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The Eastern European Left Media Outlet – ELMO will be launching a multilingual and inedit thematic article series, consisting of 4 parts and this introduction, in which we seek answers to the question: How are housing and urban movements resisting the post-socialist imperative of transforming Central-Eastern European cities into extensions, copies and satellites of neoliberal […]
On 28th March 2022 the housing justice movement Căși Sociale ACUM! – Social Housing NOW! organized a Housing Action Day event in Cluj-Napoca, a European-wide day of action for housing justice, coordinated by the member groups of the European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City (EAC). On 28th March, between […]
Note from LeftEast editors: This article originally appeared in Romanian in The Political Art Gazette and we publish it as part of the collaboration in the ELMO – Eastern European Left Media Outlet network. On March 8th, 2022, responding to the invitation of Meduza Kolektiv and Rhythms of Resistance Cluj, the radical housing justice movement […]
Throughout the fall of 2021, the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory (IFDT) of the University of Belgrade and the Housing Equality Movement have jointly organized a series of five reading workshops under the title “Housing Issue: the Economy of Housing Inequality”. The aim was to bring together those interested in contemporary housing issues and offer space and opportunity to read and analyze some of the most important texts enlightening the topic from the perspective of political economy. Sara Nikolić from the IFDT and Jovana Timotijević from the Housing Equality Movement, in an interview by Sonja Dragović from LeftEast, who also took part in the workshops, tell us more about this program and about critical engagement with the politics of housing in Serbia and beyond.
Note from LeftEast editors: We are publishing the press release of the Romanian Social Housing NOW! (Căşi sociale ACUM!) radical housing justice movement based in Cluj-Napoca. They organized a hybrid, online and physical, action day on 17th December, commemorating the eviction of 350 Roma people that happened on the same day 11 years ago. The […]
89 organizations, collectives and groups, as well as 257 individuals from Romania and other countries demand to stop the eviction process of several Roma families from the modular houses built by Cluj-Napoca City Hall near the landfills in Pata Rât in 2010. Today, 6th of July 2021, we sent our Appeal together with the signatures […]
Trade unions have been organizing protests since the start of 2021 against the newly adopted austerity measures of the Romanian government, which, among other things, froze the minimum wage despite rising living costs continued blocking collective labor negotiations and the social dialogue legislation. Thus, protesters have been demanding social policies from and a dialogue with […]
Note from LeftEast editors: this interview first appeared as a chapter in the edited volume of Michele Lancione and Colin McFarlane Global Urbanism Knowledge, Power and the City (Routledge, 2021). It was reprinted with the kind permission of the interviewers and interviewees, and was made open access with the support of The Swedish Research Council […]
The coronavirus pandemic has revealed who our society depends on for survival. It was those working in logistics, health care, trade, the post office, and other ‘essential’ industries that saved many economies from collapse and ensured the functioning of entire societies. Yet, years of living in poor conditions, working in unsafe workplaces where our lives don’t mean anything, years of alienation and marginalization of workers in public sphere have left quite a mark on working class abilities for mobilization. Those who managed to organize across the workplace’s walls and borders started to build transnational structures a long time ago. During the pandemic we could see that it wasn’t for nothing. We have to continue transnational organizing as labour and tenants movements on everyday basis. If we only start to do it when a crisis hits it can be too late.
Note of the LeftEast editors: The present text, which we co-publish together with TSS is part of a series of publications and webinars on the topics of social reproduction, (women’s) labour and migration in East-Central Europe and beyond. The video from the second webinar (Post)pandemic struggles on social reproduction, where this text was first presented can […]