Ghost of Penn Plaza Destroys Locks, Windows at New Whole Foods in Pittsburgh

The Ghost of Precarity

There’s a simple story we’re told: those in power will choose to develop commodities rather than necessities. You will be displaced, your peoples and neighborhood will be replaced, what culture and vibrancy you shared in public will be unwritten. This is progress, or so we’re told.

What was lost when the Pennley Park / Penn Plaza Apartment complex was demolished wasn’t just homes and familiar faces, it wasn’t just the sounds of tensions of city living, it’s pouring 50+ million dollars of concrete and profit over Roberto Clemente’s footsteps, it’s the erasure of possibilities that existed from within the lives of residents who made a place. It’s another tacky corporate logo that reads “you’re not welcome here, not for you, get out”. If we are to suffer this loss of homes and communities, neighbors we would hustle and flow with, then so too must this heartache be shared.

Some anarchists chose to manifest divine violence, to share a social act in a time of social distance, to thrust onto to the walls that which we often sit uncomfortably with. Into the night, hammers and spray cans in hand, the new Bezos food-chain under construction in East Liberty was defaced. Walls were painted, locks made unusable, and reinforced windows met tiger claw. Slogans sprung upon brick facade to point: people lived here, people walked this land, human stories persevere in defiance of linear time. The soul of the block serves to haunt industry titans.

We invite others to make more social expressions, bring visibility to the pain and anguish that comes with the class society: high gas and commodity prices, paying for a war, companies profiting from the destruction of homes. We believe this small stone cast can make larger waves.

In anarchy, see you in the night.

– ghosts