I wanted to share my thoughts and research on a specific, maybe more abstract form of bottom-up urbanism. I think we often align our understanding of bottom-up urbanism with Iveson’s characterization. It's easy to romanticize do-it-yourself actions as “micro-spatial” urban practices that either physically transform space or are enacted in it. These acts, often artistic in their manifestation are usually seen as a critique of the status quo; an effort to reclaim the “right to the city.” But these interventions are typically analyzed from the left, perceived as taking place in opposition to top-down bureaucratic institution and expression.
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Think along the lines of what you might spot in an urban district and think “Hmmm, that aesthetic... Now that would look good in a hip gallery space or as the theme of an experimental cafe.” Graffiti, yarn-bombing, live performances, exposed brick, transformations of the cityscape ranging from ephemeral to permanent.
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By no means do I wish to disparage the relevance, significance, and effectiveness of these forms of urban intervention, but now I’d like to play devil’s advocate.
I love creative forms of bottom-up expression. I appreciate graffiti, I like pop-up installations, and I get excited by creative live performances along sidewalks. But was I missing something? Maybe by only recognizing creative activities like these that openly challenged a neoliberal ordering of space I was being closed-minded to what might wholly constitute bottom-up transformations of space.
What about forms of expression working to counteract the forces that challenge a conservative, neoliberal space?
I love creative forms of bottom-up expression. I appreciate graffiti, I like pop-up installations, and I get excited by creative live performances along sidewalks. But was I missing something? Maybe by only recognizing creative activities like these that openly challenged a neoliberal ordering of space I was being closed-minded to what might wholly constitute bottom-up transformations of space.
What about forms of expression working to counteract the forces that challenge a conservative, neoliberal space?
Vigilantism
This is why vigilantism is fascinating. While not explicitly illegal, government institutions largely condemn vigilantism and many laws are in place that can make enacting vigilante justice in certain ways illegal (e.g. carrying a weapon, kidnapping, etc.). But it is still equated with informal justice. It is often rationalized by the idea that adequate legal mechanisms for criminal punishment are sometimes nonexistent or insufficient. So when the government is perceived as ineffective in enforcing the law, vigilantes bypass authority to ensure the [subjective] wellbeing of their community.
A few years back when I would travel to the deserts east of San Diego to film, I would ride along the border and occasionally spot shacks facing the fence marked with a tattered flags. Those shacks belonged to little groups of people who would spend their days facing Mexico, shotgun in hand, with the hopes of deterring any immigrants from crossing illegally.
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I spent some time over spring break talking to friends and family about border vigilantes, and another whole day driving inland beside the border, camera in hand, with the hopes of finding one of those temporary tents or shacks so I could speak with these people firsthand. After being stopped by the Border Patrol and sent back to the main road, I gave up hope. Plus the fact that I was really sick that week didn't help, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to make the trip again over break.
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THE MINUTEMAN PROJECT
Eventually someone directed my attention to the Minuteman Project. I decided to contact them directly. Wanting to sound genuine and unassuming, I created a pseudonym, Adam Hockwell, with his own personal email and backstory that would make him unsearchable and appear sympathetic to the cause. In early April, I contacted two of the Minuteman Project’s leaders by the emails made available on their website and even posted to their inquiry/forum page.
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No replies [yet]. I called their hotline four separate times over two weeks. Each time I described my enthusiasm for their organization and that I was an SMU student from San Diego working on a project about efforts to secure our borders. Each time the operator would take my information and assure me that someone would call me back soon. No calls back [yet].
But from research gathered online and a documentary by Reuters on a different "immigration reform" group - the Patriots - this group consists of heavily armed citizens who station themselves along the Rio Grande, patrolling in ATVs on their own time. To them, the land along the border is in some way hallowed: a rigid and tangible reminder of what they want to protect.
Using the words “vigilante” and “militia” in reference to their work does not sit well with the Patriots. For them, spotting a group of immigrants at the fence, shining a light on them, and brandishing their weapons is enough to deter anyone from crossing. They deny ever having fired their weapons. The only skirmish, they report, occurred when a Border Patrol agent mistook them for illegals and opened fire on them.
To illegals, these groups are an obstacle to entry. To the Border Patrol, they are an unsanctioned - sometimes nettlesome - extension of their organization.
Using the words “vigilante” and “militia” in reference to their work does not sit well with the Patriots. For them, spotting a group of immigrants at the fence, shining a light on them, and brandishing their weapons is enough to deter anyone from crossing. They deny ever having fired their weapons. The only skirmish, they report, occurred when a Border Patrol agent mistook them for illegals and opened fire on them.
To illegals, these groups are an obstacle to entry. To the Border Patrol, they are an unsanctioned - sometimes nettlesome - extension of their organization.
The fine legal line that border vigilantes walk is drawn by the ambiguity of citizen's arrest law.
Using zip-ties, they detain the immigrants and then transport them to patrol stations where they pass the illegals off to government authority. Members of these groups range from average people with an extreme sense of civic duty to ex-marines looking to protect what they believe in. Like many political groups, there are radical factions. In 2005, during the first major muster of the anti-immigrant Minuteman Project, an intelligence report included an interview with two men who described themselves as members of the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Both sought sniping positions in the organization and voiced their intent of executing immigrants crossing the fence. Between 2004 and 2011, an average of 223 bodies of migrants have been found every year in the Tucson Sector alone, now the busiest section of the border. And while the cause-of-death was not always evident because of the poor preservation of remains, multiple reports of vigilantes executing migrants have surfaced.
While bypassing authority, occupying space, and altering terrain, these vigilante groups engage the space around the border - a physical and metaphysical construct serving as a divider between nations – in what is objectively a bottom-up form. The difference here is that they work to uphold existing law in an effort to maintain the current ordering of social space. Yet by exercising self-appointed authority parallel to the Border Patrol, they essentially bolster the border protection process and catalyze the top-down process enacted by the United States government.
Max Good’s documentary Vigilante, Vigilante further demonstrates the paradoxical nature of vigilantism as a form of bottom-up urbanism. Good and his team follow anti-graffiti vigilantes who work relentlessly to rid cities of street art, stickers, tags, and posters. Yet in an ironic turn, we realize that these vigilantes succumb to the same illegal means of trespassing and destruction of property in an effort to eliminate this blight.
These groups appear as antagonists of each other:
- Liberals advocating for free and open borders vs. conservative border vigilantes
- Graffiti writers vs. street-art vigilantes
But really this back-and-forth struggle to define the ideology governing a space is what allows for dialogue to form at all. Each group feeds off the other, new grassroots organizations sprouting in response to old ones. Even the internet has become a space for this contestation. For example, a small website run by the Immigration Solidarity Network created a forum that mysteriously went silent in 2007 called the "Minutemen Watch." It was a compilation of news items and police reports on the activities of anti-immigrant groups along the border.
Video by Matt Twohig & Adam Hersko-RonaTas
So how do we characterize vigilantism?
It's not easy. It feels like there ought to be a dichotomy. I deduced those interventions I discussed at the beginning (e.g. graffiti, yarn-bombing, performances, etc.) to leftist-minded, aesthetic urbanism while I deduced vigilantism to conservative, reactionary urbanism. The former is on the offensive while the latter is on the defensive.
But both these forms of intervention can be calculated into a third space perspective as a means of survival, whether that be physical or ideological; each group wants to keep alive their idea of how space should be enacted.
Both produce tangible evidence of their beliefs that serve as messages, aesthetic objects, or both. For example:
But both these forms of intervention can be calculated into a third space perspective as a means of survival, whether that be physical or ideological; each group wants to keep alive their idea of how space should be enacted.
Both produce tangible evidence of their beliefs that serve as messages, aesthetic objects, or both. For example:
- temporary + permanent living spaces (tents, shacks, cargo boxes...)
- alterations to natural environment (squashed grass, broken branches, litter...)
- imagery (posters, picket signs, graffiti, shirts...)
- legislation
So what I ultimately find challenging is that when boiling down this dichotomy to each faction’s basic attributes, they are practically indistinguishable except perhaps in moral direction. And isn’t that the defining element of bottom-up activities: their message?
“The medium is the message." -Marshall McLuhan
I think that’s why we so we find it so difficult to identify a flash mob of dancers waving crafted streamers, performing on a busy park green as being in many ways identical to a gathering of protesters picketing a soldier’s funeral along the curbside chanting slurs. We see the medium before we see the message and stop there. The left often launches grassroot campaigns through artistic renderings while the right does so in what we consider more formal ways (decrees, protests, and so on). But when both groups consist merely of people
- challenging what they perceive to be the status quo in need of change
- enacting space in a way that upholds their ideology
- and manifesting that in ways that bypass bureaucratic institutions
References
Douglas, G.C.C. (2014). “Do-It-Yourself Urban Design
: The social practice of
informal improvement’ through unauthorized alteration.” City & Community 13(1).
Ferrell, J. (2001). Remapping the City: Public identity, cultural space, and social justice. Contemporary
Justice Review, 4(2).
Garza, L. (2014, September 10). 'Armed patriots': The private citizens out to secure the U.S. border.
Retrieved April 11, 2015, from http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/10/us-usa-immigration-
militia-idUSKBN0H50VA20140910
Harvey, D. (2008). “The Right to the City.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.
Hensley, J. (2013, August 21). Concern rises after border-vigilante standoff. Retrieved April 9, 2015,
from http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/21/concern-rises-after-border-
vigilante-standoff/2680247/
Iveson, K. (2013) “Cities within the City: Do-It-Yourself urbanism and the right to the city.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37(3).
Lenz, R. (2012). Investigating Deaths of Undocumented Immigrants on the Border. Intelligence Report:
Issue 147. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved from http://www.splcenter.org/get-
informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/fall/death-in-the-desert
Morgan, G. and Ren, X. (2012). “The Creative Underclass: Culture, subculture, and
urban renewal.” Journal of Urban Affairs, 34(2).
Sanchez, C. (2007). Police Investigate Activities of San Diego Minutemen: San Diego Nativist
Group Faces Troubles. Intelligence Report: Issue 126. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved
from http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all
issues/2007/summer/blunt-force
Siu Hin, L. (2007). Minutemen Watch. Immigrantsolidarity.org. Retrieved 9 April 2015, from
http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/Campaigns/Minutemen.htm
Unitedstates.fm. (2004). San Diego Minutemen - Minutemen San Diego California. Retrieved 10 April
2015, from http://www.unitedstates.fm/sdmm.htm
Vigilantism. (n.d.) West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. (2008). Retrieved April 29 2015
from http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Vigilantism
Walker, C. (2007). Border Vigilantism and Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Harvard Latino Law
Review, (10), 135-174.
informal improvement’ through unauthorized alteration.” City & Community 13(1).
Ferrell, J. (2001). Remapping the City: Public identity, cultural space, and social justice. Contemporary
Justice Review, 4(2).
Garza, L. (2014, September 10). 'Armed patriots': The private citizens out to secure the U.S. border.
Retrieved April 11, 2015, from http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/10/us-usa-immigration-
militia-idUSKBN0H50VA20140910
Harvey, D. (2008). “The Right to the City.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.
Hensley, J. (2013, August 21). Concern rises after border-vigilante standoff. Retrieved April 9, 2015,
from http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/21/concern-rises-after-border-
vigilante-standoff/2680247/
Iveson, K. (2013) “Cities within the City: Do-It-Yourself urbanism and the right to the city.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37(3).
Lenz, R. (2012). Investigating Deaths of Undocumented Immigrants on the Border. Intelligence Report:
Issue 147. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved from http://www.splcenter.org/get-
informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/fall/death-in-the-desert
Morgan, G. and Ren, X. (2012). “The Creative Underclass: Culture, subculture, and
urban renewal.” Journal of Urban Affairs, 34(2).
Sanchez, C. (2007). Police Investigate Activities of San Diego Minutemen: San Diego Nativist
Group Faces Troubles. Intelligence Report: Issue 126. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved
from http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all
issues/2007/summer/blunt-force
Siu Hin, L. (2007). Minutemen Watch. Immigrantsolidarity.org. Retrieved 9 April 2015, from
http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/Campaigns/Minutemen.htm
Unitedstates.fm. (2004). San Diego Minutemen - Minutemen San Diego California. Retrieved 10 April
2015, from http://www.unitedstates.fm/sdmm.htm
Vigilantism. (n.d.) West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. (2008). Retrieved April 29 2015
from http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Vigilantism
Walker, C. (2007). Border Vigilantism and Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Harvard Latino Law
Review, (10), 135-174.