Spanish State: When squatting is a right

By: fawda - September 3rd, 2020  Filed under: News

The peaceful occupation of uninhabited houses in an act of social disobedience to an unjust model of distribution of wealth that deprives more and more people of a dignified life. The demand for the decriminalization of this type of occupation is another step towards social justice.

This August the media have bombarded us with alarmist news about the growing occupation of inhabited homes, giving relevance to a phenomenon that until now has been a minority and getting the most conservative and reactionary voices to clamor for a supposed “anti-occupation law. On the reasons behind this campaign, I recommend reading Emmanuel Rodríguez; it is up to me to convince those who read me that the only legitimate debate on this issue is, at present, to demand the decriminalization of the occupation. [Read More]

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Angers: a look back at the demonstration in support of the Grande Ourse and the court case

By: fawda - September 3rd, 2020  Filed under: News

On Tuesday 1st September, the Grande Ourse squat and its inhabitants were summoned to the judicial court by the owner, who demanded their immediate eviction. The collective having called for a rally at 1pm in front of the building and a support march, the afternoon was busy and lively. A quick look back at the mobilisation and the hearing itself.

About a hundred people finally gathered in front of the Grande Ourse. Time for a coffee and the departure was launched by the batukada. All dressed in pink, the percussionists cheerfully lead the march. As soon as the bridge is crossed, the cops lead the small procession. Three vans and a car just for us, the prefecture has spoiled us! The cops, recognising some people, allow themselves unnecessary words and some stupid remarks about their looks. They definitely don’t change… The demonstration then goes through the town centre animated by songs, hastily prepared that very morning (and it shows), drums or slogans about the right to housing. In spite of our small number, we make noise and the passers-by look at us with curiosity. The numerous banners then attract their attention. One can read: “less bourgeois, more roofs; “fuck the mayor and his evictions” or “it’s not the winter truce we want, it’s the truce itself”. [Read More]

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Madrid: Imminent threat of eviction of the Ateneo Libertario de Vallekas

By: fawda - September 3rd, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

At the end of August we received a nice notification from the court that on September 16th the police and the locksmith would come to the space to proceed with the eviction. Our space, the Ateneo Libertario de Vallekas, has been serving for two years as a place for activities, debates, assemblies, gymnasium and a meeting point for various libertarian initiatives.

Thus we find ourselves in Vallekas, a neighborhood in the city of Madrid, a breeding ground for capitalist speculation, led by successive city councils, regardless of their political persuasion; the neighborhood is a breeding ground for real estate companies, banks, vulture funds, big landowners, journalists and the occasional submissive citizen. Vallekas has been through these speculative processes like gentrification, which have already devastated the center of the city and reached the working class neighborhoods of the periphery years ago. The idea is simple: to turn the neighborhood into an immense commercial center where the only possible relationship is that which is structured around consumption, which expels and pursues poverty, criminalizing it in favor of a new profile of inhabitant with greater purchasing power. The rise in rents is only the tip of the iceberg. The city of the rich is built on the expulsion, the precarization of life and the impossibility of free use of the street and space by its inhabitants. [Read More]

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Strasbourg: La Pigeonne threatened with eviction, let’s mobilize. Imminent danger!

By: fawda - September 3rd, 2020  Filed under: News

In a period where violent and even illegal evictions of tenants and squats have resumed (as in Caen and Gap), while the prolonged winter truce ended on July 10, threats of imminent eviction are hanging over La Pigeonne in the coming days or weeks. In the context of a global pandemic and unprecedented social and economic crisis, these moves are all the more intolerable.

As a reminder, La Pigeonne welcomes women, children and queer, precarious, exiled and marginalized people, occupying in Cronenbourg (Strasbourg) a building abandoned for several years by private owners. Since February 27, 2020, the house at 25 rue des pigeons has thus become a self-managed, queer-feminist housing and organization squat with a chosen gender mix (no cisgender men*). The existence of this place, where solidarities impossible to obtain by other means are built, is therefore necessary and vital.

We call upon the solidarity of the neighborhood and the entire population of Strasbourg to mobilize and defend this place in order to ensure the safety of its inhabitants. [Read More]

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Paris: families living on the streets sleep in front of the Prefecture

By: fawda - September 2nd, 2020  Filed under: News

After a month of alerts to the services of the Paris City Hall and the Ile-de-France Prefecture remained unanswered, 107 exiled families living on the streets settled on Monday August 31 on the forecourt of the City Hall to put an end to this unworthy situation. The objective: to obtain permanent accommodation for all of them.

Since 2015, the public authorities have shown their inability to provide a dignified welcome for exiled people arriving in Paris, in defiance of their legal obligations. Among these people are many families and single women whose time spent on the streets is constantly increasing before they are offered care.

Every evening since 2017, the association Utopia 56 has been trying as best it can to make up for these state and municipal shortcomings via a network of solidarity-based shelters. This network is made up of about 250 people living in the Ile-de-France region who take in single women, families and couples living on the streets. [Read More]

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Montpellier: eviction of the Bouisson-Bertrand squat, eviction of shame

By: fawda - September 1st, 2020  Filed under: News

The police evicted the Bouisson-Bertrand squat, located rue de la Croix-Verte in the Euromédecine district of Montpellier, on the morning of Monday August 31st. The squat had been hosting up to 200 refugees and asylum seekers for more than a year and a half. Dozens of migrants and activists gathered in front of the Prefecture to ask for emergency re-housing solutions, in vain. The founder of the association Solidarité Partagée, which managed the squat, was arrested this morning and placed in police custody following this sit-in, which lasted all night long.

One of the biggest squats in Montpellier, for several months under threat of eviction.

The association Solidarité Partagée was created three years ago by Samuel Forest, President, and Lilian Moutonnet, Secretary General. It first occupied the site of the Château de Leyris, near the Saint-Roch train station, for nine months. But faced with unsatisfactory sanitary conditions and the threat of eviction, the association moved in January 2019 to a building belonging to the Bouisson-Bertrand foundation, located in rue de la Croix-Verte. [Read More]

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UK: Stop HS2 new camp at Euston station in London

By: sisulscz - September 1st, 2020  Filed under: News

A brand new structure here at Euston Square Garden has been occupied by Martin, 19, who’s gone from 2 years homeless to protection camp, church steps to tree top. (See picture)

Who’s joining us? You are invited to bring & pitch a tent/hammock at Euston Square Gardens or at one of the other camps in Denham, Buckinghamshire or Warwickshire (previously on S!N)

Enjoy connecting with nature, swim in the Colne Valley river next to Denham camp whilst helping us hold the sites to StopHS2 or head to the newest camp in front of Euston station …

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Paris: about 300 people live under the A1 highway bridge

By: fawda - September 1st, 2020  Filed under: News

“Every morning, the police tell us to get out”.

Barely a month after the expulsion from the Aubervilliers camp, about 300 people live in a camp set up in Saint-Denis, under the A1 highway bridge. Far from food and clothing distributions, they also suffer from police harassment.

There is anger this Friday morning in the voices and faces of the men who have been living in the camp that has been set up for a little less than a month in Saint-Denis, under the A1 highway bridge.

As every morning, the police came by at about 6 a.m. and ordered the people installed on the esplanade that stretches out in front of the tricolor letters “UEFA Euro 2016” to “get out”.

Only the tents installed on the dirt slope between the road and the esplanade are allowed to stay. The camp is contained in the most invisible and most dangerous part of this place in any point uninhabitable. [Read More]

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