jayesh patel,
you’ve been acting on behalf of flamingo holdings limited (a property development company based out of the cayman islands).
you’ve asked that we vacate these premises after a possession order was issued and claim granted on march 20th by lambeth county court. you’ve told us you don’t want to waste money on bailiffs and that we should not act like “savage animals”.
for us, this is not a matter for civilized dialogue and action. this is about political and social struggle.
To tie in with the courtcase starting Monday in Brighton, when three squatters are going on trial under s144 and will not be pleading guilty, here’s some analysis of the criminalisation of squatting in England and Wales..
In 2012, as we all know, new offence of squatting in a residential building was created by the Government, following a moral panic in the media whipped up by a few right-wing politicians. After a rushed consultation, a last-minute clause was added to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (LASPO) which meant that it was never properly discussed in the House of Commons. The bill was then pushed through the House of Lords at midnight. Section144 criminalises trespass in a residential building with up to 6 months in prison and/or £5000 fine. Previous campaigns to criminalise squatting in the late 1970s and mid 1990s had failed, unfortunately this time it partially succeeded.
Demonstration against evictions of squats and rented houses on Saturday April 27th, at 2pm, rendez-vous at pedestrian street, Montreuil/Paris, métro Croix-de-Chavaux (line 9)…
… we’ll go on until private property, state and capitalism disappear.
More information, in French.
See also transfo.squat.net
Contact: transfo[ât]squat.net
[Read More]
Demo: Tuesday, 30. April, 2013, 20h (punctual!)
Meeting point: is going to be announced shortly beforehand
Last infos: twitter.com/unsersquat
The Autonomous Centre Köln (AZ Köln) has been founded three years ago with a squatting action of an empty building in Köln-Kalk. Since then it has been shaped by a huge variety of people into a self-organized and self-determined space for emancipatory politics, for non-commercial art and culture. In the meantime a use contract has been eked out in confrontations with the cities authorities. This contract has now been cancelled and is going to end on the 30th of June 2013. According to the plans of the local ruling parties, here especially on pressure of the social democrats (SPD), the building shall be evicted by police and a park ( or better a green stripe ) shall be established on top of its debris. This has to be resisted and averted.
Thursday, 18th of april 2013
Borgen in the ‘old city’ in Oslo is a gigantic building which since ’93 has been used as offices for the national railway and later as a cultural fortress with studios and workshops for artists etc. The building has been, and still is a vital part of the borough; it’s a landmark and housing extintionthreathened bats.
The national railway wants to tear down the building with the excuse of constructing a new railway line which could be built underground instead. The former users of Borgen as well as local authorities said no to the destruction of the building. When they weren’t able to stop the process (the Oslo Council Plan- and building department gave permission to deconstruct without a single reasonable democratic hearing) Boligaksjonen (the housingaction) took the baton Friday april 5th.
[Read More]
On September 3 2012, some people were arrested for being in a derelict building under section 144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act.
The three defendants are booked in for a two and a half day trial at Brighton Magistrates Court which starts at 10am Monday April 22 2013.
At this stage we think the trial will go ahead on this date. Come on down!! It’s gonna be a riot! a lot of fun. Solidarity actions would be welcome.
The charges originally were squatting (under s144), obstruction (of the police in their lawful duty) and abstraction (ie stealing electricity). The abstraction charge has already been dropped.
[Read More]
March 28th: At 3pm the cops discovered a new squat. The occupants had put up the legal notice article 423-8 and proof that they had been in the building for more than 48 hours – but the police, as so often, did not care about their own laws. Luckily there were only a few people inside who managed to escape before the police broke an illegal entry. Legally they would have needed a court order to enter, which they never presented. [Read More]
On Monday, April 8th, 2013, at around 1pm, comrades made a surprise intervention outside the Greek Embassy in Nicosia, which lasted about an hour. A solidarity banner was placed at the entrance of the building and many slogans were chanted.
The banner reads: “Solidarity to the 6 fighters of Delta squat, to all squats and self-organized spaces – 10, 100, 1000 Squats – No prosecution against fighters!”
Earlier in Thessaloniki, Greece, the trial against the 6 anarchists of Delta squat was postponed to October 2nd, 2013. Approximately 150 solidarians were gathered outside the courts.
In Greece a social and ideological war is being conducted, with global consequences for the current economic and political governance model. The state has pulled off the mask of neo-liberalism. Now It Nazi salutes and cannibalizes; it attacks basic social and labor rights, represses violently any form of resistance, as only these totalitarian methods that will guarantee its survival. Currently the anti-authoritarian community receives regular brutal attacks from both the State and Fascists. Anarchists are portrayed as terrorists, many of whom face heavy prison penalties. Their spaces are being violently evicted and their infrastructures and means of communication; (printing presses, radio stations) destroyed. Social centres within neighbourhoods with many immigrants, act as bulwarks against the Neo-Nazi’s and their murderous practices, where reactionaries are motivated by a fascist paramilitary organization / political party which holds 18 parliamentary seats; Golden Dawn.
In October 2011, Basildon Council violently evicted 83 families from land they owned (at Dale Farm) because they did not have planning permission. Now, Basildon Council has told families who have virtually nothing left that they must pay £4.3 million for the cost of the eviction!
Many of the families had lived in Basildon for over 10 years: their children were born in the borough, attend the local school and were the first generation in the community to learn to read and write. The bulldozers turned this once thriving and close-knit community into a virtual wasteland, creating deep troughs and huge banks of earth to make it uninhabitable.
On the second anniversary of the eviction of Liebig 14
“An event can be turned around, repressed, co-opted, betrayed, but there is still something in it that cannot be outdated. Only renegades would say: it’s outdated. But even if the event is ancient, it can never be outdated: it is an opening onto the possible. It passes as much into the interior of individuals as into the depths of society” -Gilles Deleuze
Struggle and Repression
The second of February 2011: a Berlin house project is evicted by several thousand cops. This event paradoxically marks a moment that is both a recent high-point of struggle in Berlin, as well as a highpoint of repression. Thousands take to the streets to demonstrate a collective refusal: we do not accept this eviction, nor the eviction of any other emancipatory space, nor the eviction of any individual or family from their home as a result of a city politics that is so clearly rotten, twisted in its pursuit of financial gain. We refuse the power of this city politics, and its neo-liberal yea-sayers, have over urban space. We will continue to fight for this space – the city we live in – to be a collective creation and not an object of financial speculation.
