News and Events

Recap of 3rd Summit for Civil Rights, co-sponsored by CURE, held remotely on July 30 and 31

CURE co-sponsored the 3rd Summit for Civil Rights which was held remotely, and presented by the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis, The Workers’ Rights Institute at Georgetown University Law School, The Journal of Law and Inequality at the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis, and Building One America.

The online event featured many powerful speakers, including:
• Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minnesota,
• Congressman Robert C. Scott, U.S. House of Representatives, Virginia,
• Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Ph.D., author, activist, & Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University,
• Richard L. Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO,
• Prentiss Dantzler, Assistant Professor in the Urban Studies Institute at Georgia State University, graduate of the PhD program in Urban Affairs at Rutgers University in Camden/ his dissertation was supervised by CURE director Paul Jargowsky), and many others. For a complete list of speaker and their bios,

visit: https://summitforcivilrights.org/speakers/2020


For the past three years, the Summit for Civil Rights has convened multi-racial and intergenerational gatherings of some of the nation’s top civil rights leaders from labor, faith, academia, law and government to respond to the dangerous intersection of enduring racial disparities, widening economic inequality, and rising political polarization in our society. The 3rd national Summit for Civil Rights continued to focus on these timely topics that have only intensified with the pandemic and been courageously amplified by the protesters.

The Summit was broken down into four distinct but interrelated discussions over the course of the two days (see topics below). While much of the attention was appropriately aimed at calls for sweeping police reform, the Summit for Civil Rights examined some of the deeper, historical
structures of racial apartheid in American’s institutions and their meaning, especially at this critical time, for working people of all backgrounds, for political action, multi- racial power, and a meaningful and transformative policy agenda.

We have witnessed an extraordinary outpouring of anger, outrage and solidarity across the nation, sparked by the killing of an unarmed Black man by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25. This movement for radical change is coming at a time of a global health crisis, political turmoil, and a massive economic catastrophe deepening existing inequalities while accelerating economic trends already devastating workers
and communities. Some of the topics, building on the past two Summits and attempting to learn from and draw on the new energy, anger and desire for change, included:

THE STATE OF MULTI-RACIAL AMERICA AND BLACK POWER

The national election/s,The Black electorate and the rise and fall of populist insurgencies of both the left and right, From Black lives to Black Power

THE TWO AMERICA’S – THE STATE OF AMERICAN APARTHEID

The consequences of our inaction and our acquiescence to a racially divided society, 52 years since Kerner Commission, 57 since March on Washington, Pandemic as microscope and telescope

WHO’S PROFITING?

Racial segregation as a lucrative and anti-worker business model, How America’s enduring ”Color Line” drives economic inequality and racial oppression

WHAT IS TO BE DONE? HOW CAN WE HELP?

Is America ready for a 2nd Reconstruction? A 3rd “Founding”? What would a Civil Rights Restoration Act Look Like in 2020?

An agenda for Economic Opportunity, Racial Justice, Freedom, and Inclusion A highlight of this year’s summit was a verbal commitment [via zoom] from Congressman Bobby Scott, U.S. House of Representatives, Virginia, to work together with the Building One America consortium on furthering the Economic Opportunity, Racial Justice, Freedom, and Inclusion agenda. As such, Congressman Scott agreed to include recommendations and strategies laid out by BOA in his Civil Rights and Voting Rights taskforce on the Hill!!

 

CURE Seminar Series: Featuring Ashley E. Nickels, Ph.D.

Cover image to Power Participation and Protest in Flint Michigan

Power, Participation, and Protest in Flint, Michigan: Unpacking the Policy Paradox of Municipal Takeover

When the 2011 municipal takeover in Flint, Michigan placed the city under state control, some supported the intervention while others saw it as an affront to democracy. Still others were ambivalent about what was supposed to be a temporary disruption. However, the city’s fiscal emergency soon became a public health emergency—the Flint Water Crisis—that captured international attention.

But how did Flint’s municipal takeovers, which suspended local representational government, alter the local political system? In Power, Participation, and Protest in Flint, Michigan, Ashley Nickels addresses the ways residents, groups, and organizations were able to participate politically—or not—during the city’s municipal takeovers in 2002 and 2011. She explains how new politics were created as organizations developed, new coalitions emerged and evolved, and people’s understanding of municipal takeovers changed.

In walking readers through the policy history of, implementation of, and reaction to Flint’s two municipal takeovers, Nickels highlights how the ostensibly apolitical policy is, in fact, highly political.

 

About the speaker

Ashley NickelsAshley E. Nickels, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Kent State University. She is the co-editor of Community Development and Public Administration Theory: Promoting Democratic Principles to Improve Communities (Routledge) and author of Power Participation, and Protest in Flint Michigan (Temple).

 

CURE Seminar Series: November 15

CURE Flyer for November 15 image

Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State

Presented by Samuel Stein
Ph.D. Candidate, Graduate Center, CUNY

Friday, November 15
12:15 – 1:30 p.m.
3rd Floor Faculty Lounge, Armitage Hall
Rutgers–Camden
Free and open to the public
Lunch provided 

Seminar Abstract:

Our cities are changing. Around the world, more and more money is being invested in buildings and land. Real estate is now a $217 trillion dollar industry, worth thirty-six times the value of all the gold ever mined. It forms sixty percent of global assets, and one of the most powerful people in the world—the president of the United States—made his name as a landlord and developer. In his book Capital City, Samuel Stein shows that this explosive transformation of urban life and politics has been driven not only by the tastes of wealthy newcomers, but by the state-led process of urban planning. Planning agencies provide a unique window into the ways the state uses and is used by capital, and the means by which urban renovations are translated into rising real estate values and rising rents. Capital City explains the role of planners in the real estate state, as well as the remarkable power of planning to reclaim urban life. In this talk, Stein will summarize the main arguments in his book, and lead a discussion about the ways planners and activists alike can chart an alternative pathway forward.

About Samual Stein:

Samuel SteinSamuel Stein is a geography PhD candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center. His work focuses on the politics of urban planning, with an emphasis on housing, labor, real estate, and gentrification in New York City. His writing has been published by The Journal of Urban Affairs, International Planning Studies, New Labor Forum, Metropolitics, and many other magazines and journals. In 2019, Verso published his first book, Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State.

Dismantling the Architecture of Segregation

Dismantling the Architecture of Segregation

A Conference Sponsored by the Center for Urban Research and Education, the Department of
Public Policy and Administration, and the Scholars Strategy Network

Multipurpose Room, Rutgers University-Camden Student Center
Camden, New Jersey, October 11, 2019

Thank you to our presenters and all who attended!

About the Conference:

Recent land use and zoning proposals around the United States directly attack the “Architecture of Segregation” – the public policies and institutional practices that further spatial inequality. Single- family zoning, for example, has effectively been used to keep lower-income people out of certain neighborhoods. To address this inequity, Minneapolis has eliminated single-family zoning throughout the city. Oregon and Seattle are considering similar measures. Several 2020 Presidential candidates, including Senators Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren, have offered significant proposals to break down exclusionary zoning. Segregation will not be solved through reform of land use policies alone, but the recent attention to the role of unwise public policies in creating and sustaining spatial inequality is a welcome first step.

This one-day conference will bring together leading academics, practitioners, and policymakers to develop an anti-segregation policy agenda. Speakers and panelists will articulate, analyze, and debate policy changes to finally begin to dismantle the Architecture of Segregation. We invite research papers on topics such as: 1) land use and housing policies that contribute to the persistence of segregation in the United States; 2) policy analyses of proposed policies intended to promote racial and economic integration; and 3) analyses of the implementation and evaluations of the impact of such policies.

This conference is necessary because the persistence of segregation by race and class casts a long shadow on the nation. In the average metropolitan area, 60 percent of blacks would have to move to a different neighborhood to achieve full integration. In some major metropolitan areas, such as New York, Detroit, or Milwaukee, the figure is nearly 80 percent. Black and white children enrolled in school are even more segregated than adults. Segregation of blacks from Asians, while lower on average, is growing. The nation is segregated by income as well as race, with more than 11 million persons residing in high-poverty areas – 56 percent higher than in 2000. A growing body of research confirms the detrimental effects that socially and economically isolated neighborhoods have on the health, safety, and life chances of those who live in them, particularly children.

There is a growing realization that segregation by race and ethnicity and concentration of poverty are not inevitable, but rather result from public policies and institutional arrangements that have governed the growth and development of metropolitan areas for decades:

  • The federal government subsidized suburban development that depopulated urban cores, allowed suburban jurisdictions to exclude low-income families, and tolerated blatant racial discrimination in suburban housing markets and housing finance.
  • Fragmented governance allowed suburban jurisdictions to set local development policies with no regard for the larger metropolitan areas within which they were embedded.
  • Tax policy rewarded construction of large homes while housing policies reinforced segregated patterns of public and assisted housing.

Every social and economic problem is both harder and costlier to solve in the context of vastly unequal neighborhoods. Thus, reducing segregation is an essential first step to fixing failing schools, improving health and education outcomes for low-income children, and improving spatial access to opportunity. Moreover, moving towards more integrated living patterns will help break down the walls of distrust that contribute to racial animosity, growing inequality, and political polarization.

In addition to research papers, the conference will feature presentations by public officials, policymakers, and advocates actively engaged in efforts to promote integration through changes to land use regulations, housing finance reform, fair housing enforcement, and affordable housing development. The event will be livestreamed and broadcast on social media via the CURE Twitter account, @CURECamden.

Agenda

8:30-9:00am: Registration and Continental Breakfast.

9:00-9:10am: Welcoming Remarks. Chancellor Phoebe Haddon, Rutgers-Camden.

9:10-9:30am: Introduction and Overview of the Day. Paul A. Jargowsky, Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Urban Research and Education (CURE), Rutgers-Camden.

9:30-11:00am: Panel 1 – Zoning and Land Use.

Paul Gottlieb and John Borrmann, Rutgers-New Brunswick. “The Suburban Wall:  Zoning Restrictions in the New Jersey Highlands and their Effects on Economic Stratification Across Space.”

Andre Comandon, UCLA. “Fragmenting Los Angeles: An Historical Institutionalist Approach to Exclusionary Urban Development and Policy.”

J. Rosie Tighe, Cleveland State University. “The Intersection of Land Use Regulations and Community Attitudes in Determining Housing Choice and Access.”

Richard Sander, UCLA and Yana Kucheva, CCNY. “How Does Metropolitan Desegregation Come About?”

11:00-11:15am: Break.

11:15-12:45pm: Panel 2 – Race and Power.

Hilary Silver, George Washington University. “Race, Homelessness, and Shelter Siting Disputes:  Implications for Segregation.”

Norrinda Brown Hayat, Rutgers – Newark. “Section 8 Is the New N-Word: Policing Integration in the Age of Black Mobility.”

Kanika Khanna, Cornell. “Examining Claims of Spatial Segregation in New York City’s Affordable Housing Policy Administration.”

Maria Krysan, Allison Helmuth, Sha’Kurra Evans, University of Illinois at Chicago. “Cataloging Racial Residential Integration Efforts: A Preliminary Report.”

12:45-1:45pm: Lunch Discussion. Richard Sander et al., “Disrupting Segregation: The National Moonshot Initiative.”

1:45-3:15pm: Panel 3 – Housing and Community.

Stefanie DeLuca, Johns Hopkins University. “Creating Moves to Opportunity.”

Joni Hirsch, Mark Joseph, Amy Khare. National Initiative on Mixed-Income Community. “Promoting Inclusive, Equitable Mixed-Income Communities:  An Analysis of San Francisco’s Hope SF and Washington, DC’s New Communities Initiative.”

Kathryn L. Howell, VCU. “Building Bridges and Digging Moats:  The Infrastructure for Affordable Housing Preservation in Washington, DC.”

Willow S. Lung-Amam, University of Maryland. “Metropolitan Planning in a Vacuum: Lessons on Regional Equity Planning from Baltimore’s Sustainable Communities Initiative.”

3:15-3:30pm: Break.

3:30-5:15pm: Panel 4 – Boundaries.

Christian Hess, University of Washington and Rutgers-Camden. “How Suburban Is Racial Segregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas?”

John Lauermann, City University of New York. “Luxury Real Estate and Residential Segregation in New York City.”

Ryan W. Coughlan, Molloy College, and Julia Sass Rubin, Rutgers-New Brunswick. “The Segregating Effects of Charter Schools.”

Ariel Bierbaum and Gail Sunderman, University of Maryland. “Dismantling the Architecture of Segregated Schooling: School Re-zoning as Land Use and Growth Management Policy.”

Russell M. Smith, Winston-Salem State University. “Boundaries, Borders, and Spatial (In)Justices.”

5:15-5:30: Break

5:30-6:30pm: Keynote Address. Gregory Squires, George Washington University. “Inequality, Segregation, and the Right to the City.”

6:30-7:00pm: Hors d’Oeuvres and Conversation.