UCLA Public Interest Research Awards Recognize Tenant Advocacy Project

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When millions of Americans lost wages at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, mass evictions loomed. California, and particularly Los Angeles County, with an estimated 365,000 renter households at risk, were no exception. In response, UCLA scholars Hannah Appel, Gary Blasi and Ananya Roy and their colleagues launched an online eviction-defense application called the Tenant Power Toolkit. Working with housing justice lawyers, technologists and community partners, the UCLA team coded the regulatory landscape of California’s 580 jurisdictions into a program tenants can easily use on any internet-connected device, in Spanish or English, to prepare their defenses. For this work, the three scholars have received UCLA Public Impact Research Awards, which celebrate the efforts of faculty who translate research into positive public action that benefits local, national and global communities. The UCLA Office of Research and Creative Activities, which bestows the annual awards, will host a ceremony honoring the recipients later this year. Since the Tenant Power Toolkit launched in July 2022, the program has prepared more than 8,000 eviction defenses, allowing approximately 21,000 tenants — over a third of them children — to avoid default eviction. “Eviction is a systemic problem,” said Appel, who noted that tenants face civil court eviction proceedings alone. “Our toolkit seeks to provide people the tools to fight their eviction while building the collective tenant power necessary to meet that of landlords and a financialized housing market.” Roy is founding director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, where Appel is associate faculty director. Blasi is a professor emeritus at UCLA Law. — Madeline Adamo

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Resisting the ‘New McCarthyism’ on College Campuses and Beyond In a UCLA lecture, historian Barbara Ransby warns of a 'war over ideas, over facts, over how we see and understand the world'

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By Mary Braswell

As a leading scholar of the social and political struggles that have shaped the American experience, Barbara Ransby could easily identify the troubling signs around her.

A climate of fear, intimidation and guilt by association is on the rise today, hallmarks of what she called a new McCarthyism — not just in the halls of power but on college campuses that have historically prided themselves on freedom of expression.

“There is a war right on our campuses, a war over ideas, over facts, over how we see and understand the world, over what we can publish and what we can teach, over how we can protest and whether we can protest,” Ransby told a UCLA audience on Feb. 8.

“Our campuses are central battlegrounds and, overall, on the spectrum of liberalism to authoritarianism, we unfortunately see a steady and frightening move toward authoritarianism.”

But Ransby also pointed to important work being done on campuses around the country, “sites of resistance that inspire me and make me optimistic and hopeful in this moment.”

Ransby, an award-winning historian, author and activist, has a long record of building bridges between scholars and grassroots organizers in their common fight for equal rights and opportunities.

She is a founding member of Scholars for Social Justice, was named to the inaugural class of Freedom Scholars by the Marguerite Casey Foundation, and directs the Social Justice Initiative at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where she is a distinguished professor of African American studies, gender and women’s studies, and history.

Ransby spoke to a capacity crowd in the Grand Salon at UCLA’s Kerckhoff Hall as part of the Luskin Lecture Series and the 2nd Annual Distinguished Lecture in Ideas and Organizing presented by the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy (II&D).

UCLA scholars, from left, Ananya Roy, David C. Turner III and Sherene H. Razack join featured speaker Barbara Ransby on stage at Kerckhoff Hall.

The event was preceded by a reception and exhibit of photos from Aetna Street in Van Nuys, an encampment where people sheltered in tents and vehicles until the site was cleared by Los Angeles city officials last August. Aetna Street residents, local activists and UCLA scholars are part of a research collective formed to study the struggle for justice for the unhoused, and the photos on display offered glimpses of the community’s experiments in living and public grieving.

During the lecture and panel discussion, several UCLA scholars whose work centers on social justice shared the stage with Ransby: UCLA Luskin professors Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, interim dean of the Luskin School, and Ananya Roy, director of II&D; Robin D.G. Kelley, distinguished professor of history; Sherene H. Razack, distinguished professor of gender studies; and David C. Turner III, assistant professor of Black life and racial justice at UCLA Luskin Social Welfare.

The dialogue touched on causes for alarm on many fronts: This November’s high-stakes U.S. presidential election. Repressive police tactics. The Israel-Gaza war, with its terrible humanitarian toll and fallout for free speech on college campuses.

Ransby issued a call to action, again turning to the lessons of history. During the anti-war and Black freedom movements of the 1960s, she said, campuses were “epicenters of struggle and resistance. Out of this struggle, real victories were won, even though fraught and fragile.”

Today’s scholar-activists, faculty and students alike, all have a stake in the struggle and must resist efforts to silence dissent, she said. For inspiration, she pointed to several thriving university programs that are on the front lines of the fight for racial and gender equity, police reform, climate justice and housing for all.

“These programs, courses and content areas matter, not just because students have a greater breadth of knowledge, which is true and good,” Ransby said. “But these ideas and theories are also tools for liberation and freedom making. …

“As problematic and complicated and contradictory as they are, as much harm as they do, colleges and universities are places where we build trenches, where we carve out oases, where we create spaces to think, collaborate, inspire, and ask critical and courageous questions about freedom and justice.”

 

Watch the lecture and panel discussion on Vimeo.


View photos of Barbara Ransby’s visit and the Aetna Street photo exhibit on Flickr.

Barbara Ransby Luskin Lecture

UCLA Hosts Its Largest Activist-in-Residence Cohort Five advocates for social change will be on campus through May to ‘turn the university inside out’

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By Les Dunseith

The UCLA Activist-in-Residence program welcomed five more changemakers — the largest cohort in the program’s seven-year history — to campus with a reception Jan. 24 at DeCafe in Perloff Hall.

The UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, which has selected at least one activist since 2017, is hosting community organizer Ron Collins II and revolutionary writer Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia during this academic year. 

The UCLA Asian American Studies Center, also a longtime participant in the program, is hosting writer and social justice educator Shengxiao “Sole” Yu. 

In its second year with the Activist-in-Residence program, cityLAB-UCLA is hosting Robert A. Clarke, a designer and educator practicing at the intersection of culture, identity and architecture. 

A new addition to the program for 2024 is the UCLA Center for the Study of Women|Barbra Streisand Center, which is hosting Narges Zagub B.A. Anthropology ’20, a movement worker and facilitator.

Opening remarks for the reception were provided by UCLA Luskin Professor Ananya Roy, who created the residency program soon after arriving at UCLA as the director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy. 

She conceptualized the program as a sabbatical for participants, allowing them time and space to reflect, envision new projects, and connect with UCLA faculty, students and staff. 

“More than ever, I am reminded, in these difficult times, that the residency is our effort to turn the university inside out,” Roy told the crowd. “At the Institute, we organize knowledge within, against and beyond the university. The Activist-in-Residence program brings to the university the movement scholars and public intellectuals who are teachers and guides for this praxis.”

a dozen people gathered in advance of a group photo laugh while one of them holds a dog in the foregroundStaff, faculty and friends of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy share a laugh together while recognizing this year’s activists. In back, from left, are César J. Ayala, Will Sens Jr., Giselle Harrell, Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia, Ron Collins II, Kristy Lovich, Sam Lutzker and Marisa Lemorande; in front, Ananya Roy and Carla Orendorff are on either side of Paisley Mares, who holds a dog named Lavi.
a dozen people gathered in advance of a group photo laugh while one of them holds a dog in the foreground
a dozen people gathered in advance of a group photo laugh while one of them holds a dog in the foreground
African American man gestures as he speaks with a microphone in hand
African American man gestures as he speaks with a microphone in hand
young Asian woman smiles broadly while speaking with someone to her right
young Asian woman smiles broadly while speaking with someone to her right
the two activists pose for a photo in front of a backdrop for the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy
the two activists pose for a photo in front of a backdrop for the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy
woman with dark curly hair is shown in profile at a podium while speaking
woman with dark curly hair is shown in profile at a podium while speaking

Roy and other representatives of the four UCLA sponsors then introduced the individual activists, each of whom spoke briefly about their previous experiences and their plans for the next few months. 

The first activist to speak this year was Gray-Garcia, who is a formerly unhoused and incarcerated poverty scholar who prefers to keep their face covered in public. Their rousing remarks were presented in the form of spoken word poetry.

The next activist to speak was Collins, a native of South Los Angeles who is has experience as a social justice strategist and movement builder. Collins’ work advances racial and social justice with a particular focus on Black, LGBTQ and environmental justice issues.

Yu is the creator of Nectar, an online space where she provides political education and healing justice workshops. She spoke of her efforts to combat misinformation and disinformation, particularly when it targets the Chinese-speaking community such as. harmful narratives attacking affirmative action and Black-on-Asian crime tropes during the COVID pandemic.

In his work with cityLAB-UCLA, Clarke said he aims to further efforts to canonize Black aesthetics, helping to authenticate it as a lens through which to practice architecture. Clarke is co-founder of a design practice that explores ways to unearth new aesthetics specific to African American culture, experience and identity.

Narges is a UCLA alumna who gained experience in student and community organizing as part of her undergraduate activities. Their background as a Muslim, queer person from an immigrant family from Libya has helped shape their understanding of community. 

Find out more about this year’s activists and their plans.

View photos from the reception on Flickr.

Activists-in-Residence 2024

Roy on Repeated Displacement of L.A.’s Unhoused Population

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Ananya Roy, director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, spoke with Spectrum News 1 about the sweep of an encampment of unhoused people on Aetna Street in Van Nuys. The sweep was part of the city of Los Angeles’ “Inside Safe” initiative, which aims to rapidly move people living in encampments indoors. Some Aetna residents who accepted hotel placements have reported dealing with sub-par conditions and strict rules, complaints echoed by other “Inside Safe” participants, KCRW’s Greater L.A. reported. Without a pathway to permanent housing, the participants could soon be back on the street, said Roy, a professor of urban planning, social welfare and geography. “Our concern about the kind of repeated displacement is that people end up more precarious than before,” she said.

Watch the Spectrum News report
Listen to the Greater L.A. report

 

Essays Capture Legacy of L.A. Historian Mike Davis

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The journal Human Geography published a collection of essays curated by UCLA Luskin Urban Planning to honor author, activist and Los Angeles historian Mike Davis. Ananya Roy, the professor of urban planning, social welfare and geography who directs the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, wrote an introduction to the collection, which arose from a convening of L.A. scholars at the Luskin School a few months after Davis’ death in October 2022. As Roy writes, “the gathering continued late into the evening as scholars of different generations, from distinguished professors to undergraduate students, celebrated all that we have each, and collectively, learned from Mike Davis.” The essay collection emphasizes that while Davis “saw and found struggle in the many terrains of catastrophe that he analyzed so prophetically,” he was neither a pessimist nor a defeatist. Roy’s essay “A political autopsy of Liberal Los Angeles” also appears in the collection, along with “Planetarity and environmentalisms: the invention of new environmental histories from the Ecology of Fear to Victorian Holocausts” by urban planning professor Susanna Hecht; “The poet of L.A.’s urban” by urban planning professor Michael Storper; “Old school socialist” by UCLA history professor Robin D.G. Kelley; “To Los Angeles: United in Grief, United in Struggle” by post-doctoral scholar Deshonay Dozier; and “Lessons in accumulated rage and rebellious scholarship” by USC professor Juan De Lara.

 

A Closer Look at UCLA’s Own ‘Justice League’

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They come from everywhere — unapologetic revolutionaries and leading voices in causes across the spectrum of social justice. They seek resources and space to recharge, regroup and, often, to plan the next stage of their struggle — all while planting seeds to grow the next generation of activists. Recently profiled in UCLA Magazine, they are part of the university’s Activist-in-Residence program, launched in 2016 by the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy (II&D). The program has hosted 11 activists, including four this year, with areas of expertise that include tenants’ rights, food insecurity, climate change, support for incarcerated people, ethnic storytelling and protection for the unhoused. “Their presence transforms our classrooms and our research centers,” said Ananya Roy, founding director of II&D and a professor of urban planning, social welfare and geography. “It’s this shared terrain of scholarship across universities and movements that we see to be very fertile ground for making change.” Other campus hosts include the Asian American Studies Center and cityLAB-UCLA. The magazine piece includes mini-profiles of five of UCLA’s Activists-in Residence.

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International Investigators Hear From People Who Have Experienced Homelessness

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On March 1, the Spatial Justice Community Collaborative class under the direction of UCLA Luskin Professor Ananya Roy joined with the Promise Institute for Human Rights to host the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Soledad García Muñoz, special rapporteur on economic, social, cultural and environmental rights. During a presentation that built on research by the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, six presenters affiliated with the class talked about their lived experiences, including the time some had spent living in homeless encampments such as one at Echo Park Lake that had been forcibly cleared by law enforcement two years earlier. García Muñoz and her colleagues, Daniel Norona and Paul Mora, then asked questions and spoke about the importance of such interactions to their mission to investigate allegations of human rights throughout the Americas. García Muñoz also viewed an altar that was built by the class to honor the large number of preventable deaths of unhoused residents in Los Angeles. And she engaged in conversation with panelists such as Jennifer Blake, whose artwork focuses on uplifting people like herself who have experienced homelessness.

View photos on Flicker

Community Collaborative hearing

 

Housing Inequality Is So Entrenched It Could Spark a Movement Scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor says establishing a human right to shelter may seem utopian but is long overdue

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By Mary Braswell

At the outset of her appearance before a UCLA audience, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor made one thing clear: The United States is not in the midst of a housing crisis.

“ ‘Crises’ are interruptions in the status quo, and housing precarity is a permanent feature of U.S. society,” said Taylor, a leading scholar of social movements and racial justice.

It was a semantic distinction that pointed to a formidable challenge: What can be done to dismantle a housing system that Taylor said has been hijacked by corporate interests, turning the family home into a hedge-fund commodity traded on the international stage?

“What we’re seeing is the deep marginalization of the socially useful purpose of housing as a dwelling … turned into an asset to be bought and sold, an asset that is mostly valued as a thing, not as a place to live,” Taylor said.

But she assured the audience that the arc of history that led to this harsh 21st-century reality also holds lessons on how to establish a human right to decent shelter.

Taylor shared insights from her 2019 book “Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership,” a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. The professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University has also received accolades that include a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation.

Her newest enterprise, as co-founder of Hammer & Hope, a magazine exploring Black politics and culture, launched just hours before her standing-room-only appearance on Feb. 15 as part of the UCLA Luskin Lecture Series, in partnership with the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy.

Woman in glasses and orange dress on stage.II&D Director Ananya Roy welcomes guests to the inaugural Distinguished Lecture in Ideas and Organizing, in partnership with the Luskin Lecture Series.
Woman in glasses and orange dress on stage.
Woman in glasses and orange dress on stage.

Taylor warned against oversimplifying the solution to housing insecurity. Raising wages just to make sure people can afford exorbitant mortgages and rents, for example, only perpetuates a corrupt system.

While the racial wealth gap is real, she said, “it is often used as a smokescreen to blot out the larger dimensions of extraordinary housing inequality and insecurity.”

Today’s housing system takes a toll not just on the Black community, which has endured generations of racist policies in the real estate industry, and not just on the nation’s poorest, those living outdoors or struggling to pay rent for substandard shelter.

“We’re talking about half of the United States living with rent burden, paying 30% of their income toward rent, and more than a quarter paying half of their income toward rent,” Taylor said. “This housing economy is like roller skates with no stops on a steep hill on the top of a mountain. … There are no brakes on any of this, and every year, it’s getting worse and worse and worse.

“And so I think it becomes the basis upon which to build a different kind of a movement.”

Taylor recalled pivot points in U.S. history when tenants rose up to demand change and governments enacted tough regulations to curb “the worst impulses of capitalism.”

She spoke about the promise of current efforts, including the Green New Deal for Public Housing and alternative solutions such as co-ops and community land trusts.

“Such proposals might have once seemed utterly utopian,” she said. “They now feel long overdue.”

Following her lecture, Taylor shared the stage with scholars Cheryl I. Harris of UCLA Law, Marques Vestal of UCLA Luskin Urban Planning and Ananya Roy, founding director of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy. The dialogue continued the following day when Taylor met with grassroots organizers at the Los Angeles Community Action Network in downtown’s Skid Row.

“We see an economic system that is incompatible with housing security and housing justice,” Taylor said at the lecture. “And so that raises another question about what kind of world we want to live in and the struggle that is necessary to produce it.”

View photos from the lecture on Flickr.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor LLS

Watch a recording of the lecture on Vimeo.

 

Latest Cohort of 4 Activists-in-Residence Is Largest Ever UCLA's cityLAB, Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy and Asian American Studies Center will serve as on-campus hosts

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UCLA welcomed an artist and three community organizers to campus on Jan. 31 during the 2023 UCLA Activists-in-Residence reception held at DeCafe in Perloff Hall.

This year, four activists were selected, making this the largest cohort in the program’s six-year history. Steve Diaz and Josiah Edwards will be working with the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, which has selected at least one activist since 2017.

Diaz is deputy director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN) based in downtown Los Angeles, and Edwards is a youth climate justice organizer who grew up in the South Bay area of L.A. County.

The UCLA Asian American Studies Center returns to the residency program after a pandemic-related hiatus to host Melissa Acedera. The daughter of Filipino immigrants to Los Angeles, Acedera is a founder of two community-powered food systems helping feed unhoused and food-insecure communities across L.A. and Orange counties.

New to the Activists-in-Residence program this year is cityLAB-UCLA, which selected Marlené Nancy Lopez, a public artist whose work focuses on serving communities through muralism, storytelling and multimedia. She was born and raised in the MacArthur Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Conceptualized as a sabbatical, the residency allows for time and space to reflect, envision new projects, and connect with UCLA faculty, students and staff. At the reception, each of the activists spoke briefly about their previous experiences and their plans for the next few months.

Find out more about the activists and their plans.

View photos from the reception on Flickr.

2023 Activists in Residence

A Worldly Perspective

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Thinking beyond borders is an integral part of a UCLA education.

The commitment to international scholarship is even spelled out in the Luskin School’s strategic plan. It recognizes UCLA’s unique position as a public university situated “in the ‘world city’ of Los Angeles, a living laboratory for the far-reaching issues facing communities across the United States and around the world.”

Roughly one in five current faculty members at UCLA Luskin conduct research primarily with an international focus. Their scholarly contributions frequently appear in journals with a global orientation or get recognized in other ways.

Two men in academic robes present a canister containing a document to a woman in the middle

Professor Ananya Roy receives the Doctorat Honoris Causa (honorary doctorate) at the University of Geneva from Rector Yves Flückiger and Social Sciences Dean Pascal Sciarni.

For example, Ananya Roy, professor of urban planning and social welfare, traveled to Switzerland in October to receive a Doctorat Honoris Causa at the University of Geneva. An honorary doctorate is one of the highest academic honors one can receive.

“I didn’t have any ties to the University of Geneva,” Roy said after the ceremony, which was televised. “But as the faculty there reminded me, it will now always be my university.”

Some faculty efforts involve a pooling of resources. The Latin American Cities Initiative draws on Los Angeles’ ties to countries across the Americas to share knowledge about managing urban spaces. Directed by Paavo Monkkonen, professor of urban planning and public policy, the initiative known as Ciudades hosts seminars and conferences and conducts an international planning studio in Latin America that immerses students in real-world case studies.

And the Global Lab for Research in Action focuses on hard-to-reach populations around the world through a social justice lens. Manisha Shah of public policy leads the research, which seeks remedies for the health, education and economic needs of women and children.

A global focus is also found in many L.A.-based efforts, both new and ongoing.

In summer 2022, social welfare students and scholars hosted the International Summer University in Social Work, during which colleagues from around the world explored theories and practices that promote justice. More than 20 participants from four continents came to campus for a two-week exploration of topics such as racism, the wealth gap, gender bias and homelessness.

Last spring, the Luskin School hosted a virtual Global Mini-Summit as part of its signature Luskin Summit policy dialogue series. Discussions are underway to expand this concept into an ongoing series focused on international concerns.

Plus, numerous alumni now hold positions in foreign governments or work in agencies or businesses with an international mindset.

Several stories in this edition of Luskin Forum take a closer look at the ways UCLA Luskin is bringing a global perspective to issues of public concern.