Thursday 1st October 2009 – 10:46
Today a new social centre opened in Sheffield, hurrah!
The last decent social centre we had was Matilda, but that was evicted in summer 2006 by the ironically named ‘Yorkshire Forward.’
Since then, we’ve had a very active branch of the Anarchist Federation engaged in all kinds of social struggles, e.g. our recent resistance against Tesco, a cool paper the Fargate Speaker, but we haven’t had a place for folk to get together and agitate until now!
The building being occupied, Pisgah House, is on the same site as the Tapton Experimental Gardens, both of which are owned by the University of Sheffield. In 2007 local residents defeated a planning application by property developers Miller Homes to demolish all of the buildings on the site.
“We’ve established this space for people to openly discuss and learn from each other about issues of social and environmental justice, because there’s a chronic lack of public space in which people can come together and freely and genuinely talk about the things they are concerned about, and take action together to change them. The only real way of addressing the problems of our society is for us all to realise the power we possess when we act co-operatively, and helping people to make that realisation is one of our main goals in setting up this social centre”.
Photos:
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/10/438952.html
http://sheffieldsocialcentre.org.uk
