Berlin: Syndikat call out. Get off the defensive!

By: fawda - July 29th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Demo August 1st – 20 o’clock – Herrfurthplatz, Berlin-Neukölln

Times have been rough not only since the coronavirus. The fascisation of society is progressing. The danger of socialism and the hatred of everything left is evoked like a prayer wheel. The horseshoe theory enjoys great popularity. Under the cloak of totalitarian theories and far from any facts, a constant equation of two supposedly equal extremes against a hallucinated bourgeois “middle” is pursued. This liberal-bourgeois equation of socialism and fascism has a certain tradition in Germany, as does the collaboration of this bourgeois “middle” with fascism in order to take action against socialism, or against everything they perceive as a socialist danger. This is also the case with their anti-feminism, another interface between the “bourgeois-conservative middle” and fascists, which aims to maintain the conservative ideas of their system of rule by maintaining the binary gender order and, to this end, tries to turn back the achievements of feminist movements.

Fascist terror attacks in Hanau and Halle, right-wing networks that organize & arm themselves, armed fascists in the state apparatus that prepare for a civil war, secret service and state involvement in the NSU that are kept under lock and key. This list could easily be extended. The fascist danger is real. [Read More]

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Berlin: Call for the demonstration on the 1st of August in Neukölln

By: fawda - July 28th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

The new phase of evictions has started. Not, as expected, with the announced eviction of the Kiezkneipe (neighbourhood bar) Syndikat, but with an attack from the cops.
An attack that was masked as a raid, with the plan for it to turn into an eviction of parts of our house. It was coordinated with some disgusting figures representing the so-called owner, in order to gain control of a space that is a thorn in the eye of a pacified european metropolis. On the 9th of July and the days that followed, we defended ourselves and reduced their filthy plans to ashes – taking back the evicted flat, pushing out the cops and bureaucrats and regaining control of our house.

This would not have been possible without the common fight and solidarity that goes far beyond our little rebellious neighborhood. Numerous people participated in the spontaneous gatherings in front of the house and nightly demonstrations in the richer neighborhoods of Berlin. While some people were cooking for everyone, others took part in the 24/7 shifts around the house. Many things destroyed by the cops were reconstructed almost immediately and different groups claimed actions in solidarity with Rigaer94. Showing once again, that solidarity in all its forms is our strongest weapon against the coordinated attacks from the state on the movement and its upcoming attempts to evict our spaces in Berlin. [Read More]

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UK: Stop HS2 Update

By: sisulscz - July 27th, 2020  Filed under: Communique

Despite a media blackout, lots is happening in the world of HS2 resistance. High speed 2 is a corrupt scheme now predicted to cost over £100 billion which will both devastate areas of natural beauty and enrich Tory cronies and construction companies. Whilst the idea to have a superfast railway line connecting the north of England to London has some merit, since the south-east is over-crowded and the UK desperately needs to reduce carbom emissions, the implementation of HS2 is completely stupid. It’s a slow ecological catastrophe. Instead of building better transport links in the north, HS2 construction has started in the south and the midlands. Ancient woodlands are being trashed by contractors who have ignored the nesting season for birds and used hawks illegally to clear zones. Just the other day in Denham, a beautiful alder tree was chopped down and a tree protector was hospitalised.

The HS2 railway project is a bloated white elephant which needs to be stopped. The Woodland Trust estimates more than 100 areas of ancient woodland will be trashed, over 30 sites of special scientific interest lost and more than twenty nature reserves destroyed. The most recent reserve under attack is Calvert Jubilee in Buckinghamshire, which has been compulsory purchased and will be cleared by HS2 beginning Tuesday 28 July. HS2 had previously entered the site in January pretending to be the owner and had chopped down trees. You know that something is going deeply wrong when the Tory leader of Buckinghamshire Council tweets: “Absolutely dreadful. Have visited this beautiful Reserve many times. This is a crime against nature”

So where is the resistance? Currently there are several protest camps dotted along the proposed route. It’s hard to find out exactly what’s going on without using facebook and twitter, so there’s clearly a need for anarchist and alternative media to do more on this important issue.

Onto a list of the camps:
[Read More]

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Berlin: Renewed alarm at Rigaer94

By: fawda - July 13th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Today july 13th, there are strong police forces, construction workers and securities in the area. Alarm, now it’s getting exciting! Mouth-to-mouth info:

It is now being decided whether the police will take responsibility for the Rigaer94 conflict, and carry out the eviction which began Thursday 7 july and will continue today. At 8 o’clock the so-called Lusche, the new dubious alleged property manager, arrived first. He and his lawyer Bernau wanted to gain access to the house by force, which failed because of the human chain in front of it. His physical attack was answered accordingly. Then immediately masses of cops arrived, who had already been in stand by in the neighborhood but avoided the street in front of Rigaer94. There are at least a hundred of them, if not two riot squads again in action. At the same time, construction workers and the security company arrived. The construction workers called on residents “one to one”. It was reported that some of them wear Combat18 tattoos. They and the cops had to register that there was a new, massive entrance door. So for the moment, the intrusion into the house was stopped. According to information obtained, the police command at the highest level, i.e. the police chief, is currently advising. Nothing will happen until they take responsibility. What happens then will bring clarity about the operation since Thursday. Was it a coup attempt by the middle level police or a well planned action by the political leadership in an attempt to make everything look like a coincidence. The lies will stop.

On the other hand, the anger against the attackers on our living together in solidarity is endless!
Prepare yourself for everything, friends, it is serious! [Read More]

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The Hague: Housing Action Days, call for participation!

By: fawda - July 8th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

On Friday and Saturday 31st of July and 1st of August, Housing Action Days will take place in The Hague. The theme for Friday is social housing and precarious modes of housing, and the theme for Saturday is the selling out of the city and gentrification. During these two days we will make a collective fist against precarity and the housing shortage.

In the past couple of years the city has become the stage of a social struggle. Capital is increasingly controlling housing and public spaces. The city is transformed into a revenue model, a new apparatus for a select group to accumulate wealth. This has drastic consequences for many of us. De waiting lists for social housing are ever lengthening, rents are already way too expensive and the political unwillingness to take up these issues is stifling. In the inner city, one loft gets restored after another and only expensive private sector housing is built. Hip coffeehouses and their terraces are spreading like an oil spill. We don’t want a city merely for consumption but a city in which we can live!

Paired with the gentrification, the state’s net to control public spaces tightens. Concurrently to being forced to pay increasingly high rent for increasingly small spaces, we are being dispossessed of the streets: hanging out in the street is perceived as suspicious and will get you castigated for gathering. The only places where you can still gather in public are parks or sports field – but never without the supervision of cameras. Our living spaces are shrinking, we will no longer put up with this shit anymore! [Read More]

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Amsterdam: Always Anti-Anti-kraak

By: fawda - July 6th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Sunday afternoon there was a small action at a former squat in Amsterdam Noord. The squatters are angry, because in the evicted building is now an anti squat workspace. The building, that had been squatted already for 3 times, got evicted last summer. It turns out it got evicted for anti-squat. Below a statement of the squatters:

Today we are here to put the situation surrounding the building in the middle of your neighborhood under attention. The old pizzeria on Statenjachtstraat 598. Probably the recent history of this building is still known to you, but to summarize:
After years of vacancy, last year the building got bought by to rich real estate dealers, Axel Veldboom and Frans Blom. Last summer, the place got resquatted (it was already squatted 2 times before). It was clear for the squatters that there were no short term plans for the building. But the owners did have a plan. A pretty ambitious and unrealistic plan, to build an enormous building in the middle of the neigbourhood.
The state decided to start a procedure to evict the squatters, squatting is forbidden, and the owner claims to have a plan. The squatters decided to fight the state in court, to prevent the eviction. In a court case like this the importance of interests is being weighed against each other by a judge, or at least it should be. On one side the needs of the state for having the place evicted, and on the other side the needs of the squatters, to be able to have a place to live. [Read More]

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Athens: Solidarity action for Dervenion 56. An international call for solidarity

By: fawda - July 4th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

On friday 26 june, in Exarchia, the Greek state evicted and sealed Dervenion 56 and the building at Dervenion 52. An immediate gathering of solidarity was held on Exarcheia square for several hours. In the evening of the same day, a solidarity march was held with the participation of 300 people. The march ended at the Dervenion squat, barricades were set up around the perimeter and then comrades broke the concrete blocks of shame. Police never came and after some hours the protesters left. Riot cops made again an operation the next morning, building again a concrete wall in front of the squat’s door. According to information, in the following days, various solidarity actions followed, a demonstration took place on the main shopping street of Athens, Ermou, where slogans were shouted, and apparently some people attacked multinational clothing companies in Ermou in the occupied -by the police-, center of Athens. Even the rich yuppie nephew of the Prime Minister, the mayor of Athens, Costas Bakogiannis, could not escape the anger caused by the evictions. The pioneer of violent gentrification and his bodyguards were attacked with coffees and other items by dozens of people at a local religious festival. In the following days a march was held again at Exarcheia where comrades demolished the walls of the sealed migrants’ squats at Themistokleous 58 and Spirou Trikoupi 15. All these days, texts of solidarity were written and banners were put in various locations in Greece. [Read More]

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Berlin: 30 years Liebig 34 – We never stop!

By: fawda - July 4th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

The Liebig 34 will celebrate its 30th birthday at the beginning of July. Eviction titles, media hype and annoying cops don’t spoil these days. Viva la Liebig!
Thirty years ago, after the fall of the Wall, people from a wide variety of backgrounds flocked to East Berlin to take advantage of the chance offered by the unresolved chains of command and the unspeakable vacancy. Entire streets and blocks of houses were occupied, redesigned and filled with ideas and creativity. The streets of Friedrichshain were full of life and very practical solidarity. At one corner there was a discussion meeting, in the next open-air cinema and there food was cooked for the whole street.
In these hours also lies the origin of our collective, which entered the rooms of Liebigstraße 34 in July 1990 and thus made the beginning of this project. In the following years a lot changed: the squat became a feminist house project without cis men. Through hard work and years of struggle it was tried to create a shelter and to offer an alternative to the cis-sexist everyday life.
Now, 30 years later, is the project to end? [Read More]

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Wassenaar: Ivicke’s Zoning Plan, a Monumental Fuck Up

By: fawda - July 1st, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Enforcement of a zoning plan would suggest there is a plan. There isn’t.

The municipality of Wassenaar has decided to pursue our eviction from Huize Ivicke on the basis of the building’s zoning plan which designates its function as an office, not a residence.

Their reasoning for the decision appears to be that ‘Kantoor Ivicke’ must become ‘uninhabited’ once again in order to be ‘presentable.’ Strange, since we all seem to recall that Ivicke being uninhabited is what led to it becoming unpresentable in the first place.

The fact that it is a house, that it has largely been used as a house, that anti-squat guardians lived at Ivicke for several years under the current owner’s watch, and that many thousands of people are living “illegally” in non-residential (and often state-owned) buildings as anti-squat guardians across the country is apparently irrelevant.

The normalization of actual offices and other business premises as anti-squat housing – operating in a ‘legal grey zone’ – demonstrates that Ivicke’s designation as an office is incidental; a handy bureaucratic tool the municipality can choose to use or disregard, depending on their interests at any given time. [Read More]

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Caen: eviction of the squat of the former Guy Liar College in Mondeville

By: fawda - June 24th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

On Wednesday 24th June, from 6am, the Calvados prefecture evicted a squat in Mondeville, the former Guy Liard college on rue Albert Bayet at the request of the owner, the departmental council and with the agreement of the town hall of Mondeville. Four families were housed in four former staff housing units, two other families and single people had been living in a former administrative building since January 4th. A total of about 40 people, including about 15 children, were evicted this morning. The Prefecture communicated as early as 6.15 am on social networks, proposing a solution of one week’s re-housing in a hotel after studying the individual situations, and it “will invite foreign nationals in an irregular situation to leave the national territory”! This means that families will either be placed under house arrest at the hotel (daily judicial control at the police station, obligation to be present at the hotel from 6pm to 9pm…), or deported to the CRA (Administrative Detention Centre) in Oissel near Rouen (the one in Rennes is closed and will reopen on 30 June) awaiting a hypothetical deportation.

As part of the state of health emergency, the winter truce has been extended until July 10th. This measure applies to all the squats under the jurisdiction of the Tribunal d’Instance (ten out of twelve squats currently). This squat was evictable since February 21st by decision of the Administrative Court, therefore it could not benefit from the winter truce from a legal point of view. Nevertheless, given the current circumstances, it is perfectly scandalous to throw dozens of people out on the street after a week of rehousing in a hotel or to consider their eviction in some cases. [Read More]

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Zürich: Juch resists! New occupations

By: fawda - June 20th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

This evening June 20th, Grimselstrasse 18 and 20, Saumackerstrasse 67 and 69 have been squatted. The squatters* took these spaces in response to the Juch eviction on 23rd May.

If you evict one space, we* will open a new one!

Exactly one month ago today, the Social Department of the City of Zurich filed a criminal complaint and subsequently had the Juch area evicted by a large contingent of the Zurich City Police. This is only because the neighboring stadium construction site of HRS Real Estate seems to need more space to turn its trucks around and thus expand its empire as quickly and profitably as possible on behalf of the city. Marco Cortesi (spokesperson for the Zurich city police) also stressed in an interview in front of the freshly evicted area that the main thing now was to immediately make the area uninhabitable and then guard it with private security forces. Even the left-wing parties of the city of Zurich complain that it is extremely questionable and inappropriate to destroy residential and cultural spaces for a building site installation, and wrote in a jointly published media release: “For us it is clear: the demolition of buildings for the use of an area as parking space is unacceptable. Although no meaningful use was promised and a shady deal between the city of Zurich and HRS was settled without any transparency, the squatters* had to leave the Juch area. It cannot be said often enough: This is outrageous from the city of Zurich! We are furious! [Read More]

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Dijon: Land occupation on Avenue de Langres

By: fawda - June 17th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Statement from the June 17 Collective – Land occupation in Dijon as part of the June 17 appeal against the repeated intoxication of the world!

Today wednesday June 17th 2020, despite the rain, we were nearly four hundred people to demonstrate from the Place de la République to the abandoned plot located at 63 avenue de Langres. Armed with spades and pitchforks, the participants were able to clear the land to make gardens, set up new meeting and breathing spaces in the heart of the neighbourhood, plant vegetables, debate the common future on this land and beyond, or share a meal.

This land is threatened by a real estate project carried by the council which, with a great deal of “greenwashing” communication, is trying to impose yet another useless urban plan. According to the INSEE, there are more than 6000 vacant homes in the commune of Dijon alone. Except for the municipality – which wants to grow at all costs to establish its status as a “metropolis” – for whom is it a priority to have more new housing? [Read More]

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