Research Catalog

Title

Fight to win : inside poor people's organizing / A.J. Withers.

Author

Withers, A. J., 1979-

Publication

• Halifax, NS : Fernwood Publishing, [2021]
• ©2021

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

x, 291 pages : illustrations, map; 23 cm

Summary

"AJ Withers draws on their own experiences as an organizer, extensive interviews with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) activists and Toronto bureaucrats, and freedom of information requests to provide a detailed account of the work of OCAP. This book shows that poor people's organizing can be effective even in periods of neoliberal retrenchment. Fight to Win tells the stories of four key OCAP homelessness campaigns: stopping the criminalization of homeless people in a public park; the fight for poor people's access to the Housing Shelter Fund; a campaign to improve the emergency shelter system and the City's overarching, but inadequate, Housing First policy; and the attempt by the City of Toronto to drive homeless people from encampments during the COVID pandemic. This book shows how power works at the municipal level, including the use of a multitude of demobilization tactics, devaluing poor people as sources of knowledge about their own lives, and gaslighting poor people and anti-poverty activists. AJ Withers also details OCAP's dual activist strategy--direct-action casework coupled with mass mobilization--for both immediate need and long-term change. These campaigns demonstrate the validity of OCAP's longstanding critiques of dominant homelessness policies and practices. Each campaign was fully or partially successful: these victories were secured by anti-poverty activists through the use of, and the threat of, direct disruptive action tactics."--

Subject

• Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
• Homeless persons > Housing > Toronto
• Housing policy > Toronto > Citizen participation
• Low-income housing > Toronto
• Poor > Toronto > Social conditions
• Social action > Toronto
• POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Social Policy
• Homeless persons > Housing
• Housing policy > Citizen participation
• Low-income housing
• Poor > Social conditions
• Social action
• Ontario > Toronto

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 246-287) and index.

Additional Formats (note)

• Issued also in electronic format.

Contents

Introduction -- Privately Policing Public Space: St. James Park -- Stay Tight: OCAP's Direct Action Casework -- Fighting for Roofs and Beds: The Housing Stabilization Fund Campaign -- When is a Bed Not A Bed? Epistemic Injustice and Shelter Occupancy -- The Struggle for Shelter: The Campaign, Mobilization and Demobilization -- Homelessness, Organizing and the Pandemic -- The Struggle Continues.

ISBN

• 177363481X
• 9781773634814

LCCN

99990634991

OCLC

• on1252961223
• 1252961223

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries