(en) Canada, ucl-saguenay, Emma Goldman collective - Gentrification: From popular neighborhood business district (fr, pt)

 [machine translation]

After imposed without consultation instead of Chicoutimi citizen, John Doe, has launched a 
major public relations operation. In eight pages (all in color and is glossy), distributed 
in every home in the city, the first magistrate and director of Promotion Saguenay strives 
to legitimize a project as inegalitarian as gentrification. In this thin and redundant 
pamphlet signed Promotion Saguenay well, developers and businessmen are in turn praised 
the role of the citizen "European" and his "great" fallen. ---- "The role of the citizen 
at the heart of the vast operation of regeneration and revitalization which is the object 
down the rue Racine. With this project reached the end face of this part of the artery of 
the historical district of Chicoutimi done more than rejuvenate. It is a starting point to 
new horizons. "Jean Tremblay

However, the history of labor and popular neighborhood, is not part of these new horizons, 
only deals and maximizing profit rates are part of the equation. Again, those who 
determine what is good for the people and inhabitants of the city demonstrate pushing ever 
further from the city center's most vulnerable people, their inability to deal with the 
problems of urban poverty.

Securing the city center, who, why?

Along with the presence of shovels and mixers, it is possible circulating on Racine, to 
see instruments CCTV installed on several buildings. Is this just a coincidence? If we add 
the fact that in September, the city and public safety inaugurate a new police station in 
the city center, it is likely that the city administration is on a mission to reassure and 
attract investors. However, before taking possession of their new offices, agents and 
officers of the city police were already at work in the "new business district", trying 
without any subtlety, to hunt persons considered undesirable (the young, the poor and 
those who refuse to remain passive). Many testimonies and observations were carried in 
this direction (including the old port and the place of the citizen). legitimation 
Strategy In naturalizing urban transformations in progress, by the use of organic 
metaphors such as "rebirth", "revitalization" or "renewal". The city appears as a living 
organism, but dying as public and private partners attelleraient to treat in harmony. It 
is, more broadly, to build a tension between, on the one hand, the rhetoric of "urban 
decay" (industrialization, depletion, environmental degradation, etc..) And, secondly, the 
promise of a " rescue "long neglected neighborhoods, thanks to the return of public power 
and sophisticated investors (Van Criekingen, 2008). Unlike speech conveyed, the 
alternative to gentrification is not the abandonment of neighborhoods, but socialization 
of housing stock, the collective ownership of housing, renovation Popular neighborhoods 
benefits of their inhabitants and current inhabitants, etc.. Obviously, we will need more 
than lobbies and social entrepreneurs to change things. Only the struggle and mobilization 
pay! Gerons the city ourselves!

Thus the activists and people who have at heart the future of Saguenay decided to join the 
call initially launched by the collective Emma Goldman and lay the groundwork for a 
campaign called Gerons the city we own!

Following the first two games, three committees were formed either: camp training, public 
education and collective reappropriation of spaces.

The campaign is primarily ...

An autonomous assembly which operates in direct democracy.
An open meeting and all those who reject all forms of domination, discrimination and 
exploitation, capitalism, patriarchy, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.. 
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Here is the famous pamphlet touting Square citizen various investments to "revitalize" the 
bottom of the Racine Street in downtown Interestingly, they talk incessantly shops, 
traders, investments, money, but never people who live there and the impact of all this on 
their lives ... ----------- --------------------

VAN Criekingen, Mathieu, "How gentrification has become marginal phenomenon, a global 
political project" Agony, No. 38-39, p. 71-88