'Reclaim' is so general a word - it is hard to pin down what 'Reclaim Brixton' means. So far I can understand that it is inclusive of many ralated causes to save the market traders and oppose Lambeth council on various issues arround planning and housing.
And reclaim it from people who are only here to profiteer. The massive problem that
anywhere with a "vibrant" local culture has, is that some people will always want to "buy into" the culture at a safe distance (as opposed to doing the normal thing of moving somewhere and finding your own way), and some people will always be on hand to marketise local culture and sell it on as a "consumer experience" (hence the whole Clapham = partytown meme). I know one can't really "reclaim" Brixton from that commercialisation of our culture - as the old saying goes, "money talks" - but that doesn't mean we shouldn't rail against it or cast the occasional clog into the money machine.
I'd like to 'reclaim' or perhaps just 'save' London from becoming an even more divided city - with only rich people living within zone 2 and cleansed of the poor. I'm not sure we all want to 'reclaim' the same things and I'm reading this thread to find out exactly what others want to reclaim. It is a valid question to ask - what do we want 'reclaim' and for whom? There is no go-back-in-time-a-tron.
I don't think we
can save London from becoming an even more divided city, because it's what those with the money want - safety and security - and that only comes with straight divisions between haves and have-nots. We were lost the moment "gated communities" were allowed back in the '80s.
I don't want to hear an argument of who is allowed to live or work here in Brixton - that is the kind of small town/ village mentality, petty mindedness, xenophobia that I moved to the big city to avoid. I'm fed up of the the 'I'm more Brixton than you' and 'you are all gentifiers' attitude' I keep hearing (IRL as well as here) The kind of personal abuse that I've read on this thread is not helpful to anyone.
Some people feel threatened. I know I certainly do. My council has pretty much said, w/r/t my estate: "Fuck the people that live there, we're going for regeneration". The problem is that "it's not for us". State-led regeneration never is. It has a long and ignoble history of removing many of the "indigenous" people through simple economics.
Anecdotally, this sort of engineered demographic change finds favour with our current local administration. They're sanguine about elements of their core electorate - the "problem" families in the social housing who take up so much of their time - being removed, because they see those votes as being replaced in the majority by those of "nice" people who don't make such demands on them.
I've moved on a bit from "you're all gentrifiers" to "I'm happy to welcome anyone who participates in the wider community". What I don't welcome is people who want "the Brixton experience" while remaining at a remove from that community and their effect on that community. My vision of "reclaiming" Brixton is the continuance of the fluidly multi-cultural, multi-class, reasonably sexuality-blind atmosphere that has come into being over the last 40 years or so. All those elements go toward making Brixton the place I love, and the removal of
any of those elements will - in my opinion - have the effect of destroying what makes Brixton different.
