March 27 – April 4, 2017: “Homes for People, Not for Profit!”

Homes for People, Not for Profit!
The struggle to build autonomous community power with Vida Digna
w/ Sergio Pacheco, Organizer with the
Tlanezi Calli Urban Housing Cooperative in Mexico City
When: March 27 – April 4, 2017
Where: Chicago, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, & Minnesota
*Due to the new anti-immigrant regime, Sergio’s visa was inexplicably denied twice – therefore he will be video-streamed live from his community with representatives from the Tlanezi Calli and Xochi Tlanezi youth commissions*

Sergio Pacheco will speak about his more than 20 years of experience organizing for housing rights in working class communities in one of the biggest cities in the world. Emerging from the government’s inadequate response to the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, Tlanezi Calli (House of the Dawn – in Nahuatl) was founded in 1995 to rebuild affordable housing and reconstruct the tejido social (social fabric) of Iztapalapa, Mexico City. With weekly assemblies, collective work projects, urban gardening plots, a health clinic, and after-school tutoring – just to mention a few – Sergio and his neighbors engage in powerful autonomous community building to achieve Vida Digna (Dignified Life) with full independence from any political parties. His talk will have important lessons for anyone interested in human rights, housing, and alternatives to capitalist community development.