CALL TO ACTION - Imminent threat to the community of St Agnes Place, Kennington, London SE11
we need:
people - lots of them, timber, fencing, tools, scaffolding - long and short and towers, scaffolding clips, cement, sand, chain, polyprop rope, locks, ball bearings, nuts and bolts, nails and screws, sheet metal, steel cable and fasteners, fire doors, metal pipe, corrugated iron, karabiners, oil drums, heavy duty plastic pipe and tubing, shovels, large nets - steel and rope, bicycle d-locks, padlocks, ballast, tarps, teflon, wire all grades, metal and wood saws etc.
Most of all we need YOU!
Directions to St Agnes (including map) can be found here
http://www.stagnesplace.org/index.php?module=htmlpages&func=display&pid=5
Contact: info@stagnesplace.org
Website: www.stagnesplace.org
Please come down this week and help save one of Londons oldest squatted streets!
BACKGROUND NOTES...........
St Agnes place is the oldest and largest multi-ethnic community of its kind, created as a radical solution to the housing crisis in the 1970s when a group of activists rescued, defended and renovated a street of derelict and condemned properties.
Home to people passing through and to permanent families alike, as well as being the Rastafarian International Headquarters, St Agnes Place has flourished for the past 29 years as a dissident community and is now seriously under threat of being destroyed. People have come and gone, but the community is just as interesting and diverse as it was then. Around two years ago Lambeth started legal proceedings against 12 of the houses. By the middle of last summer, they had gained repossession orders on them. On October 24 2003, the 12 houses were set to be evicted. These houses were defended and a continuous occupation has been maintained. None of the houses has been taken back by the council yet. For the council, it all seems a matter of making money, not helping a community. It has done nothing to help this neighbourhood. Lambeth likes to project a multi-cultural image, and yet it is threatening a place that is considered sacred to Rastafarian people. Squatting has changed from being an ancient civil right to a modern criminal offence. At St Agnes Place we have tried to protest against this. Lambeth will come again to try to evict us, this time with more force. If they succeed, it will mark the end of an era. This neighbourhood is one of the last stands of an alternative lifestyle in Britain. It is also our home. We do not intend to go without a fight.
Anonymous, from Time Out, June 2nd-9th
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