Take Back the Land: Land, Gentrification & the Umoja Village Shantytown

Mac Rameau is a Haitian-born pan-African theorist, campaign strategist, author, and creator of the Umoja Village Shantytown. The Umoja Village Shantytown was a project orchestrated by a group of housing activists called "Take Back the Land". They built an encampment on a plot of public land in Florida in October of 2006 as a way to protest against gentrification and the lack of low-cost housing in Miami. This project spurred citizens and activists around the country to think differently about housing and homelessness; it prompted people to actually take action against the foreclosure crisis and the forces that oppress lower-income families. This book helps keep those lessons alive by reminding people of the existence of the Umoja Village and the positive change its existence sought to create.