Justice not Crisis

I've just visited a newly squatted hotel on the Bristol Road. It has been reopened by the group who had / still have squatted four houses owned by the Warwickshire County Cricket Club nearby.

The hotel has 22 rooms a couple of large dining rooms a bar etc but most impressively beautiful trees, a stocked fishing lake, and a couple of (vicious) geese and ducks.

The new occupants were previously homeless and some of recently in the vulnerable position of sleeping rough. Their intention is to clean up the hotel, start paying the bills, and open it up to guests.

More here.

Earlier blog on this here.

Justice Not Crisis Squat houses near Edgbaston Cricket Ground

There are over 70,000 empty properties in the UK: so why is there homelessness?

Justice Not Crisis have recently occupied properties owned by the famous Edgbaston Cricket Ground on Pershore Road and are ready to turn one of them into a Social Centre. They are in the middle of a legal wrangle with the WCCC at the moment over temporary tenancy and are willing to negotiate if only the WCCC would follow suit.

Social Centre's are a popular way of collectivising social action in continental Europe (especially Italy) but not so much in the UK.

Examples include The Square (now evicted from a £4m property in Russel Square); The Rampart; Common Place.

The Rampart is squatted and still faces challenges from absentee landordism but the Common Place in Leeds is a rented property so faces a whole other set of challenges.

Is there an empty property near you? Perhaps a social centre that you can support? It's usually possible to find out about these through Critical Mass or Indymedia.


Image: the rampart, East London.

AWE recruitment at Birmingham University continued...

AWE Recruitment presentation at Birmingham University 5 November

Sophie and Keith Hebden attended the AWE event as recruiters for AWE; dressed in smart suits with fake AWE identity badges we looked the part. Our badges read “Human Resources Dept” with our names, “Amanda Hugenkis” and “Dan Teshell”. We arrived half an hour before the event began to properly check out where the presentation was to be held.

Our intention was to intercept students going to the AWE recruitment drive by pretending to work for AWE. There is a long glass-walled lobby with sofas downstairs at Staff House; the presentation was to take place two floors above. We settled ourselves on the sofas with clipboards and fliers ready to intercept any students coming to the AWE recruitment presentation. We then asked people to sit with us to chat about ‘recruitment’, which gave us the chance to tell them the bare facts of what goes on — bomb-making — in an up-beat and ironic way. We wanted unguarded conversations with people who were considering working at AWE but were wrestling with the morality of doing so.

The first jobseeker was a bit of a red herring: he wanted to meet the AWE staff to talk about his marketing company to help them recruit. We took some information from him, thanked him and sent him home. Later we discovered that he was a ‘fake’ as well!

The next to arrive, a physicist, sat and chatted with us for a while. We saw him becoming more confused and concerned as we spoke enthusiastically about the destructive potential of nuclear bombs. It was when Keith told him about the “cultural exchanges” possible if working at AWE – “Hirsohima survivors often hang around the gate and you can wave at them as you drive into work,” – that he grinned and said, “OK, I get it.” We chatted with him for another five minutes as he admitted that he had been unsure as to whether to attend this event but had justified it to himself and wanted to hear them out. He decided not to go to the presentation and to go home. We shook hands and he thanked us.

The next man told us he was studying medical nuclear physics but was wondering about going into defence instead, “because there’s more money than in the NHS”. He spoke about the moral dilemma he faced in choosing between medical and defence. We said after AWE had dropped a bomb we would certainly need medical experts.

We chatted; he looked concerned but took our flier and went upstairs to the presentation.

A couple of girls said they were interested in working in human resources. At first they were hesitant about sitting down, partly because there were late for the presentation, but when they did they looked at us suspiciously from the start. A few minutes later one girl interrupted to ask if we were “Socialists” we said not and carried on for a minute before she interrupted again: “Excuse me, but we’re from ‘People and Planet’”. We all burst out laughing and sent them on their way to the presentation.

Finally a girl set on studying the radiation hazards of the site spoke with us for five minutes. She was very serious and intent on working at AWE; nothing we said could deter her. We listed about how AWE contravenes international treaties, how the UK is considering working on ‘useable nuclear weapons’, and how nuclear weapons target civilians because of their enormous destructive power, to name a few. She hurried off the presentation clutching our leaflet.

All in all, we felt there were some wonderful moments where we really connected with people, but perhaps the most encouraging thing was that hardly anyone came, and more protesters attended than jobseekers. Among the protesters were Gary Hall and John Hull, staff at Queen’s Foundation.

AWE recruitment at Birmingham University

The Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston are recruiting at Staff House, Birmingham University Wednesday 5 November at 6 p.m.

The making of weapons of mass destruction is stupid, immoral & illegal.

Queen's visit to Aldermaston

To challenge the powers is in part about generating the stories that go on to reproduce themselves in other peoples' lives as the kingdom of God is established.

Here are some of the stories generated at Queen's this week. Ekklesia; Inspire; Church Times; Birmingham Mail; BBC Midlands;

Queen's Foundation trains people for ministry in the Church of England, the Methodist Church, and other independent Churches. As part of the Anglican and Methodist training students are expected to take part in at least one Prophetic action during each year and to reflect on this action in their own spiritual formation and in the life of the worshipping community.

"For many it has already become a radically conversion experience. As I stood at the fence at AWE and received the 'ash of repentance' I cried for the futility of state violence and it's totem - the Trident missile and won't ever be quite the same."

Romans Re-mixed

Today at St Philip's Cathedral in Birmingham Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat (yes there are that many vowels) held a workshop on radical re-readings of Romans.

Sylvia started us off by looking at the context of Paul's ministry: life under Roman rule as a Jew. Both Sylvia and Brian hold to the belief that Luke was correct in asserting that Paul was a Roman citizen, making his assertion of being a 'slave' of Christ all the more radical.

A lot of effort went into establishing the readership of Romans. It was a church of Jewish and Gentile Christians. However, many Jewish Christians would have left when Jews were expelled from Rome by Claudius in 49 C.E. leaving a paranoid Gentile church unsure about its Jewish spiritual heritage. Furthermore, the return of Jewish Christians under Nero in 45 C.E. would be problamatic for a now established gentile-oriented congregation.

The Jews were commonly used as scapegoats for unrest in the Roman empire. Enter Paul - taking the side of the marginalised, "to the jew first then to the gentile."

Sylvia also pointed out that, since Christian faith meant the imperial liturgy of many of the guilds became unconcionable, many Christians were marginalised for their alegiance to Jesus and may have lost both guild protection and freedom to work at their craft.

Most interesting was Sylvia's exegesis of Romans 12 and Brian's sermon on Romans 13. Together thay affirmed that the two chapters should be read as a whole with the Christian action of Romans 12 contrasting the violent "peace" of a Roman empire that liked to project itself as benign exposed in Romans 13. "Remember," Sylvia affirms, "Nero claimed not to rule by the sword." "To any loyal Roman hearing Romans 13 it would not have come accross as patriotic but seditious" Brian adds.

Brian and Sylvia were visiting Birmingham as part of a wider tour of the country facilitated by "Blah"; part of the fresh expressions emerging network.