[van-announce] Conference on Homelessness {Sat}

[Anti-Poverty Committee]

{please forward}

              HOMELESSNESS AS STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE
A conference organised by the Anti-poverty Committee to analyse
homelessness from an anti-capitalist perspective, in the contexts of race,
gender and colonisation.

                         Saturday,
                       January 14th
                          2-4 pm
                      327 carrall St.
              (Between E. Hastings & E. Cordova)

Topics will include:
The Racialization of Poverty
Barriers to Access of Public Services
Housing, Poverty & Gender Inequality
Indigenous Homelessness as Modern Colonisation and
Organising to Fight Back!

Speakers will include:

Kat Norris: Indigenous Action Group

Kat is a renowned activist who has fought tirelessly for justice for
indigenous peoples. The Indigenous Action Group has been organising around
the murder of Frank Paul by the Vancouver Police Department. Among many
other things,Kat is a volunteer at the Aboriginal Friendship Center, a
space that is vital to many aboriginal women who are homeless or at the
risk of becoming so.

Cecily Nicholson: Save Low Income Housing Coalition

Cecily is a volunteer at the DTES Women’s Center as well as the Vancouver
Status of Women, representing the latter at the Save Low Income Housing
Coalition (SLIHC).  SLIHC is currently engaged in several campaigns
including their Raise the Rates campaign which demands the BC Liberals
raise the shelter rates for those on Income Assistance by no less then 40%

Rosy Deol: Asian Society for the Intervention of HIV/AIDS (ASIA)

Rosy is an outreach worker with ASIA. She works with women employed in
massage parlours in organising for their rights and better working
conditions. In other anti-oppression work she fights for better access to
public services, many of which fail to adequate provide decent treatment
to racialised communities.

Rob Morgan: Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society (WAHRS)

Rob is the President of WAHRS and Vice-President of the Vancouver Area
Network of Drug Users (VANDU). Both groups engage in pragmatic solidarity
work, taking a hands-on approach.  From needle exchanges to back alley
patrols, WAHRS is on the front lines,  assisting their sisters and
brothers while advocating for social change through direct action.

Dr. Thomas Kerr: BC Center for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

Dr. Kerr has authored many influential medical papers in the field of
health and poverty. By using community-based research models that employ
marginalised people in the study of their peers, a more accurate depiction
of homelessness has come to light, with the findings being shared with the
broader community.

Sex Workers Activist Group

SWAG is an organization of street-level sex workers who have united to
fight for change in their living and working conditions.  They fight from
a position of first-hand experience with the most bitter forms of societal
neglect and injustice – seeing themselves and their sisters violated on a
daily basis, individually and systemically.  SWAG is fighting for the
human rights of street-level sex workers, from an anti-poverty
perspective, understanding that the problems of all low-wage workers are
rooted in the systems that manufacture and maintain their poverty.

Jill Chettiar: Anti-Poverty Committee

Jill is a long time organiser with the APC and a board member of the
Downtown Eastside Residents Association.

* The poster for this event is avalibale at http://apc.resist.ca/home *



-- 
The Anti-Poverty Committee is an organization of poor and working people,
who fight for poor people, their rights and an end to poverty by any means
necessary.  For more information on the Anti-Poverty Committee's on-going
campaigns, visit http://apc.resist.ca/home.  Contact us by e-mailing
apc at resist.ca or phoning 604-682-2726.

If you are able to donate financially to our legal defense or other
campaigns, deposits can be made directly into our account at any branch of
Vancity (account is listed under 'Anti-Poverty Committee).  Cheques or
money orders made out to the APC can be mailed to P.O. Box 1, 12 East
Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC V6A 1N1.

                           UNITED WE WILL WIN!