“When Mother Comes Home for Christmas” tells the story of a Josephine Perera, a widowed mother of three, who is one of thousands of Sri Lankan women who have left their country to earn salaries as domestic workers abroad.

Joya will speak on the current status of women in Afghanistan and what the future will look like when US troops are withdrawn. She will be joined by SHARMIN HOSSAIN, a member of the Ad Hoc Committee Against the Militarization of CUNY.

Join us to celebrate the publication of David Harvey’s A Companion to Marx’s Capital, Volume 2. We will also be celebrating the completion of the David Harvey’s Volume 2 video lectures, which comprise a semester-long open course now available on the web: http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital

The Center for Place, Culture, and Politics invites you to meet our 2013-2014 fellows, and celebrate this year’s the theme Remaking Worlds: Insurgencies, Revolutions, Utopias,  and our entry into the new school year. Wednesday, September 11th, 5:30-7:30.  Room 6107,

The Graduate Program in Design and Urban Ecologies at Parsons The New School for Design and The Center for Place Culture and Politics announces the 40 Year Anniversary Symposium of David Harvey’s Social Justice and The City (1973 – 2013), Saturday, May 4 from 10a – 6p at The New School, 66 West 12th Street, 404.

In April 1970, an essay titled “Social Processes and Spatial Form:  An Analysis of the Conceptual Problems of Urban Planning,” was published in volume 25 of the journal Papers of the Regional Science Association. For this first time, this essay constructed an unexplored critique of urban disciplines vis-á-vis capitalism. The result created a dialectical theoretical framework, and forever changed the way many urban practitioners viewed their disciplinary tools and formal training. Ultimately, this heralded an ongoing formation of radically new and unseen forms of urban practice. In 1973, this essay became the first chapter of Social Justice and the City. David Harvey’s seminal second book split the way our cities are read, and created entirely new research paths for his contemporaries and younger practitioners.

Forty years after its publication, Social Justice and the City is as relevant as when it was first conceived. As the processes of urbanization fall faster than ever at the control of the elites, an unprecedented wave of enforced spatial segregation radically alters our urban realities. Today, Social Justice and the City provokes views and directions that remain at the core of any imaginary for resistance, and an action towards the belief that socially just forms of urbanization are possible.

The 40 year commemoration of Social Justice and the City will pay tribute to the lasting work and influence of David Harvey. The day will be introduced by Harvey, who will share his views on the book and its 40 year trajectory. Harvey will then be joined by a diverse array of urban practitioners, from artists to academics and designers, whose practice has been transformed by Social Justice and the City.

Participants Include:  David Harvey, Sharon Zukin, Don Mitchell, Andy Merrifield, Margit Mayer, Peter Marcuse, Ayreen Anastas, Martha Rosler, Miguel Robels-Durán, Rene Gabri, William Moorish, Andrew Ross, Jeanne van Heeswijk, William Tabb, John Krinsky, Teddy Cruz, Erik Swyngedouw, Nik Heynen, Neil Brenner, Melissa Wright, Tom Angotti, Linda McDowell, Miriam Greenberg, Richard Walker and others.

RSVP & Information:  urban.parsons.edu

Media Contact

Chris Chafin, The New School, 79 FIFTH AVENUE, 17TH FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10003. 212.229.5667 x3794,  twitter.com/Urban_Ecologies

This event will seek to provide a platform for analysis of the present political crises facing Bangladesh, by bringing together people from across the United States and Bangladesh who are academics, political commentators, activists, and students, for a discussion and dialogue with the audience.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013, Room 9207, 7-9 pm. Free, open to the public

Thursday, April 25, 2013 from 6.30 – 8.30 pm in the Recital Hall

The Graduate Center, CUNY. Free and open to the public.

How can urban social movements cohere with existing institutions of power, from unions to local government? As importantly, how can movements collaborate with each other to achieve broader, systemic changes? Can these movements and political projects realistically be anti-capitalist? Activists and leaders Bill Fletcher, Jon Liss, and Gihan Perera will discuss these issues in an open forum.

BILL FLETCHER, JR. is the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; an editorial board member of BlackCommentator.com; and in the leadership of several other projects. Fletcher is the co-author (with Peter Agard) of “The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941″; the co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of “Solidarity Divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice“; and the author of “‘They’re Bankrupting Us’ – And Twenty other myths about unions.” Fletcher is a syndicated columnist and a regular media commentator on television, radio and the Web. www.billfletcherjr.com

JON LISS has organized for racial and social justice in Virginia for the last 30 years. Between 1979-1981, he organized for the creation of an African American Studies department as a student at the University of Virginia. He graduated with a B.A. in History in 1981, and continued his organizing for US divestment in the South African Apartheid regime. From 1983-1984, he served as an elected leader of a taxi drivers association. In 1986, Jon co-founded Tenants and Workers United (TWU), a low-income racial and gender justice organization based in the Arlandria-Chirilagua neighborhood. Jon served as the Executive Director of TWU until 2011. In 2007 he co-founded Virginia New Majority and currently serves as both a board member and as the organization’s Executive Director.

GIHAN PERERA is co-founder and former Executive Director of the Miami Workers Center, a community organizing institution for low-income Black and Latino communities in South Florida. His decade-plus leadership of the center helped turn it into a national peer anchor to a number of strategic initiatives including the US Social Forum, the Right to the City Alliance, and a number of other efforts to build the theory, practice and capacity of work happening at the intersection of race, gender, the economy and the environment. He is currently the Executive Director of the Florida New Majority, a statewide civil rights and civic engagement organization that is working to connect and empower Florida’s diverse communities.

Moderated by David Harvey, Director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics.