ABSTRACT
Through the analysis of mobilization against the American Street Takings, this chapter argues that popular demands for protection of property and home represented claims for respect for three distinct ideas: property possession, emotional investments in houses, and community self-determination. The American Street Takings involved legal mobilization against eminent domain, without the litigation. To protest takings along American Street, condemnees and their neighbors mobilized legal concepts. Philadelphia organizers, with little hope that they would make any progress in the courts, took their case to the streets, and asked the public and the politicians to support demands that their "rights" be respected. Taking legal terminology out of the courthouse, they could imagine a public audience, not a judge. The condemnees on American Street seem to have articulated parts of a moral philosophy concerning individual and communal rights in conflicts over land development such as the ones they faced.
