Michelle A Franco

Landscaper, cultivator, writer, photographer, and Aquarian. Assistant Professor in landscape architecture at Knowlton School of Architecture.

[Michelle A Franco @MichelleAFranco]

So glad to share my article "Invisible Labor," on ethnic division and immigrant labor in landscape architecture work. Very happy to send it to anyone interested, over the paywall. https://t.co/t4heKpfyS8

[Michelle A Franco @MichelleAFranco]

My Jardineros exhibition is up and running: https://t.co/Dir73vkwj1. Short films, documents, drawings, and photographs exploring experimental collaborations between builders, gardeners, and designers. Made with my friends and colleagues at TERREMOTO and Reed Hilderbrand 💚

[The Last Farm @TheLastFarm]

How long do you think it took them to find a picture of white people working in the field?

[the HBIC ✨ @oohlalathehbic]

My mentor had a great idea re: grocery prices and tariffs. Buy directly from Black farmers. Most will ship directly to you, and this index will show you a list of Black farmers by region: https://t.co/wlMZic74jT

[Criterion Collection @Criterion]

"Sublime eternal love is a possibility for human beings, and every human being should know that – it exists within each one of us." Happy birthday, David Lynch. We love you. ☕ ❤️‍🔥🥧🌲✨🌹

[James🔻 @GoodVibePolitik]

Palestine and Los Angeles are burning for the same reason: the prioritization of advancing capitalist and colonial interests over the lives and well-being of millions. We’re witnessing the brutal effects of capitalism and settler colonialism real time. This can’t continue.

[@poeticallylost @poeticallylost]

i hope the trees know i notice them

[Michelle A Franco @MichelleAFranco]

Clear-eyed @gabrielwinant
https://t.co/Ky52zRQJ6t

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

All the takes are correct and yet they also miss the point.

Yes, it was insane for the Democrats to think they could win by running a soulless candidate, without a shred of progressive policy vision, pursuing endorsements from neocon war-hawks everybody hates, while arming and funding a genocide, and belittling and crushing those who have enough morality to protest it.  It is enraging that the Democrats are so smug and blind to this.

But these are all just symptoms.  The deeper reality is that liberalism has failed, liberalism is dead, and people urgently need to wake up to this fact and respond accordingly. It is a defunct ideology that cannot offer any meaningful solutions to our social and ecological crises and it must be abandoned.

Democrats have proven over and over again that they cannot accept even *basic* steps like public healthcare, affordable housing, and a public job guarantee - things that would dramatically improve the material, social and political conditions of the working classes. And they cannot accept a public finance strategy that would steer production away from fossil fuels and toward green transition to give us a shot at a liveable future.

Why? Because these things run against the objectives of capital accumulation. And for liberals capital is sacrosanct. They will do whatever it takes to ensure elite accumulation, it is their only consistent commitment.  At home, they suppress and demonize progressive and socialist tendencies. Abroad, they engage in endless wars and violence to suppress input prices in the global South and prevent any possibility of sovereign economic development.

The Democrats have done all this purposefully and knowingly, for my whole life, not as some kind of "mistake" but in full consciousness that it is in the interests of capital.

And because liberalism cannot address our crises, and because it crushes socialist alternatives, it inevitably paves the way for right-wing populism.  They know this pattern, and yet they risk it every time - this election being only the most recent example. They did it in 2016, when they actively crushed the Sanders campaign and sent Trump to the White House. They do it because ultimately they (and I mean the liberal ruling class here) don't really mind if fascists take power, so long as the latter too ensure the conditions for capital accumulation. They 100% prefer this to the possibility of a socialist alternative.

So, progressives have to face reality. The dream of "converting" the Democratic party is dead. This is now a fact and it must be accepted. The only option is to build a mass-based movement that can reclaim the working classes and mobilize a political vehicle that can integrate disparate progressive struggles into a unified and formidable political force and achieve substantive transformation. This will take real work, actual organizing, but it must be done and that process must begin now.

[Neil Renic @NC_Renic]

Academics don’t say “I love you”, they say “I read your article”, and I think that’s beautiful

[Russell @ATLCWorker]

If paying people a living wage for their labor is going to break the system, maybe the system needs to be broken.

[Michelle A Franco @MichelleAFranco]

Join us on September 17 for a panel on "The Role and Rights of Immigrant Workers in Urban Development" -- hosted by @NextCityOrg. I'll be speaking on Latin American migrant workers, care, and shifting dynamics between design and labor.
https://t.co/U4YpLIV44d

[Michelle A Franco @MichelleAFranco]

Petty wonderful

[Batshit Australia @batshit_auspol]

If someone in Australia cuts down a tree on public land to improve the view from their house, the local government will install a sign to block that view again

[The Last Farm @TheLastFarm]

Makes me sick to my stomach to see self-described socialists acting as uncritical boosters for renewable energy rather than standing in solidarity with the slaves who make it possible

Don’t pretend to care about workers if you refuse to recognize the humanity of all workers

[Michelle A Franco @MichelleAFranco]

AI = uterus envy

[danah boyd @zephoria]

"Women are said to have a penis envy, but we are discovering that men have a uterus envy: there is something very creative that women can do and men cannot, that is, give birth to new life. We now see evidence that men are striving to do that." - Joseph Weizenbaum, 1996

[Michelle A Franco @MichelleAFranco]

Thanks for this really nice view into the Diggers Studios of '22 and '23. The work continues onward at a slow and steady pace!

[KnowltonOSU @KnowltonOSU]

The goal of the Diggers Studio, led by Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture Michelle Franco, is to position physical labor and embodied knowledge as means to develop a socially and ecologically conscious landscape practice.

Read the full story: https://t.co/3SGWJcdHHt

[acts of refusal for architects @m_hotmessgandhi]

Ideally working and studying together could create an environment in which people respect and learn from each other and, in which . . . old-fashioned notions of the separation of the work of #design and the work of construction can be abolished for good."
https://t.co/YoUWC0ysX2

[Michelle A Franco @MichelleAFranco]

🧨🧨🧨

[KnowltonOSU @KnowltonOSU]

Asst Prof of Landscape Architecture Michelle Arevalos Franco was awarded a Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme Arts Creation Grant to support her ethnographic scholarship with immigrant gardeners working on designed landscapes. / @MichelleAFranco

https://t.co/Yh8xitqtst

[Seamus Heaney @HeaneyDaily]

Anything can happen, the tallest towers
Be overturned, those in high places daunted,
Those overlooked regarded.