SOUTHSIDE SOLIDARITY NETWORK & STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY present

FIGHTING DISPLACEMENT FROM SOUTH AFRICA TO CHICAGO

A Visit from Ashraf Cassiem

Ashraf Cassiem is the lead organizer of South
Africa’s Anti-Eviction Campaign in the Western Cape.

An activist from the Mitchells Plain township with a
long history in the anti-apartheid struggle, Ashraf
has been one of the leading critics of the
continuing attacks on poor people’s human rights in
South Africa after the fall of apartheid. The
Anti-Eviction Campaign has been written about and
reported on around the world for its innovative,
bold, and defiant resistance in the face of
evictions, privatization and violation of the right
to housing that have increased with the spread of
IMF and World Bank-imposed economic policies through
post-apartheid South Africa.

Fighting Displacement from South Africa to Chicago will be a chance to
hear reflections from Ashraf on the situation
confronting South Africa’s poor, the resistance they
have organized, and lessons to be learned by groups
struggling for the right to housing in a U.S.
housing market plagued by foreclosure, evictions
and destruction of public housing. Local leaders
from Southside Together Organizing for Power, a
tenant organizing group based in Woodlawn, will
share their own struggles to stop evictions and
housing demolition and engage with Ashraf and the
audience in a discussion on making local-global
connections in struggles for human rights.

Wednesday, November 11
Harper 140
7:30 P.M.
Free dinner will be served

For more information, contact Divya Sundar at
divyasundar@uchicago.edu