Miami Final Dispatch: March on the Mayors Conference : Miami IMC

Go here for photos:

* Saturday and Sunday Strategy Round Tables
http://www.flickr.com/photos/82285926@N00/sets/72157605754422101/
* Dance, Dance Revolution
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Final Report

After a summit on Thursday June 19th (Juneteenth) and rainy but inspiring march on June 20th, the Right to the City Alliance held two days of movement strategy round table discussions.

During these two days over 200 resident delegates of grassroots organizations from cities across the U.S. elevated the dialogue. Instead of discussing the need to build a national urban movement for justice the weekend's conversation centered on how to build that movement now.

During the round table discussions resident delegates addressed 5 challenges facing the Right to the City Alliance organizations as it begins to build a broader movement.

Challenge #1 - Building the base of grassroots organizations to scale and building the leadership of the base.
Challenge #2 - Expanding alliances with new and different sectors to win power
Challenge # 3 - Amplifying our voice and shifting public debate.
Challenge #4 - Building democratic and economic institutions in order to maintain and support our work.
Challenge #5 - Building public governance through voter engagement and participation in governmental structures.

In between the two days of strategy conversations, on Saturday night, RTTC through a party. Lifted up by the funky sounds of the Power U Band and the beats of DJ Doormouse and DJ Madame Turk, people danced into the night. "We can't spend all of our time in meetings or actions, some things we need to work out on the dance floors. Our movement needs to be grounded in the cultures we come from," said Gihan Perera of the Miami Workers Center.

While RTTC delegates were debating strategy and movement building outside the mayors' conference LeKedra Robertson was inside lobbying mayors to divest from corporations found to be profiteering from Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts. She spoke with:

* Mayor Fenty's office from DC: Rebecca Thompson & Eric Jones
* L. Douglas Wilder: Mayor of Richmond
* Samuel S. Brown: Mayor of Lauderdale Lakes, FL
* Kwame Kilpatrick: Mayor of Detroit

Several Mayors from the Carribean:

* Muscadin Jean-Yves Jason: Municipal de Porta-au-Prince
* Murcison Brwon: Port of Spain
* Desmond Anthon McKenzie: Mayor of Kingston & St. Andrew
* Simeon Lopez: City of Belmopan

According to Le'Kedra "Everyone was receptive of information. Having the Carribean a part of the solidarity is important as Carnival Cruise is one of the companies we are focusing on."

As Sunday wrapped up and delegates carried their bags to airport shuttles many stopped to say goodbye to each other, tired but smiling. In the end, a fabulous fiesta for self-congratulating politicians was marked by public scrutiny. As it should be. The Right to the City Alliance is joining a global movement to bring the public back into politics. This is a movement that takes aim at gentrification and the global role of cities, grasps the tools of human rights and democracy, and rests on the foundation of resident and community power. We are blending the best of mobilizations and direct actions with community-based power building and long-term campaigns for change.

This is just the beginning. Stay tuned for anniversary activities for Hurricane Katrina and the U.S. Conference of Mayors 2009.
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SHOUT OUT!

Organizations from across the county mobilized to the March on the Mayors. Together we started building a national urban movement. A big shout out and much love for the organizations listed below.

* Boston/Providence - RTTC:
Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE) - http://www.ace-ej.org/
City Life/Vida Urbana - http://clvu.mayfirst.org/
Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE) - http://www.daretowin.org/
Olneyville Neighborhood Association

* Bay Area - RTTC:
DataCenter - http://www.datacenter.org/
Just Cause Oakland - http://www.justcauseoakland.org/
People Organized to Demand Environmental Rights (PODER) - http://www.podersf.org/
People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) - http://peopleorganized.org/
South of Market Community Action Network - http://www.somcan.org/
St. Peter's Housing Committee - http://www.comitedevivienda.org/

* DC Metro - RTTC:
Advancement Project - http://www.advanceproj.org/
ONE DC - http://www.onedconline.org/
Tenants and Workers United - http://www.tenantsworkers.org/

* Los Angeles - RTTC
Korean Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA) - http://www.kiwa.org/
Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE) - http://www.saje.net

* Miami - RTTC:
Florida Legal Services - http://www.floridalegal.org/miami.htm
Miami Workers Center - http://www.miamiworkerscenter.org
Power U Center - http://www.poweru.org
South Florida Jobs with Justice - Vecinos Unidos - http://www.sfjwj.org/

* New Orleans - RTTC:
Dirty Dozen
Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children (FFLIC) - http://www.fflic.org/
Safe Streets/Strong Communities - http://www.safestreetsnola.org

* New York City - RTTC:
CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities Center for Social Inclusion - http://www.caaav.org/
Community Voices Heard - http://www.cvhaction.org/
FIERCE! - http://www.fiercenyc.org/
Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE) - http://www.furee.org/
Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES) - http://www.goles.org/
Make the Road NY - http://www.maketheroad.org/
Mothers on the Move - http://www.mothersonthemove.org/
NYC Aids Housing Network - http://www.nycahn.org/
Picture the Homeless - http://www.picturethehomeless.org/
WeACT! - http://www.weact.org/

* Local and National Allies:
Coalition to Protect Public Housing - http://www.limits.com/cpph/
Southside Together Organizing for Power - http://apps.facebook.com/causes/81698
Grassroots Global Justice - http://www.ggjalliance.org
Jobs With Justice National - http://www.jwj.org/
Coalition of Immokalee Workers - http://www.ciw-online.org
RISEP - http://www.risep-fiu.org
Take Back the Land - http://www.takebacktheland.net/
FANM - http://www.fanm.org
Miami Dade Green Party - http://www.miamidadegreenparty.org
Florida Immigrant Coalition - http://www.floridaimmigrant.org
Miami For Peace - http://www.miamiforpeace.net/
Interfaith Action of SW Florida - http://www.interfaithact.org
Clean Water Action - http://www.cleanwateraction.org/
We Count - http://www.we-count.org/
Code Pink - http://www.codepink4peace.org/

Conference Crashers
by Anjie Hargot & Ben Torter (Miami Sunpost) Friday, Jun. 27, 2008 at 10:58 PM

Conference Crashers

Protesters crash the U.S. Conference of Mayors to mourn the loss of our cities to special interests, gentrification and poverty

By Angie Hargot and Ben Torter

Demonstrators march to “take back” their cities during U.S. Conference of Mayors in Miami. Photo by Richard M. Brooks
As 700 of the nation’s mayors, a presidential hopeful and a former president gathered in the plush InterContinental hotel in downtown Miami for the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors last week, hundreds of activists held a “counter conference” in the gritty streets outside.

Their message: The mayors should listen to the people they represent rather than developers and big corporations profiting at the expense of the poor.

The protesters gathered Thursday night for an organizational summit that kicked off three days of activities, including a bus tour of blighted neighborhoods, a New Orleans-style jazz funeral march and speeches on the sidewalk in front of the heavily guarded hotel.

Roughly 300 protesters from seven U.S. regions — the San Francisco Bay area, the D.C. metro area, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City, Boston/Providence and Miami — demonstrated in a March on the Mayors mock funeral procession Friday that began at the corner of Northwest Second Avenue and Northwest Seventh Street.

As a light rain fell on an otherwise hot and sunny afternoon, a New Orleans-style jazz band accompanied protesters carrying large black cardboard coffins, each bearing the name of cities represented by Right to the City, a national alliance of community activists.

Hoisting their umbrellas toward the murky sky, the demonstrators carried life-sized cardboard skeletons bearing the words “gentrification” and “police harassment,” symbolizing their hopes for the end of those injustices.

The band played on as the block-long procession snaked its way around a corner, while Miami police officers paced the crowd on mountain bikes and motorcycles.

“Our dear, darling mayors are talking to the wrong people,” said Shannon Reaze, a member of the Power U activist group. “They’re talking to developers, speculators and corporations. They need to talk to the workers, the mothers, the children — the majority of people that make up this city.”

Reclaiming rights

By the time the group arrived near the InterContinental hotel, the disheartening rain had become a torrential downpour. But the organizers and marchers were undaunted.

“Fuck the rain,” Reaze yelled. “Ain’t no rain gonna stop us!” The thunder was at times so fierce that it often drowned her out as she hollered the group’s demands over a speaker on the back of a flatbed truck.

“How many people had [$1,650] to get into this conference?” Reaze shouted, referring to the cost for members of the public to attend the conference. Their chants — “Whose schools? Our schools!” and “Whose community? Our community!” — resonated under nearby Metromover stations.

As the demonstrators marched on, the coffin for Boston and Providence melted in the pouring rain. However, Providence pallbearer Tomy Mooie held his head high. “Our coffin may be down, but our spirit is still up,” he said.

Protesters chanted “books not bombs” and “down with Bush, up with the people,” and held signs that said “people over profit” and “economic equality.”

“We’ve been organizing hundreds of thousands of tenants against slumlords and gentrification,” said Gilda Haas, executive director of Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, and a member of the Los Angeles chapter of Right to the City. “We want the mayors to be talking about the people’s issues and increasing democracy.”

The New Orleans-style funeral procession carried a special significance — Right to the City delegates want people, including the visiting mayors and their cities, to divest from 10 global corporations with government contracts that were cited in a congressional investigation for profiting from the devastating New Orleans floods caused by Hurricane Katrina. One of those corporations is Miami’s own Carnival Cruise Lines, a company that was paid more than $235 million to allow displaced residents to live on its ships.

“We’re declaring death on the old ways and we’re going to be pushing forward new ways of thinking about cities and justice and the economy,” Haas said. “Our mayors are talking to developers, to lawyers, to speculators — the minority of the city.”

The mayor’s conference, which featured speeches from presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, was closed to anyone who couldn’t shell out $1,650 for a ticket.

“They said you couldn’t talk to your mayors,” Reaze told the drenched congregation. “They said you couldn’t come out in the rain. But we are here.”

Mourning the city

A day before, at the group’s June 19 People’s State of the City Summit at Miami Dade College, a Caribbean Junkanoo band energized the crowd and served as a fitting opening for a multistate, multiplatform and multicultural response to the convergence of mayors.

The summit coincided with the holiday celebrated in 29 U.S. states known as Juneteenth, or Emancipation Day, celebrating the 1865 announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas.

A panel of speakers gave short speeches about the group’s demands for more affordable housing, an end to gentrification, election reform and government accountability.

New York’s Picture the Homeless spokesperson Robert Robinson, who lived on the streets of Miami from 2003 to 2005, led a dialogue with residents about Miami’s often squalid housing conditions and spoke about the importance of presenting a united front.

“We’re here to show the mayors that we ain’t taking this shit anymore,” Robinson said. “We’re here, we’re following your ass and eventually we’re getting in front of your face.”

The panel fielded cries for help from locals victimized by slumlords and skyrocketing housing costs, such as Miami resident Katherine Hutcherson, who said she was forced to live in a homeless shelter after suffering a stroke and being thrown out of her Town Park Plaza South apartment.

“How can disabled people be put out of their homes? Who can help to fight?” Hutcherson asked. “For those people who have died in the same circumstances, I want to be the voice that can speak out from the grave.”

Miami Workers Center organizer Joseph Phelan, who had been busy darting in and out of the meeting hall, crouched down beside the rows of attendees. “There’s a tour leaving in a few minutes,” he said. “You want to jump on?”

The real Miami

More than 50 activists from New York, Miami, Los Angeles and other cities packed themselves into a school bus to tour the blighted neighborhoods of Overtown, Liberty City and Little Haiti, as well as other Miami neighborhoods that have seen the effects of gentrification, such as Wynwood and the Design District.

“Ain’t no power like the power of the people, and the power of the people don’t stop,” chanted many on the bus as it pulled away from the campus.

The tour was led by Tony Romano, co-founder of the Miami Workers Center, a Liberty City-based organization that helps working-class residents fight for their rights through organization and education programs.

“There’s a war going on in Miami,” Romano hollered through a megaphone, ratcheting the vibe on the bus up to a militant level. “Any piece of land, the rich and the powerful are trying to take it to build condos.”

The bus drove by the Overtown headquarters of Power U, a group that builds tenant unions to fight slumlords.

Rather than condos, Romano called for more public housing projects where tenants pay rent based on what they earn, and if they’re unemployed, they pay nothing.

Romano spoke about the battle that many poor residents fought with the city to upgrade Wynwood’s Roberto Clemente Park. He took a dig at the Miami mega-plan that calls for using community redevelopment tax dollars from poor neighborhoods to build a baseball stadium, port tunnel, museum park and possibly trolley cars, calling it “corporate welfare for the rich.”

His message: Come together to fight injustice and take what you deserve. “The scariest thing for the powers that be is united black people,” Romano said.

The bus stopped near the sight of Umoja Village, the shantytown for the homeless that burned down last year, and picked up one of the camp’s organizers, Dennis “T-Bone” Gilbert, who happened to be strutting down an uneven sidewalk.

“Rumor is someone paid the cops to burn down Umoja Village,” Gilbert told those on the bus.

Distrust of the police and government was a common theme among those on the bus: A group of passengers chanted “Fuck the police, fuck the police” as the bus passed a Miami police officer who had pulled over a car.

They also booed at the art galleries in the Design District and Wynwood, and at the entire Midtown Miami mall and condo project, saying they’ve done nothing but displace the poor, not help them.

“We’re down [here] to take part in the [mayors’] conference and to tie together the struggle against gentrification,” said Shawn Lin, of the New York City-based Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence. One of his group’s fronts is Chinatown in New York City, which, Lin says, is being gentrified to make it more tourist-friendly at the expense of immigrants who can’t afford rising property values. His group joined RTTC, a network of like-minded groups, to achieve power in numbers.

With spiky black hair and colorful tattoos covering his arms, Lin’s face was grim as he walked through the Sunnyland Trailer Park and Trinidad Court at Northwest 79th Street and Miami Court, where dilapidated mobile homes surrounded dumpsters overflowing with trash and putrid water. A young father and mother stood near their run-down trailer with their barefoot baby, who was wearing a diaper and had snot running onto a dirty T-shirt — a scene reminiscent of one of those infomercials asking for relief money for Third World countries.

“This is a really heavy tour,” said Lin.

Grave Reality

As the bus toured the city, a resident attending the People’s Summit just blocks away told of being forced out of her trailer with nowhere to go after the trailer park was sold to developers. Another told about her high school graduation, where chairs were left empty for classmates shot and killed by police. Yet another told of her roach-infested Miami apartment, where rats bite her grandchildren.

“We’ve got to start caring,” said Power U member Reginald Munnings. “When the boat rocks, we all rock with it.”

After the summit, residents and activists spilled out into the center of the campus, still discussing the demands for which they would demonstrate the next day.

“We want to make the mayors hear us,” said Lauren Wheeler, of Just Cause Oakland, a low-income tenant and worker advocate group. “There are enough of us … that the individual mayors can actually recognize us and what we’re saying.”

Le’Kedra Robertson was the delegate who gained access to the conference and spent her time lobbying the mayors with a resolution urging them to divest from the offending corporations.

“We see this as a beginning to a large urban movement in the U.S.,” said Phelan on Tuesday, still recovering from days of protesting and organizational meetings for the just 18-month-old alliance. The 150 RTTC delegates from around the country “left tired but invigorated,” he said.

Asked if he thought Miami Police Chief John Timoney made it rain, Phelan replied with a chuckle, “If he had the power, I wouldn’t doubt it.”

Housing activists confront mayors
BY JOY-ANN REID

Fair housing advocates from around the country held a series of meetings and protests timed to coincide with the 76th Annual U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) gathering last weekend.

MIAMI — Fair housing advocates from around the country held a series of meetings and protests timed to coincide with the 76th Annual U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) gathering last weekend.

The groups, part of a national coalition called Right to the City, said their goal was to force the country's mayors to confront issues such as homelessness, affordable housing and poverty.

A heavy police presence kept the protesters far from the approximately 700 city leaders who descended on Miami, with Miami Mayor Manny Diaz playing host.

The mayors had come to discuss and promote policy recommendations to Congress and to the next presidential administration on the issues of “rising energy costs, housing, safe, clean drinking water, transportation, street crime, public schools, gangs, healthcare quality and costs, secure airports and ports, illegal guns, drugs, drug dealers and immigration,” according to the USCM website.

The organization also released a 42-city study on the nation's foreclosure crisis.

Protesters, however, said the conference was misguided.

“The people inside that building are talking to the wrong people!” Sushma Sheth, director of programs for the Miami Workers Center, told a crowd of 250 who gathered in the pouring rain Friday, June 20 near the Intercontinental Hotel in Miami, where the mayors were meeting with dignitaries from across the U.S. and Canada.

The mayors meeting lasted from June 20 to 24.

The dignitaries included Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, Toronto Mayor David Miller, members of the Bush administration, including Federal Housing Administration Commissioner Brian Montgomery and White House Interagency Council on Homelessness Philip Mangano.

Also attending were industry representatives including Mortgage Bankers Association Chairman Kieran Quinn and National Association of Realtors President-Elect Charles McMillan.

They were joined by local leaders like Diaz and Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Rudy Crew.

On June 21 and 22, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and former U.S. President Bill Clinton addressed the conference.

Determined to be heard, protest organizers stationed a representative, Lakedra Robertson of the Katrina Information Network, inside the hotel June 20 to petition the nation's mayors to stop doing business with companies cited for “waste, fraud or mismanagement” in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

So far, the group says, three cities, Erie, Pennsylvania; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Atlantic City, New Jersey have passed resolutions barring such companies from doing business with the governments there.

Right to the City accused the country's municipal leaders of ignoring lower-income people, while catering to the whims of developers, banks and other large stakeholders.

“They should be talking to the people!” Sheth said to cheers amid the downpour.

The Miami Workers Center is a founding member of Right to the City, and other Miami members include the Power U Center for Social Change, Jobs with Justice/Vecinos Unidos, and Tenant Workers United.

The June 20 protest was punctuated by a march, staged as a New Orleans-style jazz funeral, complete with To Be Continued, a brass band consisting of young men and women between the ages of 19 and 23, many of whom live in New Orleans' Ninth Ward.

The marchers and musicians wound from historic Greater Bethel AME Church on Northwest Second Avenue and Eighth Street to Bayfront Park, near the hotel.

Marchers from as far away as California, New York and Illinois joined with local activists, carrying cardboard skeletons on tall sticks and makeshift coffins bearing the names of issues such as housing, which organizers said is dying under the shadow of gentrification.

By the time the marchers arrived at the bandstand Miami Workers Center members had erected in front of Bayfront Park, the skeletons and coffins had virtually melted in the afternoon rain.

Still, the weather didn't dampen the spirits of the protesters, who crowded along the sidewalk chanting, “Whose city? Our city!”

One of the marchers, Lauren Wheeler, 31, of Just Cause Oakland, relished the idea of being in Miami with so many people from around the country.

“I think the idea of this many people representing so many cities is important, because I think people don't often hear the voices of people,” Wheeler said. “Even though we elect our mayors, they spend the next four years adhering to corporate interests. Today, it's really just about making sure people hear us.”

Wheeler said more than a dozen people traveled from California's Bay Area to participate in the weekend's events.

Earlier in the week, at what was billed as a “people's state of the city summit,” hundreds of activists from Right to the City's eight regional branches: Miami, New York, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Providence/Boston and Virginia/D.C., and the newly added Chicago chapter, gathered for a panel discussion and workshop at Miami Dade College's Wolfson Campus.

Panelists and audience members excoriated the country's political leaders, including Diaz, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for ignoring low income people.

“They need to put the people in the community first, because they're making decisions without contacting the people in the community,” said Anne Washington, who traveled from Harlem, New York.

“We are all being crushed by the same scheme that's displacing the people and putting profits before people” said Serena Perez of Miami's Vecinos Unidos, who alleged that many Haitian-American and Latino families are being evicted from mobile home parks across South Florida to make way for condominiums.

Perez and other activists said they are fighting what they call “neoliberalism,” which Perez called a global economic system that took hold in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s in which privatization is used “to make corporations richer by making sure government is as small as it can be.”

Denise Perry, who heads Power U – a grassroots, Miami-based organization that advocates social, environmental and economic justice – said on June 23 that part of the purpose of the summit and the protests was to reshape the image of cities like Miami, so that the less fortunate are not ignored. She pointed sarcastically to a slogan on the USCM website declaring, “Miami sizzles with excitement.”

“The informal economy ... the people selling fruit or shrimp, selling candy apples on our streets to keep food on their tables are also part of what this city is about,” Perry said.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Perry and many of the other activists are no fans of Diaz, who was sworn in June 23 as the USCM's 66th president.

At issue is Diaz's alleged favoritism for building high-rise condominiums at the expense of public housing.

Perry even took aim at Diaz's recent initiative to expand Internet access to low-income residents, saying, “The Internet is no help if you don't have a job and can't afford a place to live.”

Diaz did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Right to the City plans to turn the more than 200 recommendations written by attendees into a report to be released nationally on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Aug. 29.

The group also plans to have a presence at the next U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Rhode Island in 2009.