Housing disputes, struggles, art and resistance in a time of violence

We pen this editorial amidst growing authoritarianism and violence around the world, from the Israeli state’s continued genocide in Gaza to the unfurling fist of the Trump administration quashing immigration raid protests in Los Angeles. It seems we are experiencing what Nancy Fraser (2019)—paraphrasing Antonio Gramsci—refers to as an era in which “the old is dying and the new cannot be born”, where conservative authoritarianism is coupling with late-stage capitalism, advanced by wanna-be autocrats, tech-bros and military interests all in the name of absolute ethnonationalist power and profits. With this, we are also witnessing the rapid dismantling of an international model that touted and protected—however imperfectly—human rights and social justice. In short, we are in a moment of radical transitions and transformations in which basic needs, public demands, and what were seen as fundamental human rights are silenced, marginalised and openly neglected. This is the paradox of authoritarian regimes: they increasingly exert more control over people’s lives while also producing increased precarity, violence and exclusion in one form or another.