On Saturday, February 27th, le Marbré was surrounded and invaded by a hundred cops around 2pm. Le Marbré is a space for housing and political organization, located at 39 rue des Deux Communes, in Montreuil, squatted since September 2020. On that day, a canteen was organized there by the public assembly against the Administrative Detention Centers (CRA) of Ile-de-France, in order to support the people incarcerated in Meaux following the fire at the CRA of Mesnil-Amelot on January 20th.
Everything was going well until, around 2pm, a first cop car stopped in front of the entrance. Several people then entered the place and the doors were closed; very quickly, the cops called for reinforcements and more than a hundred cops from 93 and 94 departments surrounded the place. A few dozen people quickly arrived in support, but were pushed back quite easily under the threat of gas, batons and flashballs. At that point, one person was arrested in rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau and taken on board for “insult and rebellion”.
Inside, the place was barricaded and about forty people were locked up for more than two hours. From outside, the cops threatened to enter by force, although it was a home. Around 3pm, about fifteen CSI cops broke down the door with a battering ram and entered wearing helmets, armed, with a laser pointed at us, with a dog, and asking us to raise our hands in the air. Faced with our refusal to designate a contact person, they targeted a comrade at random, claiming that if no one designated him-herself, s-he would be the contact person and considered the organizer of the event. Several people indicated that they were not allowed to break in, that a procedure was in progress and that it was a domicile; to which the cops replied that only people with proof of domicile could stay in the place, the others would have to leave after an identity check. The chief of the cops put an end to any discussion by indicating that “in any case today everyone is either a child or a victim”, and that if we refused to go out they would “take us out one to four cops per person”, and that afterwards “we shouldn’t come whining if there are some bruises”.
They then took everyone’s identity one by one, with thorough searches and palpation. During this time, plainclothes and others took pictures of the place, some went upstairs into the dwelling. Identities were given orally, not all of them could be verified… Several people were fined; if you receive a fine, write to anticra [at] riseup [dot] net so that we can organize together to contest them! Some people have been identified after refusing to declare their identity and that the cops photographed them and compared their photos via a facial recognition system. Two of the people who were inside initially were taken into custody, forcefully!
All the people came out at the drop and joined the people present in support. Then, the entrance to the house was walled off in the presence of the owner and under police protection, despite the fact that the eviction procedure had barely begun, since le Marbré’s trial was postponed until April 1. Some of the belongings have been retrieved after much insistence, but tonight a dozen people are out on the street, most of their belongings and the collective life of the place are walled up behind gray cinder blocks.
When the cops arrived, they announced that they wanted to stop an “illegal party” and to issue a fine for “endangering the lives of others”. In reality, they took advantage of the empowerment gained with the sanitary measures to evict one of the few squats that offered public and political activities in these times of exacerbated control over our lives. Once again, the state is not even respecting its own laws by evicting a place that was not legally evictable. For us, the law does not matter, and we will always support the occupation of abandoned places.
Capitalist policies are creating more and more empty houses and more and more people on the street; we are organizing to stop that. Even more in this moment, when social life is being destroyed and all public space is under control, we need autonomous places to live and organize ourselves.
Today we have more rage than yesterday, and tomorrow it will be even worse!
See you this Sunday, February 28th, at 1pm, at the Montreuil City Hall, in support of le Marbré and those in custody, against all evictions!
Le Marbré’s retaliation
Following the police operation at the squat le Marbré on Saturday, February 27th which led to his eviction, the sealing of one of the two accesses to the building and its surveillance by a security guard, a call had been launched to meet the next day at 1pm, the usual time of the assembly of le Marbré, on the town hall square in Montreuil. Time to prepare some banners such as “Against all evictions, solidarity with le Marbré”, “Tomorrow opens with a crowbar”, “We always go back to fighting by breaking and entering” and to recall that the troops of the prefecture had come the day before to put an end to a canteen organized in solidarity with the accused after the revolt in the CRA of Mesnil-Amelot last January 20, during which two buildings had been set on fire and destroyed, the procession of about a hundred venerable and supportive people began its journey through the city.
First of all in the direction of the police station, where 3 people arrested the day before are still in GAV. Two people were arrested inside for “endangering the lives of others” (that is to say that the cops arbitrarily blamed them for organizing an event contrary to state directives in the time of Covid-19) and a third for “rebellion” following his arrest in front of le Marbré. One could hear “Down with the State, the cops, the landlords”, “Rent Strike! Strike the cops and bailiffs”, “Let’s open houses, destroy prisons” or “Freedom”. We hope that our voices have reached their cells!
The demonstration continued in the direction of Croix de Chavaux and then Robespierre. Tags and posters appeared on the route: “The police evict, we take the street”, “In an organized gang, nobody can evict us”… After a passage in the park of the Republic Square, the procession finally went in front of le Marbré, where two handfuls of cops were waiting for us and above all a nice surprise: instead of finding a deserted building, some determined inhabitants appeared at the windows with signs like “Marbré: 2, proprio: 0” or “Marbré evcited, the cop shop on fire”, noises of pots and pans and cries of joy! The surprised cops soon left, followed by the guards.
It seems that le Marbré has not yet been evicted! But we remain on our guard for the next few days. Information about the activities at the Marbré can always be found on our blog.
Le Marbré occupiers
Le Marbré
39 rue des Deux Communes, Montreuil, France
lemarbre [at] riseup [dot] net
https://squ.at/r/819a
https://lemarbre.noblogs.org/
Some groups in Montreuil https://radar.squat.net/en/groups?fulltext=Montreuil
Some squats in and around Paris: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/city/paris/country/FR/squated/squat
Some squats in France: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/FR/squated/squat
Groups (collectives, social centres, squats) in France: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/FR
Events in France: https://radar.squat.net/en/events/country/FR
