2023 Exemplary Collaborative: ‘Pushed Out’ collaborative seeks to disrupt systems of displacement

“Pushed Out: Displacement in South Phoenix” is no ordinary report — not in its approach that centers the people most impacted by displacement and not in its strong, unapologetic voice speaking deeply personal and historically relevant truth to power. 

Mass Liberation AZ, in collaboration with several south Phoenix partners, produced a document that is different by design and authentic by nature, which is in and of itself a community service. 

“Pushed Out” advances the argument that the system that perpetuates displacement isn’t broken: It is designed to do what it does. 

The report focuses on the lived experiences of the people of south Phoenix who have and are dealing with forces of displacement and the generational trauma of policy decisions. Chapters of the report focus on criminalization, zoning, environmental justice and “housing violence,” which is defined as the “systemic and structural way that eviction, exclusion and enforcement is used to control, remove and transform places.”

LISC Phoenix honors the extensive collaboration behind “Pushed Out.” However, collaboration is the only way the movement leaders in south Phoenix approach the work they do.

“It wasn’t a stretch for us,” Lola N’sangou, executive director of Mass Liberation AZ, said. “It wasn’t an unusual way that we organize. This is how we organize.”

Mass Liberation AZ produced the report in partnership with representative community-based organizations, including Cihuapactli Collective, Fund for Empowerment, Housing Initiative Project (HIP), and Moms, Dads & Babies (MoDaBa). N’sangou said Mass Liberation AZ carefully chose these partners to “get the reach we need.” These organizations keep their focus on directly impacted people, and lived experience should be centered as the way know and understand issues, she said. 

“Pushed Out” also was an opportunity for people across races and ethnicities to see themselves and others in the ages-old displacement system and to counter the intent of oppressive systems to “keep us all divided and separate,” N’sangou said.

“When we see each other in each other’s struggle is when you’re able to link arms and build the power necessary to overcome that oppression,” N’sangou said. “The collaboration is a necessary piece. None of these systems are going to be dismantled by one group alone.”

Terry Benelli, executive director of LISC Phoenix, said “Pushed Out” is an organic outcome of the work done in “Turning the Corner: Monitoring Neighborhood Change to Prevent Displacement,” an initiative of the national Urban Institute that began in 2016 as a research project in five U.S. cities, including Phoenix. The south Phoenix displacement report’s focus on the shared results and impact on people who are displaced is what the community wanted to do in response to “Turning the Corner” work, she said. 

Joseph Larios of Mass Liberation AZ said so often the conversation about displacement is about the physical change and the gentrification that comes after it. There’s plenty of talk, he said, about people and new businesses moving in, but often little substantive discussion about the people who were displaced and the circumstances and policies leading to displacement. 

“Usually the conversation centers on what would happen after some kind of place gets displaced,” Larios said. “So, you have more shade trees and nicer businesses move in and bike lanes. There seems to be this hyperfocus on what happens afterwards and how does that shift the economics. The idea that displacement is part of the process never really gets any more depth.”

The south Phoenix collaboration chose to look at displacement and talk with and about the displaced. Instead of others trying to interpret what’s happening in south Phoenix, “Pushed Out” is written from the perspective of people in the community.

“We wanted to contribute to the conversation about displacement that very intentionally added the perspective of what happens to the displaced,” Larios said. “What does displacement look like? What does it like feel for the people who are directly impacted by those dynamics? Let’s add that to the conversation and see where that leads us?” 

Also very intentional is the focus on racism and the role racism has played over multiple generations in displacement activity. Supporters of the concerted political effort to ban discussions of racism and a full, unvarnished telling of a history that has caused harm and continues to impact marginalized people will chafe at the conversation “Pushed Out” sustains from start to its finish.

“Race is a fundamental driver of displacement, and so we have to look at,” Larios said. "That’s something that is clear, that is critical, that draws on a whole body of work. Making race the visible element that it is in the dynamics of displacement was super important, and we didn’t see that as part of the discourse around the displacement that we saw happening.”

A second goal of the report, Larios said, is to discuss the concept of mutual aid as a practice of support, different from charity or political advocacy, that builds new, sustainable social relationships that create networks of support groups in times of community need.

“Pushed Out” is neither an academic nor abstract exercise. It is real talk at a time when south Phoenix is, as Larios puts it, pressured on all sides by displacement threats. Light-rail expansion on south Central Avenue, for example, puts questions and discussion about displacement in context. In their view, Larios and N’sangou said displacement conversations are still only on the surface when there are clear indications of what’s going to happen.

N’sangou said “Pushed Out” is an important part of an early phase of change, where you can begin to solve a problem after you have named it. It establishes language that honestly and thoroughly explains what’s happening, she said.

“Part of what this displacement report is designed to do is not only to educate the powers that be and disrupt their dominant narrative,” N’sangou said, “but it’s also to educate the public and the community to give ourselves words to things that we know. … We will then be able to push for political outcomes and make stronger demands of officials to be able to affect the change that’s necessary; that this displacement report outlines; that we all are seeking.”

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