Come to the Community Forum and Supper to discuss these issues.
Major changes are proposed by the City, the 519 Community Centre, and developers for Moss Park, the John Innes Centre, George Street and other neighbourhoods in Toronto’s Downtown East.
– What are we hearing about the proposed new recreation centre at Moss Park?
– What is behind the City of Toronto’s and the 519 Community Centre’s ‘redevelopment’ plan?
– What will the City do to address the loss of shelter beds?
– How will the new condo and apartment developments affect the neighbourhood?
– What are the implications for sex workers, drug users, and poor and homeless people?
What can we do about it? How can we as a community respond?
When April 7, 2016, 6pm to 9pm
Where John Innes Community Centre,
Sherbourne and Shuter Streets, Toronto
Wheelchair accessible
Food, childcare and TTC tokens provided
Mced by Anna Willats (long-time Toronto social justice activist/educator) and Gaetan Heroux (OCAP).
Speakers include: Monica Forrester (Maggies), Helen Lenskyj (QTCD) and Río Rodríguez.
Across the city we have seen gentrification negatively affect poor and working class people. We are told that developer investment and affluent homeowners will bring us prosperity and “economic development”. The City of Toronto and 519’s plan for Moss Park uses language such as “resiliency,” “inclusiveness” and “vibrancy” in order to assure us that we will also have a “seat at the table” and an equal share in the benefits when all is said and done.
However, rising rents and costs of living, increases in police violence, cuts to public services, racism, discrimination, and people being forced out of the area is what will actually follow.
How do we fight back? Communities across Toronto are forming tenants unions, mobilizing against the police, forming grassroots community groups and other forms of resistance. Many queer and trans people are coming together to say that gentrification cannot take place in their names. We hope this community forum can help build a broad opposition to gentrification of our communities.
Organized By: Queer Trans Community Defence (QTCD).
Queer Trans Community Defence exists to defend and build people’s power within our communities. This way we can defend our neighbourhoods from the City, the developers and to challenge those in the Queer/LGBT community who are participating – knowingly or not – in projects that will drive poor people from their homes. We reject the invoking of LGBT rights to try to prevent opposition to various ‘revitalization’ schemes and especially to the rapid gentrification of the DTE (Downtown East).
No Pride in Gentrification! Community not Commodity!
Sponsored By: The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, the Ontario Public Interest Research Group, and Queer Ontario
For more information: https://www.facebook.com/events/1683713258584139/
queertranscommunitydefence@gmail.com; http://queertranscommunitydefence.blogspot.ca/; http://www.facebook.com/queertranscommunitydefence