Social Movements, Urban History, and the Politics of Memory

Spring, 2014

IAS 158AC and PACS 148AC 4 units

Instructor: Sean Burns, Ph.D.

ACES Fellows: Hannah Birnbaum and Ina Kelleher

GSI: Ina Kelleher

Collective social movements are incubators of new knowledge.

- Robin D.G. Kelley

Course Description:
This course examines a number of national and transnational, progressive social movements
which have had prominent and influential expression in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Specifically, the course will examine: the disability rights and independent living movement; the
efforts of Native-Americans to protect sacred sites, reclaim land, and build community health;
and cross-racial collation building in working-class communities of color to build movements
around housing and workers rights.

Through an interdisciplinary combination of history, sociology, urban geography, and ethnic

studies, we will investigate: why and how these movements have emerged? What cultural, racial,
ethnic and political identities were drawn from, reconfigured, and created within these
movements? What kinds of knowledge, history, and institutions were created by these
movements, and how have these legacies shaped (and been shaped by) the geography, culture,
ecology, and politics of the San Francisco Bay Area as we live it today. Such questions will lead
us into discussions at the heart of American Studies: discussions about how dominant, cultural
narratives are sustained and contested; discussions about democracy, human rights, justice, and
social power in relation to the nation-state, capitalism, and urban formation; discussions about
what justice means in a city and how movements make claims on space; discussions about
memory and the political imaginary and how people experience their identity and social
possibility at a complex intersection of class, race, gender, nationalism, work, religion, popular
culture and more.

As part of the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) program, this course will not
only analyze what others have written and said of these movements, it will also organize

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collaborative, community-based documentation projects which seek to expand public
understanding of these histories, their legacies, and the contemporary experience of these
struggles. The community partnerships will take two, complementary forms. First, toward the
aim of building student skills as documentarians and archivists of social history, we will partner
with two local organizations at the forefront of creatively making and remaking community
history Shaping San Francisco and UC Berkeleys own Regional Oral History Office. Second,
toward the aim of supporting local, social and environmental justice organizations, we will
partner with 8-10 organizations in a collaborative effort to expand the documentation of their
institutions history within the context of the movements within which they struggle. Small
student groups (4-5 students), supervised by an ACES Fellow, will carry out a documentation
project mentored by the organizations. The specific shape of these documentation projects will
be determined through the collaborations, but a foundational goal is that in addition to serving
the partnering organizations, these histories, in aggregate, contribute to the archives of Bay Area
social movements at Shaping San Francisco and ROHO, potentially forming the basis for a web-
based SF Bay Area Social Movement History documentation initiative which could grow with
the life of the course year after year.

Course Objectives, Pedagogical Approaches, Student Learning:

- To introduce students to the questions, methods, and theoretical frameworks of social
movement scholarship through investigating how the culture, geography, ecology, and politics of
the San Francisco Bay Area have shaped and have been shaped through progressive social
movements

- To examine U.S. social history (specifically the urban histories of the San Francisco Bay Area)
through comparing and integrating the analytical tools of a variety of theoretical traditions
including: ethic studies, feminist and queer theory, working-class studies, and disability studies

- To engage students in broader theories and debates of knowledge production through specific
examination of how movements develop analysis of poverty, justice, the state, citizenship,
democracy, capitalism, race, class, gender, and history

- To introduce students to various methods of community history documentation

- To collectively grapple with the responsibilities, opportunities, and ethical dilemmas of

community-engaged scholarship and community partnerships based in reciprocity

- To contribute student-generated social movement scholarship to a growing, publicly available

archive, of SF Bay Area social history at foundingsf.org

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ACES Community Partners:
NAHC (Native American Health Clinic) - http://www.nativehealth.org/

Intertribal Friendship House - http://www.ifhurbanrez.org/index.php

IPOC (Indian People Organizing for Change) - http://ipocshellmoundwalk.intuitwebsites.com/

EBASE (East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy) - http://www.workingeastbay.org/

Causa Justa / Just Cause - http://www.cjjc.org/

AIWA (Asian Immigrant Women Advocates) - http://www.aiwa.org/index.php

Centro Legal De La Raza - http://centrolegal.org/services/advocacy/

Cuido (Communities United In Defense of Olmsted) - http://cuido.org/

NIAD Art Center (National Institute of Arts and Disability) - http://niadart.org/

World Institute on Disability (Ed Roberts Campus) http://www.wid.org/

Sins Invalid - http://www.sinsinvalid.org/

Shaping San Francisco - http://www.shapingsf.org/

Course Requirements / Assignments / Evaluation

Class Attendance: Students are expected to attend all classes and sections; attendance will be
taken. Active participation in discussions in lecture and section is a component of student
evaluation in the course.

Course Readings: Students are expected to complete all assigned readings on time in preparation
for class discussions during lecture and section. We have deliberately kept the amount of
assigned reading reasonable with the expectation that the reading is done thoroughly and
thoughtfully. Readings for the course can be found in two places: 1) A course reader that is
available for purchase at TBA 2) Additional readings that are listed on the course Bspace /
Bcourses website

Plagiarism:

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As outlined by the Code of Student Conduct and the Campus Office of Student Judicial Affairs,
any plagiarized work may result in failing an assignment and possibly the entire course. To learn
more about the campus definition of plagiarism: http://writing.berkeley.edu/about-us/academic-
honesty

Main Assignments and Grade Distribution:

Detailed prompts for the following assignments will be handed out in class.

- The introductory unit of the course concludes with a short essay which asks students to
examine the readings which serve as the theoretical foundations of the course. This 3-5 page
paper is worth (10%) your final grade.

- Participation in lecture and section discussions is a central dimension of this course (20% of
your final grade); this includes attendance, your group presentation / facilitation assignment on
course readings, as well as other small assignments that your GSIs will oversee in sections.

- This course requires several mid semester assignments which help prepare all students for
meaningfully carrying out their final, group, research project. These assignments include a
project description and work plan, an annotated bibliography, and an oral history assignment.
These assignments make up 35% of your final grade.

- In this course, final research projects are completed, in lieu of a final exam, by groups of 4-6
students. These historical documentation projects are defined through collaboration with
community partners and are presented at the end of the course. There are many options for
fulfilling the requirements of this assignment; all of these options will be discussed at length in
class. Final projects are worth 35% of your final grade.

- Grading Scale: All assignments, as well as final grades, will be computed using the following
standard, grading scheme:

A+ 99% 90 > B+ 87 80 > C+ 77

99 > A 93 87 > B 83 77 > C 73

93 > A- 90 83 > B- 80 73 > C- 70 (and so forth)

DSP Related:

If you need disability-related accommodations in this class, if you have emergency medical
information you wish to share with me, or if you need special arrangements in case the building
must be evacuated, please inform me immediately and provide me with your letter of
accommodation from the DSP Office. Please see me privately after class or at my office hours.

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Students who need academic accommodations (for example, a notetaker), should request them
from the Disabled Students' Program, 260 Csar Chvez Center, 642-0518 (voice or TTY). DSP
is the campus office responsible for verifying disability-related need for academic
accommodations, assessing that need, and for planning accommodations in cooperation with
students and instructors as needed and consistent with course requirements.

Course Calendar:
Unit 1 (Weeks 1-3) Introduction to social movement studies, urban history, methods of
community history documentation, and class assignments and community partners

Wed, Jan 22

Themes: Introduction to social movement studies with special attention to how movements
generate counter-hegemonic knowledges and histories; Introduction to the theory and practice of
history from below and the politics of the cultural turn in historiography

Reading: Making Movement History by James Green in Taking History to Heart: The Power
of the Past in Building Social Movements; When History Sleeps: A Beginning by Robin D.G.
Kelly from Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

Mon, Jan 27

Theme: The stakes of urban movements how processes of urbanization have generated
particular kinds of political contestation, agency, and understandings of how justice and human
rights relate to space; The relationship of place to history and meaning making

Reading: Introduction from American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland,
The Right to the City by David Harvey from Rebel Cities;

Wed, Jan 29th

Theme: How is memory political, and how are political discourses shaped and haunted by social
memory? What are the particular implications of the digital age on social memory? The multiple
methods, uses, and politics of oral history

Readings: Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mmoire by Pierre Nora, Telling Our
Stories: Feminist Debates and the Use of Oral History in The Oral History Reader, Joan
Sangster The Violence of Organized Forgetting by Henry Giroux

Mon, Feb 3

Theme: Overview of SF Bay Area social and environmental history (19th and 20th centuries) with
an emphasis on prominent phases of industrialization, migration, urbanization, and the remaking
of the ecology; begin introduction to main units of the course and community partners

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Readings: The Green and the Blue: Saving the Bay and the Coast and Green Justice:
Reclaiming the Inner City in The Country In the City by Richard Walker, Introduction from
All Power to the People: A Comparative History of Third World Radicalism in San Francisco
by Jason Ferreira

Wed, Feb 5

Theme: Introduction to methods of community history documentation highlighting examples of

SF Bay Area history / continue introduction to main units of the course and community partners

Readings: None

Assignment due: first short essay due

Guest speakers: Chris Carlsson and LisaRuth Elliot from Shaping San Francisco

Unit 2 (Weeks 3-6): Working Class Communities of Color Organizing for Housing and
Workers Rights

Community Partners: Causa Justa / Just Cause Oakland/SF; EBASE Oakland; Asian
Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA) - Oakland

Mon, Feb 10

Themes: Introduction to the principles of neoliberal economic logic with an emphasis on how
this era has impacted US cities; the role of WWII industry in shaping the East Bay; dynamics of
deindustrialization and the emergent, centrality of the service sector

Reading: Freedoms Just Another Word by David Harey from A Brief History of
Neoliberalism, The State of Work in the East Bay and Oakland by EBASE, Wartime
Shipyards and the Transformation of Labor from The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East
Bay in World War II by Marilynn Johnson

Wed, Feb 12

Themes: Introduction to worker organizing during the past three decades with an emphasis on
the emergence of workers centers, immigration patterns, and the strategies of service sector
unions

Readings: Holding Up Half The Sky: Chinese Immigrant Women Workers from Sweat Shop
Warriors by Miriam Ching Yoon Louie

Wed, Feb 19

Themes: Continued look at worker organizing in the SF Bay Area with emphasis on political
education and strategic coalition building

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Readings: The Fight for Good Jobs and Clean Air at the Port of Oakland By Rui Bing Zheng
and Andrew Dadko / Movement Roots and Just In Time Guerilla Warriors, M.C.Y. Louie

Guest Speakers: AIWA organizers

Mon, Feb 24

Themes: Patterns and history of gentrification in the East Bay / The political foundations and
strategies of Right to the City movements

Readings: Giving Them the Old One-Two: Gentrification and the K.O. of Impoverished
Urban Dwellers of Color by john a. powell and Marguerite L. Spencer, The Right to the City
In the Context of Shifting Mottos of Urban Social Movements by Margit Mayer

Video: Are Slums the Global Urban Future

Wed, Feb 26

Themes: Organizing for affordable housing in the East Bay / tenants rights and foreclosure
resistance efforts in the wake of the 2007 housing crisis

Reading: Multi-Racial Movement-Building for Housing Rights by Maria Poblet & Dawn
Phillips of Causa Justa

Mon, March 3

Integration and Project Day: student project groups are given opportunity to work in class

Assignment due: project description and work plan due

Readings: none

Unit 2 (Week 7-10): Native American Organizing In the Bay Area

Community Partners: Native American Health Clinic Oakland; Indian People Organzing
for Change (IPOC) Oakland; Intertribal Friendship House - Oakland

Wed, March 5

Themes: The history of Indian relocation and termination policies of the 1940-60s / the founding
of AIM (American Indian Movement) and their political project focused on cultural renewal,
sovereignty, community safety, employment and health.

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Readings: Self-Determination and Subordination: The Past, Present, and Future of American
Indian Governance by M.A. Jaimes, from The State of Native America: Genocide,
Colonization, and Resistance,

Film: excerpt from This is a Good Day to Die

Mon, March 10

Themes: The occupation of Alcatraz (1969-71) and the impact it made on efforts for self-
determination and cultural renewal.

Readings: The Earth is Our Mother: Struggles for Native American Indian Land in the
Contemporary United States by Ward Churchill

Film: Alcatraz Is Not An Island

Wed, March 12

Themes: Contemporary efforts to preserve Native sacred sites and burial sites in the SF Bay Area

Readings: forthcoming chapter by C. Gould

Guest speaker: Corrina Gould of IPOC

Mon, March 17

Themes: Examination of U.S. policy and history of Native American education / board schools
and assimilation / autonomous education efforts, tribal college movement DQ University

Readings: American Indian Education in the United States: Indoctrination for Subordination to
Colonialism by Jorge Noriega

Wed, March 19

Themes: The history and role of Native led community health initiatives / the contemporary
work of the Native American Health Clinic

Reading: "Urban Trails: A Holistic System of Care," by Janet King in Healing and Mental
Health for Native Americans - Nebelkopf and Philips (ed)

Spring Break No Class on March 24th or 26th

Mon, March 31

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Themes: The central role of Native American arts in organizing for cultural renewal, community
health and social justice.

Reading: introduction from Visions for the Future: A Celebration of Young Native American
Artists

Guest speakers: hosts of KPFAs Native Circles

Wed, April 2

Themes: Native Americans efforts to organize through international human rights law

Readings: "How Indigenous Peoples Wound Up at the United Nations," Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Guest Speaker: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Mon, April 7

Integration and Project Day: student project groups are given opportunity to work in class

Assignment: Annotated bibliography due

Unit 3 (Week 11-13): Disability Rights Organizing in the Bay Area

Community Partners: Cuido Berkeley; Sins Invalid Oakland; World Institute on

Disability Berkeley; NAID (National Institute of Arts and Disability) - Richmond

Wed, April 9

Themes: Introduction to disability studies and overview of U.S. disability rights history

Reading: Disability Rights by Paul Longmore (from Waldo Martin) Disability and the
Justification of Inequality in American History by Douglas Baynton, excerpt from Across
Borders, The Project of Ableism and Internalized Ableism: The Tyranny Within by Fiona
Campbell

Guest Speaker: Dr. Victor Pineda

Mon, April 14

Themes: The shaping of the contemporary disability rights movement / Berkeley, Ed Roberts and
Rolling Quads struggle / birth of the independent living movement in Berkeley / critiquing the
medical model with a social model of disability

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Readings: excerpt from No Pity: People With Disability Forging a New Civil Rights Movement
by Joseph Shapiro, The Dimensions of Disability Oppression by James I. Charlton

Wed, April 16

Themes: The 504 sit-ins in 1977 and the road to the passage of the ADA (Americans With
Disabilities Act 1990)

Readings: Short History of the 504 Sit Ins by Kitty Cone Direct Action: Acting Up and
Sitting In by Randy Shaw (article on 504 struggle in The Activists Handbook)

Film: excerpt from Lives Worth Living

Assignment: Oral history assignment due

Mon, April 21

Themes: The contributions of the disability justice movement to understandings of

intersectionality: race, gender, class and disability.

Reading: The Mountain and Losing Home from Eli Clares Exile and Pride, Disability in
Theory: From Social Constructionism to the New Realism of the Body by Tobin Siebers

Guest Speaker: Corbett OToole and/or Mary Lou Breslan

Wed, April 23

Themes: East Bay efforts to organize around work and housing for disabled people with
particular attention on the 2010 Arnieville protests in Berkeley.

Readings: The State of the Independent Living Movement by Simi Litvak and Douglas Martin

Guest Speaker: Jean Stewart from CUIDO

Mon, April 28

Themes: The history of disability arts initiatives and their role in the broader disability justice
and rights movements.

Reading: Sins Invalid: Disability, Dancing, and Claiming Beauty by Patty Berne from Telling
Stories to Change the World: Global Voices on the Power of Narrative to Build Community and
Make Social Justice Claims (editors) Rickie Solinger, Madeline Fox, Kayhan Irani,
Deconstructing Images / Performing Disability by Petra Kuppers from Disability and
Contemporary Performance

Visitor: Patty Berne (Sins Invalid) and Leroy Moore (Crip Hop Nation)

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Wed, April 30

Integration and Project Day: student project groups are given opportunity to work in class

Mon, May 5 Review Session / Integration optional

Wed, May 7 Review Session / Integration - optional

Thur, May 15 at 8 AM (location TBA) Final Projects Due

Important Campus Resources For Students

Disabled Students' Program (DSP) http://dsp.berkeley.edu

260 Csar Chvez Student Center , University of California , Berkeley, 642-0518

The Disabled Students Program serves students with disabilities of all kinds. Services are
individually designed and based on the specific needs of each student as identified by DSP's
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Student Learning Center - http://slc.berkeley.edu, 642-9494

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Student Life Advising Services (SLAS) - http://slas.berkeley.edu - 642-4257

Student Life Advising Services (SLAS) is an academic counseling/advising service that assists all
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Ombudsperson for Students - http://students.berkeley.edu/Ombuds, 102 Sproul Hall, 642-5754

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able to assist in resolving the problem, and assist students in complaints concerning improper

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application of University policies or procedures. All matters referred to this office are held in strict
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