Concerning the construction of the shelter in Nagai park, Sumiyoshi, Osaka, the struggle have been still continuing. Osaka, as the second largest city in Japan, has the most number of people forced to live on the street. Those homeless people are found mainly in the parks round the Osaka Castle and Ogimachi, in the midst of Down Town, on the riverside, or in Kamagasaki, the biggest pool of day-labourers. Among them, Nagai Park envisages more than 400 comrades' lives in tents without any alternative housing provided properly. Like in other places, years have mercilessly passed without any substantive countermeasures against such a condition by the authority. Hence the comrades in the park have made a bare living mostly by can collecting, supporting each other with some sort of mutual-aids, say, in the unit of small groups.
Though having enough knowledge about these situations of these homeless, which the case in Nagai Park represents, Osaka administration have coped with this issue in the most undesirable way, so far. Under the title of Rehabilitation Project, they always put priority on the policies for the press and the neighbour citizens, neglecting the homeless people involved. Never excusable is this disdainful attitude toward the comrades in the Nagai Park, which is trampling on others situated likewise in the whole country, too. We are finally combined with the comrades from other areas of Osaka like Kamagasaki and Kita, while those amounts near to 200 in the meanwhile, who have been expelled out of the park because of their rejecting of the project by the administrator. (The number includes those who got the alternative housing by the livelihood protection, though). As a result of our solidarity, the homeless comrades in the Park and other places have successfully won the assurance on the side of the authority, that they should not execute any compulsive eviction any longer, besides apologising for having neglected the people involved.
However, the different issues remain still unsolved in terms of; the evicted people who rejected the resettlement into the prefab camp prepared by the administrator; the utterance of the administrator to imply some eviction at the account meeting with the neighbour citizens; the shelter construction opposed by the neighbourhood; and the firm cold-blooded attitude of the Mayor Isomura despite the proposal for the national subsidy by the Minister of Health and Welfare. All those exposes that their most projected measures on this issue always conceal the intended eviction behind their surface accounts to the homeless people.
We consider any kind of countermeasures against the homelessness under the conditioned of evictions definitely false, and we must resist against that way, pressing so-called either-or-options (Going out, otherwise evicted!) by the administrator without any persuading alternatives, which respects the people involved. Needless to say, it should be rather the people themselves on the street, who have the right to decide to make use of the supply proposed by the administrator.
We are, asking for the life with roof and job, never defeated by poverty, and ready to welcome negotiations with the authority, provided that their policy making process openly goes on with the mutual agreement, and proposes some efficient measures, developing helpful environment for the self-supporting activity. Never unacceptable is just any one-way requirement aiming at evictions, forcing homeless comrades to remove without any agreement and any alternative housing supports.
And we never withdraw our foot-board, obtained through the struggle against the unjust eviction happened in Shinjuku, Tokyo in 1996. With all the nation-wide support, we will reinforce our bonds steadily and progress steps to win the substantive countermeasures against the problem around the homelessness. So, let's keep our solidarity close and develop our joint struggle over the whole country! All attendants at the conference of National Anti-Unemployment movement