Researcher ORCID Identifier
Graduation Year
2024
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
American Studies
Reader 1
Lily Geismer
Reader 2
David Seitz
Reader 3
Dan Segal
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2024 Sophie K McClain
Abstract
This senior thesis explores the ways in which people in Oakland, California make place and spaces through their activism and subsequently how these places and spaces are policed by the state. Building off of the works of Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Robin D.G. Kelley, David Harvey, and Henri Lefebvre, McClain examines the ways in which activists create abolition geographies while engaging in their right to the city through social movement activism with a particular focus on the Black Panther Party and Occupy Wall Street Movement in Oakland. Through these examples, McClain shows how abolition geographies often exist in a dialectical relationship with what she terms geographies of repression and how the state works to create a form of carcerality that is spatial to repress activism.
Recommended Citation
McClain, Sophie, "Making Freedom a Place: Geographies of Social Movement Activism and Repression in Oakland, California" (2024). Pitzer Senior Theses. 197.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/pitzer_theses/197
