Just Action: How to challenge housing segregation and build people-centered communities

In Massachusetts, today, our communities are more segregated by race and class than they were in the 1980s. What are the policies and strategies that advocates can pursue to improve resources in lower-income segregated areas, open up exclusive suburban neighborhoods to diversity, and improve housing opportunities everywhere? 

With searing clarity, The Color of Law documented how American cities, from San Francisco to Boston, became so racially divided, as federal, state, and local governments systematically imposed residential segregation. The Color of Law recounted how governments at all levels created segregation.

Richard Rothstein’s latest publication, Just Action describes how we can begin to undo it. Just Action describes how local groups can form and learn about their region’s history and then offers dozens of policies and strategies they can pursue to enact progress.  

What has desegregation activism looked like in Boston and how can advocates, municipal officials and organizations come together to put the lessons recounted in Color of Law into practice? Dr. Karilyn Crockett’s seminal publication People before Highways offers ground-level analysis of the social, political, and environmental significance of a local anti-highway protest and its lasting national implications. Dr. Crockett will share the story of how an unlikely multiracial coalition of urban and suburban residents, planners, and activists emerged to stop an interstate highway that was poised to exacerbate inequality for communities of color in Boston. The aftermath? A linear central city park, and a highway-less urban corridor that serves as a daily reminder of the power and efficacy of citizen-led city making.

Both People before Highways and Just Action show how community groups can fight back against policies that imposed segregation to finally take responsibility for reversing the harm, creating victories that might finally challenge residential segregation and help remedy America’s profoundly unconstitutional past.
 

Copies of both publications will be made available, free of charge, to the first one hundred registrants. Logistics regarding book pickup will be emailed to registrants. 

Speaking remarks, panel discussion and book signings will be preceded by a one hour social reception. Light refreshments and hors d’oeuvres will be served.