The UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, as part of its Housing the Third Reconstruction endeavor, invites applications for participation in its Freedom School 2024. With the theme of Insurgent Ground: Land, Housing, Property, this convening aims to bring together movement and university-based scholars actively engaged in insurgent research and critical theorization as a part of, or as accompaniment to, freedom movements.
OBJECTIVES
Intended as inquiry into the conditions and possibilities of emancipatory land and housing, this Freedom School will take up the following issues and questions:
- What is the present historical conjuncture of global racial capitalism and the attendant political economy and ideology of land and real-estate?
- How are movements undertaking land struggle, dismantling police-property relations, enacting housing and spatial justice?
- How do we learn from “beautiful experiments” of reconstruction, rematriation, reparation, and decolonization that are or have been underway and how might we organize towards such futurities? In the wake of mass protest movements that reveal possible futures while failing to materialize their aspirations, how can collective liberatory work learn from its recent and distant pasts in order to realize the world we imagine?
- What are the ontologies of radical relationality, including kinship, presence, solidarity, and community, that are being created to counter social death and state-organized abandonment?
PRINCIPLES
In pursuing such inquiry, the Freedom School will be guided by the following principles:
- To take up and learn from knowledge produced by freedom movements, not as case-study, but as foundational epistemology.
- To commit to critical theorization and historical reflection, including clear-eyed auto-critique of struggle in which participants have directly engaged.
- To demonstrate accountability to communities and movements on the frontlines of displacement and dispossession.
- To understand and mobilize the power of research and scholarship while being clear-eyed about knowledge-producing institutions, including the elite university, as sites of struggle.
- To learn and think from Los Angeles as a (post)colony, situating the U.S. as an empire-state within a world of landless and poor people’s movements.
LOGISTICS
Freedom School 2024 will take place at the University of California, Los Angeles, from July 14, 2024 – July 20, 2024. Participants are expected to attend in person and will be responsible for their travel, accommodation, and meals with a modest stipend of $500 provided by the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy towards such costs. Individuals will be required to register as a UC vendor via PaymentWorks in order to receive the one-time $500 stipend and it will be considered taxable income. Attendees from outside of the U.S. who are not a citizen of the U.S., nor a Permanent Resident, will be required to additionally go through the GLACIER process in order to receive the one-time $500 stipend. Freedom School sessions will take place throughout the day with events and group work in the evenings. Participants must also commit to undertaking a collective scholarship project which will be initiated during the Freedom School. A small number of assignments related to the collective scholarship project will be expected to be completed in advance of the in-person gathering, in addition to completing the group project in the weeks following the convening.Housing the Third Reconstruction is led by Ananya Roy, Robin D.G. Kelley, and Annie Powers, managed by Kristy Lovich and Marisa Lemorande, and guided by an advisory board with Henry Michael Apodaca, Damien Goodmon, Hamid Khan, Tracy Rosenthal, Charles Sepulveda, and Leonardo Vilchis. It is supported by a Mellon Foundation Higher Learning grant.
- Application EXTENDED deadline: Sunday, December 10, 2023 at 5:00 pm PST.
- Application decision: Friday, March 1, 2024.
- In-person Freedom School dates: July 14 – July 20, 2024.
Please express your interest in participating in Freedom School 2024 by completing the following application by Friday, December 1, 2023 at 5:00 pm PST. Incomplete and late applications will not be given consideration. We welcome applicants who are based in Los Angeles, but especially those from other nodes of struggle in the world.
All questions should be directed to: challengeinequality@luskin.ucla.edu
