The Open Air Prison

The success of the urban architecture is less and less in concealing the true social functions. We always advance forward in this hell with fury and measure, disinterested in the veneer and the cracked “study of urban phenomenon”. The management of urban space, from the choice of materials, from the placement and form of the moveable city down to the optimization of the possibilities of control and of enclosure, this is not an innocent science aimed at returning the urban life, comfortable and adapted to the needs of all.

This is to allow the police to carry out pursuits on the poor without material obstacles. This is to separate the poor from the rich to ensure the security of those last. This is to lock up the undesirable populations inside some tower and along the shit quarters of commerce and some soccer field for them to occupy. This is to break and return the unbearable life of all those who have the misfortune of living on the street (prostitutes, junkman [junky], homeless). This is to maximize the human profitability of a raid on sans-papiers . Everything underneath the proud banner of the urban and its diverse forms of self-justification: Prévention situationelle , social coeducation, sanitation, design, circulation… The urban is the one cog of this society of domination, the one function that goes hand in hand with the judiciary system, upholding the order, hunting down the undesirables, the education system and prison and all other institutions of power and authority.

It is important to not be astonished when on the last 6th of September, one interminsterial circular foresaw “to increase the role of the police in the policies of the city”. With this policy of the 6th of September 2010, the police and the prefect, up to then limited a consultative role, but they are guests in participation within the installation of this apparatus. Indeed, the text requires the prefects to generalize the “studies of public safety” to the whole of the projects in play within urban renovation. Studies which are often led by specialized cops or gendarmes, or entrusted to private people receiving a benefit.

The lay out of the city functions for the desire of the police, for example, the end of constructing flat roofs (to avoid rioters from storing stones there), to improve the public lighting (which exploits the feeling of insecurity), the end of constructing awnings (to limit the assemblies inside the halls of buildings) or to block allies (precieved like vectrices of traffic and which obstruct surveillance).

Behind the activity of the cities crammed space favorable in all sorts of disorders and of subversions, or more tritely, of illicit acts, there is the opportunity of reducing the still cage of every poor until they learn how to not stumble satisfied with some crumb of stale bread. And all that adds digging some imaginary pit between “communities”, particularisms and “identities”, between “honest people” and “delinquent hooligans” in the interior of the city.

The civil war, between the poor, is aimed at reinforcing their capacity. Our war inside of us, rages and revolts against authority, aimed only at its destruction.

In a way urbanists, police, bourgeois, politicians, their alibis cultural or humanitarian and every one of those who have stolen our lives duty is to be killed.

To live, the wild speech.

1. (literally translating in English to undocumented alien or the undocumented, but is a bit more derogatory in the French language then how it is thought of in English. Would be between illegal alien and wetback.)
2. (An english equivalent would be the tradition of formalities and methods that orient security through the design of public space. Similar to the American idea of crime prevention through environmental design.)

(From the journal Luciloes French for Fireflies)