FABRIC

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Today, the University simultaneously touts nearing its fundraising goal of $5 billion for real estate acquisition and campus expansion into Manhattanville. The expansion, while in part in the name of research, has also been executed with the promise of local employment for West Harlem. While presenting itself as a job machine for New York City, Columbia must also demonstrate it is capable of producing jobs worth having.

Take a stand for Columbia’s workers

Unusually strong editorial in the Columbia Spectator, addressing Columbia’s recent attempts to cut benefits for unionized workers. By Elliott Grieco, published March 6.

Some footage from last Wednesday’s labor rally, March 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LdoIMSEOCw&feature=youtu.be

03/9/12

Russia in color, a century ago

A switch operator poses on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, near the town of Ust Katav on the Yuryuzan River in 1910. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

@broletariat

03/8/12

gregorpanpa:

Paris Commune (1871)

(via domesticterrorism)

03/7/12

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This form of deep democracy, the vertical fulcrum of a democracy without borders, cannot be assumed to be automatic, easy, or immune to setbacks. […] For those concerned with poverty and citizenship, we can begin by recalling that one crucial condition of possibility for deep democracy is the ability to meet emergency with patience.

Now reading Deep Democracy: Urban Governmentality and the Horizon of Politics by Arjun Appadurai. The essay examines an Alliance between three organizations led by Mumbai slum-dwellers, offering compelling reflections on federation, patience, the “politics of shit,” and other facets of urban resistance under a globalized economy. In Public Culture 14 (1), 2002. download pdf

03/7/12

Wonders of colonial knowledge production. First installment.

Selections from the 1921 census of Bombay city: distribution of beggars and prostitutes. (click to zoom)

03/6/12

Iowa Moves to Keep its Factory Farms Shielded from View

via Mother Jones

03/6/12

myflagisblackandred:

projectdom:

Free Breakfast Program c/o the Black Panther Party

“… the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.”

(via domesticterrorism)

03/5/12

An Inspiring Evening for a Student in Search of Her Studies

Lindsey Catherine Cornum reflects on the Colonizing Bodies panel held at Barnard, February 24. Also, check out Lindsey’s review of Arundhati Roy’s recent book—also on her blog—and her article on Anarcho-Indigenism in the first issue of Fabric! (Download pdf via mediafire.)

03/5/12

Indian Spring? Information and the Revolution in Land Rights

Prof. Sanjoy Chakravorty (Temple University)

Tuesday, March 6 from 1:15 - 2:30 p.m. in 114 Avery @ Columbia University

Land acquisition for industry and infrastructure has become a source of major conflict and political upheaval in the last half decade in India. Some believe this is the biggest problem in India’s development and growth path. A massive new land acquisition bill has been devised to handle the crisis. Why is this happening now, after six decades of independence and sixty million lives disrupted by land acquisition for development? The key is the price of land, which is determined by the land market and its underlying institutions: laws, norms, and information systems. Prof. Chakravorty argues that the ongoing conflicts signal fundamental changes in the land market, driven by fundamental institutional changes, especially in information systems. New information agents (civil society and political parties) and new media (TV in particular) have eroded the information asymmetries that sustained earlier land acquisition practices. The argument is illustrated with data on conflicts and land prices.

Light refreshments will be served.

03/4/12

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Whatever traces of vitality remained would have a wasteland as their only refuge.

Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, p. 52.

c.f. mumbai slums

02/29/12

FABRIC

Indian Spring? Information and the Revolution in Land Rights

Questions?