Londoners have made their feelings clear about a corporate “solution” to the problem of homelessness—and the company listened.

By Molly Rusk Posted June 26, 2014 at www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/anti-homeless-spikes-heartless-cementing-over-them-ingenious.

Early in the morning on June 12, a few members of a group known as the London Black Revolutionaries showed up in front of a Tesco shopping center on Regent Street in London and covered the store’s “anti-homeless spikes” with home-made cement.

A few days before the stunt, the spikes generated a firestorm of public criticism of the retail giant. The criticism largely took place online and centered around a series of photos of the spikes taken in October 2013 by photojournalist Joshua Preston.

The spikes were intended to deter “antisocial behavior,” Tesco told The Guardian in response to the criticism. But Londoners were having none of that.

“We want homes not spikes,” Preston said in a press release from the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, an organization that campaigns against austerity policies—such as cuts to pensions and public spending. “We will show Tesco that its decision to victimize the homeless is shameful.”

Read the rest of the article at www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/anti-homeless-spikes-heartless-cementing-over-them-ingenious.

Last Updated on June 27, 2014