Jonathan Meades called On the Brandwagon. It begins with the 1981 riots in Liverpool, a city whose population had halved and whose dockyards had closed down, then moves through the government’s attempts to put a sticking plaster over the wound. First, ineptly, through the Garden Festivals bestowed on the city, alongside the first ‘enterprise zone’ version of Regeneration; then more dramatically through New Labour’s abortive attempt to turn our chaotic, suburban-urban cities into places more akin to, say, Paris, that riot-free model of social peace. The middle-class return to the cities, adaptive re-use, luxury apartment blocks, Mitterandian Lottery-funded grands projets, loft conversions in the factories whose closure brought about the main problem in the first place. The film ends in Salford Quays, its gleaming titanium a ram-raid’s distance from some of the poorest places in Western Europe. The likely result? ‘There will be no riots within the ring-road’.

We’ve long congratulated ourselves, in London, of the fact that we have no banlieue. We applauded ourselves especially smugly when zoned, segregated Paris rioted a few years ago. It’s not like it’s untrue—give or take the odd exception (a Thamesmead, a Chelmlsey Wood) our poverty is not concentrated in peripheral housing estates. Edinburgh might wall off its poor in Muirhouse or Leith, and Oxford might try not to think about Blackbird Leys, but in London, Manchester/Salford, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, Nottingham—the cities that erupted on Monday 8th August—the rich live, by and large, next to the poor: £1,000,000 Georgian terraces next to estates with some of the deepest poverty in the EU. We’re so pleased with this that we’ve even extended the principle to how we plan the trickledown dribble of social housing built over the last two decades, those Housing Association schemes where the deserving poor are ‘pepper-potted’ with stockbrokers. We’ve learnt about ‘spatial segregation’, so we do things differently now. Someone commenting on James Meek’s great London Review of Books article on parallel Hackneys mentioned China Miéville’s recent science fiction novel The City and The City, where two cities literally do occupy the same space, with all inhabitants acting as if they don’t. Miéville set it in Eastern Europe, but the inspiration is surely London…

 

Model United Nations

Model United Nations

In Model UN, students step into the shoes of ambassadors from UN member states to debate current issues on the organization’s agenda. Students make speeches, prepare draft resolutions, negotiate with allies and adversaries, resolve conflicts, and navigate the conference rules of procedure – all in the interest of mobilizing “international cooperation” to resolve problems that affect countries all over the world…

Nouriel ‘Dr. Doom’ Roubini: ‘Karl Marx Was Right’

Nouriel ‘Dr. Doom’ Roubini: ‘Karl Marx Was Right’

There’s an old axiom that goes, “wise is the person who appreciates candor almost as much as good news.” With that as a guide, place the forthcoming decidedly in the category of candor.

Economist Nouriel “Dr. Doom” Roubini, the New York University professor who four years ago accurately predicted the global financial crisis, said one of economist Karl Marx’s critiques of capitalism is playing itself out in the current global financial crisis.

Marx, among other theories, argued that capitalism had an internal contradiction that would cyclically lead to crises, and that, at minimum, would place pressure on the economic system.

Companies, Roubini said, are motivated to minimize costs, to save and stockpile cash, but this leads to less money in the hands of employees, which means they have less money to spend and flow back to companies.

Now, in the current financial crisis, consumers, in addition to having less money to spend due to the above, are also motivated to minimize costs, to save and stockpile cash, magnifying the effect of less money flowing back to companies.

“Karl Marx had it right,” Roubini said in an interview with wsj.com. “At some point capitalism can self-destroy itself. That’s because you can not keep on shifting income from labor to capital without not having an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand. We thought that markets work. They are not working. What’s individually rational … is a self-destructive process.”…


 

 

 

Cultural History of German Law Since the Renaissance

Cultural History of German Law Since the Renaissance

History 230A/B Tuesday: 4:00-7:00
Winter/Spring 1995
Haines 82
Mr. Sabean

This research seminar is an introduction to the history of German legal culture and practice. During the winter quarter, students will read widely in the secondary literature and report on various themes. Each session will be composed of three parts: 1) discussion of a book assigned to all participants; 2) a report by one of the participants on a particular issue; 3) the close reading of a short text. The Spring quarter will be devoted to discussion of research papers presented by students…


Museums Take up Civil Rights, Immigration Issues and Their History

Museums Take up Civil Rights, Immigration Issues and Their History

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Do the issues of civil rights and immigration intersect? According to the mission of the Civil Rights Sites of Conscience Network, they do. The group of museums from the Southeast recently met over four days in Charlotte. Emily Zimmern, president and CEO of the host Levine Museum of the New South, lamented “what passes as dialogue” in the immigration debate, words that don’t acknowledge “the long sweep of history.” But she was hopeful that the stand-off can be advanced with informed community engagement. “That’s what museums do.”

At the Levine, that means pairing African-American and Hispanic groups to discuss two museum exhibits: “Courage,” which explores the Carolina roots of the Brown v. Board of Education decision that outlawed segregated schools, and “Para Todos Los Niño,” which chronicles the landmark legal anti-discrimination struggles of Latino families in Southern California almost 10 years before Brown. Another program aimed at high school and college students will ask: “Where is courage needed today?”…

 

South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!)

South Asian Youth Action

South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!) is the nation’s only secular youth development organization dedicated to South Asian youth.  Our mission is to create social change and opportunities for South Asian youth to realize their fullest potential.  Since inception in 1996, SAYA! has brought comprehensive youth development and after-school programs to nearly 7,000 youth across New York City, and an average of 600 youth each academic year.

Comprehensive list of current books related to immigration/education

Comprehensive list of current books related to immigration/education

 

Center for Immigration Studies

Center for Immigration Studies

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit, research organization. Since our founding in 1985, we have pursued a single mission – providing immigration policymakers, the academic community, news media, and concerned citizens with reliable information about the social, economic, environmental, security, and fiscal consequences of legal and illegal immigration into the United States…

 

International Exchange Center

International Exchange Center

The purpose of the International Exchange Center is to create educational resources and opportunities that recognize our immigrant heritage. Dedicated to respecting, valuing, and celebrating cultural differences, the International Exchange Center programs create a synergy of the best ideas from many cultures for the benefit of all.

The Community Education Center

The Community Education Center

The Community Education Center strives to promote a better understanding of immigrants and immigration by providing educational resources that inspire thoughtful dialogue, creative teaching and critical thinking.  Dedicated to the American values of fairness, social justice and respect for all people, the Center is committed to making immigration an “everybody issue.”  The Center also highlights the positive contributions immigrants have made and continue to make to American society through its programmatic work…