GrandBanks Social Centre* mentioned in Camden New Journal

Basically about two weeks ago a kid got stabbed and killed about 10 mins from grandbanks. Possible he had been at the grand banks at some point when it was open. There is a special issue on the stabbed boy and below is an article written by an 18 year old girl who mentions the grandbanks. The other articles have interviews with the friends of the kid that died and the "rude-boy" culture of kentish town/Camden. Very interesting.

Article from camden new journal:

Help us resist lure of the streets

Teenagers need somewhere to be free, argues Lara Jakobs

Student Lara Jakobs
I AM an 18-year-old from Acland Burghley School in Tufnell Park, and feel very strongly that the issue of youth work and its importance was written off by councillor Deirdre Krymer in her letter to the New Journal (Community must help with our youth, January 12). One boy from my school has died. Is that not enough to make you realise that what the government is doing doesn’t suffice? Working with young children is one thing and schools having after-school clubs is another, but my school youth club has been shut and our sixth-form common room might as well be.

In terms of after-school clubs, apart from sports, most young people stop going to these by the time they turn 14. It is the vital years between 14 and 18 that are not being focused on and those are the years that are breeding this violence, this utter stupidity, this aggressive and hateful behaviour. If we weren’t being pushed into this culture maybe Tommy Winston’s life would not have been wasted.

I started drinking on the street at 14 because there was nothing better to do, and I see the age when this drinking starts getting younger and younger and what can I do?

I don’t feel respected in my school environment any more. Every year it just gets worse, because nobody has anything to do. Government or councillors must see it from our point of view, and accept that young people may well smoke and drink and do whatever to look cool. But, if they are going to do this, they need to be able to do it safely – perhaps even supervised by an older young person, not to condone it but to keep it under control and relaxed.

In Europe, young people don’t see the excitement in alcohol because they are exposed to it from a young age. Here it needs to be seen in a similar light. There was never a problem in my generation. You grow out of trying to fit in and look cool, but if you are on the street (and the council is making it illegal to drink on nice streets so you get forced into bad areas) you aren’t safe, you aren’t responsible.

So you get an Asbo shoved on you, and that’s supposed to help? We need a place where we can just hang out, and be allowed to do the things that young people do, before we get pushed into bad areas and into violence. It’s a different culture, and once you’re in, it’s much harder to just grow out of it. These people think they’re gangsters. Asbos and non-drinking areas are useless when the problem isn’t tackled at its root.

We had the Grand Banks Community Centre/Squat in Tufnell Park for a while. It was absolutely perfect – you could hang out with your friends, not have to spend loads of money, and generally be around a nice atmosphere. They shut that down and didn’t see the good in it. We have to let the government know that this isn’t enough.

We are students who can’t go to pubs (I’m old enough to now but still can’t afford it), can’t go to clubs, and can’t go anywhere without being moved on. What does the government expect us to do?

In Islington, all youth clubs became too learning-based and people stopped going. We just want somewhere to go and be free. We don’t want more school.

Something needs to be done before it all descends into more violence, drugs and hatred.

All the community centres were closed around the Tufnell Park area and it seems people no longer have places to go to because “We’re rich enough to pay for things to do”.

I beg to differ. Our lives are being governed by people 30 years older than us who did not have the same experience of gangs and “rude-boy” culture that has risen above us now.

We don’t feel heard or understood. Does no one realise how much Tommy’s death is a representation of what we are living in.

Does no one realise that this needs to change and we, as young people, have no way of stopping it ourselves?

Maybe if the national newspapers (or even the London papers) could hear about Tommy and north London’s cries for helpful youth work, we would get somewhere, but where is the coverage? Why are we constantly brushed under the carpet?


Source: Camden New Journal Article

*GrandBanks Social Centre was formed and occupied in February 2004. It ran as an open anti-authoritarian community centre for 8 months until a police eviction. At the first eviction date in march 2004 over 200 people stop bailiffs evicting the space. During that time the space was used for a huge number of political, cultural and social events and a meeting point for many different communities in the area.

More info: www.wombles.org.uk

having kept the 56a Infoshop going since 1991 (13 years squatted, the rest as tenants) all we can say is it's a funny old game...always something going on...ups and downs...the best bit is to know why you are there and be honest about that reason...esp. with people that come by...it does seem in recent years that centres have been more welcoming than ones that were going in the 1980's..less anarchoid, more anti-capitalist..
if you want input face to face anybody..come on down to our place and we'll talk....we are a good example of what's possible on a small scale (with a strategy). Also questions about a spaces longevity are different from questions to new spaces...it still amazes us that South London (with presumably 4 million people in it) cannot staff a social centre 7 days a week....answers on on a virtual postcard.
A Dinosaur
in personal capacity

 http://www.matilda.aktivix.org/

The social centres of the ruling classes are not just the parliaments
and assembly houses but also the churches, temples and mosques: the
cathedrals where kings and queens are married and buried are not just
physical but also psychical centres of society. Patriarchal, racist
and other attitudes promoting ruling-class supremacy are ritually played out in
those architectural materialisations of capitalist ideology, those sports
stadiums, bars, pubs, schools, factories and community centres. The proletariat
however is not centred: moreover, as recent legalistic maneuvers of the ruling
classes show, as the working class turns against its oppresors, it is seen as
not just social but also anti-social, in every sense of those words:
revolutionary power is in the supercession of all institutions: including the
hospitals, prisons, schools, cathedrals, asylums, offices, streets, homes and
palaces. It is incapable of being industrialised, of making a profit or material
value, because it can only create new values and liberate human values. This is
because it is anti-capitalist.

The process of opening up access to and ownership of resources/
information, played an important part in the bourgeoise revolution:
however, in creating the library systems of the American
revolutionaries, the new lodges like the Leather Apron Club developed
the freemasonic system in a simply quantitive way. The qualitive
development, ie the suppression and realisation, of freemasonry is a
prelude to the self organisation of the proletariat: Every buildings
is a Masonic plot: even squats are part of this plot, but it is where
these groupings of resources create new social relations that go beyond those
that produced them that they are revolutionary. where those buildings and
architectural forms go against and beyond the function given to them by town
planners, politicians, urbanists, social theorists and the professional,
full-time "revolutionaries". where the social centres of the ruling classes, the
bourgeoisie, tunnel people into spaces of ever decreasing play in power and
control, revolutionary spaces are constantly expanding or opening up their
options through confronting power in its own time and space.

The difference between the aristocratic and bourgeoise ownership of
land and property is shown up very much in instances of squatting as a
proletarian resource. While in the earlier all property is of the
crown., the later creates a contract between the crown, the state and
the people. This creates the idea of public and private: the crown and
the people. The mediation of the relationship through the state means
that this conflict can become mediated and therefore spectacular. What
is meant by 'squatting' in the context of the 'squatters movement' ie
the kachi abadi (literally 'raw housing') in the so-called "third
world", ie roma and gypsy struggle for self-housing in the former
British Empire, eg Essex or Pakistan ( a direct conflict between the
people and the (military) state which "owns" the land) is, therefore,
very different from that meant by the squatted or occupied social
centres of anarchists here in London. The kachi abadi dwellers or the
AMP (tenants association of Punjab) peasants have been living in their
'squats' for many generations. Just like those in Palestine who find
themselves in conflict with the 'squatters' OF THE ISRAELI STATE. What
is meant by 'occupation' or 'movement' in these contexts?

It is by networking that the AMP are able to continue operating even
while their offices are shut down and sealed off by the police and army. A
speaker from the Workers Rights Movement (I had seen him give a lecture in favor
of neo-liberalism at LUMS ) "Squatters rights movements" hope to go beyond the
popular slogans like 'ownership or death'. Where the squatters simply want
ownership of their own land,
the communists want to go further and build the party. They are
supported by the neo-liberal NGOs like workers rights movement too because they
are democratic. We all know what social democracy and national socialism lead
to, so it's self evident that the revolutionary org is beyond all socialisms,
nationalisms and indeed all democratic forms, radical or participatory or not.
While it may be that a representational or parliamentary judiciary (anarchist/
bourgeoisie) taking over from the military aristocracy and bourgeois would
improve conditions for the prolertariat, it is a mistake to confuse this with
proletariat power. Our movement against all power, including the army and the
police, is as a subversion of power.
The recuperation of class anger into the spectacle/commodity form is
detourned by the autonomous actions of proletarian workers in these fields. The
government workers too must be revolutionised. Their process will either
transform those offices or abolish them all together.

Recently the AMP leadership has come under attack from the PRM. As
the AMP is a self-organisation of the proletariat, independent but in
collaboration with the local CP - albeit hierarchical - this attack from a group
organised by bourgeois individuals such as in the PRM is simply unacceptable.
Similarly, Anarchist reaction against hierarchical unions and structured
syndicalists ring hollow given their own collaborations with the state in its many forms. It is foolish
to regard networks as something distinct from the Horizontal and Vertical
organisations who operate within them. Networks never exist on their own, they
need the energy and the focussed activities of more specific organisations to create the dynamism which gives them life.

Centralised and decentralised organisations are often set up to carry
out specific functions, e.g. to organise a particular action or activity.
However they can degenerate into a gang if they become an ideological apparatus
used to control the network. This has been illustrated by the attempt of
Anarchists to control the London Social Centres Network. As communists we must
be clear that we the form of organisation we are working for is the self organisation of workers
and our solidarity with all workers, in order for this solidarity to work and to
be solid, goes across all organisations or networks and this, of course implies
the destruction (deconstruction ) of all existing forms of organisation be it
centred (the self/the other/mother/brother past/present/future, east/west
etc) or social (the family, the nation, network/ lodge/ cabal/ gang/ group/
party...)

After months of searching, followed by cleaning, scrubbing, sanding, painting and varnishing, the Seomra Spraoi (room of fun) collective has begun to open its doors. The collective took a space some months back in a prime city centre location, Middle Abbey Street, and soon began to have small meetings, events and gatherings there.

At present, the centre is open 2-6pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Anyone can drop in and view the forgotten zine library and the Bad Books library, have a cup of tea or simply relax and spend some time finding out more about what’s going on in Dublin. If you would like to use the space anytime contact Seomra Spraoi via the website, mailing list or email:  seomraspraoi@wildmail.com

This weekend:
Sees a number of events taking place in Seomra Spraoi. On Saturday 4th February, from 2.00pm -6.00pm there will be a freeshop, everyone is encouraged to bring along stuff to swap, a film screening will follow. On Sunday 5th February 2.00pm – 6.00pm the library will be open and there will be an informal Bad Thoughts discussion, topic to be confirmed.
Freeshop, Film, Library / Drop In/ Bad Thoughts Discussion

more info on article on imc-ie
 http://www.indymedia.ie/article/74084