Human Rights and Housing

Human rights are often dismissed in a US context both by organizers, policy-makers, and academics alike as an unhelpfully universalizing framework.  However, human rights can also be used as a productive tool for broadening the scope of movements. When we hold the US accountable to such ideals, an important shift occurs in the organizing possibilities within local struggles, which in turn can inform theorizing from the academy about rights to space, healthcare, housing, water, and other claims that meet the needs of many. In this talk, Rob Robinson will bring personal lived experience of organizing and theorizing from homeless advocacy to the work of Take Back the Land, moving between the academy, legal struggles, and on the ground organizing to situate the struggle for housing in a innovative broader context.