My book is available for presale! 

No, not the Camden one that makes me feel like George R.R. Martin writing The Winds of Winter. The New Orleans one based on years of field work before I moved to Camden: 

Folks have been unbelievably kind as I’ve started to promote the book. Thank you! 

I talk a bit in the Facebook Post about some of the key themes of the book — particularly the ways that the daily activist life burns out those involves and affects the work, and the ways the same strategies that can be used to pursue social justice can also be used to pursue NIMBYism and exclusion. 

I want to do something a little different here, and just talk for a moment about what this piece of work has meant for me personally. This New Orleans project has stretched across a wide swathe of my life. I first visited New Orleans not that long after finishing my undergraduate degree. The book will be coming out this Fall, as I go up for tenure more than a decade later. 

So many pieces of my life today have to do with what I learned while in New Orleans. It was where I first wrestled with the challenges of a community feeling stripped of its power. It was where I first witnessed the ways communities centered around schools could break down as the school system changed. It was where I first struggled with my own role in systems like gentrification and white supremacy. 

This book isn’t about me. It’s about the inspiring, challenging and sometimes problematic activism in New Orleans. But the book contains much of me in it. So many of the ideas I’ve had over the last years can be traced back to the years I spent attending neighborhood meetings, talking to activists, showing up at protests or parades. Or just soaking in New Orleans from a bar while listening to live music. 

What I learned there was the foundation for the life I’ve built here in Camden. It’s the reason I applied for the Rutgers job — I wanted to be at a university deeply invested in its community (even with all the foibles and struggles that come with that). I wanted to do research that was grounded in relationships within a community (even with all the foibles and struggles that come with that). And I wanted to do work that was outward facing, interesting and useful to community — part of the reason that I’ve spent so much time on this blog over the years highlighting so many of the things I love about Camden. 

New Orleans gave me the room to grow, learn, and love cities. I’ll always be grateful for that. 

____

You can find A Neighborhood Politics of Last Resort at McGill-Queen University Press here.

And on Amazon here.

Tags: a neighborhood politics of last resort, new orleans