permaculture

["Graham Burnett" <gburnett@unisonfree.net>]

There's an old saying, once you've put yourself in a hole, the first rule is 
to stop digging! at
the risk of digging myself in even deeper over an event that clearly went 
somewhat pear shaped, at
least it might be useful to apply some hindsight & observation...


> Ok, once in a while some hooliganism fits into good design, and maybe I
> just don't yet see how these London events equal good design.

Clearly this wasn't good design! I had envisaged that this event would have 
primarily been a land
occupation in a similar vien to 'Pure Genius', a totally peaceful event in 
1996 instigated by The
land Is Ours, a UK land rights group wherin a 7 acre derelict Guinness 
brewery in South London was
occupied, originally as a one day symbolic media friendly event, but ended up 
as a 6 month
autonomous urban eco-village supported by the local community wherin food was 
grown, housing
created using scrap timber and providing a real (if short term) answer to 
local problems of
homelessness whilst at the same time graphically drawing attention to the 
scandalous misuse of
urban land.

So the questions need to be asked, why did 'Pure Genius' work on so many 
levels but RTS clearly
went out of control...
In retrospect it was clearly a mistake trying to do the urban gardening in 
such a central part of
the city, with so many symbollic potential targets all around. There's lots 
of lessons to be
learned, though please believe me when I say that the majority of those 
present were completely
peaceful, and there was a real commitment to keeping things non-violent on 
the part of those who
were organising the gardening events, and there WAS an intention by a group 
of us to get some
permaculture done. Naive maybe in hindsight, but it goes.

One never knows how these things are going to go, if this HAD been another 
'Pure Genius' success
story, I'd have a far more celebratory tone than this somewhat embarassed bit 
of back tracking...

> Graham didn't get hurt with all those drunken bolsheviks Vandals
> storming the yard of parliament in amongst the peaceful faeries.

I'm fine thanks Vern, and didn't even see any real violence. My experience 
was more like the start
of the first 2 articles you've pasted in (thanks for those BTW). Loads of 
positive stuff did
happen, it's just a shame that what will be remembered will be images of 
violence & mayhem.


>
> Where are the new gardens and who will care for them?

I'd like to think the best bit of gardening I did was on Waterloo Bridge, at 
the time blockaded by
the police- I had really long conversation with this police woman in full 
riot gear about the
virtues of lemon balm and comfrey- i'd been giving away the bags of stuff I'd 
brought with me as
they clearly weren't going to get planted and spotted her looking on with 
interest, so I went up
and asked her if she'd like some, then got into explaining their uses, she in 
turn told me all
about her mother's herb garden, and how she'd like to have taken the lemon 
balm, but it wasn't
really an appropriate time, besides she had nowhere to carry it... a slightly 
surreal scenario, but
hopefully it sewed a positive seed, in both directions.

See you next year? I don't think so, in future I'll be staying in the garden 
too!

Cheers,

Graham Burnett
35 Rayleigh Avenue
Westcliff On Sea
Essex, UK
SS0 7DS

South East Essex LETS
http://pages.unisonfree.net/gburnett/