Community First: Resisting Cuts In The South-inner City

dublin | education | event notice Thursday October 28, 2010 13:12 by Mick - The Provisional University wearetheuniversity at gmail dot com

Public meeting with Community First, 4th of Novemeber Exchange Dublin, Temple Bar

The provisional university presents a public discussion exploring the politics of the accelerated attack on the community sector and how to respond locally and politically

The community sector has been hit hard over the past two years. This is part of a more general pattern: the acceleration of the attack on social institutions or those oriented towards equality (e.g. public health care; the university). In this public meeting activists from ‘Community First’, based in the south-inner city, will talk about their struggle against cuts imposed by the local drugs taskforce. As in many other cases, local governance structures are used to impose cuts, neutralize dissent, further bureaucratize community development and force projects into competing with one another. How to resist these kinds of attacks? How to respond politically?

For the Provisional University the reflections of Community First are important because they relate to the university context, where the university-bureaucracy has abandoned any commitment to egalitarian and independent learning and research in favour of the state’s ‘knowledge economy’ project, which amounts to the reduction of knowledge to a function of the market.

At the meeting Community First will present an analysis of this local case of a more general problem, and how they have attempted to resist it. It will also be a chance to talk more broadly about generating a local but political response to today’s challenges.