Plunder And Pillage Of Our Green Spaces.

        Do we slumber as the corporate juggernaut continues its relentless process of gobbling up all public spaces and local communities and transforming them into profitable entities? Local communities are "gentrified", which translates as turning the area into a money spinning project for those with surplus cash and pushing the local community out to the periphery of society. Our green spaces, parks etc. are seen not as places of leisure and pleasure for old and young, but as possible money earners. More and more corporate enterprises occupy our parks and public spaces, turning them into cash machines for the corporate juggernaut. We are told, "it will help the economy", again a euphemism for, filling the coffers of the rich and wealthy. 

      We have to be alive to this plundering of our communities and public spaces or we will end up living in a world of total private property, suitable only for the wealthy, devoid of any public spaces where our kids can run freely and safely, and our local communities are ushered into ghettos on the periphery of our cities.

 My local Springburn Public Park.

 

       Thankfully some people are alive to this pillage and plunder and are organising to do something about this crime, why not join them?

     Two events concerning the commercialisation of green space and What we can do about it.

Discussion.

       Each summer the volume of paid events occupying our parks is expanding.
The disruption to ordinary park users who see the park as an escape from the chaos and consumerism of daily life. These park users see these disruptions to their enjoyment of the park as disturbing.
        We will be discussing these and other park and green space issues that are also enjoyable and could help to stop the use of our parks for commercial profiteering. Speakers to be confirmed.
Workshop.
      The workshop will be around. How to find out things about parks, greens pace, commons and how to use the “Community Empowerment Act”. The general public need to be heard in this conversation in protecting community assets. We will be looking at the various, forums, assemblies and mechanisms, that could help to enable groups as well as individuals to take part in this important dialogue.

PUBLIC DISCUSSION
Thursday 13 December 7:00
Kinning Park Complex. (For food 6:00)

WORKSHOP
Sunday 16 December 3:00 (Soft Drinks)
Kinning Park Complex.
https://inthecommongood.org/2018/11/15/the-life-of-a-park-part-1/

       Of course this is not a Glasgow or UK phenomenon, it is a world wide strategy of the financial Mafia and the corporate juggernaut in conjunction with the various states.  This from Athens.

       Article from Act For Freedom Now:

          On the 10th of December, the final offers for the construction of the METRO line 4 will be submitted. One of the stops of the metro is scheduled to be built on Exarchia square.

        The plateia is the heart of a neighborhood which is a historic and living site of the anti-state movement. This free space has been fought for for decades and maintained through constant struggle. This social movement in Exarchia, as everywhere, has been under constant repression by police and by the forced assimilation into state and capital’s plans for gentrification and pacification.

        It is obvious what this construction will bring with it: surveillance, policing, constant state scrutiny and of course greater commercialization and gentrification of the entire neighborhood. The total occupation of the square by a construction site for many years means from day one the abolition of a public meeting space. The devouring of this public space, will finally result in its replacement with a transit point, to serve the unhindered flow of consumption and production. It is also clear that this is a strategic plan to extinguish all the struggling projects of social self organization from the neighborhood, but also to push out the marginalized who find refuge here. Besides, the Athens METRO is already a site of class exclusion and control, having finally implemented the electronic ticket and barrier system.

        The expansion of the metro comes together with announcements of fancy plans of urban development for the whole of Athens. The story is the same everywhere: violent displacement of the poor and of the struggling subjects that give free public space its true meaning, to make way for commercial exploitation. A prime example is their designs for Prosfygika Alexandras.

     Where the oppressed build communities against state domination, refusing to be subsumed in its institutions, their homes and streets are treated as abandoned sites, as deserts. Even more so, where there is active resistance against state domination, they systematically target such neighborhoods as degenerated hubs of criminality. Their strategy of repression is the cultural desertification of commerce and capital. The plan to build a metro stop right on the square of such a neighborhood is exactly the spearhead of this capitalist colonization. But, life blossoms only through the struggle for freedom and self-determination.

 We call for a discussion about the resistance.

SATURDAY 8th of DECEMBER, at 18.00

EXARCHIA SQUARE

Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk