Common Ground Garden — EVICTION RESISTANCE! Wed 20th June, 9.30am, Reading.

// Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den Evic­tion Resis­tance!

// FUCK THE EVICTION, SAVE THE GARDEN!

// WEDNESDAY 20TH JUNE

// Meet at 9.30am, in Com­mon Ground Gar­den, through the alley­way next to the Wom­ens Infor­ma­tion Cen­tre, at the bot­tom of Sil­ver Street, Read­ing.

They left the land to rot, cov­ered in trash and nee­dles. They hope the build­ings will fall down, so they can jus­ti­fy flog­ging to the high­est bid­der. They hope to see more unnaford­able prison-block apart­ments. Read­ing Bor­ough Coun­cil call it devel­op­ment, regen­er­a­tion. We call it gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, exclu­sion. Just prof­it and pow­er.

The land is ours. We occu­pied it, we cleared it, we worked it and we made it bloom. We recy­cled and re-used, and on our squat­ted land we cre­at­ed sanc­tu­ary from the ram­pant cap­i­tal­ism of Read­ing. Our friends, fam­i­ly and neigh­bours chipped in, and through direct-action and self-organ­i­sa­tion, we cre­at­ed a com­mu­ni­ty gar­den in our neigh­bour­hood, Kates­grove. The land is ours? Well, not exact­ly. The land is nobody’s, because it is every­body’s. And so we called it Com­mon Ground.

On 19th May, we opened the gar­den to the pub­lic. We invit­ed our friends, fam­i­lies and neigh­bours. Embarassed and scared, the Coun­cil tried to stop us. Their court gave them an injunc­tion against us, mak­ing it ille­gal to open the gar­den. So, we informed our com­mu­ni­ty and re-invit­ed em. Fuck the injunc­tion! 200 peo­ple came and enjoyed the gar­den that day, laugh­ing at the Coun­cil and meet­ing oth­ers peo­ple who think the same things they do. Even the media told the truth about us.

Then the Coun­cil got their injunc­tion extend­ed. They told us it was ille­gal to open our gar­den at all and they want ‘their’ land back. They dont under­stand, it has nev­er been theirs, they were just look­ing after it for us. And since they don’t do a very good job, we’ve found a bet­ter use for it. For our­selves, our neigh­bours and local work­ers, for young and old, the gar­den is open every­day. So, now they say they will take it back by force, and demol­ish our gar­den and give it to the rich. Their courts have giv­en them the law, and their thugs will evict us on Wednes­day morn­ing — if they can…

For us, exis­tance is resis­tance — and Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den exists. Our self-organ­i­sa­tion and direct-action exists. On Wednes­day and for­ev­er, our resis­tance exists. Demon­strate, bar­ri­cade, block­ade, occu­py — we will resist in dif­fer­ent ways, because ‘we’ is made of dif­fer­ent peo­ple, and now hope­ful­ly will include one more — you.

In Love n Rage,
Some gar­den­ers.

katesgrovegarden(AT)yahoo.co.uk