[act-ma] 11/21 Tonight - Housing Struggles in South Africa w/Anti-Eviction Campaign (encuentro 5 @ 7:30)

[Suren Moodliar]

Tonight in Chinatown at 7:30; 33 Harrison Ave, 5th floor, Boston, MA
02111; see http://www.encuentro5.org for directions and other events.

Join Ashraf Cassiem, South African social movement activist from the
Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign.

South Africa will be on the global stage as host of the 2010 World
Cup. Yet, with one of the world's highest rates of economic inequality
and social protest, it is likely that the country's glaring
contradictions and its militant poor, perhaps more so than the
"beautiful game," will be center stage next summer.

For the past nine years, Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign has been
one of the most prominent organizations of militant poor, fighting
against evictions and police brutality as well as for free basic
service and quality health care in South Africa's poor and working
class communities. As a coordinating body of over 15 community
organizations in the Western Cape Province, the AEC has been at the
forefront of challenging the neoliberal economic policies have been
imposed since the fall of apartheid, recently helping to found the
Poor People's Alliance as a national network of poor people's
movements.

This month, one of the Anti-Eviction Campaign's coordinators, Ashraf
Cassiem, is going around the U.S., speaking at college campuses and
meeting with activist to share information about post-apartheid
community struggles, particularly with the forced removals and the
resulting protests taking place in the run up to the 2010 World Cup.
He is also here to witness the work being done in the U.S. around
layoffs, foreclosures, and other issues that have come to the fore
with the current recession.

The event is free and open to all progressives.