Spaces.

        The following article doesn't just apply to Exarcheia in Athens, what they are facing is happening to every city across the globe. The drive to turn public spaces into profitable entities, not for us all, but for the already very rich and powerful. These decisions are made by bureaucrats and politicians who see only economic growth for profit, although these decisions impact on our quality of life the decisions are made over our heads. It will take  a well organised mass movement to stop this trend of profit before the quality of life of those impacted by these bureaucratic decisions. If we want quality of life over profit, then we will have to take to the streets and force the change, it will not come from the politicians and the bureaucrats who are blinded by the profit motive.

The following from Freedom News.

Exarcheia, the subway station, and public space

 

 

Analysis, Dec 2nd
                First of all it is important to underline that public transport (tram, subway, bus) is immensely important as it allows for ecological and inclusive movement throughout the city. With the usage of all the different types of public transport a vast and comfortable transportation network can be developed to challenge the domination of the private car on our streets – domination that makes urban life worse by air and noise pollution, frequent accidents, and the exclusion of the most marginalised economically.
              For quite some time now, in the historic Exarcheia neighbourhood of Athens, home to countless anti-authoritarian and anarchist collectives, squats, and social centres, there has been a struggle directed against the construction of a metro station on the district’s central square. How does an area with such a libertarian history oppose the expansion of public transport, one might ask; but the truth is that the problem is not the subway as such, but the way the decision to build was made and what will came after it.
             Firstly, many of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, in coordination with architects and urban planners, have proposed another place of the neighbourhood (Archaeological Museum) as a place more suitable and rational for a subway station. The people of Exarcheia understand the ecological and inclusive dimensions of public transport; what they disagree with is the political way through which this, and other, decisions are being made – decisions, made by a handful of politicians and businessmen, that will shape our common ground for generations to come, without the participation of all of us who inhabit it.
            Secondly, the inhabitants are in opposition to the urban vision promoted by those in power: with most striking example being the Kotzias square right in front of the Mayor’s building in Athens. We speak of a place that does not feel nor look like square any more. There are no trees or benches, so one can pass through it on their way to somewhere, but not spend time in it, as there is no protection from summer’s blazing sun or anywhere to sit. This is in line with the project of “touristisation” that the Greek authorities have been implementing for years all around Athens. In this project the pubic spaces are an obstacle to economic growth: tourist shops, restaurants, cafeterias all generate economic revenues from tourists, while squares, with their benches and trees, serve the communal (often non-economic) needs of the inhabitants. This is what the inhabitants of Exarcheia do not want to happen to their square – but what the restructuring of it, due to the subway station, will most probably bring. The vision that local authorities envision will not solve any of the problems of the area, it will simply lay the foundations of yet another urban desert, where there is barely any vegetation and no place where one can sit for free.
             There is also a third dimension of this project. The Greek state, under different governments, has continuously been in opposition to the autonomous movement in all its expressions. As is well known, Exarcheia is both a point of reference and a symbol of this movement. In this line of thought the decision, taken without any sort of public deliberation and despite strong opposition, to place a metro station in an irrational place, is also seen by the authorities as an excuse to militarise the district with heavy police presence and suffocate any effort of self-organization.
              The case of the construction of a subway station at Exarcheia square comes to show that under the conditions of oligarchy and capitalism even sustainable means of transportation can be used to destroy public spaces and gentrify neighbourhoods, just as renewable energy sources are used to destroy mountainous areas in order to generate profits for investors far away. What is crucial to understand is that this is all a question of politics: of who gets to shape our city – a handful of bureaucrats and capitalist investors, or the vast majority of a district’s inhabitants. It is this political question that frames the content and the outlook of urban space.

Yavor Tarinski

Image: Pithari Stories

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

Re-imagining?

        

Image courtesy of Oral History Columbia

      Gentrification, redevelopment, re-imagining, all nice sounding words for turning public spaces into private spaces, for changing places that were free to use, to money making enterprises for some corporate bodies. Everything has to produce a profit. Free public spaces don't make money for the big boys, so have to go. This is something that most ordinary citizens are aware of, it is not a local feature, it is world wide across this capitalist world. Everything must be privately owned, so you pay the corporate beast for every amenity in your city, town or village.
        Of course there is resistance to this plundering of public assets, but not enough. The perpetrators of this plundering exercise have wealth, the power of the state and the corporate world on their side, we have our solidarity. The stronger that solidarity against this plundering the more likely we are to win. There is no power on earth stronger than the combined will of the people, and that is what has to come together to defeat this ravaging of our public spaces for profit. 

                                                    Image courtesy of Glasgow Live.

 An extract from Act For Freedom Now:

Athens,Taking responsibility on 2/9/22

In recent years we have been experiencing a generalised attack on the neighbourhood of Exarcheia, with squat evictions, clearing operations and the attempt to impose a regime of police occupation on the neighbourhood.At the present time this attack is intensifying, with the assistance of Attiko Metro and the attempt to build a metro station in the square. The choice of the square for the construction of the station is a political and ideological choice of the municipal authority and the state, part of the broader strategy that has been expressed explicitly in recent years in the state’s counterattack against Exarcheia, a neighbourhood where resistance and struggle against exploitation and oppression has been territorialized both symbolically and practically.

The choice of the metro station in Exarcheia square is not based on the needs of the inhabitants for their movements – it could not be, as under the condition of class domination our movements are defined and organised in the metropolis by the state as the transport of the commodity work force. The choice of the station in the square is not based on the neighbourhood’s desires for the use of public/open space, but against them, seen as another opportunity to deploy hundreds of cops in the neighbourhood with the intention of destroying its only square, meeting place and political activity and handing it over to the interests of capital.

FREE MOVEMENT BASED ON OUR NEEDS AND NOT ON STATE/CAPITAL’S INTERESTS
THE SQUARE – THE STREET – THE POLYTECHNIC – EXARCHIA DOESN’T FREQUENT MUSEUMS
REGENERATION MEANS DISPLACED POOR PEOPLE
EXARCHIA WILL ALWAYS BE HERE – FIRE TO THE ATTIKO METRO CONSTRUCTION SITES
COPS – CONTRACTORS – CITY HALL – ALL BASTARDS WORKING TOGETHER

humble and rebellious

Class War.

           The state/corporate war on the ordinary city dwellers goes on unabated, it takes on the polite and harmless sounding label of gentrification, Gentrification is the process of changing the cities form living spaces to money making machines of tourism and expensive entertainment. The serfs that will work these new money making centres will be banished to live in the periphery of the city in soulless poor quality schemes. City centres become perfect cathedrals to the class system that dominates the economics of capitalism. Know your place and money is your key to entry, but we know there are ways to fight back. Our imagination solidarity and desire for freedom are our weapons.

The following from Act For Freedom Now:
       Berlin. There are currently seven so-called KbOs areas, considered “high-crime rate locations” in Berlin: Kottbusser Tor, Hermannplatz, RAW, Görli and Wrangelkiez, Alexanderplatz, Rigaer Straße, Hermannstraße. 

 

 

Originally published by Indymedia DE.
        Here, the police have the power to establish their own security measures by stopping, identifying and searching people they consider suspicious of crime, even if there is no reason to do so. These measures end up taking the form of racial profiling and other types of discrimination. Controlled and criminalized are mainly Black people, People of Color, Rom*nja and Sinti*zze, groups of young people, drug users, homeless people and sex workers.While the criteria for establishing them are determined based on the discretion of the police, free transit is hindered and prohibited and people are criminalized and deported.
        The streets do not become safer as a result. They are perceived as more insecure and become completely impassable for some groups. Thus legitimizing the monopoly of violence in public spaces by capitalism and the mechanisms of the State. And contributing to the invisibilization of those who do not fit into a capitalist, racist and patriarchal system.Gentrification and social control are going hand by hand by displacing of population from the center to the periphery of our city, creating “safe” neighborhoods from precarious social groups. Leaving a showcase city for tourists and yuppies that have little or nothing to do with those who today we try to build networks of mutual support, solidarity and resistance in every neighborhood of this city.
       That is why on September 12th, during the Entsichern congress, we want to make these spaces ours with a bike demonstration that will go through these areas.
       September 12, 05:00pm (17:00), Alexanderplatz, Neptunbrunnen, Berlin.

 Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info 

NO Metro.

          One way for capital to take control of an area is gentrification and one way the state can assist this process is subsides and infrastructure that will encourage developers. For many years the Greek state has tried to turn Exarchia into an up-market developers paradise but so far has failed. Of course they don't give up easily, after a concerted effort from police brutality to change this area, which so far has failed, they continue with the attempt to put in place the infrastructure that will attract developers, a Metro station in the centre of Exarchia Square. This has been met with strong and determined resistance from the locals and their supporters.

      EXARCHIA WILL LIVE ON. OFF WITH THE METRO FROM THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 

      Today, 5/7 at around 6:00am a surveyors workgroup and a contractor showed up at the square for setting out the works concerning the construction of a metro station in the square.
       Immediately people from the neighbourhood and in solidarity arrived at the square making it clear that the people won’t allow the construction of a metro station in Exarchia, forcing them to leave.
       They also made it clear that, as has happened until now, the next time they show up in the neighbourhood the people will be there to prevent any work.

EXARCHIA WILL LIVE ON

OFF WITH THE METRO FROM THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
Individuals from the Exarchia neighbourhood and in solidarity

A small attack against Airbnb in Exarchia

        Some days before we did an action against an apartment that is being rented through the Airbnb platform in Manis street, Exarchia.
        We wrote slogans, painted the key box, we threw leaflets with written on them in English “Housing is not a luxury, stop the evictions and gentrification” and “Immigrants welcome, tourists go to your own homes”. Then we threw paint on the balcony. The Delta cops passed by the point a few minutes before the action and a few minutes after we had finished without understanding anything.

 

 Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk   

Our Streets.

        The following article is from The Hague, but if you live in, or visit a city, then this the pattern you will be experiencing or about to experience. The march of capital to turn our cities into nothing more than profit producing entities. Cities are rapidly becoming places where only those with large disposable incomes can congregate. They are no longer places where ordinary people live, meet, hang out and socialise. In these new sanitised city centres, if you enter and are not in that group of "well-to-do", you will treated as suspicious, and probably deemed to be "up to no good". The controllers of the new cities don't want you unless you can spend "big time", or you can work as the minions that serve as attendants to the money spenders. You will have the opportunity to have a crap job with crap wages, and zero hours contracts. Is this the new cities we want? Our cities must be our streets, places we built and places where we wish to live, not simply money making machines for the corporate beast and the financial Mafia.

         The following from Enough is Enough:

 

       The Hague. Netherlands. On Friday and Saturday 31st of July and 1st of August, HOUSING ACTION DAYS will take place in The Hague. The theme for Friday is social housing and precarious modes of housing, and the theme for Saturday is the selling out of the city and gentrification. During these two days we will make a collective fist against precarity and the housing shortage.

Originally published by Woonactiedagen.

      In the past couple of years the city has become the stage of a social struggle. Capital is increasingly controlling housing and public spaces. The city is transformed into a revenue model, a new apparatus for a select group to accumulate wealth. This has drastic consequences for many of us. De waiting lists for social housing are ever lengthening, rents are already way too expensive and the political unwillingness to take up these issues is stifling. In the inner city, one loft gets restored after another and only expensive private sector housing is built. Hip coffeehouses and their terraces are spreading like an oil spill.

     We don’t want a city merely for consumption but a city in which we can live!

Paired with the gentrification, the state’s net to control public spaces tightens. Concurrently to being forced to pay increasingly high rent for increasingly small spaces, we are being dispossessed of the streets: hanging out in the street is perceived as suspicious and will get you castigated for gathering. The only places where you can still gather in public are parks or sports field – but never without the supervision of cameras. Our living spaces are shrinking, we will no longer put up with this shit anymore!

For this reason, let us meet on 31st of July and 1st of August, to take action against the selling out of our cities and our lives. We invite everyone to come to The Hague, the belly of the beast, to struggle for the right to live and to the city!

Mail: woonopstanddenhaag [at] riseup.net

Twitter: @woonopstand070

More information: woonactiedagen.wordpress.com

You will find posters and leaflets here: https://woonactiedagen.wordpress.com/info/promomateriaal/

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Profit Versus People.

        Gentrification is not a new phenomenon, nor is it confined to any one town or city. It is just one of the methods used by the financial Mafia to increase their wealth at the expense of the ordinary local people.
      At the moment there is a battle raging in the district of Exarcheia in Athens. The newly elected government, New Democracy is brutally trying to "cleanse" the district by removing people who wish to live together in co-operation mutual aid and a community of common interests, to allow property investors a free reign in filling the area with luxury apartments, expensive restaurants and high priced fashion shops, to syphon money from tourists to the property developers bank accounts. Tourism is their current milking-cow, their goose that lays the golden egg.
      In our world of high finance, the "economy" profit and growth, outweigh any human values, the poor will continually be pushed to the margins until they decide that enough is enough.
       This extract from an excellent article by Molly Crabapple. It is well worth reading the article in full.

      From New York to Berlin, gentrification is consuming cities, and any enchantment a neighborhood offers is a harbinger of its eventual doom. Hoping to boost low real-estate prices after years of economic crisis, Greece began granting the so-called golden visa, a five-year E.U.-residency permit in exchange for a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-euro investment in real estate, in 2013. Wealthy citizens of autocracies took up the offer. Chinese investors bought up blocks of buildings; one purchased a hundred apartments in Exarchia alone. Many of these apartments were converted into Airbnbs (the Web site has more than three hundred listings for Exarchia), which drove up the rents, drove out residents, and brought in tour guides, who attempt to repackage the neighborhood’s insurrectionary spirit as vapid, marketable cool.
       “They want gentrification, to promote this as a historic neighborhood while destroying its history of artists, struggles, intellectuals, and anarchists.” Anna told me. “They want to do what Berlin did, to sell the neighborhood’s past while killing its identity.” In the last decade, Berlin rents have risen more than a hundred per cent, and for Athenians like Anna, the city is a cautionary tale. Graffiti offered a succinct rejoinder: “Airbnb TOURISTS FUCK OFF REFUGEES WELCOME.” Neither refugees nor anarchists would fit into the city that had been dreamed by the world’s wealthy. That Athens would be a series of clean, glass-walled, interchangeable rooms, through which capital could frictionlessly glide.
        Throughout the winter, police repeatedly attacked Exarchia Square with tear gas and flash-bang grenades. Sometimes the pretext was a protest; other times, it was an attack by anarchists on the police. One night, police trapped residents inside a café for hours. On November 17th, after a march commemorating the 1973 uprising, social media lit up with photos of protesters left bloody by police violence. Three days later, the Ministry of Citizen Protection issued an ultimatum: squatters had fifteen days to evacuate every squat in Greece. By late December, only a handful of squats remained, the last survivors of a network that had once given thousands of refugees a home.
        I thought of the words of an activist from Exarchia, when I asked him whether the government would succeed in fundamentally changing the neighborhood. “Exarchia is not just territory,” he answered. “Territory without people is nothing. I don’t care about losing Exarchia. I care about losing the people.”

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Cleasing The Cities Of Ordinary People.

       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.

 Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Callous, Cruel, Capitalism,

       An all too common aspect of capitalism is its continuing gentrification of our town and city centres, and the commercialisation of all open spaces within the towns and cities. This is not peculiar to any one country, it is the global design being forced on the ordinary people. The result being the eviction of those who can't afford to stay in the new up-market, tourist orientated commercial centres. They are horded out to the periphery, usually in large depressing housing estates, where they are left to see their surroundings deteriorate because of austerity and endemic poverty.

       Within the glossy town and city centres there is homelessness and rough sleeping, while property lies empty waiting for the lucrative offer that fits into their glitzy commercial plan, and makes its owners much richer. Any humane attempt to bring the homeless and empty property together, will be met with the full force of the state's minders, the police. People are away down the ladder of concern when compared with profit. This is the only way capitalism can functioning, amassing wealth for the few at the expense of the many, and it will defend this aspect of its purpose with lies, propaganda and brute force.

     However, across the globe people are resisting this frontal attack orchestrated by the commercial/financial Mafia aided and abetted by the state. 

This from Enough is Enough:

     Berlin, German territory: Today (April 6, Enough 14), after the #Mietenwahnsinn (rent madness) -demonstration, the empty Bizim Bakkal shop was squatted, which had been empty for 4 years. Berlin police evacuated without a valid eviction title, without contact to the owner and using massive force against activists, journalists and parliamentary observers.
Originally published by Besetzen. Edited machine translation by Enough 14. Imahe above byZecko Twitter account.
       Last year, we occupied several houses, apartments and shops, all of which were evicted by the Senate and the Berlin police except one apartment in Großbeerenstraße. We see ourselves as part of a movement that is defending itself against Berlin increasingly developing into a city for the rich. A city in which social participation and place of residence depend on income and in which every square centimetre is used. The city is losing its open spaces, and Berlin’s neighborhoods are increasingly shaped by tourism, consumption and property speculation. Despite many promises regarding housing policy, the Senate is only watching or even actively helping in this process of displacement.

pic.twitter.com/CpyWgnuwKW— andi.waffen (@lamda14) 6. April 2019

      Today, 40,000 people took to the streets in a demonstration against rent madness and displacement. How have the demands, which were also supported by parts of the Berlin Senate, been put into practice and how have we begun to get our neighbourhood back? Many demonstrators joined this project on the spot in Wrangelstraße.
      This made it all the more dramatic how the Senate dealt with such practical forms of action. After the police were first prevented from entering by demonstrators present, the police violently cleared blockades in front of the shop and smashed the door of Wrangelstr. 77. The people in the shop, as well as the demonstrators in front, were arrested and many activists and solidary neighbours present were injured by batons and pepper spray. Members of the House of Representatives as well as members of the Bundestag and journalists were also violently prevented from exercising their right of observation by the police. Senator of the Interior Andreas Geisel was informed about the police operation and is politically responsible for it.

pic.twitter.com/MRZf8GPNP8— andi.waffen (@lamda14) 6. April 2019
        Press spokeswoman Alisia Ney: “Today’s eviction without an eviction title is a new stage of escalation and shows that the state is not even abiding by its own rules. Yet every eviction, whether with an eviction title or without injustice, remains in a city where people live on the street while houses are empty.”
      Press spokeswoman Jona Sommer: “Since taking office, the red-red-green Senate has been claiming “The city belongs to you!” Obviously, it belongs to investors and the Berlin police. Either Senator Geisel does not have his riot squads under control or the SPD is now solving its internal government crisis by police. In Wrangelstraße 77 it became clear that a majority of the population supports our concern to set up a non-commercial neighbourhood centre in the shop which has been empty for years. ”
        Both conclude: “We will not let an arbitrary and insane police force, like fickle politicians, stop us from occupying more empty spaces and taking back the city actively and directly. We will continue to occupy until we no longer have to.”  

Besetzen, Berlin, April 6, 2019.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

     

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

Direct Action And Solidarity Are Winning Weapons.

         Every city in the developed world faces it, redevelopment, gentrification, this type of procedure may not be "ethnic cleansing", but it is "class cleansing". Each area in the city or town must be made into a profit making entity, capital needs somewhere to gamble. So push out the low earners and bring in the big spenders, it is the foundation of this era of capitalism.

          This "class cleansing" can be stopped, but only by community direct action and solidarity. So we raise a fist in solidarity with the residents of Southwark area who have forced the council to "temporarily" suspend its intended "class cleansing" 

From Libcom:

        Southwark Council has been forced to bow to community pressure, temporarily shelving the redevelopment of Elephant and Castle shopping centre on a night which saw anti-gentrification protesters storm the council's offices.
        Local residents - many from the area's Latin American community - and students, marched from the London College of Communication's (LCC) campus off the Elephant roundabout to the council offices on Tooley Street. As the march snaked through South London, protesters chanted demands for social housing - in a borough with a notoriously poor track record of providing it.
        Outside the Council offices, protesters listened to impassioned speeches before the chant of "let us in" went up. Security gates blocking access to the foyer sprang open and the crowd rushed in to the foyer of the council building. Demonstrators had to be held back by security guards as meetings on the ground floor were evacuated.

      As the protest continued inside the council offices, music was played and the crowd made space for some Latin dancing. The next track on was Skepta's Shutdown, reflecting the feeling that the planning committee meeting had been successfully disrupted - although that wasn't the case.
       The threatened demolition of the Elephant and Castle shopping centre in South London has loomed over the space for over a decade. Those familiar with the area will be all too aware of the destruction of social housing on the nearby Heygate Estate, where over 1,200 homes have already been demolished by the local council, as well as the ongoing destruction of the nearby Aylesbury Estate and many of the other programs of estate “regeneration” taking place across the area.
Last night, Southwark Council’s planning committee met to discuss the proposed redevelopment of the shopping centre by Delancey (the objections to this redevelopment are covered in far more detail here). The proposals would see the shopping centre and LCC's campus demolished, to be replaced by a new development resituating the two alongside a new housing development featuring a staggeringly low 33 “affordable” homes out of the 979 promised.

Continue reading and view video HERE:
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       Massive love and respect to all those who came out today to support The Elephant community's opposition to the social cleansing of the area. The march up Borough High St was well spirited, noisy and powerful!! 

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

     

London, Money Laundering Capital Of The World.

An extract from an interesting article on the Rabble site:

       By Some London Foxes. (NB: This is a summarised version of the full pamphlet published here.)

        If we want to bring some life and anarchy to the streets of London, it helps to understand the terrain we’re fighting on. This article looks at London’s role in global capitalism, how this drives “social cleansing” and control, and at some seeds of resistance emerging in the last year. It is a shortened version of our full “London 2016” pamphlet, which expands on these points in more detail.

 The enemy
         London now is not so much a nation-state capital as a money-laundering centre for the world elites.
         The patterns of development we are seeing now go back to the 1970s, when the international economy began to “globalise”. The Soviet bloc and organised workers movements collapsed, and neoliberal “free market” economics was unchained. As the “developing world” opened to international capital, industry shifted “offshore” from the rich economies to Asia or South America where wages were much lower. In the UK and other rich countries, mines, factories and shipyards shut, unemployent and inequality soared.
         The post-war social peace was under threat. In the 1980s, as the traditional working class was “dispossessed”, the miners’ strike brought parts of England close to insurrection, while riots raged in Brixton, Tottenham and other ghettos. The elites maintained control by increasing repression: expanding prison, surveillance, military-style policing. But, even more importantly, by finding ways to keep the majority “included” in the consumer dream. The main means to do this: debt. In a nutshell, China and other “productive” economies send their goods to us on credit, receiving back investment assets from bonds to real estate.
         While other parts of the UK economy stagnate, London thrives from this flow of goods and debts. It has two power centres: the glass towers of “The City”, site of major banks, investment funds and financial exchanges; and the noble quarter of “The West End” (Mayfair, Knightsbridge, etc.), where the global elites – from hedge fund bosses to gulf oil sheikhs or Chinese party princelings – do more discrete deals, store and spend their wealth.
        Enough wealth trickles down to employ many of us in their armies of servants, from accountants and tax lawyers down to baristas and dog-walkers. Although wages stagnate, low interest credit – mortgages and small-time property speculation, credit cards, pay day loans, etc. – keep us going.

Read the full article HERE:

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

The People Verses The System.

        We all know that "law and order" is there to protect the established power base, the land and property owners. We know that in this society, property rights trump human rights, if you take your grievances against property owners through the "judicial system", the dice is loaded against you, who makes the laws, who does the ordering? So when it does happen those of the ordinary people who find themselves forced into this situation, need all the support they can get, it should immediately be a call across the land for solidarity, every way possible.

       This is an appeal from the Sweet Ways occupation, a stand against the gentrification, and the developers, who have called in their minders, the "judicial system", to fight their unjust battle.

29 Mar 2015 — There are now more than 60,000 of us that have taken a stand together against social cleansing! Thank you!
Last Monday we were in court against Annington and the judge reluctantly agreed to give us another week to prepare our defence. But this Monday we will be back at Barnet County Court and regardless of the quality of our arguments, will be fighting against generations of British law which gives greater legitimacy to private property rights, than it does to human rights.
      Can you come to the courts with us on Monday morning to show your support?
https://www.facebook.com/events/433124830197068/
…Even if you can’t, can you keep sharing the petition on Facebook, Twitter, email… or at your office, or in your mosque or church? Or could you Tweet your support on Monday morning and let Annington know what you think of their plans? (We are @SweetsWayN20, they are @AnningtonHomes)

Read the full article HERE:

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

Fight For Aylesbury.

 

From “Fight for the Aylesbury”       occupation website.

      Since the “March for Homes” demo on 31st January, we have re-opened and occupied a part of the Aylesbury Estate in Southwark, South London.

     We are tenants, squatters, and other people who care about how our city is being grabbed by the rich, by developers and corrupt politicians, socially cleansed and sold off for profit.

    The Aylesbury Estate is where Tony Blair made his first speech as Prime Minister in 1997, making empty promises about social housing. Since then, for the past 18 years, Southwark Council and their developer friends have come up with one scheme after another. All with the same aim: to dispossess the residents, demolish their homes, and sell the land.

      In 2002 Aylesbury tenants fought and won a campaign against demolition and voted down the original scheme in a ballot. But now big areas of the estate are emptied and sealed up awaiting the bulldozers, while residents are “decanted” away from the area.

       The same bullshit that we have seen on the nearby Heygate estate, and all across London.

No demolition of the Aylesbury.

No yuppy flats.

Homes for all.

We are here to fight for the Aylesbury.

We are here to fight for our city.

We are here to liberate this space and bring it back to life. Come and join us.

PS: Thank you to everyone who has come down to show support, to all our neighbours and to those who have even come from as far away as Hackney bringing tea!

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

Workers, Know your History: We Don't Need A Carpark.

    Another episode in which The Glasgow City Council decided what the people needed, without consulting the people, and the people, by direct action and solidarity, made them change their minds and listen to the people.

     This successful campaign took place in Castlemilk, what was at one time the largest housing estate in Britain. 

Taken from Strugglepedia:

Community Action – Housing; regentrification, greens into car parks, loss of safe play spaces. Injustice/ normal channels closed / bureaucracy /desperation /solidarity with experienced anarchist strategies/ planning direct actions/ increasing the agitation/ use the demolition workers in the struggle, to bring the bureaucrats to the site/ impact on people as activists

John Cooper, John Cooper - taped and scribed by A Rice 17.7.12

I tell it all as if it was a day but it was actually maybe 6 months or a year of struggle.

    Campaign in Castlemilk, A group of tenants had been told that the Council are going to build a car park in their back greens. The back greens being the area in which they hung out their washing and where the kids played in safety. The people in the area were all against it and they had actually got a petition together, taken it up to the Labour club, and handed it into the Labour Club and low and behold the Labour Club lost the petition they said later, or they claimed they lost it. And therefore the peoples’ thing could not be taken any further. So by luck one of the tenants bumped into one of us and he told us about the situation.

      The work was about to begin in the back greens. They had knocked down a couple of the gable ends to allow bull dozers to get through into the backs. And they were going to start digging up the drying greens and the kids play areas to build this car park.

And basically the people says to us ‘do you think there’s anything we can do about this. Nobody in the area wants this. Everybody is absolutely against the idea. We have petitioned the Labour Party through the Labour Club – they lost the petition that we handed in – and can it be stopped? ’.

     I gave the answer that I always give people that ask me that question and I answered ‘How determined are you?’ And they said they were absolutely determined about it so I asked them to get a couple of the families together, we went up and saw them, and we talked to them. We being a group of local community activists in Castlemilk, myself and a couple of the others were anarchists, some of the others had no political affiliation, there might have been one or two people in the Labour party, or some kinda left wing groups or whatever but generally I would describe the whole feeling of the thing as kinda anarchistic.

We went up and seen the people. We suggested to them that they get another petition together – no because there any value in getting a petition - but jist to give us an opportunity to go back round everybody again , talk to them on their doorstep, and ask them if they were still prepared to do something about it. We did that the next day , it was only a quad , a really small area, everybody agreed that they were against it. So we went up to the Labour Club, we said that we had another petition, but we weren’t giving it them in or whatever, and we wanted something done about it. We asked to see somebody – they refused to let us see anybody, so we went back down the road and we made our plans for the next day.

      The next day the bulldozers came and we decided just to block the whole entrance to the back greens, refused to allow the bulldozers through. And I went up and I spoke to the guy that was driving the bulldozer and explained the situation to him and as usual when you speak to other working class people they generally see the point, I will have to phone my gaffer, well that’s exactly what we want you to do, and he phoned his gaffer and he phoned his gaffer and he phoned his gaffer and before too long we had all the relevant people down at the site and that ultimately they sent for the council. When the councillors arrived ( I don’t know if it was that day) but some point in the thing, the councillors arrived in a limo, and so it went from a situation where the councillors refused to see the people but because of the direct action that we took they had to eventually come to us to see us in person. And within a very short space of time they saw that we weren’t going to allow them to build a car park in the back green and they had to cancel the whole thing.

So it was an outright victory for the people.

Stasia; and these are publicity photos?

     This is a wee exhibition that the tenants done at the time. After the victory we done these sheets and people put in their comments and pictures, newspaper cuttings, explaining how we halted the car park and we actually used these in other struggles by putting these up and we explained to people that this is how you can take things on and win the situation.

List of the material

Sheets that you can put up on walls hand made posters (John Cooper Snr Handwriting)

A wee folder of all the newspaper coverage at the time

People writing poems about it

Pictures taken at the time by Charlie Fisher non resident photographer (who helped with the community newspaper Castlemilk Today)

Dept of housing official papers

Minutes of the council meetings

MP letters from Westminster Teddy Taylor

And letters from Glasgow District council

Copy of petition 2 not handed in because previous one lost.

     Initially the people went to the Labour Councillors which is the obvious way to deal with the situation. They went to them, handed in a petition to the Labour Club who basically ignored them and said they lost the petition so the Labour Councillors basically refused to take up their issue for them and they were quite happy to allow it to go ahead. And because they were able to come to us the people that lived there, we advised them on how to deal with the situation and we were there with them and we managed to stop it completely and the backs were all reinstated.

Impact

      Some of the people in the campaign for the most were delighted at the victory, it was something that they thought they could not achieve in view of the fact that they had already started the work so not only did they stop the thing but they actually retrieved the thing from the ashes so to speak. I think a lot of people felt a great sense of empowerment, and certainly some were involved in other campaigns after that.

 

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