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Station 40 is Resisting Eviction
Station 40 has provided a place to gather and affordable housing in the Mission for eighteen years, and supporters of this space are fighting to keep it from being evicted by predatory landlords.
Station 40 is a collective anarchist space that has housed countless individuals when they most needed it and hosted benefits, fundraisers, info sessions, workshops and community events throughout the last eighteen years. In March 2020, as the pandemic began to take hold, Station 40 joined thousands of other households in a rent strike. All over the world, people chose their own health and safety over paying their rent, prioritizing their needs over their landlords.
Now, even in the face of ongoing crisis, temporary local moratoriums have expired and evictions have resumed. The State is offering limited rent relief that does little more than bail out parasitic landlords and get people back to work and paying their full rent again. Station 40 will not take this path of bread crumbs, and is instead choosing the path of squatting, occupation, and everything for everyone.
On Sunday, January 23, over twenty supporters of Station 40 held a noise demo at the residence of the Jolish family, the landlords that are attempting to evict the space for the second time in the last several years. Places like Station 40 are always under threat of gentrification, and once they disappear they are gone forever. Landlords and developers need to know that this fight is not over!
Hands off Station 40! Resist Evictions! Abolish rent!
Now, even in the face of ongoing crisis, temporary local moratoriums have expired and evictions have resumed. The State is offering limited rent relief that does little more than bail out parasitic landlords and get people back to work and paying their full rent again. Station 40 will not take this path of bread crumbs, and is instead choosing the path of squatting, occupation, and everything for everyone.
On Sunday, January 23, over twenty supporters of Station 40 held a noise demo at the residence of the Jolish family, the landlords that are attempting to evict the space for the second time in the last several years. Places like Station 40 are always under threat of gentrification, and once they disappear they are gone forever. Landlords and developers need to know that this fight is not over!
Hands off Station 40! Resist Evictions! Abolish rent!
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We call on all friends and comrades to help defend the space and join in the struggle!
Wow this house looks identical to the one located at 319 Panorama Drive in San Francisco.
"Affordable housing" for who? Station 40 provided housing to a small number of extremely self-involved anarchist subculture scenesters who were in practice quite indifferent to the mass scale loss of affordable housing by many thousands of wage-earners and low income people in San Francisco's Mission District in a context of the ruin of this neighborhood by gentrification.
The anti-authoritarian subculture identity scenester space called Station 40 is located on 16th Street near Mission, in San Francisco’s Mission District, at the virtual ground zero of end-stage tech sector-fueled Mission gentrification.
Station 40 is identified as an “anti-capitalist social center” on a Facebook page illustrated with a low-angle photo of a black flag fluttering heroically in an azure sky. Over a multiple-year period Station 40 scenesters hosted many events where this space was packed to the rafters with people grazing on riot porn from Athens, and also one where more than a hundred passive consumers of fiery sentiments sat in reverent half-lotus positions at the feet of a bloviating pedant from the Invisible Committee, but over a 2-year long period from 2010 to 2012 the people at Station 40 were unwilling to host or organize as much as a single public meeting at Station 40 about the galloping gentrification of the Mission - a high-profile public meeting inviting the non-scenester working and unemployed populace of the surrounding Mission District.
In a real-world social struggle speed is everything. Capitalist society creates opportunities and authentic enemies of the social order must seize them. We needed to get something rolling before the neighborhood was ruined.
Station 40 had a large space that had repeatedly been used for public events, in an ideal location - but the Station 40 “crew” were unwilling to host a meeting about Mission gentrification, they were unwilling to say why, and too dishonest or cowardly to decisively say that they would not host or organize an anti-gentrification meeting that would be open to people in the neighborhood at large.
Finally, a certain terminally earnest anarcho-liberal college professor, apparently the designated adult of the space, primly informed me that Station 40 was not going to hold any public meetings about gentrification. The people at Station 40 were not willing to host public events other than those serving the ideological consumer needs of subculture scenesters.
Reflecting the relationship of the U.S. anarchist subculture to the larger society around it, the scenester space Station 40 adopted a passively parasitic relationship to the rapidly gentrifying proletarian neighborhood where they were physically situated. Station 40 existed solely to provide a safe space where feckless subadults could fantasize that they were ferocious rebels stickin’ it to The Man. This is consistent with anarchism in the US being a juvenile subcultural identity and fantasy projection vortex to the exclusion of all else.
This space did not exist to catalyze resistance among working people to exploitation and mass impoverishment in capitalist America. Station 40 has been a subcultural playpen and nothing more than this. The indifference to the ruin of San Francisco's Mission District in the context of tech sector-fueled gentrification displayed by anarchist subculture scenesters at Station 40 has been a excellent example of the puerile narcissism and practical political worthlessness of what gets called anarchism in today's United States.
The anti-authoritarian subculture identity scenester space called Station 40 is located on 16th Street near Mission, in San Francisco’s Mission District, at the virtual ground zero of end-stage tech sector-fueled Mission gentrification.
Station 40 is identified as an “anti-capitalist social center” on a Facebook page illustrated with a low-angle photo of a black flag fluttering heroically in an azure sky. Over a multiple-year period Station 40 scenesters hosted many events where this space was packed to the rafters with people grazing on riot porn from Athens, and also one where more than a hundred passive consumers of fiery sentiments sat in reverent half-lotus positions at the feet of a bloviating pedant from the Invisible Committee, but over a 2-year long period from 2010 to 2012 the people at Station 40 were unwilling to host or organize as much as a single public meeting at Station 40 about the galloping gentrification of the Mission - a high-profile public meeting inviting the non-scenester working and unemployed populace of the surrounding Mission District.
In a real-world social struggle speed is everything. Capitalist society creates opportunities and authentic enemies of the social order must seize them. We needed to get something rolling before the neighborhood was ruined.
Station 40 had a large space that had repeatedly been used for public events, in an ideal location - but the Station 40 “crew” were unwilling to host a meeting about Mission gentrification, they were unwilling to say why, and too dishonest or cowardly to decisively say that they would not host or organize an anti-gentrification meeting that would be open to people in the neighborhood at large.
Finally, a certain terminally earnest anarcho-liberal college professor, apparently the designated adult of the space, primly informed me that Station 40 was not going to hold any public meetings about gentrification. The people at Station 40 were not willing to host public events other than those serving the ideological consumer needs of subculture scenesters.
Reflecting the relationship of the U.S. anarchist subculture to the larger society around it, the scenester space Station 40 adopted a passively parasitic relationship to the rapidly gentrifying proletarian neighborhood where they were physically situated. Station 40 existed solely to provide a safe space where feckless subadults could fantasize that they were ferocious rebels stickin’ it to The Man. This is consistent with anarchism in the US being a juvenile subcultural identity and fantasy projection vortex to the exclusion of all else.
This space did not exist to catalyze resistance among working people to exploitation and mass impoverishment in capitalist America. Station 40 has been a subcultural playpen and nothing more than this. The indifference to the ruin of San Francisco's Mission District in the context of tech sector-fueled gentrification displayed by anarchist subculture scenesters at Station 40 has been a excellent example of the puerile narcissism and practical political worthlessness of what gets called anarchism in today's United States.
"Places like Station 40 are always under threat of gentrification, and once they disappear they are gone forever."
Yes, and, much more importantly, the same could be said about places like the one-time low-income, solidly working class, largely Latino and immigrant neighborhood that your space is physically situated in -- but you somehow couldn't be bothered to notice this, or contribute anything to real world collective action on this score, over the course of roughly a decade and a half!
As we sow, so shall we weep...
Yes, and, much more importantly, the same could be said about places like the one-time low-income, solidly working class, largely Latino and immigrant neighborhood that your space is physically situated in -- but you somehow couldn't be bothered to notice this, or contribute anything to real world collective action on this score, over the course of roughly a decade and a half!
As we sow, so shall we weep...
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