Please forward widely: At our first two meetings, this effort, (initiated by GrassrootsKPFK, the coalition that successfully ran a number of candidates for KPFK local station board committed to human rights and building communities of resistance), included representatives from Union de Vecinos, Coalition LA, Anti-Racist Action, LA CAN, the South Central Farmers, a tenants rights group organizing in Lincoln Heights, the ISO, La Comite/March 4th Mvmt., the MLK Coalition for Jobs Justice and Peace, Coffee Party, Venice Justice Committee, Food Not Bombs, LA Greens, Black students at LATTC, the Fun Zone, a program for homeless kids based in the downtown Skid Row area, and others. The conference aims to be a kind of focused mini-Social Forum, concentrating on issues of gentrification, foreclosures, evictions, homelessness, privatization of public housing, and tenants rights, as well food and water sovereignty and related urban environmental justice issues. We also want to look at issues of repression and enforcement, such as gang injunctions, police abuse and other measures. the conference is aimed at building a working alliance among people and groups dealing with these issues through grassroots organizing and direct action strategies as well as confronting economic and political elites. We have tentatively set the conference for the last weekend in March at LA Trade Technical College downtown, to include educational and cultural expressions as well as concrete skills-sharing workshops and opportunities for people to network and build ongoing community work.
We discussed the general political framework or situation in which we are trying to build the conference, including the history of conscious "spatial deconcentration" (shifting poor people of color from the central city to the periphery) spelled out by the Trilateral Commission in response to urban insurrections and liberation struggles in the 60s and 70s, as well as the current economic crisis impacting on their plans for gentrification (eg collapse of the housing market, the necessity for the state to raid CRA funds to balance the budget, etc). The third, follow-up meeting is set for Saturday, Feb. 1, at 10 AM (until noon) at the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, 6120 S. Vermont. We are still seeking to invite additional new forces to get in on the ground floor of planning the conference. We assigned people to come in with plans for an outreach/media strategy as well as a fundraising proposal/budgetary ideas to the next meeting. We agreed that translastion at least from/to English/Spanish would be necessary and possibly other languages (eg Korean) should be available at the conference. ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
