PROJECTS
Anti-Eviction Mapping Project
Core Member
NYC Chapter Co-Founder
2014 - Present
Documenting dispossession and resistance to build tenant power
The project emerged in response to a surge of no-fault evictions driven by aggressive real estate speculation, racial profiling, and luxury development. What began as a rapid response to crisis evolved into a broader effort to produce accessible, actionable data that tenant organizers could use to confront gentrification and displacement.
KEY CHALLENGE
We began by mapping no-fault evictions to illuminate the connections between property speculation, technology corporations, shell companies, racial profiling, and luxury development.
This work sought not only to transform data into actionable tools for tenant movement organizers, but also to challenge the prevailing belief that gentrification is an inevitable aspect of urban life.
By exposing the entities that exploit loopholes in housing law to displace tenants and making such critical information accessible to the public, we illustrate how the financialization of housing converts evictions into strategic business tactics.
SPREAD FROM (DIS)LOCATION: BLACK EXODUS, AN AEMP PUBLICATION PROJECT EXPLORING THE PAST, PRESENT, AND POSSIBLE FUTURES OF BLACK SAN FRANCISCO
IMAGE OF AEMP’S NARRATIVES OF DISPLACEMENT AND RESISTANCE ORAL HISTORY MAP FEATURING STORIES OF EVICTION AND GENTRIFICATION, BUT ALSO RESISTANCE AND ORGANIZING ACCROSS THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, NEW YORK CITY, AND LOS ANGELES.
THE SOLUTION
Our storytelling projects amplify those evicted by networks of shell companies, to those experiencing increased racial profiling, to those who fought their evictions through direct action and won.
While quantitative mapping was foundational, we quickly realized its limits in documenting the complex social and political realities of displacement, which cannot be fully expressed through mere dots on a map. Through projects like (Dis)Location: Black Exodus and the Narratives of Displacement and Resistance oral history map, we documented not only eviction and racialized displacement, but also resistance, organizing, and tenant power across the Bay Area, New York City, and Los Angeles.
COVER OF NOS CUIDAMOS, A BI-LINGUAL ZINE PRODUCED IN COLLABORATION WITH CITIES FOR PEOPLE NOT FOR PROFIT DOCUMENTING STORIES OF HOW RESIDENTS OF BUSHWICK, BROOKLYN ORGANIZED TO MEET EACH OTHER’S NEEDS DURING COVID-19.