In 1572, towns in the province of Holland, led by William of Orange, rebelled against the government of the Habsburg Netherlands. The story of the Dutch Revolt is usually told in terms of fractious provinces that frustrated Orange's efforts to formulate a coherent programme. In this book James D. Tracy argues that there was a coherent strategy for the war, but that it was set by the towns of Holland. Although the States of Holland were in theory subject to the States General, Holland provided over 60 per cent of the taxes and an even larger share of war loans. Accordingly, funds were directed to securing Holland's borders, and subsequently to extending this protected frontier to neighbouring provinces.
Shielded from the war by its cordon sanitaire, Holland experienced an extraordinary economic boom, allowing taxes and loans to keep flowing. The goal - in sight if not achieved by 1588 - was a United Provinces of the north, free and separate from provinces in the southern Netherlands that remained under Spanish rule. With Europe increasingly under the sway of strong hereditary princes, the new Dutch Republic was a beacon of promise for those who still believed that citizens ought to rule themselves.

San Francisco is being eroded by waves of cash flowing north from Silicon Valley. Recent evictions of long-time San Francisco residents, outrageous rents and home prices, and blockaded "Google buses" are only the tip of the iceberg. James Tracy's book focuses on the long arc of displacement over almost two decades of "dot com" boom and bust, offering the necessary perspective to analyze the latest urban horrors.

A housing activist in the Bay Area since before Google existed, Tracy puts the hardships of the working poor and middle class front and center. These essays explore the battle for urban space--public housing residents fighting austerity, militant housing takeovers, the vagaries of federal and state housing policy, as well as showdowns against gentrification in the Mission District. From these experiences, "Dispatches Against Displacement" draws out a vision of what alternative urbanism might look like if our cities were developed by and for the people who bring them to life.

James Tracy is a Bay Area native and a well-respected community organizer. He is co-founder of the San Francisco Community Land Trust (which uses public and private money to buy up housing stock and take it out of the real estate market), as well as a poet and co-author of "Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power."