Developer McNab is part of the push to gentrify West End. About 30 people turned up to a film showing on Kurilpa Common at the end of Boundary Street where a beautiful old building is to be demolished. Poor people who lived there have all been evicted. A Community Garden still flourishes beside the portable movie screen. In the 1980s a local library used to deliver books to tenants in this building. Said Henri Lefebvre: “The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is right to change ourselves by changing the city.“
The garden was never just about growing food. It was a community space – somewhere people could gather, contribute, be part of something that in its whole was bigger than each of our individual parts. It was a political statement – that in a city where every single patch of space is owned, surveyed, controlled; there should be some places where we are free to use the land for things in the common good.
That is what the Kurilpa commoners were doing under the moon on a balmy evening 🌙 .
Elina Abou Sleiman told us the history of this part of Maiwar (Brisbane River) since colonisation. Her talk was informed via a slide show..
The Growing Forward group that organized the event then showed this a film by Steve Stockwell it is about Expo 88. It occurred during the Bicentennial year, which marked the earliest colonization of Sydney and Botany Bay when Captain Arthur arrived with 11 ships.
The showing of this film and another ended in a discussion about how to stop gentrification. There was a discussion of class and of creative ways to frustrate the developers. We were told that when attempts were made to Save the Gully people bought up houses to try to introduce communal living as a way of socializing people’s poverty. Housing co-ops developed but eventually were Amalgamated and many people were evicted. And what happened to public housing it was put on the back burner by successive governments. Instead the Gambarro family donated some unused land in South Brisbane which became the location for 146 apartments called Common Ground.
“Brisbane Common Ground has 146 units in South Brisbane providing a mix of Supportive Housing and Affordable Housing with specialised onsite support.” This is good for those people but what about the hundreds of people sleeping rough in Musgrave Park and along the river banks in Kurilpa. The other problem is that Common Ground is run by a bunch of middle-class white people.
This City is Dead
I disagree with the title of this film and some of its perspective. It is depressing, but more importantly it is defeatist. I think that there are ways of making the city live. Fully funded public housing is one of those ways. No one is going to do it for us. And the most vulnerable are not able. The whole system of government is rigged against them and towards the developers, the avaricious middle class, the rich people … that’s what we have to overcome. We cannot substitute tactics for strategy. A big thanks to the organisers the film event showed me that the spirit of West Ends still lives.
A suggestion
Meanwhile developer McNab will be the head contractor and will farm out the demolition to subbies and contract out the construction of the new building to all the different trades keeping the bulk of the profit for themsleves which will be 500 or 600%. It would be a good thing to obtain a list of all the subcontractors that McNab will rip off. We could appeal to them not to move on this new development . This tactic will only work while there is plenty of other work of available but when that dries up the subcontractors will be forced to take the work. Also the reason why the battle for Bowen Hills was successful was that there were staunch families who wouldn’t allow themselves to be evicted and they had a support group of people plus an incoming Labor government decided to ban the project back to the b occupation government and his cronies and Pals.
We need a learning exchange in West End so that skills can be developed locally to fight to live and to live to fight!
Upcoming event
Sunday October 27
Ian Curr
Editor WBT
8 October 2024