Friday 30 May 2008

Fight The Height needs you! Demo at noon on Sunday 1st June

The demo against the Arcade tower block - and tower blocks in Walthamstow generally - will be at noon this Sunday, 1st June in Walthamstow town square.
Please save the date, please come along and please tell all your local friends and family. Everyone involved in tower block decisions - from local councillors on the planning committee to Mayor Boris who has the power to veto tower block plans - cares about public opinion. So put simply, the more of us that turn up the more notice they will take!
The demo promises to be short and fun for all the family. Hope to see you there...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did anyone bother going to this? Everyone I know cant wait for the development. Primark is ace. They do great cheap clothes. EMD cinema? Will someone please knock this boring monstrosity down. No one wants to watch films in ancient theatres anymore. Walthamstow is full of moaners who dont want it to move on. They should actually listen to the silent majority.

Marginalia said...

Dear Anodyne quite a few of us were there I hesitate about calling it a demonstration. It was more “ let’s meet after the Sunday service” sort of gathering. Hugely imaginative. People dressed as tower blocks – I didn’t count whether they’d got the number of storeys right. Children drawing placards (and not spelling correctly) and photographers keenly snapping the little angels’ creative doodles.

The trouble is it was so middle class and so ...nice. Everyone greeted each other. “have you seen our leaflet...Oh you have .. how nice.” I must have photographed at least ten not so well known actors.

But where were the stallholders? The people who the campaigners say will lose out from the building of “Primark Tower”. Unless the campaign extends its reach the Council can ignore it.

Anonymous said...

I went to the demo on Sunday as I don't want huge tower blocks dominating the Stow's skyline.

It's a shame none of the market traders turned up - do they not care or do they not believe their livelihood is under threat?

As for improved facilities, however, they can only be good for property prices.

And the EMD cinema ... I would like to see it back up and running but don't know how likely that is to happen. There's been a lot of talk but very little action.

The one part of the demo yesterday that I could not condone was the throwing of tomatoes. Not only was this a waste of good food, but I'm not sure how the defacing of our own community could be seen as positive publicity.

Fight The Height said...

Haha, you can't please everyone. Some say protestors were too polite and middle class and others say the tomato-lobbing is an outrage!
We're open to all constructive suggestions, so let us know what you'd like to see in our next demo. (Some of us were tempted to rip down St Modwen's illegal flags and replace them with Jolly Rogers, but we decided to keep it legal.)
It's a fair point about the tomatoes, but we can assure you they were the soft old ones going to waste at the end of the day on Saturday - they'd have been mouldy by the time the market reopened on Tuesday. And we were conscientious enough to clean up after ourselves and compost the waste (how middle class is that?!)
As for market traders - well, many of them are working at other markets on a Sunday and I guess the others were taking a well-earned rest. But they did donate the tomatoes and most stallholders put up posters, so they did play a part in Sunday's demo... but yes, of course we'd have liked to see them out holding placards and chucking tomatoes too. They're probably better shots.