1915 Rent Strike Free Event.

      Details of tonight's free Glasgow/Clydeside 1915 rent strike anniversary event in the cinema in the CCA 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow.

7:15-7:30 pm

Music by Pauline and Shaun as people arrive.

7:30-7:45 pm

Welcome from compere Bob.

Eric's brief intro to the 1915 rent strike.

Iain's brief comments on housing issues and solutions today.

7:45-7:55 pm

Shaun and Rob's poems.

7:55 to 8:25 pm

Video collage.

8:25-9 pm

Discussion.

9:00-9:10 pm

Songs by Pauline and Shaun.

          Following on from this anniversary event we will be holding another event to mark this remarkable working class victory on November 17th. a "Walk of Pride" from city centre to the old sheriff court to mark the day that this struggle was won. Of course our struggle continues as injustices become the norm. Where injustice is law, resistance is duty.

         More details of this event will be made public shortly, so watch this space.

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

The System Is People.

      What a crazy insane world we live in. A world awash with wealth all gravitating to a few humans, while millions of people live in deprivation and misery. Looking rationally at the situation today you have to scratch your head in disbelief and ask yourself, how did we let this happen. In this world today we have approximately over 2,200 (USD) billionaires, that's a lot of wealth in the hands of so few. Add to this the fact that we have somewhere between, 14 to 18 million, millionaires. Think of that in total wealth and ask yourself what could that do to help eradicate the deprivation and misery experienced on a daily basis by millions of ordinary people. 

       Of course we often say it is the system and lambast the system. However we should not forget that the system is not an inanimate "thing", the system is people. The system is those billionaires and millionaires, all with names and faces, who hoard caches of wealth in tax havens, wealth they plunder from the ordinary working people. It is an impossibility for any individual to go out and work hard and amass a billion dollars, all by their own efforts, without exploiting the effort of others. My father worked really hard all his life as a coal miner, we never amassed a fortune. 

       The system will be defended ferociously by those names and faces that hold all that plundered wealth, all those billionaires and millionaires, they are the system, they are the perpetrators of all that deprivation and misery on this planet, they are the enemy of the ordinary people. Don't be fooled by their minions and puppets who call for the rich to pay more taxes, that is just the system offering the ordinary people a paracetamol. It is simply a straight forward class war between the ordinary people and that band of greed driven plunderers. 

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

The Shackles Of State Laws.

        This short video highlights the true nature of the state. What individuals do in the spirit of humanity and co-operation, reaching out to those in dire need, offering and helping to create shelter and assistance, so the refugees can get on with their lives and become integrated in communities, is what the state is attacking in country after country. In Exarcheia, in Athens, the Greek state has launched a full scale and savage war against these very projects. Projects that would in actual fact save the state money, but dogma and ideology dictate that the state and/or its corporate bedfellows must control  all that happens within its proclaimed phony borders. No real rational approach, no humanity, just the rule of its shackling laws, created to ensure the continuation of its power and authority. Freedom and the state are incompatible.

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

Read Of The Month.

       For Spirit of Revolt's November Read Of The Month, we have trawled through our Bratach Dubh Collection and come up with a rather rare little paper. We always try to get a wide variety of papers, pamphlets, booklets for our Read Of The Month, and cover a wide range of subjects. Why not take a wee while to peruse the wealth of material in our Collections, I'm sure you will learn something and come back for more. Enjoy.

Treason, Read On Line:

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

3.5%, Is This The Tipping Point?

 Chile.

Ecuador.

        Across the world the young are turning against the enforced neo-liberalism that has brought so much hardship and misery to so many. From Chile, Haiti, Ecuador, to Lebanon, Iraq and Sudan and elsewhere, people are on the streets challenging the established authority and the symbols of this brutal exploitative system. In some states in is insurrection, and others growing mass protests. Can Chile be the spark that starts the fire?

 Lebanon.

Iraq.

    An interesting article By Medea Benjamin Nicolas J S Davies

         Uprisings against the decades long dominance of neoliberal “center-right” and “center-left” governments that benefit the wealthy and multinational corporations at the expense of working people are sweeping the world.
         In this Autumn of Discontent, people from Chile, Haiti and Honduras to Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon are rising up against neoliberalism, which has in many cases been imposed on them by US invasions, coups and other brutal uses of force. While the severe repression against these activists have led to more than 250 protesters killed in Iraq in October alone, the protests have continued to grow. Some movements, such as in Algeria and Sudan, have already forced the downfall of long-entrenched, corrupt governments.
        A country that is emblematic of the uprisings against neoliberalism is Chile. On October 25, 2019, a million Chileans – out of a population of about 18 million – took to the streets across the country, unbowed by government repression that has killed at least 20 and injured hundreds more. Two days later, Chile's billionaire president Sebastian Piñera fired his entire cabinet and declared, “We are in a new reality. Chile is different from what it was a week ago.”
        The people of Chile appear to have validated Erica Chenoweth’s research on non-violent protest movements, in which she found that once over 3.5% of a population rise up to non-violently demand political and economic change, no government can resist their demands. It remains to be seen whether Piñera’s response will be enough to save his own job, or whether he will be the next casualty of the 3.5% rule.
       It is fitting that Chile should be in the vanguard of protests sweeping the world in this Autumn of Discontent, since Chile served as the original neoliberal laboratory.
       When Chile’s socialist leader Salvador Allende was elected in 1970, after a six year covert CIA operation to prevent his election, President Nixon ordered U.S. sanctions to “make the economy scream.”
       In his first year in office, Allende’s progressive economic policies led to a 22% increase in real wages, as work began on 120,000 new housing units and the nationalization of copper mines and other industrial sectors. But growth slowed in 1972 and 1973 under the pressure of brutal US sanctions, as in Venezuela and Iran today.
        Allende was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup on September 11, 1973. The new US and Western backed leader, General Augusto Pinochet, executed or ‘disappeared’ at least 3,200 people, held 80,000 political prisoners in jail, and ruled as a brutal dictator until 1990.
         Under Pinochet, Chile’s economy was radically restructured by the “Chicago Boys”, a team of Chilean economics students trained at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Milton Friedman. US sanctions were quickly lifted and Pinochet sold off Chile’s public assets to US corporations and wealthy investors. The neoliberal program: tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, together with mass privatization and cuts to pensions, healthcare, education and other public services, was soon duplicated across the world.
          While the Chicago Boys pointed to rising economic growth rates in Chile as evidence of the success of their neoliberal program, by 1988, 48% of Chileans were living below the poverty line. Chile is currently one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America, and one of the most unequal.
        The governments elected after Pinochet, from “center-right” to “center-left”, have abided by the neoliberal model. The needs of the poor and working class continue to be exploited, as they pay higher taxes than their tax-evading bosses, on top of ever-rising living costs, stagnant wages and limited access to voucherized education and a stratified public-private healthcare system. Indigenous communities are at the very bottom of this corrupt social and economic order.
        The neoliberal consensus following Pinochet has triggered a disillusionment with the traditional political process, as voter turnout declined from 95% in 1989 to 47% in the recent presidential election in 2017.
       If Chenoweth is right and the million Chileans in the street have breached the tipping point for successful non-violent popular democracy, Chile may be leading the way to a global political and economic revolution. 

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

Music, Poetry And The Rent Strike.

        Just a wee reminder, Monday 11th. November is the evening when you can enjoy  some music, poetry and a film based around the 1915 Glasgow/Clydeside rent strike followed by an open discussion of what relevance has that great victory for us today, and what can we learn from that successful struggle. What is more, this is a free event, it will be held in the CCA cinema, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow.

Details:

Date, Monday 11th. November, 2019.

Time, 7:30pm.

Venue. Cinema in CCA

Address, 350 Sauchiehall Street Glasgow.

Price, FREE.

    See you all there for a great and interesting night.

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

The State's Cages Of Repression.

      It is a fact that across the globe, most prisons are grossly overcrowded, conditions a deplorable and nothing is on the horizon that is likely to improve matters. This on top of the fact the all prisons are a blight on humanity. Locking people up in cages is a dehumanising process, and any civilised society would not tolerate such abhorrent institutions. We must support all those who find themselves enmeshed in this state system of repression and violence.

     This is just one case, but it could be repeated in any country and in lots of cases treatment can be much more repressive and brutal, but every case should be made public in the hope that we can end this state savagery.    

 

 This from 325:

USA: A Message from Eric King – Imprisoned anarchist comrade

November 5th, 2019

October 8th, 2019

      Here are the things I hear most:

What are you doing, we heard this, I don’t think so, we’ll see, maybe, Chow!, Count!, who’s mess is this, who’s shaking the bars, lights out, mail call, rec call, you want a shower, clean this mess, nope not today, not happening, I’ll check on it, put in a cop-out request, doubt it, quit trashing my tier, cuff up…

      Sometimes I spend hours pondering revenge fantasies, most time I think of my wife and kiddos. Fourteen months in segregation minus 4 days at Grady County, plus 6 at McCreary. We haven’t been in the same room since August 11th, 2018. Now these bastards drag me back to Colorado to force more time, and have the audacity to block our family visits, due to a bad check from 15 years ago. Maybe people who read this will be disgusted by this news.

      That said, I’m hurting friends. Being attacked sucks. Being charged with new federal charges for that attack is sickening. Never forget how horrible these people are. This system exists from the top to the bottom which is why reform is such a joke. You don’t reform cancer, you destroy it. We must destroy this system.

Until all are free,

RIP Tom Manning & Willem, never forgotten

–EK

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

The 1915 Rent Strike, Then And Now.

 

       The 1915 Glasgow and Clydeside rent strike was a tremendous victory for the ordinary people and was achieved by the coming together of the women of the area and the backing of the workers of the Clydeside industries. We should always remember and celebrate these victories. To that end a group are organising two events to mark the November victory of the rent strike and see what we can learn from that great event. A FREE film show and open discussion in the CCA 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow 11th November, and Walk of Pride, 17th. November.

 

The film show: From the 1915 rent strikes to Living Rent
      We will ask. What is rent, what does it mean? - 

      Why has it such a hold on people? - 

      Why does it consume so much of our time? - 

      Who invented it?
-     Who decides what it is and what it is worth? - 

      What are the alternatives? - 

      And essentially how do we dismantle the power of the landlords who control it.
CCA cinema 350 Suchiehall Street Monday 11 November 7:30

AND a Walk of Pride…
Sunday, 17 November, 1 pm
Buchanan Street Steps; walking to the old Sheriffs Court on Ingram Street for open mic and songs.
A tribute to the Clydeside women and workers whose mass march on 17 November, 1915-- from all corners of Glasgow-- brought victory to the Glasgow rent strikes through class unity and direct action.

      Both events co-hosted by members of the Industrial Workers of the World,
May Day on the Green, City Strolls/Radical Imagination, Scottish Peace
Network, Scottish Tenants Organisation, and Strong Women of Clydeside.

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

Hail The New Messiah.

      So here we go again, another election, more promises of paradise, more shaking hands, more smiling at babies, the crooks and liars are in town. roll up, roll up to the greatest show on earth. I shudder at the amount of manifestos I have been hit with, and stand aghast at the number of messiahs I've seen take to the podium, but paradise never arrives. Despite the increasing wealth of this country over the years and the number of election promises to see a fairer distribution of wealth, nothing has changed that much. Yes we have mobile phones an TVs, but approximately 25% of our kids live in poverty, people are still homeless, parents are still distraught trying to feed their families, jobs are still precarious and wages are still crap. I still maintain that a parliamentary election is nothing more that a crooks and liars competition, each contender trying to out do the other and be crowned king of crooks and liars and take their place on the throne to perpetuate the same old exploitation of the people. So ends my only contribution to this latest crooks and liars competition.

       This from something I wrote a while ago:

       We all know that those who sit on the seat of government are in the pay of the corporate world, they call the shots, who gets invaded and when, where the tax payers money goes etc. So what’s next, new bums on seats, nicer smiles at the podium, while leaving the same corporate power in control? The system stinks from top to bottom, it is the system that should be criticised not the individuals that manage it, an Obama here a Blair there, so what, what changes. When the mass euphoria broke out at the election of Obama I reminded people of the same euphoria when Blair was elected which quickly turned to an effort to get him indicted. Over the years I have seen a multitude of smiling faces form governments and seen a library of election manifestos held aloft, but little changes, our standard of living goes up a little and goes down again, but we always struggle. We go to war on an alphabet of causes, we are always the just and the defenders of freedom, the other the evil enemy, the workers do the killing and get killed, the corporate world takes the bounty. It’s the system that needs to be destroyed, until that happens, we will struggle and we will go to war, we will kill ordinary people in the defence of those ordinary people and it will be the ordinary people that do the killing.

       Let's stop the babble and the pandering to the parasites that control and destroy our lives, Let's realise that we can make a better job of the world if we take control ourselves. Direct action, direct involvement, not delegation of our power to the millionaire parasite class that is going to screw you to the deck at every turn. 

ENDLESS BABBLE.

The questions arise. Why war and hunger?

Why does poverty continue to linger?

Why such need in a world of wealth?

Why put a price on a child’s health?

Confused and angry the public stand

gazing in disbelief at this pathetic band.

Those shiny politicians designed by spin

their street credibility paper thin,

the great persuaders looking the mood

struggling so hard just for our good!

Masters of the art of wheeling and dealing

exceptional experts at legal stealing.

Enter the Media, drowning us all in trivial text,

everything you need know

of scandal and sport, crime and sex.

Together they create a world of confusion

all fashion and style, a vicious illusion.

So no matter how often we point at need,

we always drown in a sea of greed,

no debate entered into, no answers found,

the waffle the babble goes round and round.

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

A mixture Of Alice In Wonderland And George Orwell.

       The mainstream media is the biggest manufacturer of lies we have ever witnessed. It fills the role of the state's mouthpiece and through misinformation, lies and distortions, creates the reality the state wants you to believe. It is a fog creating machine to blind the public from the reality in which they live. In this fabricated reality, truth is a far away island that has yet to be discovered. I formed this point of view many many years ago, and since then have seen nothing except evidence that reinforces that view.

      The following is a little piece I wrote approximately ten years ago, in those passing ten years the mainstream media has sank further into the mire of the world of putrid lies, misinformation and distortions, it has become the proud prostitute of the state.

Picture by John Hartfield. 

 

Some everyday headlines, WE ARE SPREADING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ. AFGHANISTAN IS A WESTERN SUCCESS. THE FREE MARKET SPREADS PROSPERITY. THIS YEAR WE WILL TACKLE AFRICA'S POVERTY.        

         Who so ever reads the bourgeois press will become blind. Slowly the fog rises, lies build on lies, lies spawn lies, lies shape your vision and reality is lost in a false consciousness. Trivia and mediocrity fill the mind, seek reality outside the putrid puss and you are deemed to be mad, a raving lunatic, possessed. The media teaches us all we need know of scandal and sport, crime and sex, who slept with who and where, depicting life as a smutty peepshow. Through the bourgeois press you’re fed your daily dose of loathsome lies, banal boring bromide, cliched crap, trivia and petty pulp. Our leaders are portrayed as heroes, supermen, and so the lies breed lies, and lies stretch back into the distant past, lies distort history until it is lost in a bizarre deformed fabrication. We then repeat the disasters of yesterday because the lies are everywhere blinding us. We can’t relate to reality, reality always takes us by surprise because we have no grip of reality, only the lies.

From ''Mein Kampf''
        "All this was inspired by the principle that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the (public) more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation."   Adolf Hitler.

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

The New Theory, "Holidayism".

          As the world gets more vilent and people get more angry and we try topick our way through the lies and confusion, it is difficult to find the right path to end this insanity. Perhaps Walter Wilkinson got it right away back some years ago. I wrote the following piece some time ago, but thought it worth repeating.

"Holidayism"

         "As capitalism lurches from one "crisis" to another, we get ever new theories, economic theories, social theories, some very complex, others not so, all pointing the way how to change the system, how to destroy the system, where we should be heading, and so on. Sometimes if we look back we find that somebody has said it all before, and in some cases in a very explicit fashion and very simply."

WalterWilkinson, 1888-1970, 

author, puppeteer, put it quite simply in his book, The Peep Show:

       "If I were a philosopher expounding a new theory of living, inventing a new "ism," I should call myself a holidayist, for it seems to me that the one thing the world needs to put it right is a holiday. There is no doubt whatever about the sort of life nice people want to lead. Whenever they get the chance, what do they do but go away to the country or the seaside, take off their collars and ties and have a good time playing at childish games and contriving to eat some simple food very happily without all the encumbrances of chairs and tables. This world might be quite a nice place if only simple people would be content to be simple and be proud of it; if only they would turn their backs on these pompous politicians and ridiculous Captains of Industry who, when you come to examine them, turn out to be very stupid, ignorant people, who are simply suffering from an unhappy mania of greediness; who are possessed with perverse and horrible devils which make them stick up smoky factories in glorious Alpine valleys, or spoil some simple country by digging up and exploiting its decently buried mineral resources; or whose moral philosophy is so patiently upside down when they attempt to persuade us that quarrelling, and fighting, and wars, or that these ridiculous accumulations of wealth are the most important, instead of the most undesirable things in life. If only simple people would ignore them and behave always in the jolly way they do on a seashore what a nice world we might have to live in. Luckily nature has a way with her, and we may rest assured that this wretched machine age will all be over in a few years' time. It has grown up as a mushroom, and like a mushroom it has no stability. It will die."

       "Of course Walter didn't see the strange new world that would spring from the madness of the old industrial world. The world of electronics, IT, artificial intelligence and mass surveillance, further alienating us from the simple world of "holidayism". However "holidayism" is still a road to be examined in detail."

      "Walter Wilkinson was the brother of Arthur Wilkinson, English born anarchist, puppeteer, artist, and conscientious objector during the first world war. Arthur married Scottish born woman anarchist, writer, translator, and artist, Lilly Gair Aitken, (Lilly Gair Wilkinson)".

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

The Voice Of Victor Jara Breaks The Silence Curfew.

      Some, people live their life and when they die they leave a mark that lives on and continues to inspire that ongoing struggle for peace and justice across all borders. One such person was Victor Jara, Chilean poet, song writer, theatre producer, brutally tortured and murder by that rat bag of sewer creatures, the Pinochet regime.

Victo Jara, Wikipedia:

         Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈβiktoɾ ˈliðjo ˈxaɾa maɾˈtines]; 28 September 1932 – 16 September 1973)[1] was a Chilean teacher, theater director, poet, singer-songwriter and communist[2] political activist tortured and killed during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He developed Chilean theater by directing a broad array of works, ranging from locally produced plays to world classics, as well as the experimental work of playwrights such as Ann Jellicoe. He also played a pivotal role among neo-folkloric musicians who established the Nueva Canción Chilena (New Chilean Song) movement. This led to an uprising of new sounds in popular music during the administration of President Salvador Allende.
      Jara was arrested shortly after the Chilean coup of 11 September 1973, which overthrew Allende. He was tortured during interrogations and ultimately shot dead, and his body was thrown out on the street of a shantytown in Santiago.[3] The contrast between the themes of his songs—which focused on love, peace, and social justice—and the brutal way in which he was murdered transformed Jara into a "potent symbol of struggle for human rights and justice" for those killed during the Pinochet regime.[4][5] His preponderant role as an open admirer and propagandist for Che Guevara and Allende's government, under which he served as a cultural ambassador through the late 60's and until the early 70's crisis that ended in the coup against Allende, marked him for death.
      In June 2016, a Florida jury found former Chilean Army officer Pedro Barrientos liable for Jara's murder.[6][7] In July 2018, eight retired Chilean military officers were sentenced to 18 years and a day in prison for Jara's murder.[8]

       The people of Chile today are going through a struggle for real change in the face of fierce brutality from a state that supposedly stands under the flag of democracy, but like all states, shows its true character when challenged by the will of the people. However, Victor Jara's voice can still be heard in the face of this state repression and savagery, This from Loam:

       This is the chilling moment soprano Ayleen Jovita Romero defies the silence curfew, imposed under martial law by the government of Sebastián Piñera in Chile and sings the song “El derecho de vivir en paz”, (The right to live in peace) by Victor Jara.
      Such is the silence because of the martial law, that her voice echoes through the buildings, while people from their windows and balconies are “holding their breath” to the words of her song, until the moment she hits the final note and a wave of applause by dozens of people fills the night and space of a neighborhood under police siege.
      The video consists of two scenes of the moment from different angles, one of them being the point of view next to the singer's window.
        The soprano is singing a song from a guitar artist called Victor Jara, he was killed by the Pinochet dictatorship (imposed by the CIA back coup). Jara was taken prisoner along with thousands of others in the Chile Stadium, where guards tortured him, smashing his hands and fingers and then told to try playing his guitar. He was then shot over 40 times and killed. The song is called “The right to live in peace”.

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

The Dear Green Place, Mired In Poverty.

      I was born in the slum of Garngad in Glasow in 1934, "The dear green place" and have lived in the city for most of my life. During that quite long spell I have seen a lot of changes in this city. However, one thing that persists is Glasgow's poverty. The once "Second City of the Empire" has known poverty from its inception right up to today. For a large part of my life I lived in Springburn, once known as a railway town in its own right, and for a while it held the dubious prize of having more children living in poverty than any other ward in Scotland, 52%. It has now lost that accolade and the prize now moves to Calton. One reason why the percentage has fallen in Springburn, is probably due to the inclusion of Robroyston a developing slightly more affluent area, not that the circumstances of the poor have changed dramatically.  
       Within the city as a whole the child poverty rate is approximately a 37% of all children, this is a crime against a vast section of the population, stunting health and potential. What makes this an even more devastating crime is the fact that the number of children living in poverty, in the city, is expected to rise by roughly, 50,000 over the next two years. Saying more than a third of children in Glasgow are living in poverty does not highlight the vast differences between one district and another, some districts are above that 37% figure.

      This chart from  Evening Times shows the disparity as you move from district to district in the city:

    
       Glasgow holds lots of prizes, some we can be very proud of, some that should have its citizens rising up in anger. Glasgow, Scotland's largest city, hosts the highest rates of poverty in Scotland, why?
        Chart from Understanding Glasgow:

 
    Aberdeen is the only city in Scotland that has shown a decrease in child poverty over this period. But we are told our GDP is growing, another crime against the system. Another damning statistic is that Edinburgh is the only city in Scotland where child poverty is below the national average, again Glasgow is top of the list.
      Chart from Understanding Glasgow:

     The number of millionaires in the country is growing, the number of children in poverty is growing, surely this must call into question the basic structure of our economic system. Every child in poverty is a life of stunted growth in health and a lost opportunity for a child to blossom to its full potential. These are unforgivable crimes in a very rich country where a pampered few live a life of opulence at the expense of the many. Where is your righteous anger?

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