Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017

Local Responses to Right-Wing Populism:

Building Human Rights Cities
JACKIE SMITH
University of Pittsburgh, USA

ABSTRACT Today economic vulnerability, heightened inequality, and reduced

government capacities have fueled nationalist and xenophobic movements in many
countries. Such movements threaten democracy and human rights within countries
and globally. Less visible amid these disturbing trends – but no less important for the
future of democracy – is the simultaneous expansion of locally-organized human
rights initiatives around the world, especially since 2000. A proliferation of place-
based movements claiming “rights to the city” is becoming increasingly visible and
trans-locally networked. After outlining some of the global dimensions of this
development, I discuss work happening in the U.S. city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
and explore the broader possibilities for locally based human rights initiatives to
address contemporary threats to social justice and peace.

KEYWORDS human rights cities; local activism; democracy; globalization; social

polarization

The recent growth and electoral success of right-wing populism can be

attributed to economic insecurity resulting from the competitive, market-
oriented processes of economic globalization and consumerist culture. Global
economic policies, known as neoliberalism, emphasize global trade and
finance over local and national economies, reduce government regulation and
welfare spending, and privatize state functions. Such policies have
encouraged the redistribution of wealth from working people and
communities to global corporations and a growing transnational capitalist
class, exacerbating economic inequality both within and between countries
(Evans & Sewell, 2013; Harvey, 2005; Robinson, 2014). The privileging of
economic expertise and the lack of transparency and public engagement in
trade negotiations further undermines the democratic legitimacy of states and

Correspondence Address: Jackie Smith, Department of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh,

Pittsburgh, PA 15260; Email: [email protected]

ISSN: 1911-4788
348 Jackie Smith

international institutions (Da Costa & McMichael, 2007; Evans, 1997;

Markoff, 1999).
Changes in the global economy, communications, and the practice of
warfare have thus fundamentally altered the structural and cultural bases of
national identities and notions of belonging. Globalization has produced what
Kaldor calls “spectacle nationalism,” which “requires passive participation,
watching television or joining a crowd but its capacity to mobilise active
participation such as paying taxes or risking one’s life in wars is greatly
weakened” (Kaldor, 2003, p. 168). Citizenship thus mirrors other forms of
consumption, emphasizing individual gratification over social responsibility
and group solidarity. This undermines the democratic values and empathy
that help generate social cohesion and support effective governance, and it
sets the stage for the kinds of exclusionary mobilizations we see today.
In the early 1990s Benjamin Barber argued that the consumerist and market
emphasis of neoliberal globalization would render democratic institutions
meaningless and fuel movements defending traditional values and nationalist
identities against perceived global threats (Barber, 1992; see also
Moghadam, 2012). Kaldor and her colleagues likewise anticipated that
neoliberal globalization would encourage a variety of “anti-globalist,”
nationalist, and xenophobic backlashes while hollowing-out democratic
institutions (Kaldor, 2003). Since the persistent advance of neoliberal policies
has fueled inequality and widespread corruption in government and business
and prevented the emergence of responsive political leadership to address
urgent social crises, today’s surge of right-wing populism should come as no
surprise. Seeking to fill this governance vacuum are populist movements
advancing parochial defenses against economic globalization.
At the same time other actors, many emerging from earlier human rights
and global justice movements, are also organizing locally to advance a more
inclusive and progressive form of globalization grounded in widely
recognized values of human rights and dignity. Mobilizing around claims of
the “right to the city,” growing numbers of people in cities and communities
around the world are seeking to defend peoples’ and communities’ access to
basic needs such as water, housing, a healthy environment, and access to
food, health care, and transportation. These movements for social inclusion
have been less visible than those on the right, in part because of their
incompatibilities with the discourses of capitalism and consumerist culture
and their marginalization from mainstream media and politics. In addition,
much of the work of these movements happens outside the realm of what is
typically defined as “politics” – that is, outside the sphere of political parties
and electoral politics. Or their emphasis is on municipal and local politics,
which are marginalized in the worldviews of neoliberal globalizers. Yet, in
the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump, more are paying attention to
these local initiatives, recognizing their potential to challenge the dangerous
rhetoric and policies of the right (see, e.g., Barber, 2016; Gerken, Bollier,

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017

 Local Responses to Human Rights Populism 349

Gerstle & Alperovitz, 2016; Goodman, 2016; Heinberg, 2016; Hoxie, 2016;
Katz, 2016; Norberg Hodge & Read, 2016).
This paper documents the emergence and spread of local human rights
initiatives and considers their potential role in helping communities address
pervasive problems of economic stagnation and the polarizing and
exclusionary politics they have generated, while helping build local capacities
for addressing basic human needs and strengthening community resilience. I
begin by discussing the global emergence of place-based efforts to realize
human rights in localized settings. I then provide a more in-depth look at one
such initiative, the human rights city initiative in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to
show how this sort of project can counter the critical threats from right wing
populism by promoting cross-cutting ties in communities, cultivating human
rights and democratic values, bringing structural racism and violence into
public consciousness and debate, and advancing human rights-oriented
practices and policies.
The methodology I employ is “observant participation,”1 stressing my role
as an active participant in this movement as well as a researcher. This method
draws heavily from critical feminist scholarship, emphasizing reflexivity and
“strong objectivity” (see, e.g., Harding, 1992) to engage in what Santos
(2014) refers to as the sociology of absences and emergences. In other words,
this method can help uncover the people and experiences as well as the
subaltern transformative practices and projects that are silenced and made
invisible by mainstream culture and institutions. Here the researcher is not
seen as an outside observer, but rather as a social being whose identity and
involvement in a social context impacts the questions asked, the methods of
analysis used, and the content of the observations or responses obtained. I use
practices of “active listening” to uncover the various ways that power
relations manifest themselves in individual and group behavior (see, e.g.,
Doerr, 2009).
My involvement in this social context results from particular relationships
with people and with a community, and I am attentive to these relationships –
and to status and power imbalances they represent – in my analysis. My
fellow-activists, moreover, are also co-investigators. I actively involve them
in my ongoing questions about our work, we discuss emerging ideas or
hypotheses about what actions might move us towards the changes we’re
seeking, we generate thoughts about the institutional changes required to
remedy the failures of existing arrangements, and I share conclusions and
results of my study in varied formats that are accessible to diverse audiences.
Such methods make visible the knowledge that grows from activists’ work
for social change. They also illuminate complex dynamics of coalition-
building and social struggle amid long-standing social divisions of race, class,
gender, ethnicity, etc. This movement is explicitly attempting to transform
these social identities and the conflicts they manifest, and I am able to use my

1
I am grateful to Jeffrey Juris for introducing me to this concept.

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017

350 Jackie Smith

own positionality and experience to try to better understand the various ways
individuals might respond – through their thoughts, feelings, as well as
actions – to new perspectives or challenges to their pre-existing conceptions
of self and community.
I first became familiar with this emergent movement while doing research
on the World Social Forums. There, I saw that many groups were using
human rights language in their efforts to build coalitions to resist economic
globalization. Despite some academic critiques that have dismissed the
transformative potential of human rights, I saw activists embracing this
language in an emancipatory way (see Santos, 2007; Rajagapol, 2006).
Moreover, the use of human rights framing did not seem to be linked to a
particular place or issue-focus; activists from both the global North and South
and groups working on trade, environment, or other issues seemed just as
likely to be speaking in human rights terms. What stood out, however, is that
it was the people and groups who were most harmed by economic
globalization who were leading the effort to mobilize around human rights
and dignity.
To understand activists’ strategies in the World Social Forums and to learn
how groups build and manage coalitions across national, cultural and other
differences, I began engaging in more local work to implement ideas from
these global movement spaces where I lived, including South Bend, Indiana
and later Pittsburgh. When I moved to Pittsburgh and learned that the city had
just passed a local proclamation naming it the fifth Human Rights City in the
United States, I became engaged in work to build a coalition of groups to
help actualize the proclamation. Co-organizers and I formed the Human
Rights City Alliance in 2013, and the observations I report here are made as a
leader in this effort. I do not attempt here to evaluate the actual impacts and
effectiveness of the work we are doing, but rather to demonstrate how
activists use the idea of “human rights city” to expand political and legal
imaginaries and to make possible conversations and relationships that would
otherwise be unlikely. In doing so, I argue that such initiatives help address
the highly polarized ideological divisions that plague our society today and
counter dynamics that encourage right-wing mobilization such as social
segregation and dehumanization of marginalized groups. Documenting how
local groups are working to overcome divisions and to transform public
discourses in their communities can help us identify policies and strategies
that can reduce the appeal of reactionary leaders and help strengthen social
cohesion and democratic institutions.

Rethinking Urban Governance: Social Movements and Political

Imagination

Neoliberal globalization has remade cities and fundamentally altered local

power structures in ways that favor transnational corporations and investors

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017

 Local Responses to Human Rights Populism 351

over local residents. Around the world, capitalists and corporate elites are
increasingly influential in urban planning (Sklair, 2017). As capitalists seek
new opportunities for profit-making, they are increasingly acquiring urban
land and property and financializing real estate markets (Sassen, 2014). This
process has fueled growing tensions between residents – for whom the city is
home and community – and entrepreneurs, who view the city as a commodity
desired for its exchange value rather than use value (Logan & Molotch,
1987). Thus, in cities worldwide we see similar processes of dispossession
and social exclusion of poor and working class people – especially people of
color – as development for elite consumption transforms urban landscapes
(Harvey, 2012).
Many analysts privilege states and other elite actors as the central players
in governance. Yet, most analyses of conflict and transformative social
change point to the essential roles that civil society plays in promoting
effective governance, such as catalyzing policy change; monitoring
governments’, parties’, and corporations’ compliance with the law; and
mobilizing public support for government programs (Appadurai, 2002; Bell
& O'Rourke, 2007). Studies of post-war settings show that civil society
participation in governance is essential to building lasting peace; as such
participation helps with intermediation between citizens and the state,
advocacy for marginalized groups, monitoring powerful actors such as states,
political parties, and corporations for accountability, socialization for a
culture of peace, and fostering social cohesion (Paffenholz & Spurk, 2010;
Paffenholz, 2010). Such functions are central to reducing polarization and
building stable communities even where large-scale violence has not (yet)
occurred. Thus, greater attention to how civil society actors mobilize and
carry out these functions is needed so that these efforts can be better
supported.
I argue that human rights cities are an example of locally-rooted initiatives
to mobilize community residents into the work of local governance and to
help overcome the polarizing tendencies reinforced by national and global
politics. Human rights cities are distinctive in that they advance a conscious
political project that re-envisions and re-orients the social order around
principles of human rights, rather than globalized markets. This involves a
fundamental transformation of social relations in order to ensure that the
means of survival are available to all human beings and protected for future
generations. They stress an attachment to place that directly counters
globalization’s footloose logic. Whereas the dominant ideology holds that
globalized markets are best at producing economic growth that then produces
other social goods, activists advocating for human rights point out persistent
failures of this logic. They argue that policies should be crafted with the
primary aim of protecting and advancing human rights, rather than treating
rights as a by-product of growth. Thus, these initiatives activate residents’
political and legal imaginations – that is, their ability to envision possibilities
and strategies for achieving a society very different from what exists in

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017
352 Jackie Smith

practice and in prevailing discourses and imaginaries.2 For if a group cannot

imagine such a community, it will never realize it.
Given the entrenched political and economic power of corporate and
financial elites and the (related) increasing marginalization of growing
numbers of people from access to secure livelihoods, it is clear that those
seeking to protect and advance human rights must somehow radically alter
the larger political and economic order if their needs are to be met. Of course,
the rise of right-wing movements reflects one response to growing economic
inequality. But to challenge prevailing power arrangements, those wanting a
more inclusive society need to come together around a different social and
political project that provides a distinct counter-narrative to the competitive
individualism and consumerism of market-based globalization. I argue that
human rights can provide the language and inspiration for such a political
project. Existing representative democratic institutions and economic policies
that privilege markets and large corporations systematically exclude the
voices of people most harmed by corporate globalization. Structural
unemployment, displacement and criminalization of communities of color,
and anti-immigrant policies marginalize and exclude globalization’s “losers,”
while the “winners” amass more wealth and translate that into political
influence – corrupting democratic institutions (see, e.g., Sassen, 2014). To
address the underlying forces polarizing societies and undermining the
viability of institutions and communities, activists are calling for efforts to
“change the music,” or “flip the script,” and engaging in forms of “insurgent
citizenship” to demand basic rights and social inclusion (Holston, 2009; see
also Harvey, 2012).
Human rights cities advocates are trying to counter “spectacle nationalism”
and its exclusionary and violent tendencies by helping redefine public
discourse to include the voices of marginalized groups and articulating
inclusive collective identities, values, and priorities that counter those of
mainstream culture and institutions. For instance, rights advocates argue that
“no human being is illegal,” and that human rights have no borders in
response to today’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. By organizing public activities
where such ideas can be articulated and where people can discuss ideas for
making change, these movements engage residents as active participants in
advancing this political vision.
The human rights city model might be seen as a form of what Fetherston
(2000) calls transformative peacebuilding, which targets the underlying
power relations and exploitative, competitive relationships that fuel conflict
and violence. Transformative peacebuilding focuses on conflict as a system,
and works to address its root causes by fundamentally confronting power
inequities in ways that alter existing relationships and identities and that
generate shared projects that support more equitable and just social relations.
For instance, by mobilizing residents around claims to the right to housing or

2
On political and legal imagination, see, e.g., Khasnabish (2008) and Desai (2015).

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017

 Local Responses to Human Rights Populism 353

the right to water, these initiatives point to the contradictions between market
logics that drive economic policies and widely shared assumptions about
what it means to be human. Such discourse can undermine the legitimacy of
the system, or at least impede further efforts to marketize basic human needs.
Shifting the discourse in this way challenges the privileged position of
capitalism and corporate elites in democratic policy making. This work is
advanced in part through what Habermas (1981) calls communicative action,
which involves

intersubjective dialogue between a community of actors which enables [people] to

reconstruct common understandings of their lifeworld and, therefore, renew the
shared basis for culture, social integration, and socialization that underlie a mutual
existence…. Communicative action does provide a means of renegotiating the
bases of mutual existence distorted by […] cultures of violence. (Fetherston,
2000, p. 212)

Communication and transformative relationship-building across major social

divides is at the core of the work of human rights cities.3 As the following
examples illustrate, human rights city organizers work to bring diverse
groups together and challenge prevailing politics, discourses, and agendas.
The practices of human rights city activists nurture relationships that are
obstructed by prevailing policies, helping overcome the segregation of
affluent from poor communities and the sorting out of cities by race and
ethnicity and other divides. The human rights framework provides an
alternative normative foundation that can unite residents around collective
identities and projects and foster mutual understanding, respect, equity, and
cooperation while actively contesting the hegemony of capitalist principles of
individualism, exploitation, hierarchy, and competition.

Human Rights Cities Movements

A “human rights city” is a municipality that refers explicitly to the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards
in its policies and programs. There are growing numbers of such cities since
2000 (Oomen, Davis, & Grigolo, 2016; van den Berg & Oomen, 2014).
Barcelona is a leading human rights city in Europe, and San Francisco
became an early U.S. human rights city with its 1998 adoption of a city
ordinance reflecting the principles of the Convention for the Elimination of
all forms of Discrimination Against Women (Grigolo, 2011). Below I explore
another kind of human rights city, namely those that are explicitly designated
as human rights cities under a growing global initiative launched by the

3
I use the word “transformative” here because the aim is not to simply create new friendships
based on prior inequalities and assumptions, but to reconstruct social relations in ways that
acknowledge past harms and put forward new bases for reconciliation.

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017
354 Jackie Smith

Peoples Decade on Human Rights Learning (PDHRE) following the UN

Human Rights Conference in Vienna in 1993. According to PDHRE’s
website:

A Human Rights City is a city or a community where people of good will, in

government, in organizations and in institutions, try and let a human rights
framework guide the development of the life of the community. Equality and
nondiscrimination are basic values. Efforts are made to promote a holistic vision
of human rights to overcome fear and impoverishment, a society that provides
human security, access to food, clean water, housing, education, healthcare and
work at livable wages, sharing these resources with all citizens – not as a gift, but
as a realization of human rights. (PDHRE International Office, 2006, p. 3)

PDHRE organizers have worked to promote human rights city initiatives in

different parts of the world, including at the World Social Forums and in
other movement and UN venues. Rosario, Argentina became the first human
rights city of this kind in 1997, and since then at least two dozen more cities
have followed.4 There is no single pathway to a human rights city: some
cities, like Barcelona and San Francisco, incorporate elements of
international human rights law into local legislation. Others adopt formal
human rights city ordinances. Some of these initiatives have involved
cooperation between public officials and civil society groups, but the key
leadership and impetus is typically from non-governmental human rights
advocates.
Formally designated Human Rights Cities are bottom-up, civil society-led
efforts to re-envision communities’ role in local governance and to prioritize
human rights in local policies and practices. Rather than looking to national
governments to enforce human rights or confining themselves to
conventional political discourses and tactics, human rights city advocates
seek to change the entire frame of policy reference. They begin with the
radical assertion that the point of governance is not to promote the interests of
business, but rather to protect and advance all human rights (including
economic, social and cultural rights) for all residents (including noncitizens).
This form of “insurgent citizenship” (Holston, 2009) points to the often
significant gaps between human rights ideals and community realities, and
engages in various forms of action to reduce those gaps. As the growth model
exacerbates problems of structural unemployment, gentrification and other
forms of forced displacement, declining social services, and environmental
damage, the notion of a human rights city offers residents a chance to re-
claim and re-build community as they address deepening crises that are most
keenly felt in local settings. It provides an opportunity that is lacking in
conventional political spaces for residents to engage in explicit thinking and

4
Among these are Alexandria, Egypt; Nimamobi, Ghana; Korogocho, Kenya; Mogale, South
Africa; Nagpur, India; Gwangju, South Korea; Edmonton, Canada; Washington D.C., USA, and
Jackson MS, USA (for a full list see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_City, a
Wikipedia site I created with my students when we realized that no entry had yet been written).

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017

 Local Responses to Human Rights Populism 355

discussion about shared goals, values, and notions of place, identity and
belonging.
These kinds of conversations reflect work to expand residents’ “political
and legal imaginations” and they directly challenge hegemonic notions of
politics, citizenship, and economy, which privilege national and global sites
of power. By mobilizing and engaging residents around notions of place,
human rights city activists are offering a radical alternative to globalizing
forces that require the subordination of local and national communities,
economies, and ecosystems to globalized markets. Such conversations also
generate uncomfortable realities as they expose what are often vast
inequalities in the experiences of residents from diverse racial and economic
backgrounds. To the extent that such conversations are successful at fostering
empathy while altering people’s social relationships and understandings of
place, they open the way for new models of politics and creative insights that
can generate support for redistributive solutions that strengthen social
cohesion and local democracy.
Below I provide selected examples from my work with Pittsburgh’s
Human Rights City Alliance (HRCA) of how human rights city initiatives
can help reduce social polarization and strengthen communities’ capacities to
address social, ecological and financial crises. I focus on how the HRCA has
worked to address structural racism in a highly segregated city with a history
and present of racial tension and exclusion. Racism in the region’s steel mills
and unions confined African American workers to the most dangerous and
low-paying jobs, and the effects remain today in the large and persistent
racial inequities in income and other measures of well-being. Pittsburgh has
among the highest rates of Black poverty (33%), infant mortality (13.7%),
and unemployment (16.6%) in the United States. African American median
household income is less than half that of white residents (Smith, 2017;
Center on Race & Social Problems, 2015). The political marginalization of
African Americans, moreover, has led to repeated displacements, and
Pittsburgh has seen more than 20,000 African American residents pushed out
of the city since the 1980s (Fullilove, 2016).5 As in other U.S. cities,
Pittsburgh police have also been implicated in numerous killings, maimings,
and other discriminatory practices violating the basic human rights of African
American residents. Yet, the city’s revitalization around the higher education,
health care, and technology industries has enabled public officials to
celebrate the claim that Pittsburgh is a “Most Livable City.”6 Activists and
many low-income residents have countered, “livable for whom?”

5
While white residents were also displaced as Pittsburgh’s steel industry declined, they had more
resources to allow them to move to new economic opportunities outside the region. Displaced
African Americans, in contrast, tended to move to neighboring suburbs of Pittsburgh, where they
have had less access to jobs and public services.
6
The designation of “most livable city” has been given to the city by numerous commercial
media entities, including Forbes in 2010, and most recently The Economist’s Intelligence Unit

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017
356 Jackie Smith

In response to these conditions, HRCA and its allies have made it a priority
to address racial inequalities as a first step towards making Pittsburgh a true
human rights city. A key aim of the HRCA is to help create spaces for diverse
organizations and community members and leaders to come together to
engage in dialogue and creative thinking – communicative action – about
how to address the gaps between human rights ideals and practices in our city
and region. At the same time, the Alliance works to amplify the language of
human rights in the public discourse by communicating with public officials,
encouraging activists and organizations in various sectors to frame their
struggles in human rights terms, and supporting varied opportunities for
human rights learning. A Human Rights City Action Plan outlines major
priorities and proposals for changes, drawing from work by groups around
the city and from other human rights cities (Human Rights City Alliance,
2014). Below I describe some of this work to provide a foundation for further
comparative research on how local movement initiatives like this can help
address critical social conflicts.

Promoting a Human Rights Constituency and Culture

One of the biggest challenges for human rights advocates in many U.S. cities
is to convince political activists and leaders to view human rights as a useful
organizing framework. Our experience has revealed an “American
exceptionalism” where many see the language of human rights as referring
only to places outside the United States – not to situations in this country
(Finnegan, Saltsman & White, 2010). Most U.S. residents don’t know much
about how international institutions and treaties operate and what prospects
these mechanisms offer for local activists. This is changing, however, in light
of the new U.S. administration, which promises to deny the traditional
strategy activists used of mobilizing federal entities to enforce human rights
against state and local authorities (ESCR-Net, 2016). In addition, the U.S.
political system encourages a focus on electoral politics and an issue-based
orientation to advocacy that marginalizes human rights principles and
dismisses or stigmatizes internationalism. Thus, much of the work in the
early years of the HRCA has been to help translate information about global
processes for grassroots audiences. The aim here is to increase local
knowledge, demonstrate how a human rights framework can facilitate
organizing, and highlight connections across issues and intersecting human
rights.
By inviting people to visualize how our city could look if it was organized
around human rights, we were asking them to imagine a very different place.
Participants quickly learned about the intersecting nature of human rights,
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
2014 livability survey. City officials often celebrate this label as they advance policies and
projects that displace poor residents.

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017

 Local Responses to Human Rights Populism 357

and recognized that we needed to change people’s mindsets as well as public

policy and government practices. For instance, politicians and the public are
accustomed to thinking of local politics as mainly about attracting new
revenues for the city and limiting taxes, and in the process they ignore – or
simply pay lip service to – questions about equity, quality of life, and
community. In our work to advocate for the right to housing or the right to
healthy food, we have sought to engage a larger public in thinking about what
these rights mean and whether market-oriented policies can achieve them. If
large segments of voters hold local politicians accountable to human rights as
opposed to market standards, these public officials will find new ways to
address the lack of affordable housing or the presence of food deserts in our
city.
One general observation from this work is that all of HRCA’s activities
have been explicit in their intention of creating spaces for building cross-
cutting connections across social divisions – especially race, class, and
gender. Each of our events has helped connect people of different
backgrounds, providing spaces for learning and strategizing as we strengthen
the local constituency demanding and supporting human rights claims. In this
work to build bridges across groups, we have found that despite the radical
implications of human rights, the language appeals to both mainstream and
radical groups as well as politicians. While the vagueness of human rights
can lead to its co-optation by elites, if used right, it can be a political
advantage. Very quickly people have tended to see (if they hadn’t already)
that the privileging of economic growth in public policy meant that human
rights would always be neglected. The human rights lens helps clarify how
economic growth systematically undermines the ability of some groups in the
city – in Pittsburgh, as elsewhere, this is especially African Americans,
immigrants, people with disabilities, and youth – to enjoy even the most basic
rights. From here, we can invite residents to consider not just different
policies but also new practices and institutions that could better accomplish
the aims of our human rights city.
The major activities of the Alliance have included work to spread human
rights values in our community and to inspire people to take action. Annual
celebrations and mobilization around International Human Rights Day,
participation in a locally organized Summit Against Racism, and celebration
of Indigenous Peoples Day on October 12th each year have been central to our
organizing strategy that seeks to shape a human rights culture and to build
and activate a broad human rights constituency. I describe each of these
activities briefly to illustrate how they can contribute to transforming social
conflicts by highlighting democratic values, building shared local identities,
and advancing cooperative actions centered on human rights.
The HRCA uses the annual International Human Rights Day celebration
(December 10) to raise consciousness in the city about our Human Rights
City status and about the gaps between this vision and the experiences of
residents. Such work promotes a human rights culture that supports mutual

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017
358 Jackie Smith

understanding, respect, and empathy among residents. Many residents remain

unaware of our status as a human rights city, and like cities everywhere,
physical segregation often prevents residents from appreciating the
experiences of less privileged residents. Such separation contributes to the
silencing and dehumanization of marginalized groups, which in turn enables
the rise of politicians promoting racist and exclusionary policies. As one of
the only explicit human rights groups intentionally seeking to mobilize a
broad base of residents, the HRCA has organized annual press conferences
and rallies with representatives from diverse human rights groups in the city
to reflect on the state of human rights in our city and to lift up some of the
leading struggles of the time. In the last two years we have expanded the
work to mobilize Human Rights Days of Action in the days surrounding
International Human Rights Day. We invited various activist, community,
and church groups around the city to take some action recognizing
International Human Rights Day. We listed these events on a shared calendar
on our website and social media as a way to show the connections among our
diverse struggles. This activity has helped build connections among activist
groups, show the intersectionality of human rights, and encourage a wider
range of groups to consider their own work within a human rights framework.
It expands human rights discourse and supports the growth of a human rights
culture in our region as more activists and residents use explicit human rights
language.
In addition to annual activities around International Human Rights Day, the
HRCA has worked to promote a human rights constituency and culture
through network-building. For instance, in 2016 we worked with a coalition
of activist groups coming together to fight displacement of poor and largely
African American residents to organize a Housing Summit at a local
university. This event aimed to shift the public discourse around housing
from one based on market logics, which focused on negotiating with policy
makers and developers to allocate affordable units in planned developments,
to one based on the human right to housing. Summit content – including
keynote speakers, workshops, and a website with films and other learning
resources – was designed to help residents understand the global factors
shaping Pittsburgh’s housing market and to enable residents who did not
experience housing insecurity to learn about how the affordable housing
crisis impacts families and neighborhoods as well as the larger city.7 An
important emphasis here was on how global economic forces contribute to
the “serial forced displacement” of communities of color (Fullilove, 2016),
which helps link conceptually today’s widespread urban housing crises with
international migration and the genocides against indigenous peoples. The
Summit also provided opportunities for networking and for residents to learn
about the work happening in Pittsburgh and other cities for housing justice.

7
See http://housingsummit.wikispaces.com/

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017

 Local Responses to Human Rights Populism 359

Most voluntary coalitions flounder where there are no resources to support

basic communication and coordination work across groups that are not
organized to work together. The Housing Summit is one important example
of how coalitions like the HRCA can provide such resources, drawing from
universities and local expertise and volunteerism to nurture and sustain
relationship-building among diverse groups in the city. But this project was
only possible because key leaders (myself included) could devote extensive
time to building relationships in the community.
In addition to work with activist groups, and to help expand the base of
resources available for human rights work, the HRCA has been working to
engage faculty and professionals at the city’s numerous universities in work
to promote human rights and human rights education. We created a
University Human Rights Network to connect university faculty, staff and
students interested in human rights and to help link Pittsburgh’s activist
community with researchers and centers that can provide information and
other resources to support human rights advocacy, education, and organizing
in our region. The network also works to support advocacy for human rights
on the city’s college campuses. Building a human rights city requires changes
in more than city government, and the university network seeks to press
universities to engage in policies consistent with human rights norms.
Universities affect the region’s labor practices and economic development
plans, including the displacement of low-income and African American
residents from neighborhoods near campuses. This network helped support a
student neighborhood tour on universities and affordable housing in
Pittsburgh to follow-up our Housing Summit and enable students to connect
with local organizations.
The University Network itself grew from collaboration between HRCA and
the University of Pittsburgh’s Global Studies Center to convene local,
national, and international human rights city leaders for a conference to
explore how the Human Rights Cities model has been used in other
communities. The conference generated ongoing connections, a follow-up
meeting hosted by Washington DC’s Human Rights City Steering
Committee, and led to the development of a National Human Rights Cities
Alliance within the framework of the largest grassroots human rights
organization in the United States, the US Human Rights Network. These
national connections link Pittsburgh with other human rights city leaders and
with the global human rights movement, inspiring and informing our local
activism.

Fighting Institutionalized Racism

The Alliance’s work has benefitted from pre-existing efforts of Pittsburgh

residents to fight racial injustice, which include most notably an annual
Summit Against Racism where hundreds of participants learn about the

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017
360 Jackie Smith

priorities and concerns of African Americans and other people of color, learn
about the work being done by existing groups, organize panels, identify
allies, and build networks to support the Human Rights City initiative and its
racial justice component in particular.8 In keeping with the intentionality of
our “people-centered human rights” agenda,9 we have sought to organize
panels with African American leaders in the city, jointly identifying key
priorities for work to address the needs of residents who have been denied the
ability to enjoy all their basic human rights. Our panels have sought to
reinforce working relationships with different groups in the community and
to highlight local human rights struggles as they relate to racial inequalities
and discrimination. Participants had the opportunity to learn about how
institutionalized racism impacts the daily lives of fellow Pittsburghers,
reproducing racial inequalities in education, working conditions,
neighborhoods, housing, and civil liberties. They also met organizers working
to change these conditions, often gaining new information about their city
and about activism within it. Panels we organized thus helped raise
consciousness about the forms of institutionalized racism in Pittsburgh and
local strategies for addressing it.
In the 2016 Summit against Racism, we built upon our prior work and our
networks with other activist groups to more explicitly engage residents in
thinking about how international human rights treaties can be used as a tool
for advancing human rights locally. Specifically, our collaborative panel
highlighted work being done by several local groups as part of the national
“Cities for CEDAW” initiative, which encourages cities to adopt legislation
that implements the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). We also helped educate
participants about the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial
Discrimination (CERD) and its review process, which encourages grassroots
participation in local monitoring efforts to inform the US Human Rights
Network’s shadow reports. The panel helped connect Pittsburgh groups with
the larger human rights movement and to familiarize residents with
international legal mechanisms that can become part of our local human
rights strategies.
These sessions also help strengthen relationships and build support for
other collaborative initiatives, including the annual May Day march for
immigrant rights and the Housing Summit described above. They help raise

8
Our website – www.pghrights.org – includes a report from the 2015 18th Annual Summit
Against Racism. The report may be accessed directly at https://pgh-
humanrightscity.wikispaces.com/file/view/Summit%20Against%20Racism%202015%20REPO
RT%20and%20Agenda%20Priorities.pdf/539653736/Summit%20Against%20Racism%202015
%20REPORT%20and%20Agenda%20Priorities.pdf.
9
The HRCA draws from previous antiracism organizing through its work with the US Human
Rights Network. The USHRN promotes a “people-centered human rights movement” that
emphasizes lived experiences and leadership on those most directly affected by human rights
violations, rather than a strictly legal approach to human rights. Another key document in this
tradition is the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing (see www.ejnet.org/ej/jemez.pdf).

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017

 Local Responses to Human Rights Populism 361

consciousness in a larger activist community and reinforce a human rights

framework for thinking and discourse. While it is difficult to assess the
quantitative impacts at this early stage in the HRCA’s work, over time,
repeated exposure to sessions like these have increased the responsiveness of
local residents to the human rights messaging we use, and more community
leaders have become engaged in our work. For instance, leading organizers
who were part of the various projects described here have agreed to join the
HRCA Steering Committee. Since the Human Rights City model doesn’t fit
prevailing conceptions of politics, it is often difficult for people to fully
understand how to participate. These gatherings enable repeated exposure to
human rights language, helping expand the human rights constituency in our
city while deepening working relationships among antiracism activists.

Historical Truth-Telling

Another example of local work to translate global human rights thinking into
local contexts is our effort to confront historical and ongoing human rights
violations through public recognition of Indigenous Peoples Day. The idea
for this day first arose in 1977 at the International Conference on
Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas. A handful of
cities in the United States have recognized the day, but in 2014, the Human
Rights City of Seattle became the first large city to do so. It adopted a
resolution renaming October 12 Indigenous Peoples Day in that city,
explicitly linking the decision to that city’s status as a Human Rights City.
One of our group members attended a rally organized by local activists
honoring Indigenous Peoples Day in October of 2014, and he brought ideas
from that rally to an HRCA meeting. Given the recent news about Seattle’s
Indigenous Peoples Day, the group was especially enthusiastic about the idea
of moving this initiative forward in Pittsburgh.10 We reached out to relevant
groups in our community and drafted a text to submit to City Council. The
text was based on Seattle’s Resolution and it incorporated a demand made by
local activists for “the teaching of Indigenous peoples’ history as
recommended by Indigenous communities in our public schools.”11 The City
Council of Pittsburgh passed a non-binding Will of the Council recognizing
the 12th of October as “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” on the eve of Human
Rights Day in 2014, and residents continue to refer to this legislation as we
recognize Indigenous Peoples Day each fall.

10
Organizers in Seattle were likewise elated to hear that their work inspired action elsewhere
(personal communication with Seattle Human Rights Commissioners, August 18 2016).
11
The text of the legislation is available at: http://pgh-
humanrightscity.wikispaces.com/file/view/Indigenous%20Peoples%20Day%20Will%20of%20th
e%20Council.pdf/533004498/Indigenous%20Peoples%20Day%20Will%20of%20the%20Counci
l.pdf.

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017
362 Jackie Smith

Subsequently, we have continued to work with the local Native American

Council and Native American student organizations as well as other local
organizations and activists to organize celebrations of Indigenous Peoples
Day, and to raise public consciousness about the violent history of Western
colonization and its lasting impacts on people of color. One innovation
introduced in 2016 is to encourage participants to reach out to educators,
congregation leaders, and other community groups to encourage them to take
some action to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day. In 2017, we built upon this
idea to encourage residents to read and organize neighborhood or larger
group discussions of a book by a Native American activist, and we provided a
discussion guide to support such action. This draws from a recognition of our
group’s limited capacity as a volunteer organization as well as of the need to
decentralize the work of building a culture of human rights. HRCA provides
educational resources to support this on our website and via regular
communications with participants, as well as through the events it organizes.
Indigenous Peoples Day challenges the celebratory accounts of Christopher
Columbus’s encounter with the Americas and the subsequent European
settlement. Pittsburgh does not have a large population of Indigenous peoples
given its history of forced migration, relocation and genocide against the
people who initially lived on this land. Thus, the voices of those displaced
from this region are not prominent in the public discourse and consciousness.
But our principled commitments to the people-centered human rights
approach sensitized us to the work of Indigenous social movements and
human rights organizers around the world, convincing us of the centrality of
historical “truth telling” about this country’s imperialist, colonial, and
genocidal history as a key initial step in our work to build a city based in
human rights. Such truth-telling both acknowledges the enduring impacts of
past human rights abuses – including the erasure of Indigenous histories and
voices from public discourses – and creates space for healing and for the re-
building of more just relationships and communities. Indeed, as we witness
the rise of right-wing populism and the spate of hate crimes following the
recent U.S. election, it is clear that such truth-telling about history is critical
to fostering a more cohesive, inclusive, decolonized democratic culture here
and elsewhere.
By supporting annual Indigenous Peoples Day celebrations, HRCA helps
create spaces for more public scrutiny of the prevailing accounts of U.S.
history. As we know from other human rights work around the world, truth-
telling is essential to promoting healing, to address ongoing trauma and its
consequences for individuals and communities, and to realizing a broader
culture of human rights. Thus, the transformation of consciousness and
culture we are seeking with the Human Rights City initiative requires that we
tell new stories about our past so that we can imagine a different future that
advances “dignity and justice for everyone.” Indigenous Peoples Day work
and related historical truth-telling – such as the UN’s International Decade of
People of African Descent and the International Day of Remembrance of

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017

 Local Responses to Human Rights Populism 363

Victims of Slavery and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade – is a form of

communicative action and an “exercise in retrospective radical imagination”
(Santos, 2007, p. 29) that enables a re-orienting of relationships in our
community by making visible the history of systematic violence that
reinforces difference and denies some groups’ full enjoyment of human
rights.

Discussion and Conclusion

The growing political influence of right-wing populist movements indicates a

broader “crisis of legitimacy” for prevailing political and economic
institutions linked to economic inequality, financial instability, and ecological
crises (Chase-Dunn, 2013). Fundamental changes in the economy and labor
markets as well as in communications have undermined national identities
and diminished the meaning of citizenship. This destabilizes social cohesion
and local community resilience. Exclusionary movements have arisen within
this leadership vacuum, as those excluded from the benefits of globalization
seek alternative policies that will address individual and social needs.
Nevertheless, especially since 2000, movements for “the right to the city”
have been growing around the world as people face growing threats to their
individual and community well-being. I have argued that these locally-based,
rights-claiming movements offer a model of politics that can counter the
divisive tendencies of capitalism and reduce the appeal of exclusionary
populist rhetoric. They do so by actively engaging residents in constructive
work to redefine citizenship and transform their communities to prioritize
human rights over material wealth.
In their latest annual report, Human Rights Watch (2017) focused on the
global threats from rising authoritarian populism. These authors conclude that
the only way to stop the spread of demagoguery and defend basic human
rights principles is to build broad popular constituencies that are organized to
defend and demand human rights:

Civil society organizations, particularly groups that fight to uphold rights, need to
protect civic space where it is threatened, build alliances across communities to
show the common interest in human rights…. The demagogues [build] popular
support by spinning false explanations and cheap solutions to genuine ills. The
best antidote is for the public to demand a politics based on truth and the values
on which rights-respecting democracy has been built. Populists thrive in a vacuum
of opposition. A strong popular reaction, using every means available…is the best
defense of the values that so many still cherish despite the problems they face.
(Roth, 2017, p. 13-14)

Such work to transform public discourse and consciousness has been

happening largely outside the broader media coverage, through a growing
global movement that is building human rights culture and demanding the

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017
364 Jackie Smith

actualization of human rights principles. Movements for human rights in

cities and communities are helping connect diverse groups and deepen
analyses of the intersections of economic and other human rights and of how
economic globalization impacts these rights. In doing so, they are cultivating
the broad popular constituencies for human rights that are necessary to
defend and enhance democratic governance.
I have argued that the human rights city model provides a framework for a
political and institutional culture fundamentally different from globalized
capitalism. Human rights cities are attempts to re-define community
identities, priorities and values and to re-design local institutions in ways that
help achieve those. Using various strategies to enhance community dialogues,
translate ideas and models across locales, and build relationships across
diverse groups, they seek to “flip the script” of economic globalization
subordinate market ideologies to the values of human rights, inclusion,
dignity, and community well-being. Expanding political and legal
imaginations, building networks among community groups and
neighborhoods, and making visible the impacts of economic policies on the
human rights of residents is critical to changing the political culture from one
that fuels competition, conflict, and violence to one that privileges well-being
and equity. The global expansion of human rights treaties, norms, and
institutions is a resource for transforming national identities and notions of
citizenship, effectively re-defining citizenship and governments’ obligations
regarding human rights (Koenig, 2008). By examining the work of local
human rights activists, we can better understand both the mechanics of how
such global-local transformations can occur and the potential of human rights
as a foundation for a more just and peaceful society.
By building connections, consciousness, and platforms for collective
action, human rights cities initiatives can help communities address deep
structural inequities of race and class segregation while fostering social
cohesion and building broad bases of support for collective identities and
projects centered on human rights. Working to change the language and
priorities of politics in ways that de-emphasize the city as an economic
“growth machine” (Logan & Molotch, 1987), and instead accentuate the city
as a place where residents live lives sustained by vibrant neighborhoods and
healthy communities, human rights city initiatives make space for residents to
engage in building a different kind of city.
Yet, the challenges to this work are significant. Globalization’s corporate-
friendly policies contributed to media monopolies that limit the media space
and public attention available for critical analyses and perspectives. This is
where work in the “sociology of absences” is key for reversing the omissions
and silencing that helps legitimate an unjust social order. And a chronic
problem all voluntary groups face is the challenge of recruiting and
sustaining active volunteers. Fatalism in the face of today’s enormous crises
and trying daily struggles for survival makes apathy and consumerist escape a
preferable option to activism for many (Eliasoph, 1998; Schor, 1992).

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017

 Local Responses to Human Rights Populism 365

My observant participation in this work convinces me that academic

workers can – and I believe we must – use our privilege in reflexive and
strategic ways to support these kinds of transformative social movements.
Scholars can help inform a “sociology of absences and emergences” – by
attending to people and processes marginalized by mainstream academic and
other institutions. We can, for instance, provide our time, expertise,
organizational support (such as note-taking and report writing), and access to
university resources such as space and financial support. By helping tell the
stories of these movements in both scholarly and more general audience
writings, we can help bring legitimacy to residents’ human rights claims and
broaden the audience attentive to human rights issues. Scholars can also
contribute to the important work of critical public education by organizing
public events and building websites that nurture community scholars who
understand the complex global forces impacting their communities. We can
help train residents to do research on and write about urban policies and their
disparate outcomes and to expose corporate human rights violations. We can
help local residents learn about activism in other locales and cultivate both
intersectional and translocal connections among activists and groups. Finally,
we can support the critical work of documenting and broadcasting the vital
local knowledge that is emerging from the work of people who are striving to
transform our world.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to my fellow human rights organizers for their contributions to

this ongoing research experiment. Special thanks to Vickie Casanova Willis
for her careful review of this text and for the many conversations we’ve
shared, which have shaped this project immensely. The Global Studies Center
at the University of Pittsburgh provided financial and intellectual support for
this research, and I’m grateful to Michael Goodhart, Roger Rouse, and Joshua
McDermott for their intellectual and practical contributions to this work.

References

Appadurai, A. (2002). Deep democracy: Urban governmentality and the horizon of politics.
Public Culture, 14(1), 21-47.
Barber, B. (1992, March). Jihad Vs. McWorld. Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved from
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199203/barber
Barber, B. (2016, November 14). Can cities counter the power of President-Elect Donald Trump?
The Nation. Retrieved from www.thenation.com/article/can-cities-counter-the-power-of-
president-elect-donald-trump/
Bell, C., & O'Rourke, C. (2007). The people’s peace? Peace agreements, civil society, and
participatory democracy. International Political Science Review, 28(3), 293-324.

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017
366 Jackie Smith

Center on Race & Social Problems. (2015). Pittsburgh’s racial demographics 2015: Differences
and disparities. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work. Retrieved
from www.crsp.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/Final%20version%20for%20publishing.pdf
Chase-Dunn, C. (2013). Five linked crises in the contemporary world-system. Journal of World-
Systems Research, 19(2), 175-180.
Da Costa, D., & McMichael, P. (2007). The poverty of the global order. Globalizations, 4(4),
588-602.
Desai, M. (2015). Subaltern movements in India: Gendered geographies of struggle against
neoliberal development. New York: Routledge.
Doerr, N. (2009). Listen carefully: Democracy brokers at the European Social Forums
(Unpublished doctoral dissertation). European University Institute, Florence.
Eliasoph, N. (1998). Avoiding politics: How Americans produce apathy in everyday life. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
ESRC-Net (2016, December 14). The program on Human Rights and the Global Economy's 11th
Annual Human Rights Institute. Retrieved from www.escr-net.org/news/2016/program-
human-rights-and-global-economys-11th-annual-human-rights-institute
Evans, P. B. (1997). The eclipse of the state? Reflections on stateness in an era of globalization.
World Politics, 50(1), 62-87.
Evans, P. B., & Sewell, W. H. J. (2013). Neoliberalism: Policy regimes, international regimes,
and social effects. In P. A. Hall & M. Lamont (Eds.), Social resilience in the neoliberal era
(pp. 35-68). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Fetherston, A. B. (2000). Peacekeeping, conflict resolution and peacebuilding: A reconsideration
of theoretical frameworks. International Peacekeeping, 7(1), 190-218.
Finnegan, A. C., Saltsman, A. P., & White, S. K. (2010). Negotiating politics and culture: The
utility of human rights for activist organizing in the United States. Journal of Human
Rights Practice, 2(3), 307-333.
Fullilove, M. T. (2016). Root shock: How tearing up city neighborhoods hurts America, and
what we can do about it (2nd ed.). New York: New Village Press.
Gerken, H., Bollier, D., Gerstle, G., & Alperovitz, G. (2016, November 29). All resistance is
local’: A plan of progressive action for the Trump years. The Nation. Retrieved from
www.thenation.com/article/all-resistance-is-local-a-plan-of-progressive-action-for-the-
trump-years/
Goodman, J. D. (2016, December 29). De Blasio and big city mayors try pooling their power
against Trump. New York Times. Retrieved from
www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/nyregion/bill-de-blasio-donald-trump-mayors.html
Grigolo, M. (2011). Incorporating cities into the EU anti-discrimination policy: Between race
discrimination and migrant rights. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34(10), 1751-1769.
Habermas, J. 1981. The theory of communicative action, volume two – Liveworld and system: A
critique of functionalist reason. (T. A. McCarthy, Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Harding, S. (1992). After the neutrality ideal: Science, politics and 'strong objectivity'. Social
Research, 59(3), 567-587.
Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Harvey, D. (2012). Rebel cities: From the right to the city to the urban revolution. New York:
Verso.
Heinberg, R. (2016, December 8). Localism in the age of Trump Commondreams.org. Retrieved
from www.commondreams.org/views/2016/12/08/localism-age-trump
Holston, J. (2009). Insurgent citizenship in an era of global urban peripheries. City & Society,
21(2), 245-267.
Hoxie, J. (2016, December 29). Reducing inequality in the Trump era. Otherwords. Retrieved
from www.commondreams.org/views/2016/12/29/reducing-inequality-trump-era
Human Rights City Alliance. (2014, December 10). Human rights city action plan. Retrieved
from http://pgh-humanrightscity.wikispaces.com/Human+Rights+City+Action+Plan
Human Rights Watch. (2017). World Report 2017: Demagogues threaten human rights – Trump,
European populists foster bigotry, discrimination. New York: Human Rights Watch.
Retrieved from www.hrw.org/news/2017/01/12/world-report-2017-demagogues-threaten-
human-rights

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017

 Local Responses to Human Rights Populism 367

Kaldor, M. (2003). Global civil society in an era of regressive globalisation. In H. Anheier, M.

Kaldor & M. Glasius (Eds.), Global civil society yearbook, 2003 (pp. 3-33). Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Khasnabish, A. 2008. Zapatismo beyond borders: New imaginations of political possibility
Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Katz, B. (2016, November 21). Why cities and metros must lead in Trump’s America.
Brookings Institution. Retrieved from www.brookings.edu/research/why-cities-and-metros-
must-lead-in-trumps-america/
Koenig, M. (2008). Institutional change in the world polity: International human rights and the
construction of collective identity. International Sociology, 23(1), 95-114.
Logan, J. R., & Molotch, H. L. (1987). Urban fortunes: The political economy of place.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Markoff, J. (1999). Globalization and the future of democracy. Journal of World-Systems
Research, 5(2), 242-262.
Moghadam, V. (2012). Globalization and social movements: Islamism, feminism and the global
justice movement (2nd ed.). Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield.
Norberg-Hodge, H., & Read, R. (2016, November 28). After Brexit and Trump: don’t demonise;
localise! The Ecologist. Retrieved from https://theecologist.org/2016/nov/22/after-brexit-
and-trump-dont-demonise-localise
Oomen, B., Davis, M. F., & Grigolo, M. (Eds.). (2016). Global urban justice: The rise of human
rights cities. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Paffenholz, T. (2010). Civil society and peacebuilding. In T. Paffenholz (Ed.), Civil society and
peacebuilding: A critical assessment (pp. 43-64). Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Paffenholz, T., & Spurk, C. (2010). A Comprehensive Analytical Framework. In T. Paffenholz
(Ed.), Civil Society and Peacebuilding: A Critical Assessment (pp. 65-76). Boulder, CO:
Lynne Rienner Publishers.
PDHRE International Office. (2007). Human rights learning and human rights cities:
Achievements report. Retrieved from http://pdhre.org/achievements-HR-cities-mar-07.pdf
Petchesky, R. P. (2003). Global prescriptions: Gendering health and human rights. New York:
Zed Books.
Rajagapol, B. (2006). Counter-hegemonic international law: Rethinking human rights and
development as a Third World strategy. Third World Quarterly, 27(5), 767-783.
Robinson, W. I. (2014). Global capitalism and the crisis of humanity. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Roth, K. (2017). The dangerous rise of populism: Global attacks on human rights values. In
Human Rights Watch World Report 2017 (pp. 1-14). New York: Human rights Watch &
Seven Stories Press. Retrieved from
https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/world_report_download/wr2017-web.pdf
Santos, B. d. S. (2007). Human rights as an emancipatory script? Cultural and political
conditions. In B. d. S. Santos (Ed.), Another knowledge is possible (pp. 3-40). New York:
Verso.
Santos, B. d. S. (2014). Epistemologies of the south: Justice against epistemicide. Boulder, CO:
Paradigm Publishers.
Sassen, S. (2014). Expulsions: Brutality and complexity in the global economy. Cambridge, MA:
Belknap/Harvard University Press.
Schor, J. (1992). The overworked American: The unexpected decline of leisure. New York: Basic
Books.
Sklair, L. (2017). The Icon Project: Architecture, cities, and capitalist globalization. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Smith, A. (2017). Infant mortality in Pittsburgh and beyond. National Health Corps, Pittsburgh.
Retrieved from www.nationalhealthcorps.org/pittsburgh/blog/infant-mortality-pittsburgh-
and-beyond
van den Berg, E., & Oomen, B. (2014). Towards a decentralization of human rights: The rise of
human rights cities. In T. van Lindert & D. Lettinga (Eds.), The Future of Human Rights in
an Urban World: Exploring Opportunities, Threats and Challenges (pp. 11-16).
Amsterdam: Amnesty International Netherlands. Retrieved from

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017
368 Jackie Smith

http://amnesty.nl/content/uploads/2016/12/the_future_of_human_rights_in_an_urban_worl
d_0.pdf?x44743

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 2, 347-368, 2017