Neoliberal Globalization: Origins and Effects

Abstract

Brother Mouzone, a Black Muslim hitman and avid reader of the left magazine, the Nation, uttered the above statement to his sidekick Lamar with more than an air of cynicism during the tenth episode of the third season of “The Wire.” Standing outside a vast fenced-in demolition site, adjacent to a sign that reads “Pardon Our Dust. Building a New Future for Baltimore,” Lamar asks Mouzone why the high-rise housing projects in West Baltimore (a.k.a. “The Towers”) had been torn down. Brother Mouzone responds “Reform!”—the same explanation given, without irony, to residents of New Orleans’ largest housing projects when the City Council decided, with Christmas just around the corner, to raze their homes. Whereas “reform” may have once referred to efforts to combat social inequality through land and resource redistribution, for the City Council of New Orleans, “reform” has meant “mixed income housing” and the selling off of public services. For the people of New Orleans and Baltimore—and other poor and predominantly black cities ruined by neglect and neoliberal “development”—it has meant displacement and homelessness.