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.
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
