Following the recent evictions in Calais, a week of action in solidarity with the resistance of the ’’jungle’’ took place in Marseille. The various actions contained in this communique were anonymously contributed by numerous individuals and groups. All the targets chosen collaborate in the repression, subjugation and deportation of migrant and/or paperless people in Calais and elsewhere.
Below is the list of actions as they were communicated by those responsible: [Read More]
London’s most famous eco-squat, Grow Heathrow, celebrates 6 years of inspired resistance. We go along to the party and talk to activists there about their struggles, their successes and our shared future.
Grassroots Takeover radio show: https://soundcloud.com/grassroots-takeover/happy-birthday-grow-heathrow
source: Occupy London http://occupylondon.org.uk/listen-here-to-interviews-and-highlights-from-grow-heathrows-6th-birthday-party/
Squatting has always been a direct solution to housing need, providing homeless people with immediate free housing that they can have some control over. Squatting has changed over the decades, from taking over entire empty streets neglected by councils in the 1970s to now moving into empty business premises before developers manage to tear them down and throw up yuppie flats in their place.
Changes in the law and attitudes (particularly from property owners who are taking a much greater interest in their empty properties these days), as well as the hyper-gentrification of inner-city neighbourhoods have made it much harder to squat at a time when there is greatest housing need. Solidarity with your local squatters is more important than ever. Here are some of the reasons to support your local squat – and the growth of the wider housing movement – and how to get involved:
[Read More]
Housing activists occupied the prime property – next to Harrods – to build support for the Kill the Housing Bill demonstration on Sunday 13 March, which saw up to 10,000 people take to the streets in central London.
Radical Housing Network, a network of grassroots housing campaigns, used the empty building – known as “Our House” – to host a community-led week-long programme of workshops, talks and performance in response to London’s housing crisis and its effect on communities. The week of action was reported by the Independent newspaper among others.
[Read More]
On Sunday, 13/03, at Vancouver Apartment Squat we got attacked with a Molotov cocktail by the local fascist group A.M.E.
The group published a text on their blog, taking the responsibility and treating that they will come back. They didn’t reach their goal because no damages were done as the bottle failed to set the house on fire.
This is the second fascist attack against squats within a month. The previous happened to Zaimi Squat on 16/02 by the fascist group C18 Hellas.
Nothing will stop us. The threats of the fascists, the State, and ASOEE University (who owns the building) will not make us give up our struggle.
Solidarity to Zaimi, Libertatia, Mundo Nuevo, Analipsi, Autonomous Steki Exarchia, Kouvelou, Terra Incognita and all the other squats and people who have been attacked. And to those who fight against fascist and fascism.
DOWN FASCISM. VIVA ANARCHY.
RESISTANCE, SELF-ORGANIZE, SOLIDARITY!
SQUAT THE WORLD! [Read More]
Welcome to the OUR HOUSE Pop Up Community Centre!
We have occupied a building in the heart of the most expensive part of London to host a community-led occupation in protest at the Tories Housing Bill, the housing crisis and to highlight the insanity of empty properties when thousands are homeless.
This was a pop-up shop — now it’s a pop-up squat.
* 221 Brompton Road SW3 2EJ * OUR HOUSE *
[Read More]
Yorkley Court was violently attacked yesterday morning (10/3/16). Previously on S!N
Mainstream media reports an eviction, but here are statements from the group:
16.00 11/3/16
We need more people to reoccupy Yorkley Court. We are facing some thuggish violence on the ground. This is an opportunity to show that people cannot be squashed by money and corruption. Although events yesterday were bad, we have a strong chance to hold onto the land if people try.
We hope that members of the local community will be able to come and give input into how you want the land to be used and defended. Please do not fear them.
[Read More]
Today [March 2nd] the southern half of the Calais ‘jungle’ enters it’s third day of eviction, in a process the authorities have now said will take 3 weeks to complete.
Here’s some of the acts of resistance that have been happening in & beyond the camp. It’s looking like it’s going to be a drawn-out process, so get busy researching, preparing and taking action now. This post will be updated as more action reports come through. [Read More]
On Wednesday evening, February 24th 2016, a large number of people gathered in the Libertad Square, in the context of the international week of action against the eviction of the autonomous social centre La Solidaria. After 7pm, comrades shouting “No eviction of La Solidaria” and carrying different banners in defense of autonomous spaces, began to demonstrate in Montevideo’s streets and continued until the corner of Fernández Crespo Avenue and Cerro Largo Street, where La Solidaria is located. [Read More]
No injuries, nor arrests, instead numerous facades revisited
Nearly 400 people marched in Nantes in the context of the week of resistance. The lead banner, decorated with the cartoon bird “the king and the mocking bird”, called for resistance against the states of emergency, whilst referencing Kobane to Kurdistan, Ferguson to the United States, and Notre-Dame-des-Landes in France.
300 police offices were supposed to prevent access to certain areas but they couldn’t prevent the redesigning of facades of some public buildings, banks, estate agencies and the Socialist Party office located on the path of the demonstration.
Demonstrators dressed in black, masked, and some with gas masks – with fire-extinguishers, paint and egg bombs – were able to indulge in paint and political graffiti on the walls of the city. [Read More]
From Iconoclasia
Translated by Scott Campbell for It’s Going Down
On the repressive circus mounted by the Mexican State
…what is condemned about anarchists is not the violence, but their having transcended denunciations and conferences, bringing disobedience, insubordination and the capacity for revolt to this point. What is condemned is precisely the fact of their standing up and walking from the point of a radical critique of power and an intransigent ethic of freedom; and, moreover, to do so until the very end.
Daniel Barret (Rafael Spósito)
When the unyielding have declared war on power with their daily, consistent action, there is not much need for “pretexts” in order to attack the subversives. For power, the fact that anarchists are unyielding to power’s norms, that they can’t be corrupted and don’t make alliances, is enough of a reason to attack them. It’s true, many times those who rule the world have to carry out “criminalization” campaigns in order to attack various struggles, anarchists included. However, other times these campaigns are much more than a campaign to “discredit”; besides, who wants credit? Do we need it? The vast majority of the time, these campaigns are part of a strike of greater magnitude, form part of an overwhelming strike that the State plans to inflict. It is within this context one can place recent events, part of power’s repression of the local anarchist or libertarian landscape, that is to say, in the Federal District [Mexico City].
The subversive struggle in the region has gained in strength and form in the past three years. In years prior, attacks on power were carried out, in general, from the shadows, but they began to happen in the light of day as well. Opposition took the form of possible widespread revolt, disturbances took on consciousness and attacks on the structures of domination spread rapidly. Sabotage and attacks of all kinds spread throughout the territory. In those moments of subversion of the existing order and the destruction of social peace—that is, the peace of the powerful—the repressive responses from the dominators were not lacking. Monitoring, surveillance, searches, arrests, and even attempts at disappearances, were what we lived with in those days, in the years past.
The climate today is not so different and beyond a campaign of harassment, what is happening today is a continuation of the repressive actions the State has directed against anarchists in recent years. Just read the stories about the climate of tension experienced during the Informal Anarchist Symposium; just consult the statements from Okupa Che and take a look at the anarchist websites and independent media to get a sense of these repressive actions.
This year seems to already be highlighted in the calendar of power, and we don’t say that with a prophetic voice, the facts simply make it quite clear to us. For some months now (a little before the start of the new year), the police forces of the Mexican State have been carrying out acts of espionage, intimidation and attacks against anarchist, libertarian and subversive individuals; and also against projects that, for power, constitute a real threat. Messages with a link sent to the telephones of “common people”; emails sent to some anarchist projects with attached links containing a malware product called Da Vinci, acquired by the Mexican State from HackingTeam as a means to infiltrate computers and telephones, are part of these repressive actions, of the continuation of what the State has been doing to subversives for the past two years. But not just that. There is also the constant shadowing of compañeros carried out by police in recent weeks using private cars, the intimidating telephone calls, the constant surveillance outside the home of some compas, the visits from ministerial police at the homes of several compañeros involved in various parts of the anarchist movement, these are part of the same story.
Included in this repressive climate is the arrest of compañero Yorch Punk, one of those who for years have inhabited “Okupa Che” in the Philosophy and Letters Department at UNAM. Last Wednesday night, February 24, around 9:45pm, ten individuals with “military appearances” forced compañero Yorch into a white truck without license plates, threatening the two people who accompanied him with weapons. The morning of the 25th, at around 5am, masked individuals burned an automobile belonging to UNAM Security and built barricades on the interior thoroughfare of the university, in front of the squatted auditorium. Hours later it was finally known that compañero Yorch was being held in the Federal Attorney General’s office located in the historic city center. But the system didn’t hesitate in starting up its manipulative machinery, which forms an important part in the repressive experiment of social pedagogy. In the afternoon, all the news outlets announced the capture of an alleged “drug dealer” in the vicinity of University City, who, to give coherence to their circus, they pointed to as the leader of Okupa Che. Some outlets accused Yorch of possessing marijuana, others of possessing amphetamines, some of diazepam and even cocaine. If Yorch drank, if he took drugs or if he was straightedge is something that should matter little to us, as the strategy of power is more than clear: a campaign of criminalization, possibly preceding a great repressive event. That statement is not for nothing, just look at the context of the compañero’s arrest, which occurred at the end of an activity held at the squatted auditorium in solidarity with imprisoned compañeros. Adding to this the fact that the following day the director of the Philosophy and Letters Department called for the prompt eviction of the squat, the suspension of intra-campus transportation, and in the afternoon of the 25th, the announcement of a meeting between the President of UNAM and the police to arrange the eviction.
But this is not the first time they’ve tried to do their worst to Yorch. Two years ago, in 2014, Yorch was viciously beaten by a paramilitary group when they tried to retake the squatted auditorium, a group that was beaten back by a large group of anarchist compañeros in December 2013. On this occasion, they severely beat Yorch, burned him with a blowtorch, opened up his head, and embedded metal pellets in his skin. To the misfortune of those “reds”, the following day a large group of compañeros again retook the auditorium, so their “failed assault” did not last long, as we say.
In any light, what has happened to Yorch is nothing more than part of a plan to evict a space that in some way is uncomfortable to power, hence the criminalization in the news, as a way to have a minimal justification for students and society “in case of an excessive use of force.” But this is not a separate issue, as it is indisputably linked to all of the monitoring, the visits by the federal ministerial police at compañeros’ homes, the harassment, the sending of messages, making clear what they are preparing. Repression, like any other method, has a before, has its central moment, and has an after. The repressive strike is being prepared, practiced and justified, although all this is done in order to maintain a façade, as the State does not need to justify anything, it simply makes use of its authority. But repression is not just the repressive strike itself, nor the arrest of compañeros, nor the kettling of a demonstration. The State practices repression in everyday ways, through the classroom, through the television, through the family; at work, in the jails, in the psychiatrist’s office; the repression the State practices is also in the power relations that prevail in society, therefore, a fight against repression is a fight for the destruction of power. Without abolition and without mediation, a precise attack against the structures, the representatives and the social relations that sustain this domination.
The tiger does not lose sleep over the opinion of sheep; this is how we should move forward, without the opinions of others about us as anarchists impeding our ability to realize our dreams, as we do not seek prestige; this is how we should advance against the wind, without the repression of the State (selective or daily) being able to paralyze our struggle or keep us inactive or in constant weariness; as such, like the tiger who doesn’t lose sleep but stays wide awake, that is how we should advance in the face of all adversities, generating projects of freedom capable of subverting the relations of domination, capable of contributing to the spreading and intensification of the conflict against authority. Determination is what we have, though many become disheartened and everything seems difficult.
There is nothing left but to send a greeting of support to compañero Yorch Punk. All our solidarity to the compañero and to all compañeros facing repression, imprisoned, and those who are on the run, transgressing the laws of power.
Against power and against all authority, social war without agreement or mediation!
Some anarchists from the Mexican region, February 26, 2016
