Recent discussions on the Brisbane left have brought the idea of the ‘Right to City‘ back to public prominence. A spirited conference was recently held to discuss the issue, and the reclaiming of public space outside the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital to stop the deportation of baby Asha has led to some reflecting on spaces of encounter and politicisation. So, we have decided to put up a few posts over the next few weeks and months considering the successes and failings of previous Brisbane movements who fit within what we would now call the Right to the City
On Monday, 3rd of June 1973 twenty police with a sledgehammer descended on 13 Markwell Street, Bowen Hills. They were responding to a group of protestors, who had occupied the building a day earlier. Promised to the housing commission, it had been left idle by the State Government’s Main Roads Department (MRD) for months, who had resumed it as part of freeway construction. That the house was not needed for freeway construction in the short term meant little, the house still had to go. As activists put it at the time, “The Main Roads Department’s determination to see this house remain empty or demolished has no rational foundation.”
So, three activists decided to do what the government wouldn’t – occupy the house, make it habitable, and turn it over to one of the many families then being made homeless by Government freeway construction. The cops, who didn’t appreciate such moral arguments, “grabbed the three and forcibly threw them out the door”.
Continue reading “#TheRighttotheCity: The Battle for Bowen Hills, 1972-5” →
