Rage Against Gentrification: Anarchy

A British political party, an anarchist party known as Class War, attacked the Cereal Killer Cafe in East London during the week of September 21, because the two owners, twin brothers Alan and Gary Keery, would not lower their prices.

The area where the café is located consists of many low-income residents from diverse backgrounds, including Africans, Pakistanis and Jamaicans. Gentrification runs wild there, like a stampede of fierce buffalo. And in England, unlike here in America, gentrification is seen as class warfare.

“Our communities are being ripped apart by Russian oligarchs, Saudi Sheiks, Israeli scumbag property developers, Texan oil-money twats and our own home-grown Eton toffs. Soon this City will be an unrecognizable, bland, yuppie-infested wasteland with no room for normal (and not so normal) people like us,” Class War said on its Facebook page.

When Cereal Killer Cafe first opened, it charged as much as $6.68 for a single bowl of cereal. Some in the community question whether East London can breakfast on ham and eggs at a café where high prices are a fungus rather than a supplement to healthy eating.

Consequently, Class War asked the brothers to lower their prices voluntarily. They refused. So the anarchists tried to persuade them violently.

According to the Keery brothers, about 200 Class War partisans, calling themselves the “F**k Parade,” grabbed their banners and torches, put on pig masks, and raided their café, leaving their customers—fathers, mothers, children—“terrified for their lives.”

If you think about it, though, Class War showed fortitude in their action, an action as unexpected as a forged check. And like a violent volcano spewing ash, fire and lava, anarchy itself lacks softness.  It is leather, not fruit juice.

How did the brothers respond to the raid? They cleaned the place and opened the café again the next day. Did they re-open with lower prices? No, they didn’t lower their prices one dime, not even one penny. How did Class War respond? They plan to raid the place again, once they get out of jail.

But for low-income residents in the U.S., another question looms in the background. Will the anarchist approach of Class War work in America? Sure, you can fight the raging bull of gentrification violently, but you can also corral it less violently.

In other words, if anarchy in its violent sense is being used to combat gentrification in England, perhaps in America, as a last resort, we can employ anarchy harshly to fight gentrification in a less violent, or even non-violent, sense.

For example, why not protest in front of a gentrified restaurant with placards condemning customers who eat their as scum, stealing money from their kids’ education to pay for high-priced food some of which they will leave on their plates anyway. Then, take pictures of the customers and post them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and ask whether anyone knows them, where they work and where they live.

Or, you could confront renters in a high-priced, high-rise apartment building on the sidewalk as they leave and enter the building and ask them to sign a petition demanding that the public housing authority fine the landlord exorbitantly for not following affordable housing guidelines established by the city council.

If the renters refuse to sign the petition, shoot’em. I mean, oops, sorry, I didn’t mean that. I mean to say warn them that you will get their names, find out which apartment they live in, learn their place of employment and give out that information to every hooker, every escort service, and every husband and wife cheated on by their spouses in the last 10 years within 50 miles of the apartment building.

Drastic? Perhaps. Desperate? I guess so. Hilarious? Well, it’s worth a giggle or two. However, if those approaches, and others you can think of, do not work, then … well …

The effects of gentrification are worse than food poisoning. High prices are only one of the symptoms. But the business of social and political activists is to force change peacefully if it works, forcefully if they must.

And on the gridiron of activism, some methods of change play offense, others defense. Anarchy is a tailback with the dexterity, strength and power to overwhelm tacklers. We should keep it on our roster of ideas and use it when necessary.

In the fight against gentrification, then, perhaps we should look upon anarchy as foreign aid, to be spent when the economics of failure result in a recession of success.

Or to put it more plainly, pacifism is an acceptable way to invoke change. But sometimes, an act of pacifism is the fossil of an ancient failure.