This article was downloaded by: [Heynen, Nik] On: 30 March 2009 Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 909718320] Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

The Professional Geographer Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t788352615

Back to Revolutionary Theory Through Racialized Poverty: The McGee Family's Utopian Struggle for Nik Heynen a a University of Georgia,

First Published on: 19 March 2009

To cite this Article Heynen, Nik(2009)'Back to Revolutionary Theory Through Racialized Poverty: The McGee Family's Utopian Struggle for Milwaukee',The Professional Geographer, To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/00330120902736377 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00330120902736377

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf

This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. Back to Revolutionary Theory Through Racialized Poverty: The McGee Family’s Utopian Struggle for Milwaukee∗

Nik Heynen University of Georgia

In this article, I consider possible political action that can reverse deepening racialized poverty in Milwaukee, . At its core, this article uses the efforts of the McGee family, an important activist family spanning three generations within Milwaukee, to offer insights into conceptualizing alternative strategies for confronting racialized poverty in Milwaukee. I also use the McGees’s story to reconsider the ways geographers might generate revolutionary theory. The article is based on more than thirty interviews and several focus groups with a mixed array of people related to a broad temporal, spatial, and political research project on poverty, race, and inequality within Milwaukee. Key Words: racialized poverty, revolutionary theory, utopia.

En este artıculo´ considero la posible accion´ polıtica´ que pueda invertir la profunda pobreza racializada de Milwaukee, Wisconsin. En esencia, este artıculo´ utiliza los esfuerzos de los McGee, una importante familia de activistas cuya gestion´ en la ciudad compromete a tres generaciones, para contribuir a la conceptualizacion´ de estrategias alternativas que ayuden a confrontar la pobreza de origen racial en Milwaukee. Tambien´ me apoyo en la historia de los McGee para reconsiderar la manera como los geografos´ podrıan´ generar teorıa´ revolucionaria. El artıculo´ se basa en mas´ de treinta entrevistas y el estudio de grupos focales formados por un conjunto heterogeneo´ de personas, relacionadas dentro de un amplio proyecto de investigacion´ que incide sobre los aspectos temporales, espaciales y polıticos´ de pobreza, raza y desigualdad en aquella ciudad. Palabras clave: pobreza racializada, teorıa´ revolucionaria, utopıa.´

n this article, I explore possible political ac- Milwaukee’s history has been less discussed by Downloaded By: [Heynen, Nik] At: 20:24 30 March 2009 I tions that can reverse the deepening un- academics (for key exceptions see Trotter 1985; even development and racialized poverty in Coleman 1997; DeParle 2004). Understanding Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My focus is deliber- Milwaukee’s recent racialized poverty must be- ately radical and Marxist rooted; liberal efforts gin with recognizing that from 1970 to 2004 to eradicate poverty have failed and the search the rate of residents with incomes below the for alternatives is a necessity. Milwaukee has poverty line increased from 11 percent to 26 a tumultuous history that has to ground any percent. This devastating decline led the city understanding of racialized poverty, as well as to be the seventh poorest in the United States responses to it. Unlike the robust scholarship in the mid-2000s. In 2004, Milwaukee’s child on industrial ruin and radicalism in other Rust poverty rate ranked fourth highest among U.S. Belt cities (see Bunge 1969, 1971; Georgakas cities. Currently, 50 percent of minority single and Surkin 1975; Darden 1987; Sugrue 1996), mothers live in poverty (Wisconsin’s Women

∗ I would like to thank the reviewers for their thoughtfulness and patience toward this article as it developed. I would especially like to thank David Wilson for playing such a supportive role is seeing this article and focus section through to publication.

The Professional Geographer, 61(2) 2009, pages 1–13 C Copyright 2009 by Association of American Geographers. Initial submission, May 2007; revised submission, March 2008; final acceptance, May 2008. Published by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. 2 Volume 61, Number 2, May 2009

Council 2006). Milwaukee’s 39.3 percent of black workers, and racist public and private- concentrated urban poverty nearly equals sector housing practices. The introductory post-Katrina New Orleans’s rate of 42.6 per- chapter to this project states, “If Milwaukee is cent (Berube and Katz 2005). Finally, Mil- committed to equality and fairness for all of its waukee’s forty-two high-poverty tracts is just residents, then the claim must be aired and de- slightly less than the forty-seven in New Or- bated. All sectors of Milwaukee’s society have to leans (Schmid 2005). face the serious possibility that the city has not These statistics are simply a place to begin, yet created the opportunities for poor blacks however. Human faces emerge when politi- to earn their way out of poverty” (Battle and cians, activists, and residents open up and dis- Hornung 2000, 11). cuss the on-the-ground trials and tribulations My analysis offers insights into what a rad- of human survival amidst such suffering. Thus, icalized fight against racialized poverty might as shown by comments from former Socialist involve. Using Milwaukee as proxy for urban Mayor Frank Zeidler (1948–1960), struggles struggle more generally, I focus on the life to survive amid the deprivation of racialized and times of one of Milwaukee’s most contro- poverty were and continue to be intense. He versial activist households, the McGee family. noted in a 2004 interview just prior to his death: My research suggests that the McGee family has played an important and heuristically illus- If you’re talking about the recent times, the trative role in the grassroots struggle against 1 manifestation of recent hunger came with the racialized poverty. I lucked into the opportu- increase in number of black residents. Black res- nity to speak with the matriarch of the McGee idents came up here from the South for obvious family, Ms. Geneva McGee, on a hot July day reasons. They thought things would be better on which I was only scheduled to interview her here, but they came up unable to carry out the grandson, Alderman Michael McGee, Jr. This high-tech industry things that the Germans and interview, and a succession of others, helped me Swedish and English had so they couldn’t get to understand this poverty and what an alterna- jobs working and they also came up where they had families. They were mothers and fathers tive poverty agenda might involve. Also of note, and would be teenagers and they were unpre- as it is central to this story, genealogically situ- pared and that led to the problem of having ated on the family tree between Geneva McGee to have food banks that was carried out by the and Michael McGee, Jr., is one of Milwaukee’s churches. In the meantime, under the Reagan most historically dramatic and controversial and Clinton administration the county support figures, former Alderman Michael McGee, Sr. disappeared. They got rid of the welfare system, The McGee family’s history in Milwaukee is so that produced a demand for food supplies on explosive and contentious. Supported by some the part of the hungry. And that continues to and vilified by others, they have persisted in be pretty substantial. It is related also to the fact Downloaded By: [Heynen, Nik] At: 20:24 30 March 2009 their radicalism against great odds. Despite that the people can’t pay rent, they can’t pay their heating bills and their lighting bills. And this, or more likely because of it, the McGees’s it’s a major concern, but you don’t read much struggles in Milwaukee offer a powerful lens about it in the paper. (Interview with the author, through which to understand decidedly utopian 27 July 2004) efforts to ameliorate racialized poverty in the city. The ideologically loaded spatial tactics at While Zeidler’s narrative only illustrates one the center of their collective efforts offer im- perspective on the roots of racialized poverty portant inroads for considering new strands of in Milwaukee, it corroborates a collaborative revolutionary theory in the face of trenchant project undertaken by sixteen mostly African dejection and hopelessness that has afflicted this American scholars and activists that depicts The community. State of Black Milwaukee (Battle and Hornung My fieldwork involved many participatory 2000). This project, seen as a modern version interviews with people whose life work has been of W. E. B. DuBois’s The Philadelphia Negro to ameliorate the suffering caused by racialized (1967), illuminates the historic welter of in- poverty.2 Interviewees included municipally equalities that have beset Milwaukee’s poor elected socialists (the city had a socialist gov- black community: minimal government sup- ernment between 1910 and 1960), founders of port, deindustrialization, declining wages for Milwaukee’s branch of the Back to Revolutionary Theory Through Racialized Poverty 3

(BPP), and activists working at Wisconsin’s Although I agree with the need to con- largest food bank, Milwaukee’s Hunger Task sider the “deeply human side of uneven de- Force. I also turned to abundant archival re- ployment,” I believe Glasmeier’s recipe loses sources from both personal holdings and the lo- sight of the complex realities of capitalist dy- cal press. Interviewees talked about the historic namics that help produce poverty. In short, and current circumstances of the African Amer- the ideology and theoretical frameworks called ican poor and the activist role of the McGee into question by Glasmeier help us understand family. Archival work was enriched by the fam- the uneven social power relations that have ily having received considerable press coverage materially and discursively produced racialized over the last several decades. Before turning to poverty. My response to the kinds of liberal ar- the historical specifics of Milwaukee, I briefly guments put forth by Glasmeier and others is discuss some of my broader ideas about the di- that it makes little sense to keep trying to re- alectics of nihilism and utopianism that frame pair a capitalist system that has always produced the political contours of, and possibilities to uneven development and racialized poverty. ameliorate, racialized poverty in Milwaukee. Solutions to this rooted reality require some- thing too often marginalized in mainstream public policy: a serious critique and response to Dialectics of Nihilism the rhythms and designs of capitalist political economies. To this end, revolutionary change and Utopianism: Racialized Poverty necessitates revolutionary thinking (see Harvey as Trigger for Revolutionary Theory 1973). ’s Since the mid-1990s, a popular body of geo- (1962) points out an alternative to the domi- graphic scholarship has produced useful empir- nant liberal perspective. Harrington’s intellec- ical research on the severity, growth, intensity, tual efforts, first through the Catholic Worker and spatial clustering of poverty (see Jargowsky and then the U.S. Socialist party, provided him 1996; Shaw 1996; Strait 2000). However, much the insights to write The Other America. On of this research ignores the complex role of un- the potentially misleading power of liberal ap- even power and class relations and their im- proaches to poverty, Harrington (1962, 186) pacts. From a political perspective, much of this suggests, “These are the figures, and there is work does little more than offer suggestions legitimate reason for sincere men [sic]toargue that serve as momentary palliatives for millions over the details ...until these facts shame us, living in poverty. Despite the insights produced until they stir us to action, the other America about the form and patterning of poverty, these will continue to exist, a monstrous example of kinds of responses are insufficient both as in- needless suffering in the most advanced society

Downloaded By: [Heynen, Nik] At: 20:24 30 March 2009 sights into and frames for actually ameliorating in the world.” Through his emergent socialist poverty. ideology, he was able to articulate and com- In a recent article, Glasmeier (2005) seeks municate the powerful intellectual arguments to refocus the kind of research done around that ignited John F. Kennedy’s interest in U.S. uneven development and poverty. Using a de- poverty and Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty cidedly liberal edge, she suggests: (see Kaplan and Cuciti 1986; Isserman 2000). In fact, Isserman (2001) suggests that Harrington Today I believe geographers want not only to invented discourse about poverty in the United contribute to but also to lead public discussions States that was made possible via a powerful of such issues as uneven development, global- universal, that is, socialist ideology. This is a ization and social ostracism. We have the tools significant moment in the production of rev- to analyze such problems and to make use- . ... olutionary thinking, even if this discourse was ful commentary We must come out from eventually watered down by liberal politicians, behind our ideologically bounded theoretical frameworks and recognize the deeply human policy-makers, and pundits. side of uneven development. This is not a call Closer to our disciplinary home, Harvey to abandon theory, but rather a plea to assert the (1973) offers similar sentiments about the im- meaning and implications of the assumptions of pediments of liberal approaches, which are still our theories. (Glasmeier 2005, 157–58) useful thirty-five years later for considering 4 Volume 61, Number 2, May 2009

racialized poverty. One of the largely unmet Racism is a practice of abstraction, a death- challenges Harvey posed in Social Justice and dealing displacement of difference into hi- the City was the need of, and potential for, erarchies that organize relations within and revolutionary theory production within geog- between the planet’s sovereign political terri- raphy. To Harvey, this need is for an explo- tories. Racism functions as a limiting force that pushes disproportionate costs of participating sion of imaginative theory and practices, against in an increasingly monetized and profit-driven which existing thought and entrenched ways of world onto those who, due to the frictions of po- doing must be confronted. He said: litical distance, cannot reach the variable levers of power that might relieve them of those costs. (Gilmore 2002, 16) Let me say what it [revolutionary theory pro- duction] does not entail. It does not entail yet another empirical investigation of the social In short, Gilmore begins to highlight new ways conditions in the ghettos. In fact, mapping even of conceptualizing such fatal couplings. more evidence of man’s [sic] patent inhuman- However, we can bring more into these ity to man is counter-revolutionary in the sense dialectical approaches to racialized poverty. that it allows the bleeding-heart liberal in us to Specifically, it is crucial to incorporate pretend we are contributing to a solution when the poverty-producing realities of angst and .... in fact we are not There is already enough anomie. To West, and myself, this is imper- information in congressional reports, newspa- ative. West (1993, 14) suggests that the neces- pers, books, articles and so on to provide us sary point of departure crucial for theorizing with all the evidence we need. (Harvey 1973, 144) racialized poverty “is an examination of the ni- hilism that increasingly pervades black commu- nities.” To West (1993, 14), “Nihilism is to be A crucial obstacle to the challenge put forth understood here not as a philosophic doctrine by Harvey involves the slow pace of recogniz- that there are no rational grounds for legiti- ing the interlocking relations among class, race, mate standards or authority; it is far more, the gender, and the production of poverty (see Katz lived experience of coping with a life of horri- 2006 and Wright 2006 for more on this). To fying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and (most this end, recent socialist feminist scholarship, important) lovelessness.” which gets too little attention in geography, By incorporating the dynamics of nihilism offers powerful insights into the impediments into our understanding of racialized poverty, facing the production of revolutionary theory we unearth a powerful trigger for deploy- (see Eisenstein 1979; Hartsock 1986; Bhav- ing perhaps the most abstract of ideologi- nani and Coulson 2005; Russell 2007). Russell cal notions, that of utopia. Together, these (2007, 35) suggests that we (a broader “we” two concepts can potentially lead to a deeper

Downloaded By: [Heynen, Nik] At: 20:24 30 March 2009 than just geographers) continue to “lack an ar- understanding of what is necessary to produce ticulated epistemology and ontology that spell revolutionary theory. Indeed, we need to inject out the nature of the social whole and its parts hope for the hopeless within our revolution- and that provide a methodology for theory ary theory, which can then be used to mobi- construction. ...Current scholarship seems to lize particular kinds of political action. Here, be caught in a bind between collapsing social we need to treat the interlocking relations of categories together and separating them out as race, poverty, gender, and emotion in a collec- a list.” tive way but in a larger bracketed bundle that So what would such an epistemology and on- unites utopian possibility with concrete forms tology enable us to say about racialized poverty? of everyday revolutionary praxis. For starters, this should allow us to specify par- Of course, it is easy to note what we need ticulars in line with Glasmeier’s desire to better to do. A potential problem emerges immedi- understand the deeply human side of uneven ately from the vexing “end of Utopia” thesis. development but not at the cost of producing As a broad intellectual project, Jacoby (1999) revolutionary theory. Capturing both of these, laments the dismantling of utopian thought, for instance, is Gilmore’s use of Hall’s (1992) which he argues is necessary for the sake of notion of the fatal couplings of power and dif- imagining an alternative, that is, a fundamen- ference. She suggests, tally different, future. If we follow Jacoby’s Back to Revolutionary Theory Through Racialized Poverty 5

thinking, and believe that in fact There is (i.e., white intellectuals) with the long tradition No Alternative (TINA) market rationality has of grassroots utopian thinking within minor- killed utopia, of an egalitarian ilk, we must face ity and poor people’s movements throughout the unsettling prospect that alternatives to ni- U.S. history (see histories of the BPP, Young hilism are indeed also impossible. What this Lords, and Yellow Berets in Pulido 2006, for means is that we will be forced to sanction the instance). Related to the power of grassroots liberal acceptance of rampant misery and suf- utopian thinking to generate revolutionary the- fering within the United States as experienced ory, Kelley (2002, 9) suggests that “social move- through racialized poverty. As “naive” as this ments generate new knowledge, new theories, no doubt makes me, I am unwilling to do this. new questions. The most radical ideas often Fortunately, other voices tell us that utopian grow out of a concrete intellectual engage- ideology and theory might not be dead. For ment with the problems of aggrieved popula- instance, Jameson (2005, 1) tells us we need tions confronting systems of oppression. For to reconsider how we interpret utopian fu- instance, the academic study of race has al- tures: “It has often been observed that we ways been inextricably intertwined with politi- need to distinguish between the Utopian form cal struggles.” Kelley (2002, 9) goes on to show and the Utopian wish: between the written how text or genre and something like a Utopian impulse detectable in daily life and its prac- Progressive social movements do not simply produce statistics and narratives of oppression; tices by a specialized hermeneutic or interpre- rather, the best ones do what great poetry al- tive method.” Here, Jameson opens up more ways does: transport us to another place, compel flexible possibilities for utopian ideology. He us to relive the horrors and, more importantly, says, “Why not add political practice to this enable us to imagine a new society. We must list, inasmuch as whole social movements have remember that the conditions and the very ex- tried to realize Utopian vision, communities istence of social movements enable participants have been founded and revolutions waged in its to imagine something different, to realize that name ...the term itself is once again current things need not always be this way. in present-day discursive struggles” (Jameson Along these lines, we look to how 500 years 2005, 1). of cultural struggle helped Huey P. Newton, There is another important caveat about this cofounder of the BPP, formulate revolutionary notion regarding utopian ideology: the degree theory that has been realized in existing utopian to which the claim of its end is defined within politics in contemporary Milwaukee. Newton a European intellectual tradition. I say this be- (2002, 236) suggested: cause there seem to be many forms of vibrant utopian political praxis within countless social The present fact is that we cannot ask our grand- Downloaded By: [Heynen, Nik] At: 20:24 30 March 2009 movement groups (see Graeber 2002). Here parents to teach us some “native” tongue, or again, we return to Jameson as he suggests there dance or point out our “homeland” on a map. is a more historically and geographically het- Certainly, we are not citizens of the United erogeneous vibrancy related to utopian think- States. Our hopes for freedom then lie in the ing than realized by Jacoby. Jameson (2005, xii) future, a future which may hold a positive elim- says, “Indeed, a whole new generation of the ination of national boundaries and ties; a fu- ture of the world, where a human world society post-globalization Left—one which subsumes may be so structured as to benefit all the earth’s remnants of the old Left and the , people. along with those of a radical wing of democracy, and First World cultural minorities and Third While imprisoned for manslaughter follow- World proletarianized peasants and landless or ing a shootout with Oakland police, New- structurally unemployable masses—has more ton spent twenty-two months theorizing the and more frequently been willing to adopt this scalar foundations of the BPP’s revolution- slogan [utopian].” ary praxis. Newton’s frustration with the scal- Jacoby and Jameson have earned respect re- ing of BPP revolutionary praxis was profound. garding the debate about the death or con- His ideas evolved into what would be one of tinued importance of utopian ideologies, but his most provocative activist notions, that of it is necessary to juxtapose their positionality revolutionary intercommunalism. Newton argued 6 Volume 61, Number 2, May 2009

that the United States was no longer a nation- horrors of racialized poverty in Milwaukee, and state but instead had become a boundless em- it is producing material changes in people’s ev- pire controlling the world’s lands and people eryday lives. through the mobilization of disciplining tech- nologies and state actions. Because people and Revolutions Across Space: A Return economies had become so integrated within the U.S. empire, Newton suggested it was impossi- to Revolutionary Intercommunalism? ble for them to “decolonize.” Spatially, political Given my interest in coupling emotion with units that might support the BPP’s political vi- racialized poverty in Milwaukee, I start with sion were no longer possible. As such, efforts one case of how nihilism was described to to mobilize grassroots support had to center me. When I interviewed Alderman Michael around such discourses as “You are connected McGee, Jr., it was clear that he understood to that rebel in Mozambique, so fight with us West’s insights about nihilism. The notion here in Oakland.” Newton suggested that op- served as a platform for his actions; as a trigger pressed people in the world had to struggle as for his utopian politics. In discussing the im- a collectivity. They had to organize from the pediments facing Milwaukee’s African Amer- base of their local communities, to take con- ican community, he talked about “the loss of trol of economic, political, and cultural insti- hope ...meaningfulness and lovelessness in the tutions. To Newton, oppressed people were community.” He went on to say: scattered through a dispersed collection of cap- italist communities, each with its own set of When you don’t have any meaning or any institutions geared toward sustaining capitalist hope, and even if you do, you have those struc- social relations and realities. tures that are not there and then you don’t David Hilliard, former Chief of Staff for the have any cultural ...the fabric of the culture for ... BPP, summarizes Newton’s notions of revolu- instance our cultural institutions are no dif- tionary intercommunalism as follows: ferent than your mother hitting you in the head with a broom. You’ll protect yourself naturally In prison, Huey has developed an analysis of the with your arms and that’s what the cultural insti- present political movement. Nation-states, he tutions are like, are like a protection against op- argues are things of the past. Nationalist strug- pression. And that’s what kept us where we are gles, even revolutionary ones, are besides the now. Without the church, and the schools, that were all black schools in particular, and then the point. Capital dominates the world; ignoring ... borders, international finance has transformed family structure of course without those, the the world into communities rather than nations. oppression is greater. The oppression always Some of the communities are under siege—like going to be there because it’s a struggle while Vietnam—and others conduct the siege, like we’re here but without those institutions be- ing strengthened we gonna lose. You’re gonna Downloaded By: [Heynen, Nik] At: 20:24 30 March 2009 the United States Government. The people of the world are united in their desire to run their have these young kids who are out there right own communities: the black people in Oak- now and they don’t care about the next person, land and the Vietnamese. We need to band to- they don’t have any love because nobody’s lov- gether as communities, create a revolutionary ing them. They don’t have any hope. You can intercommunalism that will resist capital’s reac- provide jobs and that’s a good thing, that’s an tionary intercommunalism. (Hilliard and Cole inspiration, but if you don’t have the skills or 1993, 319) you don’t have any of the, you know, support mechanisms to keep that job, you are going to Tyner (2006) and Heynen (forthcoming a, go back to that same situation. So really it has to forthcoming b) have looked at how revolu- be a like a politics of conversion going on. We got to attack this whole sense of being worthless tionary intercommunalism was theorized and by these institutions. put into practice within particular moments in BPP history, but the contemporary uses of The cause of it all, for McGee, Jr., is “institu- the notion in Milwaukee offer useful insights tional white supremacy that is still maintained.” toward imagining what revolutionary theory Although McGee talked about the afflicting might look like. Here the spatial importance effects of nihilism within his community, he of revolutionary intercommunalism has led to quickly changed course and redeployed it as a new ways of conceiving struggle against the means through which to imagine alternatives. Back to Revolutionary Theory Through Racialized Poverty 7

The reality of a despairing community mo- works (e.g., “hobos from all over”). These tivated him to activate ideas and initiatives notions, evident in Newton’s thinking about that would move beyond liberally grounded, revolutionary intercommunalism, are an im- racist (not necessarily connected from my portant backdrop for the pervasive power of perspective, but indeed from his) politics of nihilism as the McGee family’s efforts against the past. The stark racialized poverty of his racialized poverty have evolved. This is espe- district and Milwaukee’s African American cially true when we look at Michael McGee, community at a larger scale were his empirical Sr.’s, political efforts. reference points. His positionality flowed from Prior to going to fight in the Vietnam War, two contexts: the radical traditions embedded Michael McGee, Sr., was described to me as “a in his family and the utopian ideology of other young smart boy that liked to read ...he was radical black traditions, especially the BPP. a nerd.”3 On returning from war, however, he Geneva McGee, a powerful black woman was one of the founding, and very influential, whose life I had traced through several decades members of Milwaukee’s BPP (founded in Mil- of archival material, discussed how her engage- waukee in 1969). McGee’s early radicalization ment with Milwaukee’s racialized poverty was is fascinating, but he gained national attention related to the poor health care access of African as an older and even more radical Alderman Americans. Pursuing Geneva McGee’s archival on the Milwaukee City Council. He appeared trail, I found documents relating to her 1960s on Donahue and 60 Minutes and was one of the and 1970s efforts to operate one of the first free first guests on the Jerry Springer Show; his was health clinics in Milwaukee’s African American the very first fight, with a white supremacist, community. She noted that the aggressive push to have occurred on that show. Articles about for a more just provision of health care was for his politics and life have appeared in Time, a reason: Her community had been systemati- Newsweek, Essence, The Economist, the Washing- cally neglected. She told me: ton Post, the New York Times, and other national media outlets. This attention had to do with a Big momma [Geneva McGee’s mother] was promise the Alderman made on 28 February given away when she was very young and raised 1990. by distant relatives. My mother told me the story of when they were little there used to Within a politically charged manifesto, be hobos ...and they’d be traveling and my McGee, Sr., first announced the formation of Grandma Anna would send them to the butcher what he called the Black Panther Militia (BPM; shop to get all the old thrown away bacon and different from the BPP). Although McGee, Sr., ham and all of the meats. They would get those had left, or some have said “was thrown out and throw them in a big black pot in the back- of,” the BPP in the early 1970s, he continued yard and the different other neighbors would to believe in the spirit and spatial implica-

Downloaded By: [Heynen, Nik] At: 20:24 30 March 2009 bring what they had, like a potato or a bowl tions of the BPP’s utopian political tactics. He of beans and throw it in the pot. And that pot and other Milwaukee BPP members had read would cook. And at the end, they would invite and thought through Newton’s early notions all the hobos and everybody in the neighbor- hood there to eat. ...I think it started with her, that gave way to revolutionary intercommunal- back then. ism. This was clear almost twenty years later through the revolutionary delivery of this state- Within the interlocking social relations that ment. He used word for word the language gave rise to the McGee family’s radicalization of another revolutionary, Thomas Jefferson, to are several characteristics of the “Black com- make his point. As the BPP’s ten-point political munity.” First, there has been the importance platform began similarly to Jefferson’s Decla- of going beyond formal (often liberal-inspired) ration of Independence, so, too, did the BPM’s institutions to provide the necessary means for platform. survival. Facilitating social reproduction and McGee added his own take on the situa- replenishing life has always been a struggle tion, suggesting, “We are destined for incarcer- given the black community’s structural reali- ation, death and complete and absolute sadness, ties. Second, there has been the necessity of instead of life liberty and pursuit of happi- intense engagement with those socio-spatial ness promised by the Declaration of Indepen- processes produced across thick spatial net- dence.” His polemic continued with a notion 8 Volume 61, Number 2, May 2009

that rocked Milwaukee and sent shockwaves BPM to engage in a wide range of direct action through the United States. As both “com- efforts through Milwaukee’s inner city. Beyond mander” of the BPM and a Milwaukee Alder- the ideological parallels with the BBP, here we man, McGee, Sr., promised that if substantial also see the similar notions of direct action back funds for economic and human development in those foundational moments in the McGee’s were not spent in Milwaukee’s inner city by family history (as told by McGee’s mother). the end of 1995, the BPM and other volun- “Survival”-style direct action programs served teers would unleash ferocious guerilla warfare. material benefits to community members, just McGee suggested this would include sniper as they had with the BPP in chapters through- attacks, dismantling of electrical infrastruc- out the United States during the late 1960s and ture, and widespread burning and looting. He early 1970s, and reaching out to people created promised a total siege if the city refused to take important spatial networks that thickened with seriously the racialized poverty in Milwaukee. every meal shared and every dose of hyperten- When asked about the fear he invoked, McGee sion medication offered. (1991b, 136A-8) responded, “This is where the Efforts toward spatial networking went far war is at anyway, so of course people are ap- beyond Milwaukee, and even the boundaries prehensive about violence because they don’t of the United States. The lessons McGee took understand that violence is being done to them from the BPP and Newton’s notions of revolu- everyday anyway.” tionary intercommunalism were at work in the Although McGee, Sr., was often divisive, he early 1990s. Efforts at networking with other also talked about the ways in which Milwau- groups that McGee saw as oppressed were per- kee’s brand of racialized poverty reproduced haps best demonstrated when on 10 September itself. He did so to raise consciousness and to 1990, McGee wrote a letter to then President mobilize radical social action. At a BPM rally of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, in an attempt at in- in July 1991, McGee, Sr. (1991a, 20A-25), said tercommunal solidarity. The letter was contro- to a large crowd of mostly African American versial because of the content and because he onlookers: wrote it as an Alderman on city of Milwau- kee stationary. In the letter to Hussein, McGee In other words what we are to them is a bunch said:4 of cattle. In other words we can’t go to the store and have people buy their own meals, I would like you and your people to know that we’ve got to have some white people come down not every American citizen is opposed to Iraq. here and get their conscience off and feed us .... I am presently advocating and will continue meals Alltheywanttodoisfeedus.Now to advocate to the Black men of the United what do you do with a buncha cows, you throw States community that we should take no part the hay out, you throw the oats and what do in another foreign war on behalf of an America Downloaded By: [Heynen, Nik] At: 20:24 30 March 2009 they do, they come along and they eat and you that continually mistreats our race and that our know in other words that is all they think of next fight should be a domestic one. ...Anyone us. You know you see the Bill Cosbys of the that is really looking at the situation can see world but I’m talking about you and me, the that Europeans will always join together with average everyday black people here and around Europeans. Therefore I feel that it is important the United States, we’re starving to death. And for people of color to support other people of things are not getting any better. And eventually color. ...Related to the Europeans completely we’re gonna have to wake up to that matter. restructuring the geographical makeup of your country. Mr. Hussein, the same thing has hap- After his threats of urban warfare, McGee pened in our native land, which as you know is and other BPM members attracted consider- Africa. All the boundaries that exist in present able attention, not just from the media but day Africa were drawn by Europeans after they from those who felt the BPM’s project was a invaded Africa. just response to the dismal realities of racialized poverty in the city and the failure of liberal pol- In his book, Long Way to Go: Black & White in itics to address these problems. As a student of America, Jonathan Coleman (1997) uses nearly the successes of the BPP and in providing inner- 450 pages to explore the contours of Michael city relief services through “survival programs,” McGee, Sr.’s, BPM and the almost unimagin- McGee, Sr., sought to use the strength of the able political tensions within Milwaukee during Back to Revolutionary Theory Through Racialized Poverty 9

the 1990s. As often happens in such politicized Jr., certainly experienced trials and tribula- families, young “Mike Jr.” (many I talked to tions, including a political recall attempt due to referenced him this way) observed his father’s his incendiary language and several skirmishes anger and stress. Mike observed this in his fa- with law enforcement. However, his radical po- ther’s demeanor, style of interaction, and com- litical style enabled him to successfully raise mon gait. consciousness about the disempowering con- tradictions between race and class within the city. “Warrior When Necessary” Similar to the efforts of his father to spatially It is anything but surprising that Mike Jr. would network via the logic of revolutionary inter- communalism, on 1 February 2006, again on become so politically engaged. He told me: “In some ways it’s a rhetorical question. If I City of Milwaukee stationary, McGee, Jr., wrote was a Klan’s member son I’d end up being a a letter to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. He addressed Chavez as “Fellow Revolution- racist and hate people.” He talked about how when growing up, “Being Mike McGee’s son ary.” In the letter he said: has been my first job.” As a young child, he and I, like you, come from a strong, Revolutionary, his siblings grew up under a particular set of political and social family. I currently am a City expectations, formed as a result of family social Councilman in the City of Milwaukee, Wis- norms and realities. McGee, Jr.’s, education in consin. I represent one of the most economi- a fiercely radical black tradition helped initi- cally depressed areas of the city. Government ate a string of events that offers rich insight policy has for decades given special privilege to into the potential of contemporary manifesta- corporations over the struggling impoverished tions of revolutionary intercommunalism and citizens of Milwaukee. The disenfranchised citi- zens that I represent experience poverty; the dis- utopian thought more generally. solution of family; and the reverberating effects A Milwaukee journalist suggested in 2004 of United States neo-colonialism and expansion that McGee, Jr., and a host of other younger every day. Milwaukee has one of the highest African American leaders within the city, best unemployment rates for Black and Latino men described as “professionals,” were different (59%), as well as increasingly high rates of mur- from leaders of their parents’ generation, better der, dropout rates, and drug dependency in the understood as “warriors.” When asked about United States.5 this distinction, McGee, Jr., suggested: McGee, Jr.’s, efforts to establish intercommu- I think I am more from the warrior mode than nal solidarity with the Venezuelan people are the professional mode. There are still some ob- reflected in such passages as “we are both op- stacles that are in the way. The Warriors did pressed brethren” and “similar to the oppressed

Downloaded By: [Heynen, Nik] At: 20:24 30 March 2009 kick the door in, and went through the public people of Venezuela.” Moreover, McGee pro- scrutiny to make sure equality existed, and make posed establishing sister city relations between sure people like myself can advance the cause. Milwaukee and Caracas. This kind of connec- The difference is that we are better prepared. We can learn from their mistakes. (Zipperer tion would fit ideally what Newton had dis- 2004) cussed more than thirty-five years before. This proposal ended with a final call to solidarity After several failed attempts at running for using a quote from Simon´ Bolıvar,´ who led public office in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the fight for independence in what are now McGee, Jr., was elected to Milwaukee’s Com- Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, mon Council in 2004. Alderman McGee, Jr., and Bolivia: “I swear before you, and I swear and his father were the first father and son in before the God of my fathers, that I will not the to be elected to the allow my arm to relax, nor my soul to rest, until City Council. Like his father, McGee, Jr.’s, I have broken the chains that oppress us” (let- main issues related to community initiatives ter from Mike McGee, Jr., to President Hugo aimed at reducing violent crime, empower- Chavez, 1 February 2006). ing young people, promoting job creation, and The audacity for a young African American stimulating economic development within Mil- alderman from Milwaukee to write the Pres- waukee’s inner-city neighborhoods. McGee, ident of Venezuela represents utopian spatial 10 Volume 61, Number 2, May 2009

practice similar to that initiated by his father the United States. My view is that if we can and Huey Newton. Of course, the letter re- improve communications and help our people ceived substantial local press, most of it nega- at the same time, I would support that, with tive. Despite the fact that McGee’s letter was the emphasis on helping our people” (Sandler not taken seriously by many Milwaukeeans, 2006). especially white Milwaukeeans, it was taken se- The local left’s response to this set of riously by the Chavez government. The let- events was extremely supportive and speaks to ter’s first concrete response was provided by the potential prowess of intercommunal tac- Juilo Chavez,6 the mayor of the Venezuelan tics. Within the African American commu- city of Carona, who eventually scheduled a trip nity, strong support was articulated by one to Milwaukee through the Venezuelan con- of Milwaukee’s best known African American sulate in Chicago. The purpose of the trip columnists, Gregory Stanford. Through im- was to discuss setting up a sister cities agree- passioned prose, Stanford (2007) prominently ment between Milwaukee and Carona. More quoted James Brown: “Say it loud—I’m Black important, Mayor Chavez wanted to discuss and I’m proud.” Stanford’s column, with its economic and technical cooperation with Mil- pragmatic title, “Whatever the Motives, Aid waukee’s mayor and former U.S. congress- from Chavez a Good Thing,” suggested, “The man Tom Barrett and the Milwaukee Common South American nation, which is poised to Council. When I talked to McGee, Jr., about aid Milwaukee’s poor, is reclaiming its African the situation he said: roots and reaching out to African people and their descendants around the world, including I just felt he [Hugo Chavez] was a comrade in in the United States.” Here, Stanford connects the struggle and we can reach out and we knew they had resources. In Milwaukee, the priori- racialized poverty and intercommunal solidar- ties are not the same with the socialist regime. ity. Poverty, to Stanford, can be ameliorated I just wanted to see if he’d be interested in only through creating solidarities that span the kind of distributing what they have amongst the borders of nation and continent. Black people poor people of the world and they want to have across these vast stretches, he notes, share a diplomatic relationships with people of color in class plight, a history, a bond. This mobilizing America. And you know we reached out. I talked of solidarities, to Stanford, is a necessary start- to his consulate general who I contact often, you ing point for confronting racialized poverty. know he’s a Marxist [Martine Sanchez], and if The local conservative media criticized you look at it most of the professionals that are working in the regime of President Chavez are Venezuela’s offer of assistance as a scalar ma- all young people because the older generations nipulation of state-to-state tension. Instead were all the sell-outs. They all came to Amer- of focusing on the potential assistance to ica; most of them ran out the country after they poor inner-city residents, many commenta-

Downloaded By: [Heynen, Nik] At: 20:24 30 March 2009 tried to throw the coup on them. They have a tors fixated on Chavez’s rhetorical jabs de- really young staff in Chicago. And also we con- livered on the floor of the United Nations nected with the Afro-Venezuelan city. Most of (e.g., he called President Bush “el Diablo” the masses of people in Milwaukee just thought [the devil]). Whether they are in fact legiti- I was reaching out to the Latino community mate political concerns or not for Venezuela, when really it’s Afro-Latino and they had the Bernardo Alvarez (Venezuela’s ambassador to same oppressors. the United States who suggested) publicly pon- The headline in the Milwaukee Journal Sen- dered why so much poverty, deprivation, and tinel that announced the trip on 15 June 2006 stigma marked racial minorities in the United read, “Venezuela Bypasses Bush, Offers Help States (Stanford 2007). He noted that amidst Here.” Through McGee, Jr.’s, efforts at rev- such wealth, poor in Mil- olutionary intercommunalism, the Venezuelan waukee frequently had to choose between heat, government was ready to offer discounted heat- health care, and food to survive on a daily basis. ing oil and free eye surgery to Milwaukee’s Driving this point home, Alvarez recollected poor. When asked about the programs, Mayor the TV images of socionatural carnage that left Tom Barrett said, “The natural question is poor people to fend for themselves after Hurri- whether we would work with the Venezue- cane Katrina with so little help from a powerful lan government, which is not a close ally of government. He said, “The world was shocked, Back to Revolutionary Theory Through Racialized Poverty 11

because we never thought we’d see things as we risk and “gang-banging” youth. He had been saw in New Orleans, because we never thought McGee, Sr.’s., right-hand man in the BPM and we’d see that happening in the United States” now served as a trusted advisor to McGee, Jr. (Stanford 2007). His commitment to Milwaukee had been un- blinking and staunch the first two times I in- terviewed him, his optimism unyielding in the Conclusions face of much adversity. When I asked him about what kind of thinking and theorizing was neces- The McGee Family, spanning generations sary to combat the problems in Milwaukee the from Geneva McGee’s mother to her grandson third time I interviewed him, he responded: Mike Jr., provide insights into conceptualiz- I sit on the Mayor’s homicide review commit- ing alternative strategies for confronting racial- tee and every quarter we review homicides. It’s ized poverty in Milwaukee and beyond. Their usually law enforcement that does that, but here imaginings and actions have followed this fam- it’s community based, and it’s just remarkable. ily’s hope for emancipatory possibility and new Whenever we leave these sessions everybody is urban spatial relations gleaned from New- like ...has a long face and is in a sour mood ton’s revolutionary intercommunalism. The because the level of violence in this community McGees’s radical efforts show that a focus on and around the country is incredible. And a lot the deeply human side of uneven development of it these days is not gang violence but personal need not dispense with attention to the core issues that blow up and get out of control, which realities of capitalist social relations, economic I am sure is based on frustration and hopeless- ness and all that kind of stuff, but for the first structures, and political configurations. It is in time in a long time I am not as optimistic as I this context, they suggest, that we must push have always been about solutions. A lot of kids I ourselves to imagine emancipatory utopian al- know, working with gangs, they live in a whole ternatives. To say “they are just not being re- different world. A lot of them don’t give a damn alistic” is to say how out of touch we are about about our society, the norms, the regulations, their everyday struggles for survival. role models and shit like that. I’m afraid that Coleman (1997), examining McGee, Sr., in- there is a population of kids (you researchers call ... vokes an unexpected character: Thomas Jeffer- them the underclass I don’t like that term, son. Coleman wonders what Jefferson would but I guess that’s what it pretty much is), there is a culture, if you will (I don’t like that term make of America’s contradictory social rela- either) of people that are growing up with a dif- tions. Under an idealist rendering of democ- ferent value system and that bodes tough for racy, Coleman asks, what would Jefferson have the future. So I think urban America is in a heap to say about such entrenched and deepening of trouble. The violence and the crime and the poverty? “Would he [Jefferson] think that the killing and the hopelessness in the schools ...in

Downloaded By: [Heynen, Nik] At: 20:24 30 March 2009 words he had written in the Declaration of In- talking with these kids in the schools you get dependence had been ineffective—accepted in a real cloudy picture of what they see as the theory but not in practice?” (Coleman 1997, 7). future ...there is a large groups of kids who do Although this question is itself perplexing given not care, sociopathic even. These kids are the that Jefferson owned slaves, it does help con- future, but when you have antiquated thoughts about jobs and hyper-segregation, you have vi- nect various kinds of utopian thinking. The Jef- olence. Milwaukee’s imploding. fersonian paradox also serves to point out how we often make excuses about the inefficiency I take Johnson’s ominous warnings as moti- of theory and ideology as our social realities vation to think more deeply about the dynam- misalign with our ideals. Such nonalignment ics and horrors of racialized poverty. Changing can be informing and catalyze change, however: the way we think about this poverty will not be Out of this, the production of radicalized spa- easy; creating revolutionary theory necessitates tial theory becomes a possibility (see Heynen the kind of imagining that recognizes utopian 2006, 2008). creativity and realities of difficult struggle. This One of my final interviews, with longtime kind of rethinking must move to incorporate community leader and activist Ron Johnson, more integrative bundles of human identity jolted me. He had been very active in forming while recognizing the behavioral-afflicting na- the BPP in Milwaukee, having worked with at- ture of capitalist structures. At the moment, 12 Volume 61, Number 2, May 2009

discursive productions of race coupled with the Literature Cited material repercussions of racism must be polit- ically interrogated and acted on. This kind of Battle, S., and R. Hornung. 2000. Introduction. In The state of black Milwaukee, ed. S. Battle, 9–15. Mil- change can come; the McGees have begun to waukee, WI: Milwaukee Urban League. show us how this is possible. Berube, A., and B. Katz. 2005. Katrina’s widow: I am not so presumptuous as to suggest Confronting concentrated poverty across America. The I know what revolutionary theory necessarily Brookings Institution special analysis in metropolitan looks like, but I suggest that it seems absolutely policy. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institu- necessary for us to collectively expand, nuance, tion Metropolitan Policy Program. and use our geographical imaginations to better Bhavnani, K. K., and M. Coulson 2005. Transform- incorporate radically utopian alternatives. The ing socialist-feminism: The challenge of racism. trials and tribulations of the McGee family can Feminist Review 80 (1): 87–97. Bunge, W. 1969. The first years of the Detroit geographi- serve as such an exemplar. From this, it is crucial cal expedition: A personal report. Detroit, MI: Society that we take full account of the emancipatory for Human Exploration. capacity, creativity, and of course the ideologies ———. 1971. Fitzgerald: Geography of a revolution. inherent in those struggles. This is in line with Cambridge, MA: Schenkman. the notion that “Geography is too important Coleman, J. 1997. Long way to go: Black and white in to be left to geographers. ...The geography America. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press. we make must be a people’s geography” (Har- Darden, J. T. 1987. Detroit, race and uneven vey 1984, 7). The historical and geographical development. Philadelphia: Temple University ramifications of this show at least in relation to Press. the utopian efforts to speak out against oppres- DeParle, J. 2004. American dream: Three women, ten kids, and a nation’s drive to end welfare. New York: sion within Milwaukee that many poor African Viking. American residents are going to have a warmer DuBois, W. E. B. 1967. The Philadelphia negro: A social house in the winter and be able to see much study. New York: Schocken Books. better because of the spatial implications in- Eisenstein, Z. 1979. Capitalist patriarchy and the case for herent within an actually existing moment of . New York: New York University revolutionary intercommunalism.  Press. Georgakas, D., and M. Surkin 1975. Detrot: I do mind dying: A study in urban revolution. New York: St. Martin’s. Notes Gilmore, R. W. 2002. Fatal couplings of power and difference: Notes on racism and geography. The 1 I am using the term family here as a historical- Professional Geographer 54 (1): 16–24. geographical unit, not as an epistemological device. Glasmeier, A. 2005. One nation, pulling apart: The In making this point, I am recognizing, in line with basis of persistent poverty in the USA. Progress in Downloaded By: [Heynen, Nik] At: 20:24 30 March 2009 Oyewumi (2002), the difficulties that can come from Human Geography 26 (2): 155–73. focusing on the nuclear family system, which is a Graeber, D. 2002. The new anarchists. New Left Re- specifically European form and yet is the original view 13:61–73. source of many of the concepts that are used uni- Hall, S. 1992. Race, culture, and communications: versally in feminist scholarship. and forward at cultural studies. 2 I conducted more than thirty interviews, and con- Rethinking 5 (1): 10–18. ducted several focus groups, with a mixed array of Harrington, M. 1962. The other America: Poverty in people related to a broad temporal, spatial, and po- the United States. Baltimore: Penguin. litical research project on hunger and inequality Hartsock, N. 1986. Money, sex, and power: Toward a within Milwaukee. feminist historical materialism. Boston: Northeast- 3 This quote came from an interview I did with some- ern University Press. body very close to the entire McGee family, 12 April Harvey, D. 1973. Social justice and the city. Cambridge, 2006. MA: Blackwell. 4 A duplicate of McGee, Sr.’s, letter was provided to ———. 1984. On the history and present condition me by McGee, Jr., from his personal family archive. of geography: An historical materialist manifesto. 5 McGee, Jr.’s, letter was also provided to me by The Professional Geographer 36 (1): 1–11. McGee, Jr., from his personal family archive. Heynen, N. 2006. But it’s alright, ma, it’s life and 6 The mayor is not a direct family relation to life only: Radicalism as survival. Antipode: A Radical President Hugo Chavez as far as I could determine. Journal of Geography 38 (5): 916–29. Back to Revolutionary Theory Through Racialized Poverty 13

———. 2008. Bringing the body back to life through Pulido, L. 2006. Black, brown, yellow and left: Radical a radical geography of hunger: The Haymarket activism in Los Angeles. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Affair and its aftermath. ACME: An Interna- University of California Press. tional E-Journal for Critical Geographers 7 (1): 32– Russell, K. 2007. Feminist dialectics and Marxist the- 44. ory. Radical Philosophy Review 10 (1): 33–54. ———. Forthcoming a. Bending the bars of empire Sandler, L. 2006. Venezuela bypasses Bush, offers from every ghetto for survival: The Black Pan- help here: Poor would get heating oil discounts, ther Party’s radical anti-hunger politics of social eye operation. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 15 June. reproduction and scale. Annals of the Association of http://www2.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id= American Geographers. 436487 (last accessed 12 February 2009). ———. Forthcoming b. Revolutionary cooks in Schmid, J. 2005. City is No. 9 in poverty clus- the hungry ghetto: The Black Panther Party’s ters: Study links Milwaukee, New Orleans. Mil- biopolitics of scale from below. In Leviathan un- waukee Journal Sentinel 11 October. http://www. done? Towards a political economy of scale, ed. R. Keil jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=362564 (last ac- and R. Mahon. Vancouver: University of British cessed 3 February 2007). Colombia Press. Shaw, W. 1996. The geography of United States poverty: Hilliard, D., and L. Cole. 1993. This side of Patterns of deprivation, 1980–1990. New York: glory: The autobiography of David Hilliard and the Garland. story of the Black Panther Party. Boston: Little, Stanford, G. 2007. Whatever the motives, aid Brown. from Chavez a good thing. Milwaukee Jour- Isserman, M. 2001. The other American: The life of nal Sentinel 20 January. http://www.jsonline.com/ Michael Harrington. New York: Public Affairs. story/index.aspx?id=554724 (last accessed 8 Jacoby, R. 1999. The end of utopia: Politics and culture February 2007). in an age of apathy. New York: Basic Books. Strait, J. B. 2000. An examination of extreme urban Jameson, F. 2005. Archaeologies of the future: The de- poverty: The effects of metropolitan employment sire called utopia and other science fictions. London: and democratic dynamics. Urban Geography 21 (6): Verso. 514–42. Jargowsky, P. 1996. Beyond the street corner: The Sugrue, T. J. 1996. The origins of the urban crisis: hidden diversity of high-poverty neighborhoods. Race and inequality in postwar Detroit. Princeton, Urban Geography 17 (7): 579–603. NJ: Princeton University Press. Kaplan, M., and P. Cuciti. 1986. The Great Soci- Trotter, J. W. 1985. Black Milwaukee: The making ety and its legacy. Durham, NC: Duke University of an industrial proletariat, 1915–45. Urbana and Press. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Katz, C. 2006. Messing with “the project.” In David Tyner, J. 2006. Defend the ghetto: Space and the Harvey: A critical reader, ed N. Castree and D. Gre- urban politics of the Black Panther Party. Annals of gory, 234–46. Malden, MA: Blackwell. the Association of American Geographers 96:105–18. Kelley, R. D. G. 2002. Freedom dreams: The black rad- West, C. 1993. Race matters. Boston: Beacon Press. ical imagination. Boston: Beacon Press. Wisconsin’s Women Council. 2006. The status of McGee, M. 1991a. Black Panther Militia rally with women in Milwaukee County. Milwaukee: Wiscon- Downloaded By: [Heynen, Nik] At: 20:24 30 March 2009 Michael McGee. Jonathon Coleman Archival Pa- sin’s Women Council. pers, 1976–1997. UWM Manuscript Collection Wright, M. 2006. Differences that matter. In David 152, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Harvey: A critical reader, ed. N. Castree and D. ———. 1991b. Interview with Jonathon Coleman. Gregory, 80–101. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Jonathon Coleman Archival Papers, 1976–1997. Zipperer, S. 2004. Warrior when necessary. UWM Manuscript Collection 152, University of Riverwest Currents. December. http://www. Wisconsin–Milwaukee. riverwestcurrents.org/2004/December/002307. Newton, H. P. 2002. Uniting against a common en- html (last accessed 8 February 2007). emy: October 23, 1971. In The Huey P. Newton reader, ed. D. Hilliard and D. Weise, 234–40. New York: Seven Stories Press. NIK HEYNEN is an Associate Professor in the De- Oyewumi, O. 2002. Conceptualizing gender: The partment of Geography at the University of Georgia, eurocentric foundations of feminist concepts and GG Building, 210 Field Street, Room 204, Athens, the challenge of African epistemologies. Jenda: A GA 30602. E-mail: [email protected]. His research Journal of Culture and African Women Studies 2(1). interests include radical urban politics of hunger and http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?000.2.1.8. (last ac- inequality as well as urban political economy and cessed 12 March 2007). ecology more generally.