Street Vending and Organizing in the Neoliberal City

Book excerpt: In this essay, I analyze grassroots organizing around street vending in New York City since 2003 paying particular attention to the debates surrounding vending in the city and the way the issue has been framed by activists and government officials alike. I argue that street vendor organizers have framed their campaigns and articulated their demands by drawing on neoliberal discourses as well as gendered constructs and alternative notions of citizenship. Grassroots activists and their supporters have framed the demands of street vendors appealing to ideas of free enterprise and individualism. These frames resonate with prevailing discourses of neoliberal forms of urban governance that emphasize individual entrepreneurship and targeted state intervention in the market. Simultaneously, activists base their demands on notions of recognition and respect as humans independently of legal status. Gendered notions of family and women's roles within it are also central to the framing of street vendor demands.