Signature Lecture Series: "Social Reproduction and the Crisis of Housing in Buffalo" Panel

India Walton, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, & Rahwa Ghirmatzion

(From left to right: India Walton, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and Rahwa Ghirmatzion)

Wednesday, March 15, 2023
CFA Screening Room & via Zoom
4:00 - 5:30pm (EDT)
Free and open to the public.

Free parking is available in Baird A and Baird B lots, as well as in front of the CFA.

Register for the March 15 Housing Panel
Zoom image: event flyer event flyer.

"American life has been suddenly and dramatically upended, and, when things are turned upside down, the bottom is brought to the surface and exposed to the light."

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, The New Yorker (3/30/2020)

The “Social Reproduction and the Crisis of Housing in Buffalo” panel aims to bring social reproduction theory home to Buffalo in terms of the struggle for affordable housing. As Dr. Taylor notes above, social crisis has a way of exposing the deeply embedded injustices within a society and as the recent litany of crises demonstrates—from COVID-19 to the white supremacist massacre at Tops in Buffalo's East Side—a host of related concerns about safety, food insecurity, and access to medical care have come to the fore. The panel will address such questions as:

  • What are the biggest challenges facing Buffalonians today and how is Buffalo a microcosm of similar challenges nationally? 
  • What are the local social movements working toward housing justice and how do they connect with statewide and national movements?  
  • How is housing a feminist issue? How is housing connected to reproductive justice movements?

Panelists:

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Leon Forrest Professor of African-American Studies at Northwestern University (and former UB undergraduate), 2021 MacArthur Fellow, and author of Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership (2019), a semi-finalist for a National Book Award and a 2020 finalist for Pulitzer Prize.

India Walton, 2023 Buffalo Common Council (Masten District) Candidate, Director, Roots Action Buffalo/Roots Action Civic Engagement, former Executive Director of Fruit Belt Community Land Trust and 2021 Democratic candidate for Mayor of Buffalo, New York, who ran with a housing advocacy platform plank.

Rahwa Ghirmatzion, Former Executive Director of Buffalo’s People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH Buffalo), a West Side activist and housing advocacy organization.

Moderator: Carrie Tirado Bramen, Director of the UB Gender Institute and Professor of English.