Calais: Recent police attacks on distributions

In the last weeks the police have started to include attacks on support infrastructure in their campaign of violence and intimidation against people on the move in this city. Volunteers and supporters in Calais have been reporting police attacks during food distributions, traffic stops and fines when going out in association vehicles to do distributions, threats to seize vehicles, poisoning of water supplies, and the destruction of donations. This is in addition to the police violence which takes place daily in the jungles, at the parkings, and in the streets for which volunteers are not often present.

Image: Water containers contaminated with CS gas
[Read More]

Tags: , ,

Roca (Lecce): La Caura, new squatted space

We liberated a space situated on the coastline in the Roca Vecchia area (Lecce).
There will be an info point with materials where we can discuss, talk, make presentations and projections on the issues we care most about. We’ll be talking about nocivities, the struggle against exploitation, against the different faces of imprisonment and repression, against the fury imposed on those who come here from the ‘wrong’ countries.
There’s a great deal of interest on what’s going on in this territory, to understand what kind of harmful and devastating work they want to build up by trampling on the environment and the people, for the struggle against the new monster TAP, which has already had very intense moments and will need strength in the long run.
The space will welcome those who come from distant areas and are interested in knowing more and self-organizing in the opposition against the TAP. We decided to do it without submitting ourselves to the prices and rules of the tourism market.
You are all invited on Friday 28th July from 7pm to have aperitifs together and start knowing one another better.

La Caura [Read More]

UK: The edge of precarity. Squatting in England and emergency crisis planning

In recent decades squatting has been under near constant assault from a variety of ruling class actors. In 2012 the Conservative/ Liberal Democrat government banned squatting in residential properties for the purposes of living. Councils, Conservative and Labour alike, treat squatters as a public health issues and pressure property owners to fast track evictions. The (still) rising property market in London and other major cities has incentivised owners to use underhand legal techniques and increasingly violent tactics to rid their properties of squatters in order to make a quick sale or proceed with redevelopment works.

In spite of this, squatting continues. A Houses of Parliament report on evicting squatters estimated there to be around 20,000 squatters at any one time in the UK. This is certain to be a conservative estimate considering the tens of thousands of hidden homeless and the tendency among squatters to float between squatting and other forms of precarious housing arrangements such as guardianships, pubwatching and renting.

Squatting goes on, but in a much diminished form. Nearly all capacity for establishing any kind of long term infrastructure has been destroyed. In the past, semi permanent spaces have been places for squatters to organise, relax, recuperate and party. More than most, squatters depend on solidarity and mutual aid to survive. In Amsterdam squats can last for years. Joe’s Garage, for example, is a social centre near the centre of Amsterdam which has been squatted for 12 years and hosts gigs, talks and people’s kitchens. Social centres and creative spaces act as community hubs that people incorporate into their everyday lives and routines and provide points of stability that can be relied on.

When evicted squatters move to nearby squats to rest and make plan to rehouse themselves, vans are found to move possessions, eviction resistances are put together initially through networks of friends. The demise of squat infrastructure has made it harder to get these things done. It is difficult to keep track of your mates if they move every few weeks. It’s even harder if your time and energy is taken up with moving yourself and your crew.

Sudden court dates, unexpected illegal evictions and the like have inculcated a heightened capacity for emergency crisis planning, at least in the London squat scene where I have experience. Less time for social events and collective actions has meant squatters tend to see the most of each other in stressful situations like evictions, or raves. More often than not squatters just end up seeing less of each other, a diminishing of the social network they rely on to survive.

There have been attempts to combat this trend. Last year an old bank on Deptford High Street was squatted and hosted regular collective meals and other open events such as info nights. This was encouraging and saw frank articulations of politics and lived experiences between squatters and non squatters. The bank squat lasted a couple of months and the crew kept up events in a new building. Inevitably, however, some people not clued into the squatters social circle were left behind in the move, either because they did not know where the new building was or did not have the means to easily get there.

Squatting will continue as long as the housing crisis continues, as long as people are forced to the margins of society. The reorientation away from crisis planning and towards long term organisation, towards new infrastructure, will take time and will require different strategies and efforts. It is time for the left to end its sneering dismissal of the squatter movement – to stop instrumentalising squatters whenever they need them for a political action or occupation only to forget about them when they are no longer needed. Squatting is part of a spectrum of precarious housing and living that needs to be contested and should be more integrated into struggles for council housing, direct actions against estate agents and organising among couriers and other ‘gig economy’ industries.

https://freedomnews.org.uk/the-edge-of-precarity-squatting-in-england-and-emergency-crisis-planning/

Groups in London: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/city/london
Events in London: https://radar.squat.net/en/events/city/London

Groups in UK: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/GB
Events in UK: https://radar.squat.net/en/events/country/GB

Call for defending the occupation of the Hambach Forest

The Hambach Forest has been occupied for five years. For five years people have been building and defending tree houses in order to protect the trees they are living on. For five years diggers, cops, and secus have kept coming closer. Officially, the forest is owned by RWE, a multinational energy company that does not only want to kill the thousands-of-years-old forest, destroy habitats, dispossess and displace residents from the surrounding villages to generate power. With it’s production of lignite in the Rhineland along it is responsible for 30% of Germany’s CO2 emissions. A company that does not shy away from exploiting the entire world in order to maximise its profits. It is a company that significantly contributes to generating situations forcing people to leave their countries of origin. Because the people who first have to deal with the consequences of global warming are not those profiting from coal, but people from the global South. This makes our struggle part of the struggle against imperialism, against oppression and racism. What happens here does not happen by accident. It is a symbol of the capitalist system. And we are working on means of attacking it.
[Read More]

Solidarity statement from Rosa de Foc Squat in Athens, Greece, to anti-airport struggle ZAD in France

As an international housing squat we think solidarity is our weapon, and as we all know weapons have categories, from handguns to nuclear bombs. Revolutionary solidarity doesn’t have boundaries and can only benefit the struggle. We are already starting to try our theories in practice about this.

International solidarity means bringing and taking ideas from one place to another, placing priorities and supporting the place that needs our help the most. Help is not only texts, supplies and solidarity demonstrations in our territory, but also our physical presence there. Working with the people, learning their language and their culture. Basic ingredients if we want to be effective and helpful, because every battle ground is different. [Read More]

Athens: Solidarity statement from the squat Rosa de Foc to XM24 squat

As international collective, self-organized and based on anarchist and anti-authoritarian principles we believe that the international solidarity represents the strongest weapon that the movement has. We are all aware that this weapon can be used at different levels, from words to direct actions.

As living squat and self-educational center Rosa de Foc of Exarchia, we believe that is essential to express our solidarity to all the squats and battlegrounds that are under attack from state apparatus of repression. Especially, for affinity in ideas and practices, we want to assert our vicinity to the squat XM24 of Bologna. A squat that resists to the power’s oppression for 15 years, in constant struggle to create a concrete alternative to the dominant lifestyle that repress and humiliate an increasing number of individuals. We feel close to XM24, a place where, thanks to the many collectives acting inside it, during the years it were built a big number of projects, alive and active, which have made a shelter against the gentrification and the monetization of our neighborhoods. At the same time it isn’t just a provider of ‘alternative services’ but it has maintained alive his fighting and rebel soul that doesn’t surrender to the current situation. [Read More]

Durban (South Africa): Abahlali are under armed attack from the eThekwini Mayor

Thursday, 6 July 2017 – Abahlali urgent press statement

Abahlali are under armed attack from the eThekwini Mayor

On 26 June we marched, in our thousands, on the Mayor of the eThekwini Municipality and the KZN MEC for Cooperative Governance. The Mayor and the MEC refused to present themselves to the thousands of people who had marched on the City Hall.

The memoranda that we handed over gave them seven days to respond to our demands. We made it clear that if there was no response we would engage in further protest action. [Read More]