Class Warfare in Philadelphia: Foreclosures

Posted by on September 19, 2011

The Moonstone Arts Center & 1199C Presents
Thursday September 22, 7pm
Class Warfare in Philadelphia, Part 2
Foreclosures

At the 1199C National Union of Hospital & Health Care Employees, AFSCME, AFL-CIO, Training and Upgrading Fund, Breslin Learning Center, 100 S. Broad Street, 10th Floor Auditorium

7:00pm: The David Harvey animated lecture The Crises of Capitalism (11 minutes)
Mr. Harvey, a scholar who heads CUNY’s Center for Place, Culture & Politics, describes not just the failures that caused the ongoing fiasco, but the failure of how we’ve explained it. This is really terrific, you have to see it.

7:15pm: Panel Discussion with John Dodds and Max Rameau
John Dodds is Director of the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, a non-profit membership organization that has been involved in efforts to prevent mortgage foreclosures since the early 1980s.

Max Rameau is an organizer of Take Back the Land, an American organization based in Miami, Florida devoted to blocking evictions, and rehousing homeless people in foreclosed houses. Take Back the Land was formed in October 2006 to build the Umoja Village Shantytown on a plot of unoccupied land to protest gentrification and a lack of low-income housing in Miami. Take Back the Land volunteers break into the houses, clean, paint and make repairs, change the locks, and help move the homeless families in. They provide supplies and furniture and help residents turn on electricity and water.

Though the occupations are of contested legality, as of December 2008 local police officers were not intervening, judging it to be the responsibility of house owners to protect their property or request assistance.

For more information about the rest of the series go to http://www.moonstoneartscenter.org/classwarfare/