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Why do we still listen to the rentier impostors?
“The first man who enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘This is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, ‘Beware of listening to this impostor, you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
280,000 people in Scotland living in the private rented sector live in poverty. (in a so called welfare state) And how many are children and how many are malnourished, living in fear of the next exploitative bill, how many will be physiologically impacted; become a statistic of the criminal justice system, turn to mood altering drugs and alcohol, be isolated from their families and the wider society. Shelter is a primal need for survival, like air, like water. That is why housing is a basic human right and we fail as human beings unless we recognise this. And we fail as citizens by not demanding it. Money may insulate us from poverty but it can not protect us from the conflicts of our own humanity, nor the threat of changing circumstances that may affect anyone in any given time in a precarious world.
Rent is the most insidious weapon in the neoliberal project, it seeps into and controls everything, it sanitises our communities to the zero sum game of afford, it isolates people, creates fear of the future, destroys creativity and innovation and ultimately violates and criminalises the poor.
280,000 people living in poverty. Is that the legacy we want to leave our kids, our grand kids? Or do we need to listen to something different?
Living Rent
Living Rent, Scotland’s tenants’ union, fighting for decent and affordable housing for all.
From LA to Glasgow (Event)
A book launch for City of Segregation
100 Years of Struggle for Housing in Los Angeles
“We must fight these racist ideologies for a different vision of housing, and justice at the soul of our cities.”
City Strolls “Enough already” walk
With their 1994 battle cry, “Ya basta!” (“Enough already!”) Mexico’s Zapatista uprising became the spearhead of two convergent movements: Mexico’s movement for indigenous rights and the international movement against corporate globalization.
‘I think we have to start by admitting that we don’t have the answers. The fact that we think that taking state power is the wrong way to go does not mean that we know the right way. Probably we have to think of advancing through experiments and questions: “preguntando caminamos” — “walking we ask questions” — as the Zapatistas put it. To think of moving forward through questions rather than answers means a different sort of politics, a different sort of organization. If nobody has the answers, then we have to think not of hierarchical structures of leadership, but horizontal structures that involve everyone as much as possible.’ John Holloway
Join us on an “Enough already”, walk. Meet at Govan underground and come on a walk into town, taking in the landscape and discuss the changing social dynamic and ways we can move forward. Or just come for the stroll. All ages welcome.
Saturday 18th June. Meet 12:00 Govan Underground. Walk around two hours. Finnish with tea at the Electron Club CCA Suchiehall street.