Amsterdam: The living breathing lungs of ADM terrain Westpoort

By: fawda - April 21st, 2017  Filed under: News, video

ADM_AmsterdamOn the edge of an expanding industrial area in Amsterdam called Westpoort, a special development took place.

A group of people created a forest. The forest functions as a natural filter for emissions from local industries. It filters particulate matter, which are small particles of toxic debris and dust from the coal, concrete and petroleum industries located in the nearby area.

On the ADM terrain the trees and plants continually capture these small particles and hold on to them with their leaves and branches until they are washed away naturally by the rain. This is a pollution barrier at work.

The ADM trees also work as a sound barrier to the activity in the industrial freight and coal terminals located in the area. The trees also capture and store CO2 gas. This sound barrier, natural air filter and CO2 storage works every day.

At present the ADM forest forms a direct benefit for the surrounding living areas such as Westzaan and Zaandam, but also for the environment in a much bigger sense. [Read More]

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Argentina: Hotel Bauen eviction called off at last minute

By: fawda - April 20th, 2017  Filed under: News

Hotel_Bauen_Argentina_Famed worker-occupied building Hotel Bauen got a stay of execution last night after the National Chamber of Appeals in Buenos Aires allowed an injunction against its eviction, just hours before the site was due to be forced out.

In its comments the court overturned an order by María Paula Hualde that Bauen’s 140 workers had no right to appeal their eviction. It said she had “erred” in rushing through the order. Hualde’s overenthusiastic ruling followed President Mauricio Macri’s decision to veto a Senate agreement last year to give the building over to the workers.

Over the last month staff at the Bauen have been building solidarity and organising support events to raise awareness about the threat to the hotel, which has been under occupation for 14 years and is a mainstay of left-wing organising in the city. City bosses have been reluctant to take on the hotel, which is a national symbol for the co-operative movement and has a long history of successfully seeing off eviction attempts. [Read More]

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Vienna: Kienmayergasse 15 squatted

By: fawda - April 17th, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

201704_besetzung_Kienmayergasse_15_ViennaUpdate: The house is still squatted. There’s a program for this evening from 5pm on:
– at 5pm there’s a lecture from the book “the net knows everything”
– after we are going to cook and eat together
– and a plenary will also take place
Come by! Take your sleeping bags and camping mats with you and stay over night!
We are happy about your solidarity!
Attention: There’s quite a lot of civil police in the streets around! And cop cars are passing the house over and over again!
Take care of each other!

Call for a squat action

Soon we are going to squat a house, to create a room of struggle and to reclaim a piece of our lifes. From this publication in advance we expect, that everyone who recognizes her*himself in the ideas as they are formulated here, develops her*his own initiatives, plan her*his own activities and actions and intensifies the struggles. [Read More]

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Montevideo: About the raids and arrests linked to La Solidaria Social Center

By: fawda - April 11th, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

la_solidaria_montevideoOn Tuesday April 04, members of Police Intelligence and the regular police carried out two coordinated raids linked to the La Solidaria Social Center. The raids ended with 5 comrades detained, one of whom was charged and bailed, accused of criminal damage. This accusation could be upgraded to to robbery charges and is a result of investigations by the repressive organs of the State that have been carried out since the eviction of the social center and the protests that followed.
The state has promised more arrests in the coming days. Presumably then, there will be more detainees. Private property was put into question and self-organization was made the culprit. The clash between the State standards that defend the existing order based on profit and exploitation and the ability of the self-organized to struggle for radical social transformation was inevitable.
The ability to transform spaces and give them a real life, placing them at the service of the autonomous social struggle and the ability to disrespect the world of dominion will never be forgiven by the defenders of capital…
At the moment, clarity in ideas is very important and the ability to remain strong is crucial.
Defend our social centers, defend the struggle for freedom.
For self-organization and direct action. [Read More]

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Thessaloniki: About the eviction of the squatted house Albatross

By: fawda - April 8th, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

albatross_evictionIn the morning of Wednesday the 5th of April, the police, led by an OPKE unit, evicted a house in Ano Poli, Thessaloniki. Under the threat of fire-weapons, 13 people were arrested and brought to the police station in Monastiriou. The cops refused to let the arrested use their right to contact a lawyer and get translators for 5 hours. 9 people that came to in solidarity were also brought to the “megaron” and kept 3 hours for identity control. One of them now faces the charge of resistance after the pigs beat him up.

During the day, 2 people had to be transferred to the hospital : one with a severe head-wound after the treatment he received in the police station (the physical and psychological violence of the cops following him even in the walls of the hospital) ; the other because of his health, the pigs refusing for hours to take in consideration his signed appointment with a doctor for this precise day, and for hours refusing giving their prescribed medication to him and another person.

After 32 hours, only 12 people were set free before the trial, one being kept imprisoned for having no paper. He may stay in up to six month for this only, and is also accused, like the others, of both squatting and damaging private property. The asylum process in Greece is still so insufficient that thousands of people are not able to obtain a “legal status” and have therefore no possibilities to get access to accommodation or other forms of support. Living in a squat is often the only option they have. [Read More]

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Athens: 400 refugees, 7 floors, 1 home – Solidarity space City Plaza Hotel

By: fawda - April 6th, 2017  Filed under: News, video

city_plaza_athensSince 2015 and the emergence of the refugee movement to Europe, Greece has become a major stopover on the journey of people seeking a better and safer life. Thousands of immigrants from Syria, Kurdistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and other war zones have abandoned their homeland in search of a new home, where their life and freedom are not compromised.

Unfortunately, the EU and Greek governments have been unable (and largely unwilling) to respond to the issue. Instead of providing safety and solidarity to war victims, they have signed a (rather shameful) agreement with Turkey, with the purpose of “managing refugee flows” and further securitizing the “forbidden” European borders. As a result, thousands of refugees are currently trapped in Greece, cramped inside detention centers and camps, away from the public eye.

In this context, on 22 April 2016, activists and refugees squatted the City Plaza Hotel in Athens, which had been abandoned for seven years, in order to create “here and now” a model of dignified housing inside the city. Since then, City Plaza became a home for 400 refugees, including 100 families and 168 children. More than 100 solidarians (locals, activists and volunteers) have mobilized to break with the reality of detention, to build new social relations and multicultural forms of coexistence between locals and immigrants, and to animate a living example of self-organization. [Read More]

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Argentina: Worker-occupied Hotel Bauen gets ready to resist April 19th eviction

By: fawda - April 5th, 2017  Filed under: News

Hotel_Bauen_ArgentinaToday marks 14 days to save Argentina’s famed worker-occupied building, after 14 years of continuous working for the community and providing jobs for 140 people.

The building was taken over by its staff as part of the fábricas recuperadas movement during Argentina’s early 2000s financial crisis, as the original owners had dealt with their financial troubles by abandoning it. Currently hotel chain Mercoteles is claiming ownership of the site, which has become a major hub for left-wing organising in Buenos Aires. In a video, Bauen workers explained:

The group that bought the Bauen was built with the help of the dictatorship and they abandoned it without paying a million-dollar debt and leaving 70 families in the street.

Hotel Bauen co-op members are currently fighting a legal battle against a judge’s ruling last month to evict them on April 19th, based solely on the veto of right-wing President Mauricio Macri. They had previously been confident that they would beat the case overall, as they had won Senate support to expropriate the building to their care before Macri intervened in December last year. Team member Ataliva Dinani explained:

The legal route is not a utopian dream on our part, there is a mechanism in Section 83 of the Constitution which would allow deputies and senators to ratify the ruling to expropriate the Bauen, despite the veto by Macri. [Read More]

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Italy: A few contributions on the latest wave of repression against anarchist in Florence

By: fawda - April 5th, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

psfpsryuosSummary by act for freedom – A suspicious parcel was spotted by a Digos patrol outside the premises of a fascist Casapound bookshop on New Year’s Eve. A bomb disposal expert called to the scene in order to detonate the device was seriously injured by its explosion. Shortly afterwards several anarchists’ homes were raided by the police in Florence and other areas in Tuscany. Prosecutors started an investigation for attempted murder.
Another operation, ‘operation Panico’, unrelated to the action against Casapound, was carried out by the cops on 31st January against 35 anarchists of whom 3 were put under house arrest and 7 were inflicted various restrictive measures. Villa Panico squat was also raided and closed down. The charge pressed with operation Panico is criminal association and refers to a number of episodes that took place in the city in 2016. [Read More]

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Amsterdam: Finally clarity about ADM terrain

By: fawda - April 4th, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

ADM_AmsterdamChidda admits, Koole Maritime is not intending building a shipyard.

The ADM terrain in the port of Amsterdam has been disused since 1977. From that time, the land was ‘owned’ by various speculators, who however still had to deal with a limitation that the municipality had included in the Act of Ownership, when they gifted the then ADM shipyard in 1970; “the terrain is destined for a company, which aims to build and repair ships.” The Supreme Court ruled earlier that this destination restriction (the ‘perpetual clause’) is still in place. The current ‘owner’, Chidda Vastgoed BV, argued for some time that they had found a company that would indeed plan to launch a genuine shipyard on the terrain. In the appeal court-case of the ‘Bodemprocedure’ (=> in-depth court case), which took place Tuesday (March 28th. 2017), Chidda was forced to admit that it is not about a shipyard, but “a displacement of the current activities.” The company in question, Koole Maritime BV, is known for, among others, asbestos removal, waste treatment and excavation works.

That real estate company Chidda BV insisted this long that it indeed was about a shipyard, has to do with the fact that they’re attempting already for about two years to remove the more than 200 residents, who settled in the area in the past 40 years, through various procedures. However, in order to accomplish this, the real estate company must have a “demonstrable and law respecting interest in the matter”, according to the judges in the three previous court cases. For the ADM terrain it means that there must be serious plans presented for a shipyard. These plans were proven again and again below par. Last Tuesday it became finally clear why. [Read More]

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Lesvos (Greece): Many arrests at squats yesterday

By: fawda - April 3rd, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

201704_Former_No_Border_Kitchen_camp_LesvosPolice was coming today early in the morning to the squats. They came to the different squats one after the other with 3 cars and two arrest vans. In total 17 people were arrested, sixteen refugees and one person with European passport.
In the squat where they went first two person were arrested. After they went to the other squat. There they arrested one European person and also kicked her during the arrest. Then they went through one of the building taking all the people from their rooms. All papers were checked and then the police took pictures of each person.
At the same time other cops started to go to another building and to the beach were some people were sleeping. When one person tried to run he was severely beaten. He had to be transferred to the hospital for treatment.
In the other buildings also people were arrested.
All people were taken to Moria. 11 of them are still in the prison inside Moria. 5 people were released again today, 4 of the arrested refugees and the person with European passport.
Some of the people that are now in Moria prison will be deported.
We are incredibly sad and angry. Once again today our friends and comrades were imprisoned and beaten for no other reason than being in Europe without having the “right” passport. Now many face weeks or month in prison and after that deportation…for nothing. Only for looking for a safe place to live. [Read More]

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