About the Encuentros

The “New York Encuentros for Dignity and Against Displacement,” have been organized by Movement for Justice in El Barrio—a community organization based in East Harlem, New York.

On this site you will find information, articles, photos, and other content related to “Encuentros” (or “Gatherings”) that have been held since 2007.

The purpose of these Encuentros has always been to bring together and strengthen the many struggles of the peoples and communities that are resisting neoliberal displacement and its forms of injustice at the local level and forming networks of mutual support and solidarity.

Additionally, in these spaces – which have brought together hundreds of representatives of a wide range of collectives and organizations - “listening” is practiced as another form of politics—from below and to left.

Inspired by the Zapatista Encuentros, these Encuentros have sought to be a bridge between dignified peoples from across the city and around the world.
Hopefully, this site can also serve as a kind of bridge to ensure that the voices and faces of these peoples and their struggles are seen and heard.

An Encuentro is a space for people to come together, it is a gathering. An Encuentro is a way of sharing developed by the Zapatistas as another form of doing politics: from below and to the left. It is a place where we can all speak, we will all listen, and we can all learn. It is a place where we can share the many different struggles that make us one.

Movement for Justice in El Barrio

Founded in 2004, Movement for Justice in El Barrio is a majority-women, immigrant-led, grassroots community organization that fights for dignity and against neoliberal displacement in East Harlem and beyond. At over 950 members, Movement has built a bottom-up struggle for justice and liberation that operates on a commitment to participatory democracy, self-determination, and autonomy.