7000+ people marched today in defense of culture as STOP in Porto, the largest DIY Studio space in Europe, where 500 artists work daily, was forcibly evicted by police on the 18th of July.
Official news media (and police) reported 1.5 thousand people, but the organization believes we were somewhere between 5 to 7 thousand people on the street.
The chaos erupted earlier this week, when a police opperation reminiscent of the ones for the “war on drugs”, a much larger and deadly matter, with 200+ “opperations” in the last months, with heavily armed gendarme, represses the neighbouhoods of the city.
At 22:30, the police wanted to re-open the street. Clearly, people were in the street, so the police sent 8 motorcicles and then a city “trash cleaner” truck came. The people were calm, but said clearly that in a way, they didnt like it. Reminiscent of struggles of the city, were people chanted “O Porto é nosso” , “A cidade é nossa” The city is ours, and will be until we die.
This forced eviction “despejo”, of Centro Comercial Stop, has sent shockwaves across the region. due to media coverage, the city hall is backing up, while experimenting new forms of social control.
Meanwhile, the city is in a war like state.
.
About a few papers on fire at the police headquarters:
(this part is more emotional than trustable, but it was fun!)
As to anything that may be reported as fire, there was no fire, the firefighters went to an air-conditioner and applied a red can of firestopper for 7 seconds, clearly having fun, while onlookers cheered. then the hole commitive left. the police seemed “not aware” of the situation at all.
Very important to note that no apparent motive has been given as to why any of these public “agencies” have behaved like this…
The firefighters were put by polititians on high alert, on a meeting that happened precisely during the protest, because of STOP’s “fire risk”. but in the end, they went at midnight in a huge and first reponse operation, to the police station instead…
The police station ( which had a small fire going in their balcony, a couple papers were apparently thrown) but the motive for such a large intervention is that the city hall, in trying to deviate our capacity to see that they are in fact, doing these actions, like selling the whole neighbourhood, in a “contest” of “ideas” and accepting a poor idea, out of only three(!)?(!) put the firefighters on extremely high alert, on that same day. Because for years they say that STOP is prone to fire, and they want to “avoid a catastrophe”.
So it was really fun when three huge fire trucks and several ambulances were coming to raid the police station!
As to why it is happening, it’s being called speculation, traffic in nfluence, and lots of money. artists are the tip of the iceberg, in what may well become a huge scandall in the city.
The plans are public, they want to sell the neighbourhood for €45M+, an architecture project has been approved. Now they axpected the artists to just accept being kicked out, but the fight has just started.
Already a series of scandals has been erupting, with the president of one of the artists association being called out for selling the artists to power. Its all part of a larger scheme to make the huge multimillion euro project happen, and kick out the punks…
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firefighters at the police station after large demo against the closure of STOP
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send a trash collecting truck to disperse the crowd, workers celebrate with protesters
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22h30 arrives. the road was blocked several times
@dragonfly@indymediapt@ptrevolutiontv@ecosurrealism This eviction, like most evictions, is based on malice and stupidity.
It is a call to battle.
Everyone can fight this in some way.
The World Is Watching.