To our fellow compañerxs, to those in the struggle, to the independent media and the community in general:
On Sunday, July 31, at midday, four compañeros who are members of Okupa Che were near the university pool when they were surrounded by National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) Security, who in an excessive operation began to attack them.
From Ill Will Editions
“[B]eneath the surface of that idea – that truism, black lives matter – is an unsettling challenge. What would it mean to create a world, or at least a space, where that actually was true?” [1]
A Cop-Free Zone in Carbondale
On Friday night a couple dozen folks converged on the local autonomous infoshop in Carbondale, IL for an illegal dance party in the street. In addition to locals, cars arrived from Bloomington, Chicago, and St. Louis to participate. The plan was to throw an unpermitted street party with free food and loud music, and as things progressed and energy rose, to block off the street and visibly polarize the space against state violence with large handmade banners declaring it a cop-free zone.
Comrades are currently mobilising in the streets to make the eviction as expensive as possible for the cops and the Berlin Senate. Below is today’s announcement by Rigaer94.
This morning, June 22nd 2016, at around 7.30am, approximately 300 cops, private security and construction workers came to our house in Rigaerstrasse 94. First, the construction workers cut out our doors and removed them. After securing their place in the house, the cops, construction workers and security, took position in the garden, the yard and on the roof, as well as in the staircases. Construction workers and cops joined together to carry out all movable objects they could find in the yard – bicycles, a bike shed, fridges, trailers etc. Our doors were removed and the frames knocked out, the phone and internet connection was cut. Only after our lawyer got access to the house, we were informed about the reason for the police action.
A balade for de-gentrification took to the streets of Saint-Henri on the evening of May 28, 2016. About 30 people, all in black bloc, strolled down rue Notre-Dame and looted the yuppie boutique grocery store “Le 3734”. As most of the crowd held down the street outside the store, a few people went inside and filled duffel bags with fresh and dry sausages, cheese, maple syrup, and other items. Meanwhile, the storefront was redecorated with graffiti reading ‘Fuck Empire’ and wheatpasted posters that communicated some of the intentions behind the action. After throwing smoke bombs ahead of and behind the crowd on Notre-Dame, people dispersed via the train tracks before police could arrive, and no arrests have been made. In the days that followed, we re-distributed the food to people in the neighborhood who wouldn’t regularly have had access to it. The poster left behind read as follows:
With the arrival of the condos in Saint-Henri, a multitude of expensive businesses, hipster restaurants, and bourgeois grocery stores followed. Nevertheless, despite this affluence of food, the neighborhood remains practically a food desert for people with little money. Such a paradox it is to live in a world that produces so much food, but that isn’t accessible for those who are hungry!
May 28th, we tried to recalibrate things a bit, to the extent of our means. We put on masks to protect our identity, we entered one of these extravagant businesses, we took everything we could and we left to redistribute the goods joyously in the neighborhood. Inspired by the recent actions against the police in different neighborhoods and knowing that they were going to show up to protect the property owners, we brought what we needed to protect ourselves.
Everyone deserves to eat well and there is enough food for everyone! It is with great pleasure that we organized this pillaging, which is a slap in the face to the forces that impoverish and starve us. We invite everyone to do the same!
Long live de-gentrication!
Tonight is the great banquet, we celebrate complicity and abundance!
From Iconoclasia
Translated by Scott Campbell for It’s Going Down
On the repressive circus mounted by the Mexican State
…what is condemned about anarchists is not the violence, but their having transcended denunciations and conferences, bringing disobedience, insubordination and the capacity for revolt to this point. What is condemned is precisely the fact of their standing up and walking from the point of a radical critique of power and an intransigent ethic of freedom; and, moreover, to do so until the very end.
Daniel Barret (Rafael Spósito)
When the unyielding have declared war on power with their daily, consistent action, there is not much need for “pretexts” in order to attack the subversives. For power, the fact that anarchists are unyielding to power’s norms, that they can’t be corrupted and don’t make alliances, is enough of a reason to attack them. It’s true, many times those who rule the world have to carry out “criminalization” campaigns in order to attack various struggles, anarchists included. However, other times these campaigns are much more than a campaign to “discredit”; besides, who wants credit? Do we need it? The vast majority of the time, these campaigns are part of a strike of greater magnitude, form part of an overwhelming strike that the State plans to inflict. It is within this context one can place recent events, part of power’s repression of the local anarchist or libertarian landscape, that is to say, in the Federal District [Mexico City].
The subversive struggle in the region has gained in strength and form in the past three years. In years prior, attacks on power were carried out, in general, from the shadows, but they began to happen in the light of day as well. Opposition took the form of possible widespread revolt, disturbances took on consciousness and attacks on the structures of domination spread rapidly. Sabotage and attacks of all kinds spread throughout the territory. In those moments of subversion of the existing order and the destruction of social peace—that is, the peace of the powerful—the repressive responses from the dominators were not lacking. Monitoring, surveillance, searches, arrests, and even attempts at disappearances, were what we lived with in those days, in the years past.
The climate today is not so different and beyond a campaign of harassment, what is happening today is a continuation of the repressive actions the State has directed against anarchists in recent years. Just read the stories about the climate of tension experienced during the Informal Anarchist Symposium; just consult the statements from Okupa Che and take a look at the anarchist websites and independent media to get a sense of these repressive actions.
This year seems to already be highlighted in the calendar of power, and we don’t say that with a prophetic voice, the facts simply make it quite clear to us. For some months now (a little before the start of the new year), the police forces of the Mexican State have been carrying out acts of espionage, intimidation and attacks against anarchist, libertarian and subversive individuals; and also against projects that, for power, constitute a real threat. Messages with a link sent to the telephones of “common people”; emails sent to some anarchist projects with attached links containing a malware product called Da Vinci, acquired by the Mexican State from HackingTeam as a means to infiltrate computers and telephones, are part of these repressive actions, of the continuation of what the State has been doing to subversives for the past two years. But not just that. There is also the constant shadowing of compañeros carried out by police in recent weeks using private cars, the intimidating telephone calls, the constant surveillance outside the home of some compas, the visits from ministerial police at the homes of several compañeros involved in various parts of the anarchist movement, these are part of the same story.
Included in this repressive climate is the arrest of compañero Yorch Punk, one of those who for years have inhabited “Okupa Che” in the Philosophy and Letters Department at UNAM. Last Wednesday night, February 24, around 9:45pm, ten individuals with “military appearances” forced compañero Yorch into a white truck without license plates, threatening the two people who accompanied him with weapons. The morning of the 25th, at around 5am, masked individuals burned an automobile belonging to UNAM Security and built barricades on the interior thoroughfare of the university, in front of the squatted auditorium. Hours later it was finally known that compañero Yorch was being held in the Federal Attorney General’s office located in the historic city center. But the system didn’t hesitate in starting up its manipulative machinery, which forms an important part in the repressive experiment of social pedagogy. In the afternoon, all the news outlets announced the capture of an alleged “drug dealer” in the vicinity of University City, who, to give coherence to their circus, they pointed to as the leader of Okupa Che. Some outlets accused Yorch of possessing marijuana, others of possessing amphetamines, some of diazepam and even cocaine. If Yorch drank, if he took drugs or if he was straightedge is something that should matter little to us, as the strategy of power is more than clear: a campaign of criminalization, possibly preceding a great repressive event. That statement is not for nothing, just look at the context of the compañero’s arrest, which occurred at the end of an activity held at the squatted auditorium in solidarity with imprisoned compañeros. Adding to this the fact that the following day the director of the Philosophy and Letters Department called for the prompt eviction of the squat, the suspension of intra-campus transportation, and in the afternoon of the 25th, the announcement of a meeting between the President of UNAM and the police to arrange the eviction.
But this is not the first time they’ve tried to do their worst to Yorch. Two years ago, in 2014, Yorch was viciously beaten by a paramilitary group when they tried to retake the squatted auditorium, a group that was beaten back by a large group of anarchist compañeros in December 2013. On this occasion, they severely beat Yorch, burned him with a blowtorch, opened up his head, and embedded metal pellets in his skin. To the misfortune of those “reds”, the following day a large group of compañeros again retook the auditorium, so their “failed assault” did not last long, as we say.
In any light, what has happened to Yorch is nothing more than part of a plan to evict a space that in some way is uncomfortable to power, hence the criminalization in the news, as a way to have a minimal justification for students and society “in case of an excessive use of force.” But this is not a separate issue, as it is indisputably linked to all of the monitoring, the visits by the federal ministerial police at compañeros’ homes, the harassment, the sending of messages, making clear what they are preparing. Repression, like any other method, has a before, has its central moment, and has an after. The repressive strike is being prepared, practiced and justified, although all this is done in order to maintain a façade, as the State does not need to justify anything, it simply makes use of its authority. But repression is not just the repressive strike itself, nor the arrest of compañeros, nor the kettling of a demonstration. The State practices repression in everyday ways, through the classroom, through the television, through the family; at work, in the jails, in the psychiatrist’s office; the repression the State practices is also in the power relations that prevail in society, therefore, a fight against repression is a fight for the destruction of power. Without abolition and without mediation, a precise attack against the structures, the representatives and the social relations that sustain this domination.
The tiger does not lose sleep over the opinion of sheep; this is how we should move forward, without the opinions of others about us as anarchists impeding our ability to realize our dreams, as we do not seek prestige; this is how we should advance against the wind, without the repression of the State (selective or daily) being able to paralyze our struggle or keep us inactive or in constant weariness; as such, like the tiger who doesn’t lose sleep but stays wide awake, that is how we should advance in the face of all adversities, generating projects of freedom capable of subverting the relations of domination, capable of contributing to the spreading and intensification of the conflict against authority. Determination is what we have, though many become disheartened and everything seems difficult.
There is nothing left but to send a greeting of support to compañero Yorch Punk. All our solidarity to the compañero and to all compañeros facing repression, imprisoned, and those who are on the run, transgressing the laws of power.
Against power and against all authority, social war without agreement or mediation!
Some anarchists from the Mexican region, February 26, 2016
From Unicorn Riot
Four squad cars of local police attacked a fundraiser party outside of Casa Naranja Okupa – a nine-year old squat. People were raising funds to start a bike collective. After the early morning incident on Saturday, December 19th, one person is still hospitalized from police gunfire but expected to recover fully.
From Indybay
This is an escalation from a sentiment of resistance to gentrification to a direct attack against it. We join the vandals of fastagent signs, Google Bus blockades, the Midtown Apartments rent strike, and other clandestine offensives with a window smashing attack on condos in the Mission. as we expected, SF’s election season was a charade of democracy. It only showed that while the developer/colonizers feast on our City, not even the crumbs could be saved through legal means. We fight because the issue of our homes and survival is not up to a vote by anyone. survival and resistance are only there for the taking. All that is necessary is the will and the act.
Introduction
For the past several years, we’ve been talking quite a lot about gentrification here in Hamilton. In the current moment, as the vanguard of art galleries decisively give way to boutique shops and condos, as sections of town are repurposed into bedroom communities for people who work in Toronto but can’t afford to live there, what do we mean when we talk about gentrification? Two years ago, even the arts industry fucks could claim, without feeling too dishonest, that they were creating something local and durable. Now we watch their flagship galleries and favourite restaurants close while a Starbucks and McMaster satellite campus open in Jackson Square, with condos going up on all sides. You were the footsoldiers of gentrification – don’t say we didn’t warn you.
On May 29th, 2015, an eviction order was served to La Idea, a squatted social center near the Dimond District of Oakland. In two weeks, the Alameda County Sheriff will put the house on its list of upcoming evictions and will dispatch an armored personnel carrier and several armed men to the house to clear everyone out at gunpoint. In this regard, La Idea is not exceptional and thousands of people have been evicted in the same manner all over Oakland. It is simply the normal functioning of capitalism.
People that had squatted a house that was allegedly worth $2,610,000 were evicted on September 27th. The house was located near the corner of Fulton St and Masonic Ave, close to Golden Gate Park. Here is a report from the mainstream media:
A group that has named themselves RÄPUBLIK has squatted a Thyssen Krupp building in Essen, Germany. There will be a press conference held by the occupiers at 18:00 (6:00pm).
More info on the occupation here, in German.
Squatted social center known as the RCA, part of the RCA/Hot Mess compound, caught fire early Wednesday morning in Oakland, California. It appears that no one was inside at the time, as Sheriffs were scheduled to evict the property the day earlier, although it is unknown if they did. In lieu of a communique from the squatters, the following is from mainstream media outlet CBS San Francisco:
