A fire started at [the formerly squatted and since legalized] anarchist and antiauthoritarian social center Makamik around two o’clock Saturday night (February 25th, 2023) due to reasons so far unconfirmed to us. The house suffered widespread damage. We received news on location that the fire department suspects arson. Last year fascists performed several attacks on Makamik, including the burning of a shed last midsummer. On friday, the day before the fire, the group Antifasistinen Helsinki released information about a nazi named Olli Vickström, which raises questions.
[Read More]
Helsinki (Finland): Fire at Makamik
Atlanta (USA): In solidarity with the movement to Stop Cop City and Defend Weelaunee Forest
We call on all people of good conscience to stand in solidarity with the movement to stop Cop City and defend the Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta.
On January 18, in the course of their latest militarized raid on the forest, police in Atlanta shot and killed a person. This is only the most recent of a series of violent police retaliations against the movement. The official narrative is that Cop City is necessary to make Atlanta “safe,” but this brutal killing reveals what they mean when they use that word.
Forests are the lungs of planet Earth. The destruction of forests affects all of us. So do the gentrification and police violence that the bulldozing of Weelaunee Forest would facilitate. What is happening in Atlanta is not a local issue.
Athens (Greece): International day of action in defence of Exarchia neighborhood, 25 June 2022
25 June / Demonstration in Exarchia Square
The construction of the metro station on Exarchia square and the redevelopment of Strefi Hill are expected to start during the summer months, according to reports in the mainstream media, but also according to notifications by the Municipality of Athens to shops located in the square.
The government’s ultimatum is the final blow to the character of the historic neighborhood of Exarchia. The construction of a Metro stop on the square, the conversion of the Polytechnic school into a museum, the attempted eradication of the monument of Alexandros Grigoropoulos through the construction of luxury apartment buildings on Mesologgiou Street, the surrender of Strefi Hill to private interests (which includes the cementing of the park’s paths, cutting down trees, placing cameras, gates and security posts to control the entrance) are part of the overall designs for the gentrification of the area, the transformation of the neighborhood into a tourist destination, the development of control and repression. [Read More]
Hambach Forest (Germany): Summer Event, 21-24 July 2022
FOREST ANTI-SPE DAYS #3
CHAOS AND RAGE, SMASH EVERY CAGE
BORDERLESS CALL: JOIN US IN THE HAMBACHER FOREST FOR A GATHERING FOR ANIMAL LIBERATION!
In the factory farms and vivisection labs, our nonhuman comrades are already fighting back. The time is ripe – let’s share skills and perspectives on how to support their resistance! By “anti-speciesism” we don’t mean online activism, vegan capitalism or cop-hugging pacifism – we’re opening a space to plot against human supremacism, and we’ve no need for bureaucratic organizations of any kind.
Many animal rights groups have become a hotbed for fascist/homophobic/cissexist/macho/white supremacist/colonialist views and behaviour. Others promote liberalism, the state or single out human activists as animal “saviours”. We want to build on two years of anti-spe days explicitly pushing against these tendencies, uncompromising in our rejection of all forms of oppression and domestication. Let’s meet each other and make some trouble! [Read More]
Thessaloniki (Greece): Eviction of Biologica squat & Call for solidarity week, 10-17 January 2022
The state, cops and university lackies decided on 31 December 2021 to realize an eviction that has already been announced the previous months. After unofficial threats for an upcoming eviction of the Biologica squat during the previous years, in September a project agreement was signed and assigned to a contractor, with the aim of “remodeling” and “utilizing” the spaces on the ground floor of the Biology building where the squat used to be. In the plans, of course, they included the squatted area with the intention of demolishing the surrounding walls and turning it into a secretariat room and a waiting room. In New Year’s Eve as in the long gone 1992 – at that time they built the door of the squat – the university campus is surrounded by police forces while underground cops are moving towards the area of the squat. They invaded our liberated ground and after conducting a thorough search, while destroying anything that was in the squat, they took pictures of their “grand” findings and they gave the space to the workers to finish off the first stage of their plan, the demolition of the walls. [Read More]
London: Autonomous Winter Shelter opened in former St. Mungo’s hostel
Freedom has received the following communique:
There were over 2688 people recorded to be sleeping rough in London on any one night in 2020.
The temperature at night will be cold enough to cause hypothermia for 23 days this month. That’s 23 days where there’s a real possibility that someone sleeping on the street may not wake up.
It doesn’t have to be like this. [Read More]
Rubí (Spain): Eviction of the Mirlo squatted orchard and retaliation
On Thursday, October 14th, the community orchard el Miro, a squatted plot of land in Rubí city centre [20km away from Barcelona], was evicted. It was the second attempt, after the cops desisted to evict it in july, when some 60 people stood up to defend the place. It had been squatted for five years; the land was farmed, concerts, talks & other events were often held there. The owners, DomoMarina SL -a company owned by Elena Massot- wants to build luxury flats on the former orchard, with the Ana María Martínez’s complicity. Martínez is Rubí’s mayor, of the PSC (catalan socialist party). [Read More]
Notre-Dame-des-Landes (France): The Mohawked Salamanders Burn Down the Salamander’s School – Why We Attacked the Zad
“I simply didn’t see where the inevitable reformism was coming from this time, discreetly but surely, from those who speak of insurrection and autonomy by the thousands of copies.”
Quote from “The movement is dead… Long live reform”, November 2017.
The Zad was our pirate ship, the mother of all Zads. It emerged in a time with no way out and it was as if the world became a little more bearable. Like a brief glimmer of light, a possibility breaking through the thick, sticky fog of our future. For those of us who lead full and busy lives, off the beaten track, it was the knowledge that there would always be a place to welcome us if we were on the run. A place where the state would never come for us. A place where we would always find allies to feed us, to clothe us, to hide us in the folds of its hedges.
And this very state, which crushes us, kills us, hunts us, was given the Zad three years ago by a handful of opportunists. Those who, only yesterday, claimed this territory as being in “secession”.
This despicable betrayal, which took place behind the backs of those who confronted the police on the barricades, cannot be forgotten. Even less so when the local Comintern has come up with a project for an École des tritons [salamanders'(1) school], to celebrate the three year anniversary of what they call victory.
Rebuilding on the Planchettes(2) then? How can we not exult in rage at this umpteenth provocation? How can we not cry vengeance for the devastated East? [Read More]
London: Squatters take Camberwell Cop Shop (2.0)
The Serious Annoyance has returned to occupy the empty Camberwell Police Station, Camberwell Church St SE5, as we continue in our fight to #killthebill and highlight the destructive role of the police.
This week, the draconian PCSC Bill passed its third reading in the commons as the state continues to enforce the expansion of police powers that do nothing but increase the ruling class’s ability to repress us. We know the cops don’t protect us – their resources aren’t focused on catching so-called “criminals”, but on protecting the wealth and power of the capitalist class. We also know that no demand to defund the police is enough – the bastard Tories have already been defunding the police for years! As all these empty cop shops prove… Instead we must build a world which abolishes the police by organsing our own communities and making the cops completely unnecessary.We do not and we will not accept increased police powers which effectively ban protest and criminalise trespass, something which amounts to the ethnic cleansing of the GRT community in the UK by making a travelling life impossible. [Read More]
Philadelphia (USA): Squatting, Rebellion, Movement… An Interview with Philadelphia Housing Action
Podcast to download here (mp3).
On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we speak with two members of Philadelphia Housing Action, about the ups and downs of 2020 that has been outlined in the recent piece, Occupy, Takeover: How Philadelphia Housing Action Turned Vacant Buildings Into Homes. It details how throughout 2020, members of the group moved unsheltered individuals and families into livable, unused homes owned by the Philadelphia Housing Authority. [Read More]
Canada: Coast-to-coast Call to Action – Compilation of submissions
While North Shore was down in late November and early December, we received three submissions from BC and Quebec about actions taken there in solidarity with the Coast to Coast Call to Action being circulated by Wet’suwet’en land defenders involved with Gidim’ten checkpoint. The three are below, all were received anonymously.
Portland (USA): The Red House and the Future of Eviction Defense
To the Barricades
Portland, Oregon has been in the headlines again over the last few days, and this trend will continue. The reasons for the headlines will vary depending on who you ask. If you ask the far right they will say something about Antifa terrorists having violent confrontations with the police because they hate law and order. The mainstream media’s headlines will also tend to lead with the so-called violent clashes, but then they may inform us that the reasons for the confrontation have to do with folks trying to prevent the eviction of a Black and indigenous family that has lived in the Red House at 4406 North Mississippi for multiple generations. [Read More]