London: Harvil Road Protection Camp eviction alert

Urgent update: Harvil Road Protection Camp, Colne valley, Greater London (StopHS2) being evicted now. [13 Feb 11:00] As the anti-HS2 protestors dig in for a 17th night in tunnels Euston, central London… 25 miles west, Harvil Road protection camp in the Colne valley, Greater London is under siege. Harvil road where the on ground opposition to HS2 all began 3.5 years ago, for long the only outpost of resistance to HS2, might breath its last breath tonight.
The National Eviction Team arrived en masse at midnight threatening arrests if protestors high up in the trees in hammocks did not immediately get down. Protestors at the protection camp have said the NET’s forceful and aggressive arrival in the dead of night has put the physical safety of the protestors in jeapordy. Some have been forcefully removed and thrown into the freezing subzero night, others have had police chase them through fields for over a mile.
The camp, once situated in a green and verdant landscape is now surrounded by mile after mile of building site and endless floodlights at night. Protestors currently on the ground at the camp are expecting much more to come especially in the early hours of the morning and have put a call out for support.

Brussels: Update from the Solidarity Requisition Campaign

On December 18, 2020, L’Hospitalière was open! Since then, the Solidarity Requisition Campaign continues! Here the news from the different buildings.

L’Hospitalière:
A precarious occupancy agreement has been signed: 80 places of decent housing have been opened, in a building that was otherwise doomed to remain unoccupied. This occupation will also allow the collectives to organize their struggles for the regularization of undocumented migrants and for dignity!

Citydev building:
Negotiations are underway, we hope to be able to conclude a one-year agreement (at least until the end of March 2022). About 30 people are already living in the building. We are waiting for the heating to be turned on again and for the fire department to visit us so that we can complete the move of the Jette occupancy. In all, 200 people will be able to live there. [Read More]

Toulouse: call-out for solidarity with the squat on Fronton Avenue

In September, an unoccupied house in Toulouse‘s Minimes district is squatted and, following legal proceedings, the occupants benefit from the winter truce (recently extended from March 31 to June 1 as part of the health crisis). These two months of extension alone trigger an update of the anti-squat media and political wave of recent months.

On February 7, the newspaper La Dépêche, published a miserable article on the “so-called” situation of Roland, a former employee of the same newspaper… The affair invaded social networks and media in the days that followed, leading to the massive presence of journalists, always there to defend the owners, possessors and other dominants.

Each time, it’s the same rhetoric, the same bogus story: old people who would be put out on the street by squatters. For them, the fable is attractive: it is the landlords who would be in misery and it is the squatters who would be at the origin of the evils of old age. Behind this fable, which plays on pathos, are clear objectives: to support the intensification of repression against squats by promoting new laws reinforcing the rights of landlords (ASAP law and other proposals to parliament). But no one is fooled: if some elderly people cannot afford the EPHAD (housing establishments for dependent elderly people) and others occupy empty houses, it is because the states and capitalism organize and maintain the misery of billions of people, elderly or not. [Read More]

Rotterdam: building squatted in Delfshaven

A number of Rotterdammers have squatted a building in Delfshaven. They want to make a statement to the city council. Rotterdam has been pushing people on the minimum wage out of the city for years. The activists are now drawing a line and want a higher minimum wage and affordable housing.
Inequality in Rotterdam is becoming more and more visible. Everywhere in the city, social housing is poorly maintained and demolished to make way for expensive housing. Rents continue to rise in our city and the income of Rotterdammers with a minimum wage or a benefit is lagging behind. There is also less and less room for their social activities and initiatives. They are being pushed out of our city. There seems to be no place for them anymore.
We do not accept this. That is why we support the Rotterdammers who have moved into the building at Havenstraat 231. They are claiming back a piece of Rotterdam to draw attention to the struggle of many Rotterdammers. Together with them we want the wealth and space in our city to be distributed more fairly. Only then can every Rotterdammer participate and have a place. This can be done by raising the minimum wage to 14 euros per hour in 2022 and by properly maintaining and renovating social housing.
Our city council did not want to listen before. Once again we call on them to ensure that every Rotterdammer can live affordably and have a decent income. We call on the City of Rotterdam to choose for us.
We want a thriving, colorful city in which everyone can live and thrive instead of survive. [Read More]

Angers: eviction of the Grande Ourse and nazi attack, the city where it is good to live

On Thursday, January 21, 2021, in the middle of winter, the forces of law and order and the prefecture proceeded to evict the Grande Ourse squat, a place of militancy and solidarity. It housed many homeless people, students, the working poor … The issues of poverty, equality, solidarity, were at the center of the actions carried out by its activists, they regularly organized rounds to distribute food to people on the streets. People from outside the city could also get together, there were regular cultural events, film screenings, debates… But what is the problem, at a time when students in Angers are facing a housing shortage, at a time when the covid-19 crisis is plunging an increasingly large proportion of young workers into poverty? The problem is that these activists are holding a political discourse, that by occupying an unused building the holiness of private property has been called into question. That’s unacceptable, we don’t question that, especially when that questioning benefits people who don’t intend to use it for capitalist ends, especially when it benefits people who advocate values other than competition and individual financial enrichment. So here we are, the prefecture will return the furniture store to its legitimate owner. He will be able to put back beds where no one will ever sleep or make other projects allowing him to increase his capital a little more. [Read More]

Wuppertal (Germany): A statement by the Osterholz Forest Occupation

Wuppertal. Germany. A statement by the Osterholz Forest Occupation, a forest that is occupied since August 2019. The Oetelshofen company wants to clear a part of the Osterholz forest to store the waste of their lime pit. In the past weeks cop activity has increased in the forest and it all smells like the state is preparing an eviction of the forest occupation. The Osterholz Occupation is now asking people to come to the forest.

The forest has called us and we have heard its call. We were absent for a long time, but we are back on the island of freedom. The oasis has grown, a lot has changed. Old platforms have disappeared and new ones have been built. It is beautiful here. We thank the people who have stayed here for so long without us.
[Read More]

Arlon: Call to resist. Eviction threat at the Zablière on January 26

For more than a year, a piece of land has been torn from the concrete. The former Schoppach sandpit, where wild animals and plants used to coexist with Sunday walks, is threatened by a zoning project for businesses including offices and parking lots, and this since it was bought from the municipality by Idelux-Aive.

Some people decided to occupy this forest in order to defend it against this threat, responding to a call from local residents desperate for attention to their voice. This year was an opportunity to bring about another turning point in the struggle “for the climate” by making it take a real ecological and social turn; from the occupation of roundabouts by yellow vests to a forest occupation by Zadists. In this way, the tree houses made it possible to hear the cries of the birds.

For a year, the winter, police and mafia threats did not succeed in lowering the mood of the Zablière’s occupants, not even a few slanderous opponents. From this impulse of resistance were born direct actions, a book of photos and poetry, a film, a free university, friendships and a lot of other things impossible to describe without being there. [Read More]

Ljubljana: Everyone on the streets. Against the social destruction of the city!

Dear residents of Ljubljana, the whole municipality and all that come here to work, study or because of other obligationas and free-time activities! All are witnesses to the violent intervention of Municipality of Ljubljana (MOL) in the space of Autonomous Factory Rog (AT Rog).

Protest, Friday 22.1.2021 at 18h at Prešernov trg

What happened to the community of AT Rog can happen to many of us. Especially if they do not belong to the rich and property-owning well-off part of society. What happened in Ljubljana can happen in any other town. Violent expulsion of less well-off individuals, families and other communities is written in the fabric of capitalist system of extraction. The so called legal order and the so called rule of law have been exposed many times as instruments that were established mainly in the interest of financial and political elites. Moreover, the state and municipal authorities chose to exploit exactly the moment, when many hardly manage to make ends meet due to changed living conditions as we deal with the issue of basic mental, physical and economic survival. They base themselves in repressive measures, financial punishments and the police apparatus. Any and all political activity outside the parliamentarian arena is forbidden. Schools are closed, rent and other living costs are rising constantly, the workers’ rights are being taken away. They declared war on the people and it is important to understand this. [Read More]

Ljubljana: Stop demolishing autonomous spaces, everyone come to ROG

Call for solidarity

Comrades! Many of you have stayed, fought and loved one of the two squats in Ljubljana. For 15 years Rog was a centre of political activity in the city and in the international movements. Today 19 January 2021, Rog factory was brutally evicted. Many of our comrades were violently beaten and arrested. We are calling for solidarity all around the world. Let’s show the oppressors of all kinds they are messing with the wrong movement!

Statement of Rog factory about eviction

Today, at 7 in the morning, employees of the security company Valina have forcefully entered the spaces of Autonomous factory Rog. Violently, using physical force, they injured some of its users and evicted everybody. Our personal belongings, pets and valuable equipment were left inside, together with 15 years of our dreams, activities, projects, adventures and common experiences. Police has erected fences around Rog and started to beat supporters gathering in support in front of the factory’s gate. In the inside of the complex workers have demolished majority of side structures and smashed windows on the main building that is protected as heritage. At the same time they are taking away, on the unknown location, all the equipment from Rog. More then 10 persons were held in custody, among them some of the injured that need medical help. We do not have access to them and we don’t have information on where all of them were taken. [Read More]

Ljubljana: Autonomous factory Rog evicted

Ljubljana. Slovenia. January 19. 2021. In the early morning hours riot cops showed up at the autonomous factory Rog. They started to evict the squatted facilities without an announcement and without a legal basis.

In 2002 the Municipality of Ljubljana bought the 7,000 square-metres complex with several buildings in “downtown” Ljubljana but never used it. The former bicyle factory was occupied in 2006 and since then it was used as an autonomous social center.

This morning Valina secutity arrived at 07:00am and started to evict the Rog and injured several people during the eviction. The cops started to install fences around the Rog and started to beat people in front of the premises. At least nine people were arrested. Three injured people had to be treated in a hospital.
[Read More]

Brussels: new occupation of empty building

As of Friday, January 15, 6,936 square meters formerly used by Opel – located at 552 chaussée de Gand in Molenbeek – are occupied to rehouse some of the 200 people about to be evicted from their homes in Jette. The opening of this new squat in Molenbeek follows the opening of the Hospitalière, a former clinic in Saint-Gilles that has become home to 80 people since December 18. This action announces the launch of a campaign of “solidarity occupations”.

As collectives and associations of people with and without papers, actors of the right to housing, inhabitants of Brussels, we are organizing ourselves once again with our means to enforce the right to housing and to demand the regularization of undocumented migrants.

We will continue to open and occupy empty buildings as long as the public authorities do not provide sufficient structural responses to the social and health crisis. By launching this campaign, we affirm that we are determined to organize ourselves in the face of the absurdity of thousands of empty buildings while hundreds of people sleep outside in our city. The opening of about ten squats has made it possible to house several hundred people during the spring 2020 confinement. Today, we want to make this solidarity and self-organized response visible, while refuting the idea that this is a structural and sufficient solution. It is up to the public authorities to make it a priority. [Read More]

Slovenia: statement by the Ljubljana Anarchist Initiative in support of autonomous spaces and Radio Študent

Three pillars of autonomous, alternative culture and politics in Ljubljana.

The anarchist movement in Ljubljana has been actively involved in the co-creation of the alternative scene for more than ten years. This includes the Autonomous Cultural Centre Metelkova, the Rog Autonomous Factory and Radio Študent. In a time of neoliberal devastation of the communal, the public and the non-commercial, these spaces represent the rare bright spots that make life in an otherwise increasingly gentrified Ljubljana more bearable, which is why many people have not yet moved out. [Read More]