The homeless fight back: the politics of homeless resistance

Abstract

Chapter 5 turns to the activism and politics of anarchist homeless activists in resisting the city’s attempts to exclude the homeless. I turn to two important political theorists to make sense of the resistance of Food Not Bombs: Jacques Rancière and Eduardo Glissant. Rancière’s short piece “Ten theses on politics” provides a powerful understanding of the way that disruptive actions and resistance expand political space, while Glissant’s idea of right to opacity examines the complex relationship of violence, power, and visibility. The chapter argue that the homeless have a right to opacity from the state, and state surveillance, and that the homeless should only be as visible as they want to be. This means that public occupations, political protests, and public meals are legitimate forms of visibility, which respect the right of the homeless to be opaque, while programs such as San Francisco’s Matrix plan are a coercive form of violence.