Our book helps bury our own

Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers Statement
9 November 2011

Funds raised through our community’s efforts to sell our book, No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way, is making it possible for Doreen Lewis to bury her son who died tragically days ago.

Last week, one of our own youth, 24 year old Leroy Van Wyk, passed away. He was taken to the local Delft Clinic with a severe ‘headache’. His symptoms were scoffed at and he was sent away with some pain tablets. (As poor people, Delft Clinic often refuses to take our health seriously and usually sends us away with Panado or Paracetamol even though we have much more serious illnesses).

Pavement Dwellers to speak at first ever Anarchist Book Fair

Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign
Event Notice

The Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers would like to invite all its supporters and the media to the first ever Cape Town Anarchist Book Fair to be held at Cafe Ganesh in Observatory from 10am to 6pm on the 5^th of November.

This is your opportunity to meet some of the authors of No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way and hear about our struggles from the horse’s mouth. Copies of our book along with copies of a sister anthology, My Dream Is To Be Bold: Our Work To End Patriarchy, will be available for purchase.

At 16h00 in the upstairs section of Ganesh, authors will do a presentation about their occupation of Symphony Way and their struggle for dignity, land and housing.

Please join us, we would love to meet you.

Contact Sarita @ 0764699843 and Jerome @ 0731438886

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For more information, see the book fair’s press release below…

Cape Town Anarchist Book Fair

*** Saturday 5 November 2011 *** Café Ganesh, Observatory (corner Trill Road & Lower Main Road). *** From 10am to 6pm *** Free entry

 

Remember, remember, the fifth of November, as this is the date when South Africa will play host to its first ever Anarchist Book Fair, taking place in Observatory, Cape Town, at Café Ganesh (corner Trill Road and Lower Main Road).

Comrades, armchair anarchists, committed revolutionaries and book lovers are invited to come and learn about this exciting philosophy and its proud history of resistance. You can swing by any time between 10am and 6pm to check out a wide range of radical literature, music, movies, talks and more. You’ll also have the chance to meet like-minded people, engage in discussions and workshops, and help to foment dissent (the ideal antidote to South Africa’s one party state).

Come and tune into an exciting moment in history. Not only have long-term dictatorships been overthrown by grassroots movements in North Africa (many of which organised along anarchist lines) but we’re also seeing a new decentralised occupation movement that started in Wall Street, New York and is now spreading across the world. People are taking to the streets and, if not directly calling for anarchism, are organising with anarchist principles such as horizontalism, decentralisation, and consensus-based decision-making.

Says one of the organisers Neil Goodwin, ‘Whenever societies descend into destruction and violence, commentators like to reach for the ‘anarchy’ label, in much the same way that colonialists once used ‘black’ to describe anything negative. This ideological hatchet job’s being going on for so long that people just accept it now. A flick through any one of hundreds of books at this bookfair will show you a completely different picture of Anarchy, a rich and vibrant set of values and social history built on co-operation, equality and ingenuity.’

There will be over 12 stalls and collectives taking part including –

The Missing Shelf, Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front, CrimethInc South Africa, Intsangu Clothes, Amandla! Magazine, Soundz of the South, Feminist Alternatives and Botsotso. The Sympony Way Pavement Dwellers, who will also be there showcasing their extraordinary book “No Land! No House! No Vote!”

Other talks will touch on such themes as “Anarchism, wtf? An introduction to anarchist ideas and history”…“Murdering the Queer dream: an incomplete personal critique on the liberal gay agenda in politics, in relationships, in death”…“Art & (revolutionary) Activism”

The programme will also include a feast of thought provoking films, including the South African premiere of ‘Reclaim the Streets – The Movie’, the staggering ‘Fourth World War’, a sneak preview of ‘Dear Mandela’, and that anarchist classic “Living Utopia”.
For further details, Contact Aragorn Eloef Tel: +27 (0) 82 557 3912

Email: us@anarchistbookfair.co.za or visit our website at www.anarchistbookfair.co.za and our events page on Facebook – ‘The Cape Town Anarchist Bookfair.

Pavement dwellers to present their book at two events / Only 17 hours left to bring our book tour to Europe and North America

To all supporters of the Symphony Way and Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign,

The Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers will be presenting their book at two events in Cape Town today and tomorrow:

• SA Cities Studies Conference – Along with other authors, we will be presenting our book, No Land! No House! No Vote! at 5pm tonight (7th Sep) at the Kimberley Hotel on Roeland Street in Central Cape Town. For more information, click here.
• Making a home in temporary spaces: film and photography by Sydelle Willow Smith – Symphony Way will be speaking and displaying their book at 6pm tomorrow (8th Sep) at Rococo on Buitenkant Streent in Central Cape Town. See facebook invite here.

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Last chance fundraising for Europe/North America book tour:

 

We only have 17 hours left to raise the money we need for a our book tour. If we get at least $4,000usd, then we’ll be able to bring 2 authors on tour.

Please contribute here now so that our voices can be heard outside South Africa.

10 days left for a US/UK book tour to fix the publishing industry

To all supporters of the Symphony Way and Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign,

We cannot humanise our world through a vanguard media. The right to a voice cannot be held only by elite academics, authors and politicians. To fix the publishing industry, we must turn freedom of speech on its head. This is why the first ever pavement dweller book tour of Europe and North America is so necessary. On behalf of the Symphony Way community, we ask you to help us bring our new anthology, No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way, to the world!

If we can raise the $6,830 (usd) needed for the plane tickets, we plan to visit universities, bookstores, organisations and movements the following cities:

London / Oxford
New York / Boston
Philadelphia / Washington DC
Chicago / Milwaukee
San Francisco / Los Angeles
Ottawa / Toronto
Vancouver

In order to make this happen, however, we need to raise an additional $5,666 within the next 10 days before our campaign ends.

If you believe in the importance of providing a platform for authentic voices from below, this is your chance to make sure these voices get heard. Please contribute to our campaign and you will receive free copies of the book, DVDs, signed copies by Raj Patel, and even a specially arranged visit to the city of your choice by the authors.

But please contribute here now before we run out of time!

Thanks for your support. Aluta continua!

The Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers
Contact: symphony@antieviction.org.za or 0845930255

To bring the book tour to your city, contact jaredsacks@gmail.com

Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers in Grahamstown to speak about their new anthology

Press Release – 9 August 2011
Students for Social Justice
Unemployed People’s Movement
Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign

Event 1: Pavement Dwellers to speak at Rhodes University
Venue: Sociology 1, Rhodes University
Date/Time: Thursday 11 August @ 19h00 – 21h00

Event 2: Symphony Way authors meet the Unemployed People’s Movement
Venue: Duna Library in Joza Township
Date/Time: Friday 12 August @ 3pm

‘A beauty, extraordinary in every way.’
Naomi Klein, author of ‘The Shock Doctrine’ and ‘No Logo’

Students for Social Justice, the Sociology Department, and the Unemployed Peoples Movement in Grahamstown have organized two unique talks by four of the Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers, authors of No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way. This extraordinary anthology of struggle it testimony and poetry written on the pavement of one of the longest running civil disobedience protests in South Africa’s history.

Poster: Rhodes University book launch of No Land! No House! No Vote!

Review of No Land! No House! No Vote! for Amandla Magazine

Amandla Magazine, South Africa – Jun 1, 2011

by Martin Legassick

On 19 December 2007, encouraged by their Democratic Alliance (DA) councilor, backyarders in Delft illegally occupied unfinished houses in the N2 Gateway scheme. After battling in court, they were evicted on 19 February 2008. Many of them decided to remain across the road from the N2 Gateway houses, and built shacks along the pavement of Symphony Way. After a further 20 months of contestation these people were evicted again, to the nearby Blikkiesdorp Temporary Relocation Area (TRA).

Op-ed: Freedom of speech is upside-down

Note: Versions of this article have appeared in the Catalogue of the 2011 Jozi Book Fair and 5 August 2011 edition of The New Age.

We live in a world turned on its head, a desolate, de-souled world that practices the superstitious worship of machines and the idolatry of arms, an upside-down world with its left on its right, its belly button on its backside, and its head where its feet should be… It’s a world where children work and don’t play, where ‘development’ makes people poorer, where cars are in streets where people should be, where a tiny minority of the world consumes a majority of its resources…If the world is upside-down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?

-Eduardo Galeano

Celebrated Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano would surely also agree that there is something upside-down about the way freedom of speech is meted out in our society.

Pavement Dwellers in Joburg to promote their new book

Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign
3 August 2011

‘A beauty, extraordinary in every way.’
Naomi Klein, author of ‘The Shock Doctrine’ and ‘No Logo’

The Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers who now stay in Blikkiesdorp have just arrived in Johannesburg to promote our new unique anthology, No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way.

We invite all our supporters, detractors and anyone interested in learning more about our struggle to hear Sarita, Lilly, Jane, Tilla and Mina speak about their daily struggles dignity in the new South Africa.

They will be featured in a panel discussion today at the NGO/Social Movement Fair and will be hosting a book launch tonight at Love and Revolution in Mellville. On Thursday evening, five of the authors will be speaking about their critique of urban planning at Wits university. On Saturday, Finally, the authors will be hosting a stall at the Jozi Book Fair for the entire event, from the 6^th until the 8^th of August. On the 6^th of August, they will be hosting another panel discussion at the Fair.

These events will be an important opportunity for our communities to speak about their struggles for land, housing and dignity.

If you are not able to attend, please consider buying our book available at most South African bookstores or online at Kalahari.

Here are the details of the events in the next few days:

The City of Cape Town has created this war in Blikkiesdorp

29 July 2011
Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Release

We warned the City.
We warned the courts.
We warned the public.
Fearing for our lives and with a heavy heart, we write this to tell Zille, Plato and de Lille and say: We told you so!

Yesterday, the morning of the 28^th of July, Blikkiesdorp exploded into a full-scale drug war.

This is what we warned the government against when we resisted our eviction to Blikkiesdorp from the pavement of Symphony Way. The shacks we built ourselves were better than the shacks that our City has built and dumped us in.

We, as residents of this camp, have no control here because the City has disempowered us and stood by while drug-dealers have invaded the ‘temporary’ relocation area.

Yesterday morning, two adults were shot in broad daylight by three gunmen. Yesterday evening, a revenge shooting took place and three more people were shot and are now in hospital. One of those shot was a teenage boy, a member of the Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers. Some people have been arrested but all the residents of Blikkiesdorp know that this is only the beginning as revenge killings are likely to continue in the weeks to come.