The State On The Streets

Blends academic and activist perspectives to explore recent emancipatory struggles to win and transform state power. For decades, emancipatory struggles have been deeply influenced by the slogan “Change the world without taking power.” Amid growing social inequalities and the return of right-wing authoritarianism, however, many now recognize the limits of disengaging from government and the state. From the Streets to the Statechronicles many diverse and exciting projects to not only take state power but to fundamentally change it. A blend of scholars and activists explore issues like the nonsectarian relationships between new radical left parties, egalitarian social movements, and labor movements in Greece, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey. Contributors discuss municipal campaigns based in popular assemblies, solidarity economies, and independent political organizations fighting for racial, gender, and economic justice in cities such as Jackson, Vancouver, and Newcastle. This volume also studies the lessons learned from the Pink Tide in Latin America as well as the social movements of racialized and gendered workers transforming human rights across the United States. Finally, the book offers case studies from around the world surveying the role of state workers and public sector unions in radically democratizing public administration through coalitions between the providers and users of public services.

Street level discretion -- Three pathologies: the indifferent, the enforcer, and the caregiver -- A gymnastics of the self: coping with the everyday pressures of street-level work -- When the rules run out: informal taxonomies and peer-level accountability -- Impossible situations: on the breakdown of moral integrity at the frontlines of public service

An in-depth comparative analysis of the interplay of police, democracy, state, and civil society in Argentina and Brazil, with disturbing implications for the consolidation of democracy in Latin America as a whole.

Focusing on the liberating promise of public space, The Beach Beneath the Streets examines the activist struggles of communities in New York City—queer youth of color, gardeners, cyclists, and anti-gentrification activists—as they transform streets, piers, and vacant lots into everyday sites for autonomy, imagination, identity formation, creativity, problem solving, and even democratic renewal. Through ethnographic accounts of contests over New York City's public spaces that highlight the tension between resistance and repression, Shepard and Smithsimon identify how changes in the control of public spaces—parks, street corners, and plazas—have reliably foreshadowed elites' shifting designs on the city at large. With an innovative taxonomy of public space, the authors frame the ways spaces as diverse as gated enclaves, luxury shopping malls, collapsing piers and street protests can be understood in relation to one another. Synthesizing the fifty-year history of New York's neoliberal transformation and the social movements which have opposed the process, The Beach Beneath the Streets captures the dynamics at work in the ongoing shaping of urban spaces into places of repression, expression, control, and creativity.

Bernardo Zacka probes the complex moral lives of street-level bureaucrats—the frontline social and welfare workers, police officers, and educators who represent government’s human face to ordinary citizens. Too often dismissed as soulless operators, these workers wield significant discretion and make decisions that profoundly affect people’s lives.

Linger on the mezzanines of fantastic movie palaces like the Oriental, sample the confectionary delights of Krantz Candies or recklessly splurge on dress shields or mustache wax at dime stores like Kresge's or Woolworths. Allow yourself to be enchanted by the painstakingly prepared displays at Marshall Field's, but leave plenty of time to visit Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co., The Fair, Montgomery Ward, Goldblatts, Wieboldt's and the Boston Store. Above all, meet the people behind the glitter and glamour of State Street who poured so much heartfelt energy into making it the magical place that it was. From its first bricks to future projects, Robert P. Ledermann lovingly recounts the history of this unique thoroughfare.

The Stephen Curry Underrated Literati Book Club Pick! “[A] powerful novel.... Tragic, hopeful, brimming with love, Wolfe’s debut is a remarkable achievement.”—New York Times Book Review Named a Best Book of Summer by Good Housekeeping, Chicago Magazine, The St. Louis Post Dispatch, Chicago Tribune, Veranda, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Publishers Weekly, and more! For fans of Jacqueline Woodson and Brit Bennett, a striking coming-of-age debut about friendship, community, and resilience, set in the housing projects of Chicago during one life-changing summer. Even when we lose it all, we find the strength to rebuild. Felicia “Fe Fe” Stevens is living with her vigilantly loving mother and older teenaged brother, whom she adores, in building 4950 of Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes. It’s the summer of 1999, and her high-rise is next in line to be torn down by the Chicago Housing Authority. She, with the devout Precious Brown and Stacia Buchanan, daughter of a Gangster Disciple Queen-Pin, form a tentative trio and, for a brief moment, carve out for themselves a simple life of Double Dutch and innocence. But when Fe Fe welcomes a mysterious new friend, Tonya, into their fold, the dynamics shift, upending the lives of all four girls. As their beloved neighborhood falls down around them, so too do their friendships and the structures of the four girls’ families. Fe Fe must make the painful decision of whom she can trust and whom she must let go. Decades later, as she remembers that fateful summer—just before her home was demolished, her life uprooted, and community forever changed—Fe Fe tries to make sense of the grief and fraught bonds that still haunt her and attempts to reclaim the love that never left. Profound, reverent, and uplifting, Last Summer on State Street explores the risk of connection against the backdrop of racist institutions, the restorative power of knowing and claiming one’s own past, and those defining relationships which form the heartbeat of our lives. Interweaving moments of reckoning and sustaining grace, debut author Toya Wolfe has crafted an era-defining story of finding a home—both in one’s history and in one’s self. "Toya Wolfe is a storyteller of the highest order. Last Summer on State Street is a stunning debut."—Rebecca Makkai, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Believers