What's this business of viewing the poor in the city as non-citizens?

Mike Davis, in his book "Planet of Slums" talks about urbanization and its disconnectedness with urbanization. He says that in the cities of the South, there are now a billion people and the number is rising.Mike Davis ends his book with a provocative meditation on the “war on terrorism” as an incipient world war between the American empire and the slum poor.

The lives of the urban poor can be our own. A kind thought translated into a politically correct language may just be the beginning of an advocacy for a transformed world society. We just have to start somewhere....From a Community Organizer

Here's what Michael Sorkin said about "Planet of Sums":

“In this trenchantly argued book, Mike Davis quantifies the nightmarish mass production of slums that marks the contemporary city. With cool indignation, Davis argues that the exponential growth of slums is no accident but the result of a perfect storm of corrupt leadership, institutional failure, and IMF-imposed Structural Adjustment Programs leading to a massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich. Scourge of neo-liberal nostrums, Davis debunks the irresponsible myth of self-help salvation, showing exactly who gets the boot from ‘bootstrap capitalism.’ Like the work of Jacob Riis, Ida Tarbell, and Lincoln Steffans over a century ago, this searing indictment makes the shame of our cities urgently clear.” — Michael Sorkin

(Michael Sorkin is Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at the City College of New York. From 1993 to 2000 he was Professor and Director of the Institute for Urbanism at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Sorkin's long academic career has also included professorships at Cooper Union, Harvard, Yale (holder of the Davenport and Bishop chairs), Cornell (Gensler Chari) Columbia, Pennsylvania, Texas, Minnesota, Illinois. Michigan (Saarinen Chair), Nebraska (Hyde Chair). Sorkin lectures widely and is the author of several hundred articles on architectural and urban subjects. For ten years he was the architectural critic of the Village Voice and is currently contributing editor for Architectural Record.)

In our country as well as in other cities in the world, there is a general hostility to the poor. All sorts of negative stereotypes are heaped on them - they are "eye sores", lazy, irresponsible ad infinitum....Mainstream society, I mean our society, is blind to the fact that 85%of our national coffers comes from indirect taxes. The poor pay indirect taxes everyday every time they buy goods and services on a piece-by-piece basis because they can't afford to go wholesale.

Social movements are the best channels of the poor's collective voice. With the support of people from all walks of life whose hearts understand the structural causes of poverty, social movements thrive and society gets the better for it.