"Instituent" Power and the Leftover Left

• In Event: Histories and Possibilities of “Instituent Power”

Abstract

Even now that City institutions are on their side, some Left activists from the late 1960s and 1970s carry their suspicion of establishment politics into climate action and affordable housing initiatives of today. Just what is it about new approaches to these problems that triggers these suspicions? What are the most striking differences between the new politics of climate and affordability and the old? I'll examine these questions from my vantage point as both a scholar of US democracy and a member of the Ann Arbor City Council. Ann Arbor is a particularly good place to study these tensions, having been home to the first "Earth Day" in April 1970 and the birthplace of all manner of teach-ins and ranking today as a national leader among municipalities of its size for its taxpayer-funded initiatives to combat out of control housing prices and implement an innovative climate action program. But Ann Arbor is not unique in seeing a lingering old Left challenge a contemporary Left that wields institutional power (see e.g. resistance to affordable housing in New York City).

Author

• Lisa J. Disch, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor