No. 88, Sept. 21-27, 2000

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Local eviction had political motivations

Editor, Asheville Global Report,

This letter is to alert readers of the AGR that the preemptive police repression used against protesters in Washington, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles this year is not isolated to international spectacles, but is going on right here in Asheville.

The story starts early this summer when a group of people, including me, rented an 8,000-square foot warehouse by the river that had been vacant for 25 years. Some of us had recently moved out of the Pink House on Broadway, which had been sold to a Christian non-profit, and our intention was to build a vibrant, active collective space in which to live, create, have fun, and connect with like-minded folks in Asheville and beyond, similar to the Pink House but less chaotic and less public. Our new low profile was not low enough, however, as we were soon to find out.

We began decorating, building rooms, setting up a library and a kitchen, and started a small garden. We had an art show and some music. Things were positively rosy. Eventually, the fire inspectors caught wind of the activity and dropped by, giving us three weeks to get our wiring up to code. We made an appointment with an electrician. A few days later we were visited by an officer of the Asheville Police Department who came to confirm a rumor that “the Pink House kids” had moved to a warehouse by the river. He proceeded to imply that “Pink House kids” were responsible for Asheville’s graffiti problem and informed me that the general opinion at the police station was that “Pink House kids” had vandalized several police “cruisers” because we supposedly held the police responsible for the Pink House being shut down. I assured him that everybody remotely involved knew that we were evicted because the landlord sold the house and knew that the police had nothing to do with it. The police, in fact, had been remarkably tolerant of the activity there.

Well, his false accusation turned out to contain a premonition, or perhaps a secret tip-off, because two days later the police returned with the fire inspectors, building inspector, and other ambiguous officials to conduct a surprise “follow-up inspection” days before they were scheduled to return and before the electrician had done any work. This time, they weren’t interested in communicating with anybody or even telling us what was wrong. They had come to shut us down and the building was quickly condemned. The fire marshal had the power cut off, said he was coming back to padlock the building and if he saw anybody doing anything but moving out they would be arrested. And that was the end of the warehouse.

It is true that we weren’t supposed to be living in the space (it was rented to be artist studios), but I don’t think it’s too paranoid to conclude that this is more than a simple case of building code enforcement. The protests in the past year in Seattle, DC, Philadelphia, and LA have gotten a lot of press, and the media have focused especially on the young black-clad anarchist rabble-rousers, printing “who are these kids?” features and linking them to vandalism against chain stores, etc. And, as readers of the Global Report know well, the police have bent over backwards to preemptively strike against protesters (shutting down warehouses and meeting spaces, confiscating equipment, infiltration, surveillance, etc.) before they can “cause any trouble.” Now, for police in the relatively small town of Asheville, it would be easy to associate the rotating cast of colorful characters in and out of the former Pink House with this very media phenomenon, and to assume that as good policemen it is their duty to contain this activity, repress it, and keep it from gaining steam, possibly using some of the same tactics as their comrades in the big cities.

Seen in this context and in light of the evidence, it seems that our living illegally in a warehouse was more of a pretext for being shut down than their primary motivation, and the simple rumor that we had lived in the Pink House was enough to connect us to a so-called dangerous national current of criminal rebellion that needed some swift repression. Resistance to the existing capitalist order is on the rise in America, and this has heightened the sensitivity of law enforcement everywhere to any activity that defies society’s norms. They’re making it harder to be visible in our attempts to live as we choose and build self-sufficient communities, especially if you are young and wear black. Now is a time for discretion. Their eyes are peeled.

David Meesters
Asheville

 

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