Oisín Fagan reports.
Between October 15th and 17th, protests in London disrupted Europe’s largest property fair, which is a major player in the privatisation and financialisation of homes and cities. The London Radical Housing Network invited housing activist groups from across Europe to join the protests against the MIPIM property fair, which brings together power brokers from politics, law, property and elsewhere.
Outside the fair, protestors chanted, “Build Council Housing”, “Our City” and “Shut it down.” They bore placards that proclaimed “Social Housing, not Social Cleansing”, “Save our Hospitals”, and “Our Houses are not your Investments”. Local community groups held up banners naming essential services and social centres that had already been cut or privatised.
The protestors consisted of various action groups and trade unions: E15 Mums, Radical Housing Network, and the European Action Coalition for Housing and the Right to the City, among many others. This protest was only the second time anti-MIPIM groups co-ordinated and mobilised, and they managed to temporarily shut down the event, garner local and international media coverage, and force many councillors into giving evasive statements of accountability. Most importantly, it united various strands of local grassroots organisers on an international level and has created cohesion between disparate groups across Europe who share the belief that housing is a basic human right.
The next MIPIM will be in March, 2015, and it will be back in its native Cannes. It will also be accompanied by a much larger protest.
The author is a member of Housing Action Now.
