Reading: Common Ground, squatted community garden, to re-open 12 April!

Spring re-ener­gis­es squat­ting gar­den­ers to dig-in and con­tin­ue the strug­gle!

1. Com­mon Ground Squat­ted Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den Re-Open­ing, 1pm, 12th April!

Time: Open from 1pm, Com­mu­ni­ty BBQ (tra­di­tion­al & veg­an) from 3pm, live acoustic music from 6pm.
Date: Sat­ur­day 12th April
Venue: Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den, entrance through alley­way next to (Ex) Wom­ens Infor­ma­tion Cen­tre, Sil­ver Street, Read­ing, RG2.

Con­tact: Tele­phone 07774023475 on the day for lat­est infor­ma­tion.
Email katesgrovegarden@yahoo.co.uk any oth­er time.

2. ‘Plan B’…

If nec­es­sary, we will take the cel­e­bra­tion to the spoil­sport author­i­ties!

3. Com­mon Ground Col­lec­tive joins anti-cap­i­tal­ists!

We unite to fight for “Every­thing for Every­one!”

4. Plans for new ‘autho­rised’ com­mu­ni­ty gar­den in Kates­grove pro­gress­ing.

Any­one inter­est­ed urged to get in con­tact.

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1. Com­mon Ground Squat­ted Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den Re-Open­ing, 1pm 12th April!

Gar­den­ers reaf­firm “We will always val­ue com­mu­ni­ty, democ­ra­cy and com­mon sense over prop­er­ty rights and beu­ro­c­ra­cy!”

Com­mon Ground Col­lec­tive plan to re-open the squat­ted com­mu­ni­ty gar­den (1) in Sil­ver Street to the pub­lic from 1pm on Sat 12th April, with a free BBQ (tra­di­tion­al and veg­an) from 3pm and live acoustic music from 6pm. (2)

Fol­low­ing the gar­den being closed down by landown­ers Read­ing Bor­ough Coun­cil (RBC) in Oct 07, it turned out that RBC intend to pri­va­tise the site, flog­ging it off to the mul­ti­mil­lionare ‘Unite Group’, a com­pa­ny spe­cial­is­ing in pro­vid­ing pri­vate­ly owned stu­dent acco­mo­da­tion and renowned across the coun­try for rip­ping stu­dents off in the process (3).

How­ev­er, five months have now passed dur­ing which the peo­ple of Kates­grove have had one of our few poten­tial green spaces denied from them and despite RBC and Unite say­ing a con­tract would be signed in Decem­ber 07, no progress seems to have yet been made. Even if a con­tract were to be signed tomor­row, which we vehe­ment­ly oppose as being unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic (4), no plan­ning per­mis­sion could be grant­ed for months, leav­ing the land des­o­late and unused for the dura­tion when fam­i­lies from the neigh­bour­hood could be enjoy­ing it.

For this rea­son, we have resolved to once again take direct-action and re-open Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den to our neigh­bours and any­one who cares to enjoy it, begin­ning on Sat 12th April. We have cho­sen this date to tie in with a Euro­pean ‘day-of-action for squats and autonomous spaces’, where sim­i­lar activ­i­ties will take place across the UK and in more than 20 cities Europe wide. (5)

As always, we hope that RBC will see sense and allow the gar­den to be re-opened. Clear­ly we dis­agree on what should hap­pen to the site long term, but sure­ly it does not make sense to see the site once again aban­doned for a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time when it could be pro­vid­ing much need­ed green space and relax­ation to peo­ple and fam­i­lies from around the area. We encour­age RBC to sup­port us and to dis­cuss meth­ods of alle­vi­at­ing any con­cerns they might have.

How­ev­er, as pre­vi­ous­ly, we aim to go ahead regard­less of the the views of the author­i­ties. We will always val­ue com­mu­ni­ty, democ­ra­cy and com­mon sense above prop­er­ty rights and beu­ro­c­ra­cy.

2. ‘Plan B’…

We recog­nise with sad­ness that there is a (hope­ful­ly very small) pos­si­bil­i­ty that the author­i­ties will not see sense and could suc­ceed in phys­i­cal­ly pre­vent­ing us re-open­ing Com­mon Ground. But nev­er fear, ‘Plan B’ is here!

In this sit­u­a­tion, the entire event will sim­ply be relo­cat­ed into the Town Cen­tre, tak­ing place exact­ly as adver­tised but in the area imme­di­ate­ly in front of the Civic Cen­tre and law courts, behind the Police Sta­tion and just off Hosier Street. (6)

If mem­bers of the pub­lic can­not find us at Com­mon Ground in Sil­ver Street, they are encour­aged to join us at this sec­ond loca­tion. Alter­na­tive­ly, peo­ple can ring 07774023475 on the day for up to date infor­ma­tion.

3. Com­mon Ground group joins anti-cap­i­tal­ists!

In ear­ly March, Com­mon Ground Col­lec­tive agreed to affil­i­ate to anti-cap­i­tal­ist organ­i­sa­tion ‘Read­ing Grass­roots Action’ (RGA). RGA aims to organ­ise in a direct­ly-demo­c­ra­t­ic way (i.e. every­one involved is equal), tak­ing direct-action to defend and improve our lives, sup­port­ing oth­er com­mu­ni­ties and groups of work­ers local­ly and glob­al­ly and unit­ing and link­ing with oth­ers to con­tin­ue the growth of the glob­al ‘anti-cap­i­tal­ist’ move­ments.

Sev­er­al peo­ple involved in Com­mon Ground, includ­ing many of those who orig­i­nal­ly start­ed the gar­den project, were all­ready mem­bers of RGA, and Com­mon Ground view this step of join­ing RGA ‘en masse’ as an entire­ly log­i­cal one. The prin­ci­ples which under­pin Com­mon Ground — includ­ing oppo­si­tion to devel­op­mentim­posed from out­side and above the com­mu­ni­ty, a belief that land should be under the ‘com­mon own­er­ship’ of the peo­ple (its use decid­ed by and for the ben­e­fit of every­one affect­ed not by minori­ties for pri­vate prof­it), as well as our use of direct-action and direct-democ­ra­cy — are tak­en to their log­i­cal con­clu­sion in RGA’s more gen­er­al anti-cap­i­tal­ist, egal­i­tar­i­an, com­mu­nis­tic hall­marks. (7)

As Com­mon Ground said in our very first press-release, “by cul­ti­vat­ing unused derelict land with­out the con­sent of author­i­ties and landown­ers, we present a pos­i­tive demon­stra­tion of resis­tance to the (dom­i­nant) set of pri­or­i­ties which sees our local envi­ron­ment as just anoth­er (exploitable) com­mod­i­ty”. And by join­ing with RGA we declare our inten­tion to con­tin­ue this strug­gle in all areas of life, unit­ing to fight for “Every­thing for every­one”! (8)

4. Plans for new ‘autho­rised’ com­mu­ni­ty gar­den in Kates­grove
pro­gress­ing.

Mean­while, sev­er­al peo­ple involved in Com­mon Ground/RGA, are work­ing to ensure that an ‘autho­rised’ com­mu­ni­ty gar­den is estab­lished in Kates­grove. As a response to Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den, RBC offered two oth­er sites of derelict land, to be used for such a project. Fol­low­ing meet­ings with both RBC, local coun­cil­lors and Kates­grove Res­i­dents Asso­ci­a­tion, plans are pro­gress­ing.

The con­di­tions of the RBC offer have now been clar­i­fied, sat­is­fy­ing all involved that there is def­i­nite poten­tial worth work­ing for. Kates­grove Res­i­dents Asso­ci­a­tion have hap­pi­ly agreed that any ‘autho­rised’ com­mu­ni­ty gar­den could be man­aged under their name, and research is ongo­ing into the method of legal­ly insur­ing any such gar­den. All involved are very pos­i­tive that this project can be realised over the next year or so, and we strong­ly encour­age any­one iter­est­ed in any capac­i­ty to get in touch via Com­mon Ground’s email address: katesgrovegarden@yahoo.co.uk

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Com­mon Ground con­tin­ue to meet at 3pm, every Sun­day, in ‘The Turks’
pub on the Lon­don Road. Every­one who can agree to work with­in the RGA hall­marks
(found at www.rgacollective.org.uk) and Com­mon Ground aims, is wel­come to join us.

We can be con­tact­ed by email at katesgrovegarden@yahoo.co.uk.

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Notes for the edi­tor:

1. Tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from New York, where work­ing-class, most­ly immi­grant, com­mu­ni­ties had ille­gal­ly trans­formed hun­dreds of derelict lots into won­der­ful com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens (see http://www.weareeverywhere.org), Com­mon Ground was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed by squat­ters and local res­i­dents in Jan 07 on land owned by RBC. RBC had left the land and sur­round­ing build­ings a nee­dle-cov­ered derelict junk­yard for more than five years before­hand. Despite legal threats (includ­ing an injunc­tion bar­ring the open­ing and an vic­tion notice being served), the gar­den was opened in May 07, reciev­ing huge sup­port through­out the com­mu­ni­ty and beyond, as well as favourable media reports includ­ing tele­vi­sion news clips. Over the sum­mer, the gar­den was enjoyed by local peo­ple — young and old — every­day and sev­er­al well attend­ed com­mu­ni­ty events were held in the gar­den includ­ing BBQ’s, live acoustic music shows, an art day and a talk by a vis­it­ing indige­nous ‘land-rights’ cam­paign­er from Mex­i­co. Two ‘evic­tion days’ were seen off by local protest and refusal to coop­er­ate, before the gar­den and near­by squat was final­ly evict­ed, through phys­i­cal force, on 18th Octo­ber.

2. Sev­en acoustic acts, rang­ing in influ­ence across folk, punk, ska, coun­try and hip-hop, are con­firmed: Neil Suther­land ( http://www.myspace.com/neilsutherlandacoustic), Nao­mi-Hates-Humans ( http://www.myspace.com/?????), Sam Rus­so, Kel­ly
Kemp ( http://www.myspace.com/?????), Smoky Bas­tard ( http://www.myspace.com/smokybastard??) and Clay­ton Bliz­zard ( http://www.myspace.com/claytonblizzard).

3. Unite Group hope to con­struct a huge (300+ capac­i­ty) devel­op­ment on the site, rent­ing rooms to stu­dents at over­all prices poten­tial­ly £1000’s above the aver­age cost of uni­ver­si­ty owned acco­mo­da­tion. This is despite two stu­dent halls build­ings hav­ing lain emp­ty for two years less than 200 yards away. For infor­ma­tion and links to com­plaints and cam­paigns against Unite Group from around the UK, please con­tact Com­mon Ground.

3. RBC is nego­ti­at­ing the pri­vati­sa­tion (flog­ging off) of land which is cur­rent­ly pub­licly-owned, behind closed doors and away from the com­mu­ni­ty and pub­lic. There has been no pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion about whether the land should or should not be sold, let alone ‘who to’ and ‘for what pur­pose’. We do not con­sid­er a plan­ning con­sul­ta­tion to be be any­thing like ade­quate, as this would come after the land had been sold and plan­ners can only con­sid­er spe­cif­ic con­cerns, not tak­ing into account wider social or envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors. Democ­ra­cy can only mean some­thing if local com­mu­ni­ties have direct con­trol over their own resources.

4. Please see http://april2008.squat.net for more infor­ma­tion or http://www.indymedia.org.uk for arti­cles about spe­cif­ic actions planned. So far we know of actions planned in Lon­don, Leeds and Man­ches­ter, as well as Read­ing and 20 oth­er cities around Europe.

5. We have cho­sen this loca­tion as we feel it would be an apt protest
against the author­i­ties actions sur­round­ing Com­mon Ground, as well as
express­ing our oppo­si­tion to the pos­si­ble fur­ther pri­vati­sa­tion of pub­licly-owned land
in this area and any poten­tial neg­a­tive effects against the mar­ket, which is of major ben­e­fit to low-income res­i­dents like our­selves.

6. For more infor­ma­tion please see http://www.rgacollective.org.uk. RGA is cur­rent­ly based on the ‘Hall­marks’ of glob­al anti-cap­i­tal­ist net­work ‘Peo­ple’s Glob­al Action’. These hall­marks and more infor­ma­tion can be found at http://www.agp.org. RGA cur­rent­ly meets at 8pm every Thurs­day, in the Turks pub on Lon­don Street. Any­one who agrees to work with­in the hall­marks is wel­come. Every­one is free to make pro­pos­als and dis­cuss items on the agen­da, all mem­bers (i.e. those who have attend­ed four or more meet­ings) have an equal vote and roles of ‘chair­per­son’ and ‘minute-tak­er’ are rotat­ed each week.

7. “Every­thing for Every­one, Noth­ing Only for Our­selves!” is the
slo­gan of Mex­i­co’s ‘Zap­atista’ rebel com­mu­ni­ties. RGA and par­tic­u­lar­ly Com­mon
Ground was great­ly inspired by their strug­gles.

Com­mon Ground
http://www.rgacollective.org.uk