Submission
A few months ago Fairmount Park Conservancy put up 3 4-sided plastic strucures along the trail parallel to MLK BLVD. The signs advertise the park with a website, twitter, QR and IG, and feature a list of shows/activities people can get involved with. Prior to this there were no obvious signs along the trail specifying what the space “was”, who it was being maintained by or what it was for.
Early Friday morning we wrote anti-development, anti-colonization and FDR meadows solidarity graffiti on the structures. We also covered up the QR codes and some of the social media handles. Beyond the message in the graffiti we hope the paint ruins the signs.
These signs, the cutting of trees in Cobbs Creek, the development in FDR Park are all forms of domesticating the land and those who move across it. Domestication runs counter to how we want to relate to spaces, ourselves and each other. We want to live wild lives beyond the control of any authority and for that we need wild spaces.
The development and domestication of wild spaces makes them less hospitable to wildlife, plant life, people wandering and living outside and anyone who wants to enjoy a space in autonomous, unorganized and illegal ways.
We dislike the Fairmount Park Conservancy because we’re not interested in conserving spaces, freezing in time spaces that would otherwise grow and change. Despite their name, the conservancy has a clear objective of designating spaces for certain kinds of activities, for certain kinds of people, in a topdown manner. The clearest example of this is their contribution to the destruction of the FDR meadows.
Development and domestication are inseparable from issues of race, colonization, gentrification and class. Check out https://edgeeffects.net/green-gentrification/ for a way these things interact in spaces outside of residential neighborhoods.
Solidarity with the saboteurs at FDR, Cobbs Creek, the Atlanta Forest and everyone trying to widen the cracks!
