We are here today because we don’t want our homes demolished. The city says it’s not its responsibility to house folks while actively giving over control of our homes to the developers. We can clearly see the game that the city is playing and some speakers today have helped make that clearer foe us. It’s fine to analyze and to criticize and to make humanitarian appeals to the powers that be. But we must also stop and question where the city gets the power from to reject our appeals, to turn a blind eye. It certainly doesn’t get it from elections. When there is only one party, elections are meaningless.
At the end of the day, all of this comes down to a piece of paper that carries a notice of eviction.
A piece of paper, or 3,000 of them, do not have the power to displace, to rob 3000 families of their right to continued shelter.
A piece of paper is only a piece of paper but it finds power because we obey its orders. And we obey because behind the facade of rationality in that piece of paper stands the repressive power of state, I’m talking about the cops who have been escorting us all along today too. This power has no logic, knows no reason, humanitarian or otherwise, its only logic is that of violence. A piece of paper is a facade. Evictions are violence at the hands of the police.
We must physically resist this irrational violence. Tear up the damn pieces of paper. Tell the city we are through obeying. We are not disposable and we will fight them to prove this.
Hell no, we won’t go!