zlacker

>>obilgi+(OP)
I wonder if it's bigger than Sealand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

When I look at the list of demands I'm pretty quick to dismiss it. Then I remember how I dismissed the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle too, and how many of the fears those protesters had were realized over the next two decades. I might be too hopeful, but I really think the city leadership should talk to them and hear them out, instead of just trying to push them over.

>>yingw7+S2
The list of demands is extremely tame for a fricking anarchist commune. Look at the list of "economic demands." The biggest ask is de-gentrification and rent control.

>>rayine+Ab
Those asks seem pretty incompatible with property law and the legislative process. You can't just unilaterally demand something like rent control and de-gentrification measures. The city government shouldn't even have (and probably doesn't have) the power to meet such demands.

>>maland+My1
Degentrification could trivially be achieved by eminent domain, condemning existing residential property for public housing for which eligibility would be governed on rules which are incompatible with gentrification. It might be expensive, even prohibitively so, to do on a broad scale, but in terms of legal authority it's well within the scope of powers that local governments usually have.

Note that rent control, even if the city doesn't have the power to establish it for private rentals, can effectively be achieved by the same means.

>>dragon+qD1
IANAL but I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to use eminent domain to confiscate the homes of citizens based on their race. The law doesn’t make provisions for unpopular races as far as I know.

>>throwa+mP1
> IANAL but I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to use eminent domain to confiscate the homes of citizens based on their race

Good thing I never suggested that. Gentrification has a racial dimension because race correlates with economics, but it simply is the rich displacing the poor in a particular region; if you take housing units by eminent domain and establish a process for renting them out as public housing that doesn't distribute them to the highest bidder, you prevent gentrification. You neither have to acquire nor distribute based on race.

>>dragon+dA2
> establish a process for renting them out as public housing

and the process for renting them as public housing will be fairer how? You're just switching out one filtering system (price) for another based on arbitrary rules proposed by petty bureaucrats and politicians. At the end of the day you're still discriminating. The only difference that in your system, you're hoping that you or someone with your sensibilities has the power to do the discriminating.