From Ballymun to Los Angeles - public housing residents meet at the Project Arts Theatre

Friday June 27, 2003 14:05

by redflaremist

Peripheral Vision: Community at the Urban Margins.
Saturday, 28 June 2003 2 – 4 p.m.
Project, 39 East Essex Street, Temple Bar

This forum tomorrow is one of a series of collective reflections that will take place in Dublin and Los Angeles between June and October 2003.

The purpose of this project is to foster a dialogue between public housing residents in Ballymun, Dublin and Pico Aliso, Los Angeles. Residents from the Ballymun Women’s Resource Centre and LA’s Union de Vecinos will share experiences and histories, focusing on urban geography and the impact of grass-roots leadership on urban regeneration.

On the global front, institutions like the IMF, World Bank and WTO enforce a variety of economic and social regimes – structural adjustment programs, austerity measures, and debt servicing – on the underdeveloped world. Meanwhile, in the overdeveloped world, governments enforce public sector austerity, privatization and budget cuts in an effort to shift public money to increasing corporate monopolization and militarism.

The situation in Dublin at Ballymun is no doubt equally bound up with global developments. The rise of the maquiladora economy (the myth of the “Celtic Tiger”) in Ireland has created conditions of public financing not seen before. While there have been many benefits of this new economic boom in Ireland, the costs have been equally dramatic. At the center of the development in Ballymun is the notion that residents are finally seeing promises made real. The regeneration is very much the result of forty years of activism and organizing in the Ballymun community.

Come along tomorrow (Saturday) at 2pm to the Project Arts Theatre to listen and contribute to this forum.

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Comments (6 of 6)

I Came From A Deprived Area

by Tax Payer

Fri Jun 27, 2003 17:38

We did not vandalise the area or piss on our doorsteps.

and pay tax

by i also like c.o.d.

Fri Jun 27, 2003 17:23

‘They’ unfortunately do not have golden toilet paper to wipe their precious bums or gardeners to tend their acres of land. Indeed your suggestion to ‘fuck em’ has already been suggested and acted upon by everyone and anyone that didn’t happen to grow up in a deprived area.

Fuck Em

Fri Jun 27, 2003 15:36

They destroyed the old Towers. Pissed in and vandalised the lifts. They get new houses which would cost civilised people $350,000 and they are still not satisfied.

i like c.o.d.

by i like c.o.d.

Fri Jun 27, 2003 15:14

Dear Mr. Angry,
We at Bush’s Universal Military Movement [B.U.M.M] are currently scouting for future recruits to join us in our crusade of ridding the world of intelligent and interesting people and we think that you are our man.
We are impressed at your prolific ability to lash out in rage at topics you clearly don’t understand and your ability to flaunt your ignorance with force, and feel that you have a destiny with us here at B.U.M.M.
We will be in contact with you in due course,
Keep up the Good work.

Great -

by Mr Angry

Fri Jun 27, 2003 14:48

- these people get free accomodation and they're still whineing.... um yeah, globalisation stuff.. erm militarism, corporate something etc. etc. .. go get a fucking job!

cool!

by iosaf

Fri Jun 27, 2003 14:34

I thought it "too" un-local to mention here before but now it seems relevant.
NYC has seen very serious lobbying and protesting these last weeks indeed months over housing issues.
on May 5th NYC housing board with responsibility for rent charges and precint "housing estates" in the NYC state increased average rents by 5.5-5.7%

Other tied issues were increases in subway fares.

This may seem far away, but unfortuanetly in todays "business management" culture, ideas which source in rightwing thinktanks in the USA "on the banks of the Potomac" find their ways into you local chamber of commerce and local council/corporation within five years.

All the nastyness of the London Authority may be traced to NYC, and trust me the Irish equivalents will be happy to "implement" such "rationalisations" as soon as they get back from the "fact finding missions".

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From Ballymun to Los Angeles - public housing residents meet at the Project Arts Theatre

Comments (6 of 6)