What's happening to public space in Montreal? Rising land values and real estate are having an adverse impact on existing communities. Gentrification and mega-urban developments like the Quartier des Spectacles continue unchecked. People – especially the poor – are being displaced and bashed. Expensive condos replace affordable housing. There is more police profiling of street people, more 'urban cleansing,' and the security of those who work in the streets is jeopardized. Meanwhile, community concerns are being ignored. How can we stop this process and take back our city? How do we keep Montreal affordable, accessible and liveable?

A panel presentation and roundtable discussion.

Presenters:

• John Bradley is a community organizer at the Pointe Saint-Charles Community Clinic, active in non-profit housing development and in questions of social justice in an urban setting for over thirty years (Milton–Parc, SHDM), with a particular interest in the connections between urban planning, public health, ecology and citizen empowerment.

• Stella is the Montreal community group that was created in 1995 to provide support and info to sex-workers so that they can live in safety and with dignity. Stella also educates the public about sex work, fights discrimination against sex-workers, and promotes the decriminalisation of sex work. 'Stella favours empowerment and solidarity by and amongst sex-workers.'

• Stéphanie Lareau has been working at Stella for five years as an outreach worker downtown.

• Anita Schoepp is an intervention streetworker with Stella for the past 7 months and has been doing streetwork in Montreal for the past 5 years. She works mainly in the downtown area and does needle exchanges, crisis intervention, accompaniment and sex-worker rights advocacy.

• Velma Candyass is a teacher, choreographer and performer in the vanguard of bringing neo-burlesque and striptease classes to Montreal. Involved in street theatre and verbatim theatre activist projects, and currently active in the movement to save the Lower Main of Boulevard St Laurent, including Cafe Cleopatra.

Facilitator Norman Nawrocki is a part-time faculty member in Concordia's School of Community and Public Affairs and a longtime community organizer in Montreal, currently involved with saving Parc Oxygène.

The Rad School is a group of Montreal community organizers and activists who present public events about diverse social justice issues. Each event offers a place to think critically about theories and practices, about what works, what doesn't, and to develop new perspectives for our activism so that we can organize more effectively. It's also an opportunity to meet and learn from each other.

More info: theradschool@gmail.com