Film Night In Glasgow.

A wee reminder:

COMMON GOOD FILM NIGHT CONVERSATIONS:

GROWN IN DETROIT
Tuesday, August 11 at 6:30pm for 7:00
The Portal Plantation Productions, 987 Govan Road, G51 3AJ
Focuses on the urban gardening efforts managed by a public school of
300, mainly African-American, pregnant and parenting teenagers.
     Also COMMON GOOD PROJECT, will be at 
Centre Human Ecology in the Pearce Institute every Thursday from between 
1-4pm, or by prearranged times:

CHE Pearce Institute, 840-860
 Govan Road, Glasgow G51 3UU
Phone:
07811263923 

email: info@inthecommongood.org 

Web: commgood.wordpress.com

PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT
    Part of the PAR To increase understanding and encourage participation in helping to build local institutions where research can be shared, discussed and developed with others.

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

Let's Discuss Tomorrow, Today.

      Your local community is the basis for a better society, get together, talk, organise and shape your community the way you want it to be for you and your kids. It can only be done if we meet up and discuss our ideas, free from the influence and pressure of authority. How do you build a better society if we don't come together and talk about the how, why, and where, the nuts and bolts of what we really want. Let's discuss tomorrow, today.

      Make a date for Tuesday June 30th. 978 Govan Road, bring along the community you want.

 

      Come along to the Portal, Plantation Productions, on Tuesday night, help us to start thinking about building new models of community participation, value systems, and a knowledge base of things folk need to know, learn and share to counter austerity and win things.
      As many other communities have shown us, the rewards of community-run assets & spaces are huge (i.e. reigniting community spirit, ensuring sustainable management of resources & ensuring much needed spaces and services continue to exist). However, as many other communities have
learned (and shared), the process of collectively governing a community asset is a complex and challenging one with many obstacles – practical, relational and political.
      In order to navigate these challenges as effectively as possible we believe that a process of structured knowledge-sharing, learning and research needs to take place in the community by the community to figure out the what, how and why, of building and rebuilding community structure, resources and representative institutions. We can build, through Participatory Action Research, (PAR) the knowledge, strength and vision needed to really take these kinds of projects forward.
      It has taken many hours months and years to put this project together. It is time to put it to into action. It is wide enough in scope and adaptability. What we offer is a framework. What you hang on it will go towards reclaiming the commons and the hope of a decent future – If we are willing to fight for it.

PAR Volunteer information session:
Tuesday 30th June 5:30-6:30 pm

Film Night - Conversation
 – The Secret History of our Streets
30 June 7 -9:00

Plantation Productions
The Portal
978 Govan Road
Glasgow
G51 3AJ

All info on Website:
https://commgood.wordpress.com/
https://commgood.wordpress.com/participatory-action-research/

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





  

Let's Roar.

There is no need to stand alone----

Let's Roar.

The problem's too big

the perpetrators unknown

you can't beat the system

all on your own.

So it's easy to withdraw

find your own little cage

turn a blind eye to the suffering

stifle your rage,

but the greed goes on

the poverty's still there,

you can't just leave it

for your children to bear.

Others feel as you do

eager to put things right

but locked in isolation

it's a hopeless fight,

so don't sit in silence

behind a closed door,

your voice can help raise

a whisper to a roar.

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

Who Cares?

A little food for thought.

WHO CARES?

In a world of

movers and shakers and moonbeam rakers

pimps and dealers and real cool free wheelers

slick fork-tongued entrepreneurs

movin' with glitzy glamorous whores

all with an angle, all with a line,

all goin' t'score real big time.

Who cares about

the heavy hearted mother the anguished young brother

the kid on dope searchin' for hope

the Clydesdie father with the asbestos lung

dumped on life's ladder's lowest rung

the damaged big sister conned by a twister

all trying to live in a system with no give.

Where is

the society the community the neighbouring deed

the thought the act for the other's need

the carers the sharers the giving hand

the dream of all our children's promised land

the open world free from hate

where exploitation is an impossible fate?

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

Whose Town Is It Anyway?

Published on May 30, 2013

     Presents a portrait of a working class community after 25 years on the receiving end of traditional local government. Includes interviews with local community activists, a meeting in a pub, the editorial office of "The Voice" community newspaper and a discussion with unemployed young people. Conveys their sense of powerlessness and anger at the failure of the authorities to get to grips with the massive housing and employment needs of their area.

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

Free Film Show Glasgow CCA.

Films and discussion

      Part of the Electron Open Day - Centre for Contemporary Art Cinema:

350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow.

Sunday December 1st. 2pm.  FREE.

Spirit of Revolt

      Watch a short film about one of the most important developments around working class history in the city for a long time. The Spirit of Revolt, a new archive of the struggles and achievements of ordinary people, at the Mitchell library. Watch a wee film of an SOR exhibition and how the project is developing. And after chat to SOR volunteers about the future hopes for the project.

Glasgow to Detroit

      Glasgow to Detroit is a shorter version of a longer film shot in Detroit, talking to activists involved in growing and food security. The purpose of this screening is to look at the organisational structures particularly around the city farms of Detroit, and what we can learn from our sister city, around solidarity and protecting the longevity of our exciting and expanding growing community.

       We are so perverted by an education which from infancy seeks to kill in us the SPIRIT OF REVOLT, and to develop that of submission to authority; we are so perverted by this existence under the ferrule of a law, which regulates every event in life — our birth, our education, our development, our love, our friendship —that, if this state of things continues, we shall lose all initiative, all habit of thinking for ourselves.

Peter Alexeievich Kropotkin

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

Do It Ourselves.

       Detroit is bankrupt, so that opens the doors for the leeches and parasites to jump in and grab all public assets at bargain basement prices. The collapse of the city authorities ability to function because of massive debt, run up by spivs/conmen and corruption, is also an opportunity for the people of Detroit. As the city authorities step back from supplying services, the people, with their usual resilience and ingenuity, can step forward and organise those services themselves. That is happening on various levels in the city.

This from TSW:

 

      “I have connected with a few other individuals who are interested in founding a free school in alignment with meeting the unique needs of each individual child involved while honoring their autonomy and curiosity,” bringing up the idea of “unschooling” in a group setting. In addition, Testa told TSW that a dispute resolution and mediation service would inspire her as well, looking towards solving community problems through a win/win situation and not a punishment/reward model – calling that the status quo.

Read the full article HERE:

          Also across the city people are organising in different ways for example starting "city farms" and growing their own food and distribution system see annarky's Glasgow2Detroit "away-ye-grow"

Visit ann arky's home.

The Red Rock, Icaria.

      Most of us are now aware of the tragic state of the vast majority of the population of Greece, with massive unemployment, rapid increase if health problems both mental and physical and in your face poverty and deprivation. It's the “financial crisis” we are told, we have to slash your standard of living to pay the losses of the gamblers in the financial Mafia. The plan, of course is to promise everybody pie-in-the sky, from those wonderful green shoots of growth, that will miraculously appear in the distant future, and put the whole stinking mess back on track for another rip-off session for the corporate world. To say the whole of Greece has been decimated is not quite accurate. 

     There is a Greek island called Icaria, sometimes called the Red Rock, not because of the colour of the landscape, but more the colour of its lifestyle. The islanders of Icaria have always been an independent lot and threw the Turks out in 1912 and declared themselves, The Free State of Icaria. Shortly after this they join with Greece. In 1947 when the nationalist in Greece defeated the communists, with no little help from the British military, the nationalist government rounded up 13,000 communists and deported them to Icaria. The communists soon integrated with the locals and their influence has helped shape the lifestyle on the island to this day. The island never embraced the consumer society and they live a more communal community oriented system. If somebody on the island wants to build a house, or repair a barn, the labour will come free from the community, knowing that it will be returned when their needs require. The type of comments from the islanders goes something like, “These city folks see something in the evening and they must have it in the morning and seldom is anything they buy something that they really need. Consumerism is not happiness.”

       So far they have been more or less untouched by the financial Mafia's rape and plunder of Greece, perhaps the rest of the country could see an answer to their problems if they take a wee look at the island of Icaria. In fact, perhaps we could all learn something of value from the people on that sunny island situated in the Aegean. 

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We Can Do It Ourselves.

       DIY is a well known phrase but our answer to the problems of this type of society that we live in, is DIO Do It Ourselves. We can work together to create communities that can work in federation with other like-minded communities. The ordinary people have all the skills and imagination necessary to build and sustain healthy, just and happy environments. We don't need a bunch of power hungry parasites to tell us what is best for us, why should we believe a group of egotistical arrogant political careerists that tell us that to control our lives is too difficult, so we should leave that part to them. It is our lives, it is our world.

We are the ones who knead and yet we have no bread,
we are the ones who dig for coal and yet we are cold.

We are the ones who have nothing,
and we are coming to take the world.

~ Tassos Livaditis (Greek poet, 1922-1988)

This from Edible City:

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GLASGOW POP-UP-SOCIAL CENTRE.

PoP-Up Social Centre

Glasgow Social Centre

30 March at 18:30 until 1 April at 17:00

Pearce Institute. 840 Govan Road. Glasgow, G51 3UU

The Glasgow Social Centre PoP's Up in Govan.

This Weekend the GSC is holding a PoP-UP Event at the Pearce Institute in Govan.

Friday: Film Showing: Wasteland 6.30pm

      "Filmed over nearly three years, WASTE LAND follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of “catadores”—self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz’s initial objective was to “paint” the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives. Director Lucy Walker (DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND, BLINDSIGHT and COUNTDOWN TO ZERO) and co-directors João Jardim and Karen Harley have great access to the entire process and, in the end, offer stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit."

Empire:

        “Beautifully captured, this portrait of a very proud and resourceful underclass rightly tugged the heartstrings of everyone who saw it.”

New York Times:

         “We are not pickers of garbage; we are pickers of recyclable materials,” Tião, an impoverished Brazilian catadore, or trash picker, declares to a talk-show host in Lucy Walker’s inspiring documentary “Waste Land."

Saturday: Govan Together,

        You are warmly invited to the final event of the Govan Together partnership. Events throughout the day to include:

-Seed Planting

-Film Screening

-Workshops

-Community Visioning

-Torchlight Procession

The evening will climax with a reconvening of the Parliament on Doomster Hill at Water Row.

Sunday:

         Banner Making, Sunday Lunch & "This Space Is Your Space" Discussion.

-Banner Making: 11am

        Have a cause, a group or campaign you'd like to tell the world about? Get involved in our banner making workshop. Lets all pitch in together! (Paints & Some Materials Available)

-Lunch: 2pm-3pm

"This Space Is Your Space": 3pm-5pm

          We're aiming to plan a series of PoP-Up Social Centres throughout 2012, and we'd like to know what you want, bring suggestions for workshops, talks, film screenings, or anything else you're passionate about.

This Space Is Your Space!

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COME TO THE VILLAGE SQUARE.

The village Square project
         While there are many interesting avenues of change around the city. There are groups, campaigns, projects and activities, working in the common good, but many of them are invisible to a lot of people. The Village Square will act as a focus point for what is happening around the communities and city. The project will operate from the Pearce Institute, Govan, Glasgow and be run by volunteers, on a daily basis also with evening events. There will be as well as hands on workshops on model making, mapping, meetings, discussions, talks, films, bookstall and an info shop.
          Groups working in the cities communities will be invited to exhibit, what they do, share and swap knowledge, ideas, organisational skills and build solidarity with each other. We would like to persuade folk to invent their own meet-up ideas and topics and to encourage those already working in the community to create awareness of what they are doing. There are a multitude of ideas that will unfold in the square, but the main aim is to encourage, parents and
children, young folk, older folk to think about, question and help to articulate ideas interests and issues in their patch. 

Let's get doon theerr.  

       We can do this in entertaining and inventive ways through cultural activities, actions, interventions, politics, education, art, drama, geography, mapping, technology, different mediums, film, photography, internet, walking, and such, can all be brought into play.
         You can find out more about the village Square at the LEGUP dinner nights, Govan conversations next Tuesday at the Pearce Institute and every following Tuesday at the Pearce cafe from 6: 30 or see city strolls for details.

Check the website:http://themeetingsquare.wordpress.com

 www.citystrolls.com

While we all watch television business gets organised.

ann arky's home.

GOT SPARE CASH? GET OUT OF YOUR COUNCIL HOUSE!!!

        

      You wait for years for a council house and then finally you get one and it is in an area that your happy with, so you're all sorted. You start to do the place up and settle in and feel at home, your sorted for life. Well, not any more. Our millionaire well coiffured twins have just decided to change the rules. Now you will only get a short term rental agreement, probably about 5 years. After that period a committee made up of a bunch of wealthy bureaucrats will assess you to see if your are now well-off enough to buy your own house and therefore no longer in need of a council house. What if you don't want to buy a house and you're quite happy in the area you're in? Well tough, you have been assessed as not being in need of a council house, so out you go. It could be that you have been there for years and one of your family has left home. Well those same well-heeled bureaucrats will now assess you has having a house too big for you needs and move you to another council house somewhere else. That is assuming that you haven't increased you income in that period or it could be both, too well-off and your family is too small.

         This is another little gift to their millionaire mafia friends in the lending business, another way of forcing everybody into debt with a mortgage company whether they like it or not. Council housing will only for the poorest of the poor who will be assessed every 5 years or so just in case their circumstances have improved and then out they go. The corporate world must be able to make money out of you if you have any at all. Why else are you there??

        Another glaring example of who the millionaire twins at the Westminster House of Hypocrisy and Corruption really work for, they know who their friends are. Do we know who are the friends of the working class? Well it is us of course, the working class, the only group that will look after the interests of the working class.

 

 

 

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Banker's bonuses or heated homes??

       As the bankers and hedge fund managers recovery from their pause in the greed feast and start to gallop away again with their stratospheric bonuses the rest of us can look forward to a cold winter.

       The latest government figures show that the number of families in the UK affected by fuel poverty has risen from 2.4 million in 2006 to 3.25 million in 2007. As fuel prices soared through 2008 the projected figures for England alone are expected to reach 3.6 million for 2008 and 4.6 million for 2009. Add to this the rest of the UK and you have a shocking and unacceptable level of homes living in fuel poverty in a country that has just handed the bankers billions of our money.

        These figures came as Citizens Advice announced the number of people falling behind with fuel bills had increased by nearly 50% in the past six months, and by more than 80% over the past three years. Between April and September Citizens Advice bureau in England and Wales saw a 46% increase in the number of people coming forward with fuel debts compared with the same period last year. The majority of people seeking help over debts to energy companies were of working age; 5% were over 65 years old, while 25% had a disability. We are in a society where the weakest and the most vulnerable suffer the most.

        It is obvious that the government targets to end fuel poverty among vulnerable households by 2010 and among all households by 2016 is just so much “hot” air, as are their targets to end child poverty and all the other election propaganda. As unemployment soars and all the parties are showing an eagerness to wield the axe at the social services it should be obvious to all that this system is not for the benefit of the ordinary people.

        We acquiesce to a system of privilege for the parasites and watch our children, elderly, and poor suffer the indignity of poverty at the same time as we watch the bloated parasites frolicking around in yachts and on sun drenched islands sipping the favourite Champagne. Is this the best we can do for ourselves and the rest of humanity? Surely we can devise a fairer system, we have the resources to see to the needs of all, all we need is the will to destroy this man made system of greed and create a society based on mutual aid and sustainability. A fairer system that sees to the needs of all those in that society based on free association, voluntary co-operation and is free from the profit motive.

 

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Help the needy and get shut down!!

A COMMUNITY law centre that provides free legal advice in Glasgow to more than 3000 people each year is to close. Lawyers at the East End Community Law Centre are mounting a legal challenge over the loss of £250,000 council funding. The centre, which was set up 12 years ago and has seven full-time staff, including two lawyers and a legal trainee, will shut next year. It follows a shake-up of advice services by Glasgow City Council.

It has awarded a £2.4million contract to a new consortium of services, East Glasgow Advice, which is made up of Citizens Advice Bureau, the Greater Easterhouse Money Advice Project and Govan Law Centre. Hundreds of people in the East End have signed a petition opposing the law centre closure, which is in the Ladywell centre in Duke Street. Its lawyers are mounting a legal challenge of the loss of funding, arguing the £2.4m contract was the highest value of nine the council advertised in September 2008. Marcus Parham, a solicitor at the centre, said: "We deal with more than 3000 clients each year and bring in well over £3million to the community.

"A lot of our cases deal with employment tribunals and benefit claims. It is a lot of money for the most vulnerable people in the area. About 70% of our clients are disabled."

"We will try to deal with as many cases are possible, but we are now having to turn people away."

"There is also ongoing litigation over the loss of funding."

Glasgow East MP John Mason said: "I am concerned there will be a reduction in the provision of legal advice in the East End. The centre deals with around 3000 cases each year and it is my understanding the new service will have the capacity to deal with only 250."

A council spokesman said: "In the past, the 27 organisations that made up Glasgow's Advice Network had been developed without any over-arching clear strategic framework, resulting in fragmented service provision across the city. "The way money advice, welfare rights, housing and employment and legal advice services were provided required modernisation." "We moved to a commissioning approach, which saw a consortium called East Glasgow Advice be awarded the contract in this area of the city." "Changing the way we fund these advice services will mean improved service provision across the city, in addition to providing a fair and transparent allocation of resources."

Publication date 15/10/09   Thanks Caroline Wilson.

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