We demand that the dialogue between the public Administration and part of the citizenry be reopened. This is a process which we understand to transcend the Eskalera Karakola Feminist Social Center itself, constituting a fundamental part of citizen demands to take part in the construction of participative, active and public ways to “make city.” Such a process must inevitably include:
- The recognition of the social function which the Eskalera Karakola has been fulfilling for almost seven years: the construction of a collective space which has housed innumerable forms of intervention in the social, in building community, in generating a strong social fabric in a neighborhood like Lavapies heavily marked by exclusion and precariousness, in creating the indispensable links between women which are necessary for us to recognize ourselves as subjects active at the political level.
- The expropriation of the building. Expropriation is a means which, according to its own laws, the Administration should use in many cases such as this. Expropriation could guarantee the social use of otherwise abandoned spaces in which the property owners have failed to fulfill their maintenance responsibilities. The building which houses the Eskalera Karakola has been abandoned for more than twenty years. The owners have expressed no concern whatsoever for this historic building. We therefore understand that they also have no concern for the tremendous lack of housing and social spaces from which we suffer. The policy of non-intervention in these cases therefore becomes a policy that protects privatization, speculation and the monopoly of space and which disregards the great need of citizens in general and women in particular. The Administration must respond to this conflict: it is not a neutral question but rather a political decision which we demand be taken.
- The cession and restoration of the building as a response to the demands of a large community of users, permitting on the one hand that the space be managed by the participants in the Social Center themselves and, on the other hand, permitting that this project expand to its full potential in an adequate space.
We solicit the opening of a process of negotiation capable of responding to this situation.
I support this initiative:
(Name, signature and ID number. Name of group or university affiliation if applicable)
There are two options for signing this letter:
1) electronically, click here (signatures managed by e-leusis.net)
2) by mail, printing this page, signing it and returning it to:
La Eskalera Karakola, c/Embajadores 40, 28012 Madrid, Spain
For more information contact: firstname.lastname@example.org
(we’re sorry for this inconvenient system, but at the moment it is the only one possible…)