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Want to learn more about the battle to live in London? Watch our documentary, Regeneration Game:---------------------------So how do we follow Spain's example and make the leap from those 45 localised campaigns to city hall itself? The London Mayoral elections in 2016 will see a few interesting candidates on the ballot – Lindsey Garrett from the New Era Estate, for one; Sian Berry from the Greens, for another. A new non-partisan organisation on the Spanish model, Take Back the City, was launched earlier this month, with the notion that they might find and support a "people's candidate for Mayor" in 2016, and hopefully this goal will only be one side-product of a much wider effort to empower the city's marginalised communities.Take Back The City is formed from the same mindset as the new wave of housing campaigns, with no more storied an ideology than the notion that the city should belong to all its citizens, not just the rich and powerful.We are many, and they are few, and we have to remind ourselves of that as we gaze up at the opalescent, mocking hubris of The Shard. As a famous Spanish radical from a few generations prior to Ada Colau said, "it is we who built these palaces and cities – and we can build others to take their place". To the millions of Londoners who have been abandoned, ignored or exploited by politicians and bosses: to young people herded out of public space and out of free education, permanent renters, migrants, victims of racist policing, the disabled, carers, the insecurely housed, the underpaid and unemployed – it's time to take back our cities.
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