This film, “El Barrio Women Fighting for Freedom and Against Displacement,” was presented by Movement for Justice in El Barrio at the ground-breaking first worldwide online Women’s Freedom Conference, held on October 25th, 2015.
Ten years ago, in East Harlem, New York, an area known as El Barrio, members of fifteen Mexican immigrant families, all of them women, came together to see how they could achieve dignified housing in their community. They were struggling against gentrification and displacement; their landlord was trying to force them out of their homes in order to attract wealthier tenants and transform the neighbourhood they lived in. These were people without previous experience of organising, and they knew that they had much to learn, but they listened to and supported each other and in December 2004 they formed Movement for Justice in El Barrio (Movement).
The women of the Movement for Justice in El Barrio–a community-based organization led by immigrant women in New York– and the Zapatista women of La Realidad are two examples of how women in struggle all over the world are coming together to inspire and learn from each other, and how, in the process, they are transforming the world.