In this video, near the end Johann Hari’s “Secret to Happiness” he talks about a place called Kotti. In this town, a woman’s rent was being raised and due to the fact that she couldn’t pay it, she was being evicted. She hung a sign on her window saying that she was being evicted and was going to kill herself. This caused an uproar, and people moved to help her in any way they could. Everyone was experiencing their rent being raised, so it was a problem for all of them, they just weren’t being evicted yet. They had a protest, hoping that it would get news coverage and put pressure on those who were raising the rent. Later that night the police tried to stop them. The people of Kotti were afraid that the police would remove the woman and the signs, so they formed groups and did watch shifts. As days went on more and more people joined and became more connected to each other. As more people joined and the group became more organized, they got more news coverage and a closer connection with the people around them. Soon, the lady was able to keep her home, and rent I believe stopped increasing for other people. Before this all started the people in that town didn’ know each other, they feared each other in some cases. After this happened, they were a community, a group of people that loved and cared for one another, and worked together to solve their problems. Through this process, they learned how much they all have in common. For example, a younger woman, who wore miniskirts in the middle of the winter, and the woman who wanted to commit suicide realized they had a similar back story. They both got stuck in Kotti, a place that wasn’t their final destination, with children and had to work throughout their lives to survive.
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