Los Angeles Housing and Hunger Crisis Conference

The impact of the Great Recession on existing oppressive conditions and situations, such as gentrification, homelessness, displacement, lack of open space and malnutrition, has produced a crisis in housing and hunger that exposes the brutal nature of class society and colonialism within the U.S. and the southern California region.

The conference will bring together people facing critical survival issues in the L.A. area:

• Gentrification and the "spatial deconcentration" of poor people of color
• Foreclosures and evictions
• Privatization of public housing
• Gang injunctions, sweeps and "biased policing"
• Commercialization and corporatization of public parks
• Lack of food and water sovereignty
• Denial of indigenous sovereignty and land rights
• Attacks on migrants' and undocumented residents' right to housing

Groups involved in planning the conference include GrassrootsKPFK, which initiated the effort, Venice Justice Committee, LA Food Not Bombs, the South Central Farm, Union de Vecinos, Coalition LA, Anti-Racist Action L.A., Community Services Unlimited, Making Change, the Martin Luther King Coalition for Jobs Justice and Peace, and LA Community Action Network.

The planning committee is meeting weekly at the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, 6120 S. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles. For more information, contact us by email at housing.hunger.crisis.conference@gmail.com or call 310-890-7104. Or you can sign up for our low volume list serve, http://groups.google.com/group/h2c2. The conference will include a cultural component, educational as well as skills-sharing workshop and an action orientation towards follow-up organizing.

Our goal is to build unity among all sectors of society impacted by this crisis, including homeowners, renters and unhoused people, and develop an effective fight back strategy for direct action to develop food and water sovereignty and defense of the human right to housing, food, water and shelter.