Anti-City Academy Teachers Take To The Trees

Sat­ur­day 8 August, 2007: For six months teach­ers have squat­ted the sports ground on Forty Lane in Wem­b­ley, North West Lon­don, to protest against a pri­va­tised City Acad­e­my school being built on the site.

The coun­cil threat­ened to evict them and the sports ground lease­hold­ers if they did not leave. So in true fight­ing fash­ion, the teach­ers, with some advice from Heathrow Air­port Cli­mate Camp erect­ed tree plat­forms right under the noses of the author­i­ties and took to the branch­es on Fri­day night.

Sat­ur­day saw a very loud protest on the ground and from the trees, inform­ing local peo­ple of what it means to send your chil­dren to a City Acad­e­my.

City Acad­e­my’s, for those not in the know, are fund­ed by wealthy busi­ness peo­ple, who get a say in what is and is not being taught.

Oth­er City Academy’s have erad­i­cat­ed any sign of Dar­win­ism and evo­lu­tion from the class­room, only teach­ing cre­ation­ism. Oth­er Academy’s have designed the edu­ca­tion pro­gram to suit their cor­po­rate inter­ests, train­ing chil­dren for jobs, not edu­cat­ing them, cut­ting out activ­i­ties like art, music and oth­er cre­ative out­lets.

One Acad­e­my, as one of the teach­ers told me, does has after-school activ­i­ties though – a ful­ly work­ing Call Cen­tre, where chil­dren as young as 11-years can learn the joys of work­ing your prover­bials off in prob­a­bly the most piti­ful form of employ­ment known to the human race.

The protest last­ed the week­end, the teach­ers endur­ing vicious abuse from the Eng­land fans, who descend­ed on Wem­b­ley for the Eng­land-Israel foot­ball match. They could be heard for miles yelling, “Who’s that wanker in the tree” while throw­ing toma­toes and eggs at the teach­ers.

But the teach­ers endured, sev­er­al giv­ing it back and get­ting the last laugh when the Eng­land fans turned on the Israeli’s with the now his­tor­i­cal­ly record­ed chant of, “Take you Islam and shove it up your ass.”

Foot­ball fan intel­li­gence on parade.

Need­less to say, many of the foot­ball fans did not grasp the fact that the teach­ers were try­ing to save the foot­ball pitch­es for the local chil­dren.

Acad­e­my Schools do not like play areas for their kids. The pro­posed Acad­e­my at Wem­b­ley has no space for play or out­side activ­i­ties.

But as the sun set that Sat­ur­day evening, the irony set in. There we were. Sat under the lit-up Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um arch­way, fol­low­ing a nation­al foot­ball game, drink­ing with teach­ers who were try­ing to save the last sports ground in the area from becom­ing breeze-block, con­crete and glass. And mass prof­it for some pri­vate investor.

For more infor­ma­tion or to sup­port the cam­paign and oppose all City Acad­e­my’s and the rapid pri­vati­sa­tion of the UK school­ing sys­tem, see: http://www.tentcityoccupation.co.uk