We live in a city that has third world conditions in many of our communities and in this day and age, in the 21st century, that is fundamentally wrong. This documentary film is about ordinary people like ourselves, people who had their lives adversely affected by our civic leaders within the Liverpool city council, and by various local and central government agencies and rich property developers. It is also about people and how they empower themselves, how they stood up and said no, about local democracy or the lack of it. Community activists always knew that regeneration funding would be redirected away from Liverpool poor areas and put into the pockets of the rich.
1) How the council has colluded with local land developers in order to take away from the people of Liverpool council housing and land in order to providecheap land for the developers so they can build houses for sale.
2) The council together with property developers is stealing property from home owners through compulsory purchase orders supposedly to enable the widening of the Edge Lane corridor.
3) the attempt of council together with property developers to destroy a business in the heart of Liverpool in order to help one of the Britain's richest man, the Duke of Westminster, to become richer.
At the end of November 2005 an occuption was started by local residents at 34 Broadway Market to prevent it being knocked down for luxury flats. Over the next few months support multiplied and the news travelled around the world. It's a story that brings in corrupt property developers, an incompetant council, rampant gentrification and the question of just what sort of community we want in 21st century London.
We're sorry to have to annouce that the rampART anniversary events we were planning for next month have now been postponed as there is a really bad clash with a very interesting (and quite similar) sounding event taking place in a squatted space elsewhere in London.
We're hoping to find new dates in June for the anniversary after the G8 - details next week hopefully.
They will also be presenting info and films about other grassroots projects taking place in Barcelona.
Help. We still need a nice big fuse box / consumer unit.