In the morning hours of Tuesday September 1st, Seattle Parks Department and Seattle Police initiated a sweep of unhoused people staying at Cal Anderson Park and the soup kitchen and community center set up in and around the previously abandoned (and now repurposed) shelter-house at the center of the park. Police pushed people out of the area surrounding the shelter house, making several arrests and claiming the park was closed while people could be seen working out and walking their dogs on the other side of the field. Seattle Police also confiscated a cache of shields, as well as spike strips. Seattle Parks employees confiscated tents, clothes and camping gear, only to throw them in a garbage truck, while snacking on food donated for the Shelter House and unhoused people with Seattle Police. Several arrests were made.
Leipzig: Luwi71 evicted
You can take the Luwi from us, but not our dreams
Yesterday on september 2nd the Luwi71 was evicted. At about six o’clock in the morning, cops started trying to enter the house. Thanks to strong barricades, this was not possible with the battering ram. Only chainsaws gave the state authorities access. After about three hours the police announced the end of the operation on Twitter. So the Luwi was empty again and dreams of non-commercial open spaces and cheap housing lay in ruins like the entrance door.
Thanks to the solidarity and vigilance of local residents and a dedicated surveillance system monitoring the movement of the cops in the neighbourhood, the people in the house were all able to flee from the police in time. Nevertheless, four people were picked up near the house and their identities were established. Three people were then temporarily taken to the Dimitroff guard. Two people on suspicion of trespassing. They are therefore accused of having been squatters. The third person because of an open arrest warrant, which is due to an unpaid fine for incorrectly affixing a dog tax stamp. After the money was paid, the third person could leave.
The other two were also able to leave the station around half past ten, but not before DNA was taken from them and their ears measured.
It has been shown that profits and capital are more important than the needs of city dwellers. Private property as the highest value of this system has won once again. Once again the state is unable to provide housing for all people. The needs of the people are secondary in this system. [Read More]
Madrid: Imminent threat of eviction of the Ateneo Libertario de Vallekas
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]
Berlin: Liebig34, another trial against our house!
On August 26, the default decree of June 3 was again confirmed in the Berlin Regional Court against the association Raduga e.V., which has left the house beginning of this year. The new verdict does not come as a surprise; here, once again, the court is acting in the interests of the owner and his capital interests, negotiating a living space as an object of speculation. In Padovicz’s sense, the Liebig is to be evicted as soon as possible. In addition, the property shark is to get 20,000 euros stuck in his throat. It took only half an hour for the Berlin judiciary to once again judge the fate of the people in the Liebig. Half an hour to decide whether people should be put on the street or not.
The association will appeal and bring the case to the court of appeal. We can still be evicted at any time, but Padovicz would have to raise a substantial „security deposit“ of 60,000 €. Not unlikely given his assets. [Read More]
Thessaloniki: Libertatia squat raided
On Sunday 23 august at 10:30 in the morning, several squads of cops raided the Libertatia squat in Thessaloniki. More precisely, during the reparation of the building’s roof that had been burned down by fascists, the cops broke the door’s padlock and raided the squat where they arrested 12 people that were inside. After that, for one more time, they stole several building tools and other necessary material for the reconstruction of the roof, as they had done one month before, when they raided the squat together with Ephorate of Modern Monuments-assistants and had taken a part of the squat’s equipment for the rebuild project. Right after the raid, comrades that were rallying outside the building, came in and re-occupied it. Other than the 12 arrested people, the cops held two more comrades that were standing outside the building and released them a couple of hours later. The arrested comrades spent the whole day both in Toumba’s Police Department and the General P.D. Of Thessaloniki where they have been released late at night, The accusations that have been charged to the comrades are : illegal working, damaging a monument of cultural significance and disobedience. It is also worth mentioning the disgusting tentative of the police and some media to connect the accidental arrest of a woman for drugs possession with the 12 arrested comrades. [Read More]
Athens: 10, 100, thousands of squats. One year of resistance against state terrorism
Today marks one year since the armed hooded men of Chrysochoidis invaded the refugee squat of Spirou Trikoupi 17 and the neighboring Transito squat. It was early in the morning when they forcibly pulled out families with young children from their beds–people who after much hardship and suffering had found a place to grow roots again in these buildings. They took them from their home and distributed them in miserable camps to live in the dirt and with indifference in canvas tents. Since then, a barrage of state terrorist attacks on refugee and political squats has led to evictions, snatching of people, beatings, and arrests. The refugee squats have functioned for many years as unprecedented experiments of practical anti-racism and anti-fascism, self-organization, and solidarity. These spaces have given thousands of people the opportunity to regain their stolen autonomy and the right to define their own lives away from human guards and charity contractors. And almost all of them were evicted. Families with babies, single women, LGBTQI+ people, the sick and disabled, survivors of torture were all brutally detached from their daily lives and relationships and were trapped in nothing but state mercilessness. Political squats that formed cells of social action in neighborhoods, challenging the prevailing ideas of tourism, private property, and commercialization, which turned cities into concrete class pyramids of solitary depravity and social rivalry, were also evicted. [Read More]
Paris: rue du Croissant, re-housing of all occupants within one year
The eviction will not take place! Residents will leave the building on Thursday, August 27 from 8:30 am: They will be re-housed in HLM by the City and the Prefecture and accommodated until then.
The 31 homeless households/families who have been occupying 18 rue du Croissant Paris 2e since January 1st 2020, have won their case: a commitment to rehouse all the occupants within a year by the Prefecture and the City of Paris was agreed at the beginning of the week, with DAL and the occupants.
A particularly severe judgment, handed down on July 2nd, ordering the immediate eviction of the occupants, as well as the involvement of the Prefecture of Police in the procedure (it was the former police station of the 2nd arrondissement) raised the imminent risk of eviction.
This is why the occupants and DAL had proposed as early as July 10 to leave the building as soon as possible on the condition that they would be housed until they were re-housed, organized anti-eviction pickets every morning to give the alarm in case, and throughout the summer, called the new government and the regional prefecture. The city of Paris had agreed to house some of the occupants. [Read More]
Second edition of Venice Climate Camp to be held at CS Rivolta
We have decided, as Centro Sociale Rivolta, to host the second edition of the Venice Climate Camp. There will be four days of debates, assemblies and discussions on the ecological and climate crisis. A moment of confrontation and organization for local and global struggles for climate and social justice. We have chosen, for this year, to move this edition to Rivolta to guarantee maximum possible safety and tranquility for the participants. We will take all the necessary precautionary measures by implementing a specific protocol that has at its core the concept of care and responsibility for one’s community.
More info (Italian)
Leipzig: Luwi71, the negotiations have broken down.
Today the squatters have spoken with the Office for Housing and Urban Renewal. The boss, Mr. Dr.-Ing. Frank Amey, has direct contact to the owner and announced that the owner has cancelled the scheduled negotiations. Speculations of the office suggest that the owner wanted to demolish the house and build a new one. This is not possible because of the law for the protection of the existing building. Now the capital interests of the owner are shifting towards buying or renting by the occupying persons. Kaya, spoke person from Leipzig Besetzen, explained: “We are angry that no talks at eye level are possible. It is therefore difficult for us to take the existing offer of talks with the owner about the office seriously.
Sasha adds: “Should the owner decide to come to Leipzig, he/she knows where we are and where we will stay. During the conversation it emerged that the law enforcement authorities could construct a threat situation. This would result from possibly defective building fabric and the resulting damage to health. [Read More]
Leipzig: Ludwigstraße 71 squatted
Press release – occupation Ludwigstraße 71, August 22nd 2020
The occupation of Ludwigstraße 71 has survived the first night. Activists are still staying in the apartment building. According to the LVZ the owner should come to Leipzig on Wednesday and be ready to talk to the activists. Until then the house is under police observation.
“We would be pleased if the owner would also contact us directly”, says Kaya from Leipzig Besetzen. Since the beginning of the occupation, the group emphasized its willingness to conduct negotiations on an equal basis and presented a utilization concept.
“We expect restraint from the police,” agrees Sasha, also from Leipzig Besetzen. The day before, there had been an increased police presence in the neighboring streets. In the meantime, police officers tried to gain access to the building from Mariannenstraße. To do this, the police blocked the front doors of adjacent residential buildings when residents left them. Additionally there were harassment of passers-by by police officers. [Read More]
Thessaloniki: Political statement of the squat Terra Incognita. International call for solidarity
In the morning of 17th of August Terra Incognita gets TEMPORARILY evicted by the repressive forces of neoliberalism. Police forces intrude in the building and conduct researches for hours and confiscations. Days after the eviction the squat still remains open with cops celebrating TEMPORARILY their capability of violating every corner of our liberalized grounds.
For over 16 years Terra Incognita consituted a meeting place for hundrends of people of the struggling social basis. With constant events, direct acts, demonstrations and conflicts Terra Incognita was present in moments of the violent struggle against the violence of the state, the benefits of capitalistic monopolies, against the violating authority of fascism and patriarchy, against any type of discrimination and speciesism. In the grounds of the self-organised structures of self-education, solidarity and mutual aid of the squat all the “known-unknown” strugglers of freedom met and will continue to meet. Liberating and equallity-based relationships were constructed, subversive plans and operations, dreams that day by day found and still find a space of moral and physical substance. For 16 years the squat proves itself to be the flesh of the flesh of the multiform struggle against any type of authority and opression, without prioritizing or distinguishing the means that contribute to the spreading of libertarian ideas and the organization of social and class-conscious counter attack. Because for us this is liberation. [Read More]
Gap: Cesaï violently and illegally evicted
On Wednesday 19 August, at six o’clock, police officers broke down the doors of the rooms of the inhabitants of Césaï, the Gap autonomous social centre, with a battering ram. They gather everyone in a courtyard and check their identities. This is the beginning of the eviction from Cesaï.
Results: 43 people outside, 20 staying in campsites, 2 boarded at the station. 43 exiled and homeless people who barely had time to take their belongings and collect food before Cesaï was walled up. 43 people on the Place Saint Arnoux, in front of the Prefecture, soon joined by militants.
A camp is being organized while waiting for a solution that will not come from the Prefecture, which is increasingly afraid of the famous “vacuum effect”. While waiting for a place to sleep and to put down their bags, families, young migrants, Dublin cases and homeless young people are all astonished to find themselves homeless in a few hours. [Read More]
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