For decades, emancipatory struggles have been deeply influenced by the slogan "Change the world without taking power." Amid growing social inequalities and the return of right-wing authoritarianism, however, many now recognize the limits of disengaging from government and the state. From the Streets to the State chronicles many diverse and exciting projects to not only take state power but to fundamentally change it. A blend of scholars and activists explore issues like the nonsectarian relationships between new radical left parties, egalitarian social movements, and labor movements in Greece, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey. Contributors discuss municipal campaigns based in popular assemblies, solidarity economies, and independent political organizations fighting for racial, gender, and economic justice in cities such as Jackson, Vancouver, and Newcastle. This volume also studies the lessons learned from the Pink Tide in Latin America as well as the social movements of racialized and gendered workers transforming human rights across the United States. Finally, the book offers case studies from around the world surveying the role of state workers and public sector unions in radically democratizing public administration through coalitions between the providers and users of public services.

Street level discretion -- Three pathologies: the indifferent, the enforcer, and the caregiver -- A gymnastics of the self: coping with the everyday pressures of street-level work -- When the rules run out: informal taxonomies and peer-level accountability -- Impossible situations: on the breakdown of moral integrity at the frontlines of public service

An in-depth comparative analysis of the interplay of police, democracy, state, and civil society in Argentina and Brazil, with disturbing implications for the consolidation of democracy in Latin America as a whole.

Focusing on the liberating promise of public space, The Beach Beneath the Streets examines the activist struggles of communities in New York City—queer youth of color, gardeners, cyclists, and anti-gentrification activists—as they transform streets, piers, and vacant lots into everyday sites for autonomy, imagination, identity formation, creativity, problem solving, and even democratic renewal. Through ethnographic accounts of contests over New York City's public spaces that highlight the tension between resistance and repression, Shepard and Smithsimon identify how changes in the control of public spaces—parks, street corners, and plazas—have reliably foreshadowed elites' shifting designs on the city at large. With an innovative taxonomy of public space, the authors frame the ways spaces as diverse as gated enclaves, luxury shopping malls, collapsing piers and street protests can be understood in relation to one another. Synthesizing the fifty-year history of New York's neoliberal transformation and the social movements which have opposed the process, The Beach Beneath the Streets captures the dynamics at work in the ongoing shaping of urban spaces into places of repression, expression, control, and creativity.

State Street Chicago, 1999. One summer that changes everything. An unlikely trio: Felicia 'Fe Fe' Stevens, daughter of fiercely protective mother; Precious Brown, daughter of a prominent church Elder; and Stacia Buchanan, daughter of a Gangster Disciple Queen-Pin. They have a simple friendship, whiling away sunny days with games of Double Dutch. But when Fe Fe invites mysterious Tonya into their fold, life as they know it will never be the same again. Last Summer on State Street is a profound coming-of-age story about the restorative power of community, the claiming of one's own past, and the defining friendships which form the heartbeat of our lives.

When the State Meets the Street probes the complex moral lives of street-level bureaucrats: the frontline social and welfare workers, police officers, and educators who represent government’s human face to ordinary citizens. Too often dismissed as soulless operators, these workers wield a significant margin of discretion and make decisions that profoundly affect people’s lives. Combining insights from political theory with his own ethnographic fieldwork as a receptionist in an urban antipoverty agency, Bernardo Zacka shows us firsthand the predicament in which these public servants are entangled. Public policy consists of rules and regulations, but its implementation depends on how street-level bureaucrats interpret them and exercise discretionary judgment. These workers are expected to act as sensible moral agents in a working environment that is notoriously challenging and that conspires against them. Confronted by the pressures of everyday work, they often and unknowingly settle for one of several reductive conceptions of their responsibilities, each by itself pathological in the face of a complex, messy reality. Zacka examines the factors that contribute to this erosion of moral sensibility and what it takes to remain a balanced moral agent in such difficult conditions. Zacka’s revisionary portrait reveals bureaucratic life as more fluid and ethically fraught than most citizens realize. It invites us to approach the political theory of the democratic state from the bottom-up, thinking not just about what policies the state should adopt but also about how it ought to interact with citizens when implementing these policies.

How local, specific, and personal understandings about belonging, ownership, and agency intersect with law to shape the city. In Owning the Street, Amelia Thorpe examines everyday experiences of and feelings about property and belonging in contemporary cities. She grounds her account in an empirical study of PARK(ing) Day, an annual event that reclaims street space from cars. A popular and highly recognizable example of DIY Urbanism, PARK(ing) Day has attracted considerable media attention, but has not yet been the subject of close scholarly examination. Focusing on the event's trajectories in San Francisco, Sydney, and Montreal, Thorpe addresses this gap, making use of extensive interview data, field work, and careful reflection to explore these tiny, temporary, and often transformative interventions. PARK(ing) Day is based on a creative interpretation of the property producible by paying a parking meter. Paying a meter, the event’s organizers explained, amounts to taking out a lease on the space; while most “lessees” use that property to store a car, the space could be put to other uses—engaging politics (a free health clinic for migrant workers, a same sex wedding, a protest against fossil fuels) and play (a dance floor, giant Jenga, a pocket park). Through this novel rereading of everyday regulation, PARK(ing) Day provides an example of the connection between belief and action—a connection at the heart of Thorpe’s argument. Thorpe examines ways in which local, personal, and materially grounded understandings about belonging, ownership, and agency intersect with law to shape the city. Her analysis offers insights into the ways in which citizens can shape the governance of urban space, particularly in contested environments. The book's foreword is by Davina Cooper, Research Professor in Law at King’s College London.