045 a valued location

From: starstuffharvestingstarlight [e-mail] Date: 2010-05-13 21:57:00 Title: a valued location

here we go again. someone cut the chain to go and steal some construction material from our street. among other things, they also got into fights and threw some rocks at the house. so we called the police and the person in question is now identified. the irony of it all: we used the police to protect our squat. law enforcement really is different (for the better) in portugal. i've also stopped worrying about our illegal immigrants. one of them was taken to court (S), only to hear the judge defend him and complain about the lack of employment and integration for immigrants in this country. they are not paying his ticket back, and encouraged him to get his papers. even judges seem to be aware of the big fluke our government is.

our street, a street with no public lighting and a lot of privacy seems to be a valued treasure, especially in this part of town. from drug dealing to prostitution to stolen goods hiding to simple trash dumping and couples making out, there is a lot of passion around the city hall's order to close the street. so much passion that people keep cutting the chain to access this street. we like it better when it's closed.

the paint we found has proven to be a great tool for painting stuff, from fabrics to walls to goods. it is oil based paint, but it isn't easy to use with our spray gun. anyway, we are going to paint the whole building in color to make it look like a proper cultural center. for that, we need to collect all the paint we found at the construction site. besides that, we're planning on setting up better electricity at the house, since the earth connection isn't good (zapping fridge comes to mind), even though it's just at about 60V.

P and M have been working on a dog park (so that we don't get dog fights again) and have been finishing up the bottle-bar at level 1.

during the past weeks, new people have been sleeping in one of the bunkers. they are also stealing a lot of stuff (under one guy's mattress there were car radios and other devices). the police are aware of this and have been turning up more. the good thing is we now have a good relationship with the authorities and we help them in sorting these things out.

again, hard positive work regenerates any place you put it into, and our group has fed new life to this area of the city. with that life, comes conflict but also recognition from the locals. my opinion is that this is only true while we keep in mind our social change objectives. our greatest defense will always be the beauty we create, so all we need to do is keep working.

godspeed starstuff ☆★☆☆★★★☆☆☆☆☆