Description

In today’s episode we talk with Erin McElroy, a scholar and activist in the field of housing justice and co-founder of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (AEMP), about issues of housing and gentrification in the San Francisco Bay Area. We start the discussion by exploring theoretical concepts like critical geography, gentrification, countermapping or critical cartography. We focus on issues of positionality and situatedness, which are essential in any kind of analysis or representation. In the second part of the discussion, Erin tells us about the conditions leading to the formations of the AEMP and the work they have done mapping gentrification and dispossession in the San Francisco Bay Area. We discuss instances where their data has been used in actual empowering situations by tenants themselves. Finally, we talk about the importance of recording not just material changes and flows of capital, but also stories of resistance and struggle. During the break between parts, we listen to such stories, archived within the Narratives of Displacement and Resistance project.