Author: earthfirst

24.01.2007

The squat­ted Vor­tex social cen­tre has been fend­ing off an ille­gal evic­tion attempt this morn­ing. There is a call out for folks to help tonight and tomor­row morn­ing

Vor­tex Social Cen­tre
139–141 Stoke New­ing­ton Church Street
Stoke New­ing­ton
N16
Help need­ed Wednes­day night (24th) and Thurs­day morn­ing (25th)
Get on down there and see what help you can offer

Vor­tex Social Cen­tre
139–141 Stoke New­ing­ton Church Street
Stoke New­ing­ton
N16

MON 22 Jan
8pm — Olympic Action Group meet­ing
Con­cerned about the finan­cial cost and neg­a­tive devel­op­ment plans for Lon­don 2012? Feel strong­ly that 2012 will be dam­ag­ing to you, your com­mu­ni­ty or the envi­ron­ment?
Join our group of like-mind­ed peo­ple, with the aim of sup­port­ing each oth­er and devel­op­ing ways to chal­lenge the neg­a­tive Olympic effect.
All wel­come

TUES 23 Jan
7pm — Cafe and cin­e­ma night.
Hot food, drink and anti-copy­wright cin­e­ma. Dona­tion.

WEDS 24 Jan
10am — 12pm Babies@Play.
New parent/baby group, come along for tea/coffee chat and play­time for babies. Bring your toys and ideas to share. Every wednes­day. Free.
10.30am — Court appear­ance for the evic­tion of the social cen­tre.
Clerken­well and Shored­itch Coun­ty Court
29 — 41 Gee Street
Lon­don
EC1V 3RE
All wel­come to attend.
7pm — Social Cen­tre gen­er­al meet­ing.
Come and get involved in the run­ning of the social cen­tre, pro­pose new intia­tives and cam­paigns

THURS 25 Jan
7pm — No Star­bucks in Stok­ie.
Anti Star­bucks cam­paign meet­ing to ensure the social cen­tre isn’t demol­ished for Star­bucks. All wel­come.

FRI 26 Jan
7pm — Cafe and cin­e­ma night.
Hot food, drink and anti-copy­wright cin­e­ma. Dona­tion.

SAT 27 Jan
8pm — Live jazz Upstairs at the Social Cen­tre.
Old jazzers relive the glo­ry days of the orig­i­nal Vor­tex. Dona­tion on the door.

Pho­to­graph­ic exhi­bi­tion:

Lon­don Social Cen­tres in Picures
Pho­to­graph exhibiton of the last five years of lon­don social cen­tres and a brief back­ground to each one.

Protest
Small col­lec­tion of pho­tographs from acclaimed pho­tog­ra­ph­er Guy Small­man cov­er­ing major demon­stra­tions across Europe over recent years.

We hope to open dai­ly from mid­day onwards for cof­fee, tea, soft drinks, cake and bis­cuits. Volu­enteers are always need­ed to help out. If you are inter­est­ed pop in and speak to some­one. Alter­na­tive­ly come to the meet­ings on Wednes­day.
See you there.

occupiedsocialcentre@hushmail.com

139–141 Stoke New­ing­ton Church Street N16 (old Vor­tex Jazz bar)

Open­ing day Sat­ur­day 20th Jan
map:  http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=533113&Y=186502&A=Y&Z=1
— - — - — -
On Sat 6th Jan a group of local peo­ple, along with oth­ers, occu­pied 139–141 Church Street with the inten­tion of open­ing it up as a social cen­tre. Pre­vi­ous­ly the home of the famous Vor­tex jazz club the build­ing is set to be demol­ished by noto­ri­ous land­lord Richard Mid­da to make way for a Star­bucks on the ground floor with lux­u­ry apart­ments above.

This devel­op­ment high­lights the con­tin­ued ero­sion (and unique char­ac­ter) of Church Street as a com­mu­ni­ty hub, where cor­po­rate logos increas­ing­ly pro­lif­er­ate while the cost of hous­ing in Hack­ney esca­lates beyond the means of most ordi­nary peo­ple. Again and again rich prop­er­ty devel­op­ers and the dom­i­nat­ing pow­er of cap­i­tal deter­mine our social, liv­ing and cul­tur­al needs — as with the evic­tion of the orig­i­nal Vor­tex pri­vate greed always wins out against com­mu­ni­ty need.

Social cen­tres are a means where­by peo­ple can come togeth­er to cre­ate, con­spire, com­mu­ni­cate and offer a col­lec­tive chal­lenge against this dom­i­na­tion.

Stoke New­ing­ton has always had a rich rad­i­cal tra­di­tion: Mary Woll­stonecraft writer, philoso­pher and ear­ly fem­i­nist worked in New­ing­ton Green, the Angry Brigade plot­ted against the state from Amhurst road, as well as the The Rad­i­cal Dairy social cen­tre being sit­u­at­ed round the cor­ner in Kynas­ton road. We hope to con­tin­ue this tra­di­tion.

The idea of social cen­tres is not only to occu­py social space but to cre­ate a crit­i­cal vis­i­ble pres­ence in the com­mu­ni­ty where peo­ple can engage with rad­i­cal ideas and events and encour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion in cre­at­ing those events.

Already planned is a reg­u­lar café, cin­e­ma and jazz nights, an exhi­bi­tion space for local artists, a parent/baby group and reg­u­lar ben­e­fits. We intend it to be a meet­ing space for all man­ner of local cam­paigns as well as polit­i­cal events. We invite you to par­tic­i­pate and con­tribute to the suc­cess of the new social cen­tre as a rad­i­cal way of organ­is­ing our­selves.…..

The Social Cen­tre meet­ing every Wednes­day 7pm, all wel­come.

PS Richard Mid­da has issued court papers (court date: Jan­u­ary 24th 10.30 am at Shored­itch coun­ty court) to take repos­ses­sion of the build­ing. We intend to fight against the pro­ceed­ings and invite peo­ple to get involved in the cam­paign to pre­vent Mid­da turn­ing Church Street into anoth­er cor­po­rate won­der­land.

Come on Sat­ur­day to find out more.
2pm — Cafe serv­ing cof­fee, tea, cold drinks, cake
5pm — Social Cen­tre Pre­sen­ta­tion. Find out who we are and what’s going on with the place
7pm onwards hot food, drink and chilled music

web­site: www.londonsocialcentre.org.uk
email:  occupiedsocialcentre@hushmail.com
tel: 07960641707