community

PDF taken from www.prol-position.net, converted to text by libcom

The protestors included local residents, MPs and hospital staff, who are trying to prevent cuts to the Royal Surrey's services which could well lead to complete closure of the hospital. The NHS say the cuts will save £100 million. Any closures would put a great strain on the nearby Frimley Park Hospital which serves military personnel as well as the public.

In community politics, door knocking plays an essential role. From just getting to know your neighbours better, to carrying out a local survey or trying to sign people up to a local campaign or petition talking to people at home is a valuable exercise, due to its face-to-face nature,

Firstly, remember: If you are going to do community organising, do it in your own area! Don't be a missionary!

Research and preparation

Useful organising tips taken from the Black Panthers community organising strategies.

The British National Health Service is massively under-funded, overstretched and under-staffed. Over twenty years of Tory-initiated privatisation have wrecked the already-imperfect health system, leaving it bureaucratic and top heavy, and driven by government targets rather than the health of the population.

While businesses in the designated Olympic village are being given a custom-built new home, local groups are being fobbed off with derisory amounts while being moved to poor locations.

Winning the water war

The occupation at Via Tibaldi was a great step forward for the tenants’ and homeless movement in Italy. A whole neighbourhood was involved in it : factories, schools, housing projects took part in the organising of the struggle. There was a victory at Via Tibaldi because everyone there was fully aware

Quarto Oggiaro is a working class quarter of Milan in northern Italy. Many Italians had been forced to leave the poverty of the south to try to find work in the industrialised north, and there found pay low. Housing was scarce, and where it did exist much was wretchedly sub-standard.

In
1987, the shipyards in Puerto Real were to be shut down by the governing Thatcherite
"Socialist" Party, PSOE. However, a militant strike and solidarity
of local people saved the yards and won huge gains for the staff. In this
not only did the great determination and ingenuity on the part of the workers

The bans prevented billions of dollars of development over 4 years, until the campaign was halted by the union leadership.

In 1971 a group of women from the fashionable suburb of Hunter's Hill in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, were trying to save Kelly's Bush, the last remaining open space in that area. Construction firm AV Jennings planned to build luxury houses over the bush land.

A review of "Pushers Out: The inside story of Dublin’s anti-drugs movement" by Andre Lyder.

Walk five minutes from O’Connell St, Dublin’s main thoroughfare, or five minutes from Christ Church Cathedral, an important tourist attraction, and you will find yourself in a very different world from that depicted in the tourist brochures...

Asked to give examples of how anarchist ideas work in practice most anarchists would probably suggest the collectivisation of industry during the Spanish Revolution. If pressed to give more recent examples then some of the surviving small-scale worker co-operatives set up since the late 1960s, or free schools such as Summerhill might be suggested.

The Liverpool Echo, which investigated official records at both local and national level to obtain an overall view of how the socially deprived area has fared, said: “Toxteth is still being crushed under the weight of socio-economic inequality. When it comes to unemployment, deprivation, health and education the area is always towards the bottom of the pile.

This libcom.org news feature contains background information and updates on the struggle and related developments.

Background information
Pipeline and refinery

Dale Farm, near Basildon, is the largest travellers' community in Britain, the home of approximately 600 residents living in 86 homes. Virtually a village, with chalets, mobile-homes and brick-walled gardens, Dale Farm's residents have erected barbed-wire, scaffolding and multiple steel gates because they say they expect to wake up any day now to find themselves under siege.

They were protesting against the council auctioning off the publicy owned farm next month as part of spate of similar sell-offs.

Balham Hill's farm shop was scrubbed down during the occupation and started selling milk, meat and vegetables, and then as more animals arrived, they were put out to graze as the occupation continued.

One local said: