Leyton Marsh Camp update (London north

  March 29, 2012

Here is a report from the camp at Leyton Marsh next to the site of a planned 'temporary' Olympics basketball training facility.  The camp is here to support the local community and the Campaign to Save Leyton Marsh.

Community Support!

Chatting

Food kindly donated by locals
The tent occupation which sprang up on Saturday in solidarity with the Campaign to Save Leyton Marsh has entered its 5th day.  The camp continues to grow with supporters arriving every day.  Local residents and campaigners visit all day long providing support, bringing supplies and chatting with the campers.  Basic facilities have been setup including a field kitchen and washing up area.  There is also a communications tent.
No construction work has taken place on the Leyton Marsh site since Friday when local campaigners from the Save Leyton Marsh group stood in front of lorries preventing them from entering the site.  On Monday, the occupation campers joined with local residents standing in front and lying down under lorries.
Today a Police Community Support Officer arrived at the camp in the early morning to inform the group that the Olympic Delivery Authority will be coming to the camp on Friday morning.  The PCSO said that the purpose of the visit was to negotiate with the Save Leyton Marsh Campaign and Campers about the situation (an update will be published when more info is known).
The occupiers welcome any and all support. There is plenty of space for more people to get involved. It is located Behind Lee Valley Ice Cente on Lea Bridge Rd, Leyton Map: http://tinyurl.com/6ntfscy
For more info check out:
http://saveleytonmarsh.wordpress.com/
http://www.gamesmonitor.org.uk/

Save Leyton Marsh - Update London

Save Leyton Marsh - Update

local resident | 26.03.2012

The Occupy movement have joined Hackney and Waltham Forest residents in their struggle against the Olympic land grab.

the plan for the marsh

Since planning permission was granted in January by Waltham Forest council for a large indoor basket ball arena for Olympic and paralympic athletes to practice on, local residents and marsh users have been organising and campaigning to save Leyton Marsh.

Leyton Marsh is metropolitan open land and is managed by the Lea Valley Regional Park Authority (LVRPA) on behalf of the people. It is land that is not supposed to be built on, unless in exceptional circumstances. Waltham Forest have designated the Olympics as such “exceptional” circumstances and have leased the land to the Olympic Development Authority for £138,000. The structure that will house the two practice basketball courts and associated facilites is temporary and the ODA and LVRPA are assuring us that they will take the structure down and return the land to its previous condition by the 11th October 2012.

Many of us who use the marsh and who have witnessed the destruction of the site over the past few weeks do not believe that there is the will, never mind the way, to return the site to its previous condition and are determined to stop this build going ahead.

There has been organised resistance to the building works and local residents have been successful on a number of occaisions in halting building work on site. On Friday 23rd March, a determined bunch of people exercised their rights to use the Marsh freely with a 6 hour game of boules that resulted in £40,000 of cement being spoiled as the trucks carrying it were blocked from getting on site.

Local residents have been meeting weekly since January and the Save Leyton Marsh group has been formed, who have been having weekly Saturday demonstrations and last Saturday the 24th of Marsh saw the occupy movement join the fight to protect our communal land and collective legacy.

Occupiers from the Finsbury Square occupation marched to the marsh and over the past few days an intentional community of tents and people have joined the communities of Leyton, Walthamstow and Hackney in fighting against the Olympic land grab.

Lorries containing hard core were prevented from entering the Marsh today and we are hopeful that if we are able to significantly delay building work from taking place we may be successful in halting this destruction of Leyton Marsh.

Leyton Marsh is a beautiful bit of open land bang in the middle of Hackney and Leyton. I would encourage all those who live nearby to come and visit the site and the camp. This battle is winnable and I would encourage all those interested in defending the land, fighting against the Olympics, protecting our environment, challenging capitalism, building community, etc etc to come and get involved.

For more information visit www.saveleytonmarsh.wordpress.com

local resident

Occupation on Leyton Marsh.london

March 28, 2012

An occupation has sprung up next to the site of a planned Olympic 'temporary' basketball training facility on Leyton Marshes, Leyton.
It is there to show solidarity with the Campaign to Save Leyton Marsh.

tent occupation

tents 2

having a chat

lorry blockage

lying under lorry

An occupation has sprung up next to the site of a planned Olympic 'temporary' basketball training facility on Leyton Marshes, Leyton.

It began on Saturday when a group of concerned people went to the Marsh to show solidarity with the Campaign to Save Leyton Marsh (CSLM).  Some had marched from Occupy London's Finsbury Sq.
The CSLM was formed to challenge the decision by Waltham Forest Council to grant the Olympic Delivery Authority permission to build a temporary basketball training facility on Leyton Marsh, which is designated 'Metropolitan Open Land'.  As well as opposing the decision through a media campaign, the group has also engaged in several acts of peaceful disobedience: by standing in front of lorries attempting to enter the site where the facility is due to be built.

On Monday this week, the new occupiers joined with the local campaigners preventing any vehicles entering the site.  By today, there were no vehicles at all and all work on the site stopped.
Many locals are very upset at what is happening to this piece of open, communal land.  Kev, a local resident from Hackney expressed his feelings:
'' What they have been doing in Hackney on the East Marsh has shown the local people the devastation caused by the Olympics.  Even if we're told this is just temporary we do not want it.  East Marsh is too late but here there is a chance to stop it''. 

Health and safety concerns have also been raised by local residents who point to the possibility of contamination.  Caroline, a local resident and campaigner from Leyton said:  ''They are churning up contaminated soil from WW2 and leaving it in mounds around the site.  There could be asbestos in there.''
Locals are also concerned that by building on Metropolitan Open Land which is supposed to be protected, a precedent is being set for further land grabs, development and privatisation of public space.  They also question the promise made by Waltham Council that the land would be returned to its original state by October 15th which seems hard to imagine if tons of concrete is laid.  Caroline commented: ''It will take 1 year minimum for the turf to grow back, and the eco-systems will take far longer''

This morning a police officer reported that members of Waltham Forest and Hackney Council held a meeting.  Presumably the fledgling occupation an peaceful direct actions by locals and occupiers will be a hot topic of discussion.
The site where the occupiers are camping is part of the Lea Valley Park and is subject to byelaws which forbid camping and barbeques.  It is possible that the police may be instructed to clear the camp soon.
In the meanwhile though, the sun shines and local people come and talk with the occupiers and share their views on the situation, with some delighting in the obvious lack of work and silence on Olympic site.  Lots of food, blankets and supplies have been donated: an indicator that many are glad to have the presence and action of the occupiers.

The occupiers welcome any and all support.  There is plenty of space for more people to get involved.  It is located   Behind Lee Valley Ice Cente on Lea Bridge Rd, Leyton Map:

The 10,500 athletes participating in the London Olympic and Paralympic Games, the world's greatest celebration of human physical endeavour and progress, will be guarded by a security force of some 40,000.

The 10,500 athletes participating in the London Olympic and Paralympic Games, the world's greatest celebration of human physical endeavour and progress, will be guarded by a security force of some 40,000. This beats the 3:1 ratio of guards to athletes at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, as the London Games continues the Olympian trend for record-breaking security contingencies. Indeed the home secretary, Theresa May, only last month crowed that the Games' security would constitute "the UK's largest ever peacetime logistical operation". Never mind the performance of athletes: the Olympics is about government and business delivering security solutions.

And it's a great show. Armed officers from the Metropolitan police and the Royal Marines hammering along the Thames in speedboats and helicopters, ground-to-air missiles scanning the skies, hovering spy drones scanning the land, security services scanning the internet for nascent plots or cyber attacks – it's all being co-ordinated by a bevy of Olympic-themed security agencies.

The police-led multi-agency National Olympic Coordination Centre co-ordinates the forces to deal with the threats identified in the Olympic Intelligence Centre's "national Olympic threat assessments, while the Olympic Clearing House is screening 380,000 people, from athletes to voluntary litter pickers, seeking accreditation for the Games. Meanwhile the UK Borders Agency boasts the UK is to be the first country to welcome arriving athletes by funnelling them up dedicated "Olympic lanes" at airports for fast-track fingerprinting.

Locals are also in the firing line, in subtle, privatised ways. Houseboaters on the River Lea have been priced out of a controlled mooring zone around the Games, while the £60m Prevent strategy has screened the five Olympic host boroughs for what threat they pose for brewing local extremism, with "engagement officers" dispatched to each borough.

Random security screening has been carried out on cars parked at Stratford City's Westfield shopping centre, by officers from the staggering 23,700-strong private security contingent of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) and G4S. Westfield isn't even in the Olympic park, itself a hotbed of embedded biometric scanners and CCTV with automatic facial and behaviour recognition technologies, amid which LOCOG's forces can search anyone and use "all available powers" to dispose of troublemakers, particularly anyone caught with anything that could be used … in a tent.

Who LOCOG's bouncers are accountable to is not clear, but they are backed by 13,500 military reservists, apart from countless police deployments, and international contingents such as up to 1,000 US agents, possibly armed. The Games' security costs exploded from £282m in 2010 to £553m by end-of 2011, with another £475m for policing. Under the host city contract, the chancellor of the exchequer signed a guarantee "bearing the costs of providing security" – a blank cheque signed by the taxpayer for Olympic security planning that industry lobby body the British Security Industry Association (BSIA) has proudly been involved with from the outset.

Olympic security is booming business. The $1.7bn security budget for the 2004 Athens Games was over four times that of the 2000 Sydney Games, while $6.5bn went on security at the 2008 Beijing Games, mostly going on security technologies supplied by firms like General Electric and Panasonic – two major sponsors of the London Games. Beijing also saw innovations like armed police zipping around on Segways, or tickets inserted with radio-frequency ID chips to enable the real-time tracking of ticket holders.

Bureaucrats and lawmakers have internationalised efforts to use the Olympics to install and expand intrusive, permanent surveillance measures. The 2005 European Prüm Treaty justified the mass sharing of data among Europe's security forces on convicted criminals, suspects, possible protesters and anyone deemed suspicious for seeking to attend a big sporting event. Britain didn't sign Prüm but certainly shaped and aped its aims, as it did from a 2006 EU manual that standardised how the security forces should respond to threats arising from major events, "political, sporting, social, cultural or other".

Amid the greater alarm of security and the Games, the coalition is soon to wheel out the Communications Capabilities Development Programme – an old, dusted-down plan to force companies to hoard of all text, phone call, email and internet data.

Meanwhile, installed gadgetry always finds other uses. CCTV set up to monitor traffic during the Athens Games were later used to monitor public gatherings. In addition, a communications system set up to co-ordinate the Greek emergency services has, at great cost, been expanded into a surveillance command system dealing with "Greek post-Olympic security needs", presumably in great use now in the bankrupt land where the Games were born.

And so thousands of impoverished teenage Londoners who've lost playing fields to highly secured Olympic carparks, missed out on sports training or couldn't afford tickets, instead of rioting, may take up X-ray screening and door supervision qualifications backed by LOCOG, the BSIA and Home Office, securing their own futures by becoming part of the industry that's securing all our futures. Everyone's a winner.