Stop Worrying (So Much) about Exclusionary Zoning and Fight Our Real Enemies: A Reply to My Critics

Abstract

In this short reply, I attempt to address my critics in the limited space allotted. I show, inter alia, how the Anti–Exclusionary Zoning (Anti-EZ) Project: (1) brutally reproduces White supremacy, rather than subverting it; (2) employs pernicious neoliberal and antidemocratic means to achieve its—at best—inherently modest ends; (3) emanates from and reflects the elitist politics of the liberal professional-managerial class that locks in the neoliberal status quo, instead of building upon the emancipatory potentialities and power of grassroots, street-fighting mobilizations for housing justice and the right to the city; (4) takes massively uneven capitalist development as a given, rather than the object of contestation and resistance; (5) denies lower-income/working-class people of color vital human longings; and (6) embraces the same progrowth mentality fueling the climate crisis. We must stop worrying (so much) about EZ and fight our real enemies: neoliberalism, White supremacy/racial subjugation, elitist skepticism of democracy, and the growth machine.