Dis-association Trouble

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The following shows how the city-run organizations, which normally act as conduits for information from the city to its constituents, can also serve as "gate-keepers" to restrict the practices of groups that are based outside of the city’s own institutional reach.

On the seventeenth of September, 1993, at a general public meeting of the organizing committee, one member of the executive committee read a letter of objection from the PTA of the school where, in a month the madang was to be held.

The letter objected to the poster/flier that was already printed and needed to be circulated immediately. The letter also brought up the unprecedented nature of this event, and, by its tone and effect, it demonstrated how the city, through its neighborhood associations, can act against any group that would organize outside of city auspices.

What follows is the transcript of the Higashi-kujo Madang planning meeting where this problem was announced.