Rents Will Continue To Rise As Long As Housing Remains A Capitalist Commodity, by Pete Dolack

Gentrification Zone

Image by Matt Brown via Flickr

by Pete Dolack
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Systemic Disorder, May 25, 2022
May 26, 2022

Capitalism marches on. And thus housing, because it is a capitalist commodity, has resumed its upward cost, putting ever more people at risk of homelessness, hunger, inability to access medical care and medications, or some combination of those.

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Marx in the House: Episode 3: Rent Gap + Episode 4: Disinvestment

Gentrification Zone

Image by Matt Brown via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

Space Babies on Jul 23, 2020

Marx in the House is a series that explores gentrification and housing from a Marxist perspective. In this episode we take a look at how the rent gap is the fundamental theoretical component explaining gentrification. We look at how Ruth Glass spotted and theorized the rent gap first and how Neil Smith elaborated on it.

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Marx in the House: Episode 1: Intro: Gentrification and Housing + Episode 2: Exchange Value

Marxism

Image by rdesign812 via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

Space Babies on Jul 9, 2020

Marx in the House is a series that explores gentrification and housing from a Marxist perspective. In this episode we take a look at the movement of capital, the ridiculousness of landlords, how it’s necessary to organize and the fundamentals of capitalism and the role of the state.

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Chris Hedges: The Radical Transformation of Jackson, MS

Chris Hedges: The Radical Transformation of Jackson, Mississippi

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below

Dandelion Salad
Originally posted March 4, 2018; updated below

“Self-determination is not possible within the capitalist social framework, because the endless pursuit of profits that drives this system only empowers private ownership and the individual appropriation of wealth by design. The end result of this system is massive inequality and inequity.” — Kali Akuno, Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi

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The Same Old Know-it-all Neoliberal Obama by Paul Street

Barack Obama - Second Term Flare-Ups

Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr

by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street
August 4, 2018

Until he was tapped as a shiny new national and global asset by the white American ruling-class and catapulted to rock star status in the summer of 2004, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama was not particularly popular in the Black Chicago South Side that he deceptively called “home.” Besides being an outsider from Honolulu and Harvard Law, he was an aloof and arrogant part-time law professor over at the conservative and heavily white University of Chicago, an institution long known for displacing and lording over Black South Side communities.

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Chris Hedges: The Radical Transformation of Jackson, Mississippi

Chris Hedges: The Radical Transformation of Jackson, Mississippi

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below

Dandelion Salad

“Cooperation Jackson is an emerging network of cooperatives and grassroots institutions that aim to build a “solidarity economy.” By seizing on the crisis and weak links of modern capitalism and building on the historic struggles for racial equality by the black people of Mississippi, Cooperation Jackson has created a model we can all learn from.” — Richard Moser, “Jackson Rising: At Last, a Real Strategic Plan“, Black Agenda Report, Jan. 30, 2018

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Chris Hedges: Race and Class Inequality in Major Cities

20110928 Class War

Image by Chris Piascik via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Feb 11, 2018

Juan Gonzalez, author of Reclaiming Gotham: Bill de Blasio and the Movement to End America’s Tale of Two Cities, discusses the structural inequality of cities through class and racial policies formed by the US government.

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The Poison of Commercialization Where Everything Is Regarded As A Commodity by Graham Peebles + Kate Tempest: Tunnel Vision

"People over profit!"

Image by Francis Storr via Flickr

by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
June 30, 2017

In cities and towns from New Delhi to New York the socio-political policies that led to the Grenfell Tower disaster in west London are being repeated; redevelopment and gentrification, the influx of corporate money and the expelling of the poor, including families that have lived in an area for generations. To this, add austerity, the privatization of public services and the annihilation of social housing and a cocktail of interconnected causes takes shape. Communities break up, independent businesses gradually close down, diversity disappears and another neighbourhood is absorbed within the expensive homogenized collective.

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Grenfell Tower: A Disaster Waiting to Happen by Graham Peebles

Grenfell Tower after Fire

Image by Frank John via Flickr

by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
June 23, 2017

Charred, lifeless and brutal, the hollowed out remains of Grenfell Tower in west London screams of the human agony inflicted when, on 14th June, the building became an inferno.

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