Ethnicity Italian-American | Citizenship American | |
Books The Civil Disobedience Handbook, Dispatches Against Displace, Sparks And Codes, Direct Action: Radical P, The Time Opener: 1692 | ||
James Richard Tracy (born 1970) is an American author, poet and activist living in Oakland, California. He is the co-author (with Amy Sonnie) of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times (Melville House Publishers 2012).
Contents
Early life
Tracy was born in Oakland, California in 1970. His family moved shortly there after to Vallejo, California. His father was a kindergarten teacher in the Richmond Unified School District. His mother worked a variety of jobs in the social work field. Tracy has two younger brothers.
Early Politicization
Tracy credits several formative events in shaping his early political outlook. His first job was as a paper delivery person for the Vallejo Independent Press, a worker-owned newspaper founded by striking newspaper workers. This introduced the idea of worker self-management to him. In early 1989, the presence of Neo-Nazi organizers in Vallejo helped him form an anti-racist commitment. Tracy attended anti-nuclear and environmental demonstrations as early as 1987.
Housing Organizing
In 1992, Tracy co-founded the Eviction Defense Network (EDN) an organization which utilized Direct Action to prevent evictions. The EDN was invited to work alongside public housing residents organizing for the right-of-return in the federal HOPE VI program. Subsequently, he was a member of the Coalition On Homelessness, Mission Agenda, and the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition.