Wassenaar: Report on Ivicke’s ‘Emergency Repairs’

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

In January, following the court ruling stating that the owner must comply with the municipality’s order to carry out emergency repairs, a contractor began the works on Ivicke.

At the request of members of two monument protection organisations, we sent a report (below) to the municipality, with details about how the repairs were carried out. We didn’t receive a response. Instead, municipal officials announced they would inspect the building. We agreed to this and showed the inspectors and the contractor around, pointing out the issues we’d already raised in the letter. The officials barely engaged with us, and merely went around with a clipboard and ticked off boxes. The conclusion of the municipality was that the owner fulfilled the obligation to do emergency repairs. Yay! Win-win for the municipality, who successfully enforced their administrative order, and for the owner, who can keep them off his back (for now). [Read More]

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Amsterdam: ADM community has to pack again!

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

A first update from the Slibvelden crew itself was made public on May 24th 2020. One big part of the former ADM crew relocated at the Slibvelden on Buikslotermeerdijk 95 in Amsterdam Noord. The following statement is published on Indymedia on June 4th by Stichting ADM Leeft, with Hay Schoolmeesters (also Urban Resort, Free Spaces Accord), holding the pen:

ADM community has to pack again!

Almost a year and a half ago, the ADM site was evicted inappropriately. Under the supervision of the municipality, all that was from and dear to the more than 125 residents was completely destroyed by the owner of the site. Part of the close-knit community ended up on the Sludge Fields of the former Water Purification in Amsterdam North. Now this group is forced to relocate on November 1 this year, without any necessity.

At the end of 2018, a motion was passed by the Amsterdam city council, which instructed the college to work with the ADM community to find a definitive location where the community could continue their way of living and livelihood after the sludge fields. The sludge fields were made available to the ADM community for 2 years by means of a tolerance decision. In a recent meeting with the Municipality Noord, it turned out that, despite the motion and despite the fact that no other location is in the picture, the Municipality nevertheless wants to remove the ADM community from the site! [Read More]

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Lausanne: Occupation of a building to accommodate homeless people

By: fawda - June 3rd, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

On Friday May 29th at the end of the day, during the Critical Mass, we occupied the Place Bel-Air 4 building in downtown Lausanne with the aim of creating a place of welcome for people in need of housing, but also a place of solidarity, convergence of struggles, culture and sharing. The Municipality gave the order to evict and the building was emptied a few hours later by the police, but this event will be remembered and reminds us that autonomous, supportive and resistant places are more than ever necessary.

With the end of the lock down, Lausanne has reduced the number of housing units for the homeless. Friday’s occupation was made in response to the Sleep-In Association’s Appeal 212, which asked to do everything possible to ensure that the 212 beds that were provided during the coronavirus period would be maintained all year round, thus meeting the real needs of homeless people in the Lausanne region. The covid-19 pandemic has shown that many emergency measures can be put in place quickly and that immense financial resources can be found to support the economy and save multinationals. Why don’t we see a similar mobilization for climate emergency and social justice? [Read More]

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Berlin: Liebig34 invites to her own court case on Dorfplatz. Chaos instead of an action for eviction!

By: fawda - May 30th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

On 3 June ’20, the eviction of Liebig34 is to be heard in the high-security hall of the Tiergarten court. It is assumed that after two failed attempts, the verdict will be pronounced after all, making the eviction of the anarcha-queer feminist house project more likely. However, the collective does not want to accept this and will continue to resist. Because: The houses, those who need them!
In the past, there have been many attempts to condemn and criminalise our protest against the eviction of the threatened projects in court. They try to keep us small with repression and surveillance. We see this, for example, in the new classification of the Liebig34 collective as “left-wing extremist” by the constitutional dirt and the aggressive and provocative behaviour of the BPE cops day in, day out in the danger zones of this city.
Courts constantly decide FOR the winners AGAINST the marginalized and oppressed in this patriarchal, racist and capitalist system. We have no confidence in this unjust state, which protects fascist perpetrators and acts and decides according to the interests of capital. We stand against this system and never give in.
That is why we create our real version of the verdict and shit on eviction suits and do NOT go to Moabit to the court. We decide against an eviction and that alone counts.
Come on 03 June from 9:00 on the Dorfplatz in front of Liebigstraße34. First there will be spectacles, then brunch.
Also join the actions on June 2nd and show your solidarity with the projects threatened by eviction: decentralized and chaotic! [Read More]

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Berlin: Let’s take the struggle into our hands again

By: fawda - May 26th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

A short call for the reopening of our structures.

Now that the arteries of the capitalist system are again pulsating in the rhythm of production and consumption, we find the re-opening of Kadterschmiede and other common spaces of the projects as important as mentioned in our previous text. [1]
During the “unofficial” lockdown people where pushed to continue going to work or companies found the alternative solution of home office to prevent a breakdown. For almost a month now the industry of education is open again. At the same time the public spaces are under constant attack to prevent political and social interactions.

In times when it’s mostly fascists who reclaim the public spheres and the cops try to control every corner of the city, our spaces cannot be kept closed any longer. [Read More]

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Athens: Themistokleus refugee squat evicted

By: sisulscz - May 19th, 2020  Filed under: Communique

Athens. Greece. Statement by Notara 26 on yesterday’s eviction of the Themistokleus refugee squat.

Today (May 18, 2020) at dawn, the Greek state whose racism can not be bent neither by pandemics, nor by meteorites possibly, went ahead with the eviction of the refugee housing squat of Themistokleus street.
Dozens of people, mostly women refugees with children, lost their home again as well as the minimal protection they had found. They were moved on police buses to Petrou Rallli and then they were dumped in the middle of nowhere to wander the streets homeless and fatigued, with no place to go to.
At the moment they have gathered at Exarchia square with no access to food and housing. Amongst them many babies and children.
We are under no illusion. We don’t expect any kind of salvation from the guard-dogs and their superiors who have raised inhumanity and repression to the ultimate dogma.
Only solidarity can give hope back to those who have been deprived of it.
We call all the friends of Notara26 refugee – immigrant housing squat to support these people in the same way they have been supporting our community all those years.

“IN ORDER TO TURN THE REFUGEES’ JOURNEY TOWARDS SURVIVAL INTO MANKIND’S JOURNEY TOWARDS FREEDOM”

Notara 26, May 18, 2020

Via EnoughisEnough, originally published by Notara 26 Facebook page

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Wassenaar: Huize Ivicke, Restoration Through Expropriation

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

Instead of unconditionally gifting half a million euros of public money to Van de Putte’s property portfolio, Ivicke must be expropriated before it can be restored. Only then is its future secure.

The province of South-Holland pledged to pay 500,000 euros for Huize Ivicke’s restoration if the municipality of Wassenaar is unable to recover the costs from the owner, Ronnie van de Putte.

This amounts to yet another handout of public money to a parasitic financial firm.

The move comes after the municipality of Wassenaar placed an administrative order on van de Putte last November which supposedly compels him to complete Ivicke’s restoration by July, 2020. Van de Putte contested this order in court, but lost.

In the event that van de Putte does not comply with the administrative order, the municipality of Wassenaar said they will arrange for Ivicke’s restoration and send him the bill. A spokesperson for the municipality of Wassenaar described this scenario as “unlikely,” but past experience tells us otherwise. Ask Amsterdam, Sluis, Noordwijk, or Leiden. [Read More]

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Hamburg: Alltuna squatted and evicted

By: fawda - May 10th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Alltuna (Alle tun Alles) on Blücherstraße 7-9 in Hamburg Altona has been squatted and evicted on May 9th. Three people have been arrested. Statement made during the occupation:

Welcome back to the map of the squatters! Besetzenhaha
Another world is possible!

By this we do not primarily mean a world without covid-19, but a world where people deal with it differently. In which our lives, our community as people, our health is at the center and not the profit of the richest.

We opened the Alltuna because we think another world is necessary and we just wanted to start with it. Because another world is just around the corner.

We start and no longer ask: Squatting rocks! Open the doors! We don’t ask if we are allowed to create space, because we really haven’t got anywhere with that in the last years. Except into exploitative tenancies, which are now afflicting the entire cultural life in the city! Everything that has been put together through decades of painstaking, unpaid work by various actors is at stake: Because of the rents. Be it the SKF, the Centro Social, the Gängeviertel, concert halls, small theaters, Infoladen or our own living space. If we had just asked the question of ownership earlier. [Read More]

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Berlin: On the closure of Kadterschmiede and our handling of open spaces

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

Wednesday, March 25th

Our lawyer told us that he should pass on a telephone threat from the police to us. The content of the threat was that the cops would enter Rigaer94 if Kadterschmiede would not close officially. After a due to timepressure admittedly short discussion, we then announced on twitter and our website that we would not open that day.

Already at 8 p.m. there were about ten team cars of a cop unit in the next vicinity and at the Wedekindwache (cop station in the south of Friedrichshain) the technical unit provided heavy equipment. For a large part of the evening the area of Rigaer Strasse, between Zellestrasse and Dorfplatz, was occupied or sealed off by police. In front of our door the new BP-unit (Brennpunkt- und Präsenzeinheit /“Criminal Hotspot and Presence-Units“ [1]) was stationed again. The usual yellow press and massmedia had been informed and was present on the street from early on.

A few days earlier we had published and postered a text with the title “Self-organization in a state of emergency – Why we still consider open social spaces important”[2]. Though we still politically think it‘s the right thing to do, we took a shot in the dark in two aspects. Neither had we considered the reaction of our enemy in the form of the state, nor had we removed all the uncertainties among ourselves regarding hygiene issues. So, because of our lack of a wider discussion and analysis around the topic of opening our own space we also seemed unprepared for the repression on that Wednesday. We had fallen right into the trap we set ourselves, as we would not have been able to defend any decision we could have made collectively. [Read More]

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The Hague: Crush economic powers! Against the sale of the city!

By: fawda - May 7th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Short Stay, No Way!

Recently we occupied the building at Waldeck Pyrmontkade 872 in Den Haag-Zeeheldenkwartier. The ongoing corona crisis has not only exposed but also exacerbated the housing shortage and financial scarcity. The consequences of the crisis are certainly felt by us young adults.
The only things that are available to us are flex-contracts and temporary rents, which cause uncertainty and stress and offer no security.

At this time in particular, it is important for everyone to have a secure home. Especially women and LHBT+ young people, who are a target of patriarchal oppression and as a result often have lower incomes and precarious jobs, should have access to a safe and stable living situation. Even young people who have no choice but to enter into zero-hour contracts are now slaving in supermarkets and delivery services while their living situation is as precarious as their income. That is why we have taken action.

The property has been used for years by support organisations against domestic violence and for youth support. These organizations have moved because of the high rent. Now the property has been purchased by the Amsterdam investment fund RE:BORN real-estate. RE:BORN wants to transform this former office building into 30 luxury apartments, with a “short stay” construction. Short stay apartments are homes, where a tenant may stay for a maximum of six months. These apartments are therefore fully aimed at expats who are staying in The Hague for a short period of time. They often work in our city’s established multinationals and international organizations such as Shell, KLM, Total, Siemens, ICC, Europol and the numerous embassies. [Read More]

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Leipzig: Statement on the May 1st mock occupations

By: fawda - May 3rd, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

The occupations on May 1st in Ludwigstraße and in Großzschocher were mock occupations. Due to the Corona crisis, police repression and bans on larger solidarity demonstrations were to be expected. Therefore, the activists decided to choose this symbolic form of action to draw attention to the start of their campaign and to release corresponding forces and energies. One thing is clear: symbolic forms of action will not remain, the goal of the campaign is the actual creation of self-managed, non-commercial spaces through occupation.

Occupation is necessary because people are so far excluded from urban co-determination that their needs are not heard in urban politics. Just as radically as the real estate industry is taking over the city, people will take back their lives in the city. In every occupation, the city’s decision-makers and police are open to take the interests of the people into account or to evict them directly, thus making themselves the executive organ of a city policy of repression. [Read More]

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UK: Evictions make us sick!

By: fawda - May 2nd, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Squat solidarity! This MayDay squatters from across the U.K. have come together to co-ordinate decentralised actions across the country to highlight our plight and address our needs. Both residential and commercial buildings have been occupied to provide housing for ourselves and the others left high and dry during this time of crisis, and banners have been dropped in support by squats not yet facing imminent eviction. Land has been taken to repurpose for clean open space and food, and food distribution is taking place to aid all who are struggling.
Due to the COVID-19 crisis, emergency legislation was introduced and put a stay to all evictions for 90 days. However, it took just three weeks for the judges to surrender to the pressure from bailiffs, landlords and banks, and amend the law. Squatting cases will continue to be heard via phone, and bailiffs are now again smashing through our doors the way they always have – but this time we’re in the middle of a global pandemic and it’s scarier than ever before. [Read More]

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