When Democracy Disappears: Emergency Management in Benton Harbor

Seamster, Louise

doi:10.31235/osf.io/3ahtb

Cited by 12 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…The interviews lasted between 1 and 2 hours and were recorded and transcribed. We developed interview questions based on our archival research of Tamina and our research on other places (Purifoy, 2021;Seamster, 2018), both to develop our understanding of the sequence of events in Tamina, and to track the frequent co-occurrence of extractive phenomena.…”

Section: Process and Research Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This research arose from a pattern of spatial relations we identified in existing case studies and research projects we pursued in seemingly disparate Black places-small rural and periurban Black towns like Princeville and Taylortown in North Carolina (Purifoy, 2021(Purifoy, , 2018 and the larger, demographically Black cities of Flint and Benton Harbor in Michigan (Seamster, 2018). Working within our "community of inquiry" (Timmermans and Tavory, 2012: 179), we observed a pattern captured in literature about race and local development.…”

Section: Why Black Towns?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Creative extraction: Black towns in white space

Purifoy

Seamster

2020

Environ Plan D

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This article interrogates the “anomalous” case of Black-founded towns, so-called because of their relative absence from discourse on Black place, their unique struggles for self-determined development, and their externally ascribed narratives of absent or dysfunctional governance, frequently invoked to explain their lack of access to basic infrastructure. We propose illuminating some of these so-called anomalies through Charles Mills’ “racial contract,” which we argue structures space at a deeper level than traditional legal arrangements and allows us to look relationally at Black towns in “white space.” We also rely on Cedric Robinson’s “racial capitalism” to demonstrate how white space develops through extraction of value from places racialized as nonwhite. Through the case of Tamina, Texas, we argue that Black towns specifically, and Black places more generally, experience racially predatory governance and resource extraction, often by nearby white places, under the guise of following mundane rules of legal jurisdiction, standard economic planning, and development. To illustrate this, we focus on three overlapping mechanisms of “creative extraction” that reinforce white spatial, political, and economic power at the expense of Black places: theft, erosion, and exclusion. These mechanisms are tied to the environmental harms inflicted on Black towns, as some of the existential threats they face.

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Section: Process and Research Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Why Black Towns?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Creative extraction: Black towns in white space

Purifoy

Seamster

2020

Environ Plan D

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“…In this, the treatment of DPS mirrored the wider disempowerment of majority-Black municipalities in Michigan through emergency management laws as enabled by a state politics of anti-Blackness (Pulido, 2016;Ranganathan, 2016;Seamster, 2018). 6 While financial crisis is common across Michigan municipalities, only 2% of the state's white population has been placed under emergency management compared to half of its Black population (Seamster, 2018). In particular, the second state takeover was used to advance the policy preferences of elite philanthropists.…”

Section: State Of Emergency: State and Philanthropic Experimentation With Detroit Schoolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Philanthropy to the rescue? Detroit’s schools and urban policymaking under austerity

Cohen

2021

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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As municipal governments in the US struggle under austerity, philanthropic elites have seemingly come to the rescue. Their money has not come without strings attached, however. By leveraging political contributions and donations to non-profits, philanthropists have moved beyond funding services and into the promotion of their preferred policies to cash-strapped municipalities. This has meant that the super-wealthy can now set the terrain of urban policy debates in cities struggling under austerity, ignoring democratic processes and often working to actively co-opt or stifle dissent. Through a study of the politics surrounding an impending bankruptcy of the Detroit public school system in the mid-2010s, this article provides crucial insights into the nature of elite-led urban policymaking under conditions of racialized austerity. Specifically, it focuses on how competing coalitions of liberal and conservative philanthropists used their wealth and influence to define the parameters of the policy debate over the future of Detroit’s schools. In doing so, these coalitions constrained the ability of residents with alternative visions to participate in decision-making processes and promoted a market-based system of schooling that served Detroit students poorly. This result must be understood as facilitated by the city’s context of racialized austerity, as manifested both through the financial crisis facing Detroit’s schools and through the system of emergency management used to take over Michigan’s majority-Black municipal institutions. These findings highlight that as philanthropic funding and influence have grown under conditions of racialized austerity, we must critically examine their effects on policymaking and on systems of democratic accountability.

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“…The law (Public Act 436) offers a wide range of quantifiable indicators for use in determining municipal financial stress, each of which is able to trigger state takeover, and provides the potential for state takeover "at the discretion of the Treasurer. As in other cases, there is emerging evidence that the state has disproportionately targeted Black communities for emergency management (Seamster 2018;Breznau and Kirkpatrick 2018). However, we still lack a rigorous examination of takeover decisions in Michigan and their consequences for public service provision.…”

Section: State Municipal Takeovers and Austerity Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We seek to better understand the political dynamics of state takeovers and their implications for communities, and specifically for safe, affordable drinking water services. We build on previous research indicating that state takeovers have political origins and drivers and negative social and economic consequences for affected communities (e.g., Seamster 2018;Morel 2018). While state takeovers are nominally designed to help ensure the continuation of critical public services and support communities, their implementation and intersection with austerity politics can ultimately undermine these goals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local Effects of State Takeovers: Drinking water systems in Michigan

Hughes

Dick

Kopec

2020

Preprint

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This paper is motivated by the growing use of state takeovers of local units of government and the growing financial precarity of many U.S. cities. Takeover policies have been shown broadly to disproportionately target low income and minority communities and to prioritize service reduction and cost cutting measures. Michigan's state takeover policy, Public Act 436, has come under particular scrutiny due to its role in the Flint water crisis. In this paper, we examine the implementation of PA 436 to determine if majority-black cities in financial distress have been more likely to trigger the provisions of Public Act 436. We then use case studies to determine the consequences of emergency management for drinking water services. Our findings have implications for the study of state takeovers and their local effects, and for the evaluation of Michigan’s Public Act 436, which remains in place despite significant controversy.

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When Democracy Disappears: Emergency Management in Benton Harbor

Cited by 12 publications

References 4 publications

Creative extraction: Black towns in white space

Creative extraction: Black towns in white space

Philanthropy to the rescue? Detroit’s schools and urban policymaking under austerity

Local Effects of State Takeovers: Drinking water systems in Michigan

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