Gentrification, that creeping corporate cleanser, that eradicates districts and communities and replaces them with money making playgrounds for the wealthy, is a world wide policy. We have all seen it in our own cities and districts, Glasgow is no different. There will be different approaches to this cleansing of areas of ordinary people, modernisation, or perhaps for one the corporate world's extravaganzas like the "Commonwealth Games" where large swaths of Glasgow's east end was demolished and the people moved, though in that case they had a fight on their hands for quite a while, thanks to one family and their supporters. The end result is all you have is a sanatised area where all you can do is spend lots of money. The process of course requires loads of tax payers money poured in, but we should feel good as we are
told it will boost the economy, in other words it will be good for
businesses. Wow, I'm delighted that big business is doing well at my expense.
Below is just another example of this process from another part of the world, and how some people are reacting to this cleansing cities and towns of ordinary people.
A Wee But-n-ben in Lecce, Italy.
This from Anarchists Worldwide:
It now appears that “Lecce city of tourism” no longer tolerates any dissent. A city now completely gentrified, synonymous with a controlled city. The walls erected following the eviction of the new anarchist occupation in the historic center, in a building owned by the municipality, speak for themselves. Outside of consumption, nothing is granted. And the historic center of Lecce is now totally a place of consumption, including bars and restaurants, trendy bars and luxury shops, hotels and B&Bs. For residents of the past, pointed because inhabitants of the historic center, there is no place left. There is no place for refractories of any kind. The walls stand for those who do not adapt or are different: whether they are immigrants living in the Giravolte for more than twenty years, or those who want to take a space to express their ideas and desires. Those walls are the exact expression of power. That is called Us with Salvini [“Noi con Salvini”, electoral party coalition led by Matteo Salvini, leader of the “Northern League” party, currently renamed “League]” or that is called Us with Salvemini (mayor of Lecce), in fact the processes carried out are the same. With brutality the first, with a smile the second, security and decorum are the central part of the agenda of power. Agenda that means more and more police in the streets, TSO, annihilation of social life, expulsion of undesirables, total control, homologation. Because everything is connected and it is not possible to feel strangers.
Only those who have their eyes closed cannot realize how much and how this territory is changing, how and how the people who live there are increasingly dispossessed of their existence. Trees are eradicated and the landscape is erased, replaced with structures, power stations and cement. Spaces are closed to eradicate critical thinking, dissent, rebellion. By police or by bureaucracy, the Authority wants only to affirm itself and its totalitarianism. This basic concept of a police State is basically the basic concept of a democratic State and its administrators. The rest is bar talk. But if the walls are erected, the simplest and most urgent thing to do is to demolish them, whatever they represent. Borders, morality, annihilation of critical thinking. Eradicating the refractoriness of wild nature, as well as anti-authoritarian nature, is not an easy task. “Knock down, always knock down, because many more abuses are eliminated in the present, many egalitarian solutions you will prepare for the future” – E. Cœurderoy.
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