This week local anarchists, squatters and housing activists were lucky to meet a good man, allbeit under the stress of a violent eviction by Bristol City Council and it's hired thugs. The world needs more people like Gordon; a rough diamond, angry, undefeated and a headache for the authorities. He's been on the receiving end of a long history of neglect, abuse, punishment, intimidation and violence from council, courts and cops alike but remains defiant, with a well developed and entirely justified hatred of authority alongside a sense of humour which has carried him through all the shit they have thrown at him over the years. His stories are tragic in the extreme, but somehow he tells them in such a way that we all end up laughing at it all with him. As the bailiff scum and the filth began their dirty work, smashing through his front door early on Tuesday morning and Gordon knew he would soon be homeless, we still managed to share a laugh and a joke in the face of their brutality and violence, as we piled the contents of the flat onto the barricade. A police "negotiator" who'd been watching too many cop shows on TV provided us with much shake your head in disbelief style amusement. How we laughed at the council officials there to simply tick their boxes, trying to convince us that they're only trying to help, giving the nod to the tooled up thugs to continue the "assistance" by means of a bit of old fashioned door smashing.These embarassments to humanity even whistled and chuckled while they worked - for the first five minutes! We were agreed on a guiding principle of "Well, let's make these bastards work for their dirty money!" and these tools certainly didn't have an easy job of it. It took them half an hour to break through with a crowbar, sledge hammer and battering ram, which was plenty long enough for us to make our own noise with a few home truths and tell them exactly what we thought of their chosen careers. Strong men wielding all the power of the law, but with no integrity and no real power over their own lives, breaking down doors, destroying homes and ruining lives because they're told to do it by the boss. What a waste of a life! You could see in their dead eyes they were way too far gone to reason with, having sold themselves a long time ago. Their dignity is as broken as that front door; well beyond repair. The same goes for the council officials, hiding behind their "proper procedures" which only serve their interests and offer no real help whatsoever to people on the sharp end of their policies. These tools have no idea, in their cosy little lives, what the reality of life is like for the people they profess to be "helping". Gordon, on the other hand, walked out with his head high, knowing that he'd lost another home but kept his integrity through struggle and he was clearly happy that this time he was not alone.