London: Police Station is squatted! Join the resistance!

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

London squatters are organising an anarchist social centre in a notorious secure police station in central London. It is leading to a week of action for GAF, Green Anti-capitalist Front, from 24th February to 2nd March. Come and help with this once-in-a-generation opportunity to perfect barricading and organise towards the COP26 and more! We look forward to welcoming you to this liberated space for global resistance in a centre of international capitalism.

Green Radical Anticapitalist Social Space (GRASS) in Paddington

Was nice to meet Oli (and Rich!) from JOE.co.uk the other day! The GRASS (Green Radical Anticapitalist Social Space) was originally formulated as the result of a public assembly to come up with ideas to tackle capitalism in ways that not only ‘stick it to the man’, but demonstrate that it’s entirely practical and possible to build a new society. A society based on fairness, compassion, co-ordination and communal working and living. The sort of society where no one will be without a home or a chance to live a fulfilling life. [Read More]

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Zaragoza: statement by the CSO Kike Mur

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

If the Kike Mur falls, Zaragoza will rise up.

Greetings to anyone who feels identified with the values of freedom, self-management, anti-fascism and with the CSO Kike Mur . First of all, we would like to thank all the comments, communications and expressions of support that are reaching us from both collectives and individuals, they transmit a lot of strength and reaffirm our resistance, it is the people who really give meaning and life to space, who have managed to make this dream come true. It is because of all this that we feel strong, we know that we have the support and solidarity of the best people of this city and other places, and that is the best weapon we can have. [Read More]

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London: Paddington Green Police Station occupation in anticipation of our week of action

By: fawda - February 9th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

On the night of February 7th, a group of activists from the Green Anti-Capitalist Front, alongside squatters and other activists, occupied the abandoned High security police station at Paddington Green. The intention is to hold the space and turn it into a community centre, the activities of which will culminate in a week of action against capitalism.
This is motivated by the belief that capitalism by its very nature will continue to destroy our planet and ultimately our civilisation. We chose this building because the police have time and again shown that they will gladly break their own laws to suppress any challenge to the entrenched, unjust, systems our society is based on.
Only by moving beyond the inherent oppression of capitalism to a system based on co-operation and communality, can we hope to survive in any meaningful way to the end of this century.
During the week of action the space will host workshops, skill shares, socials, planning sessions and a wide variety of other informative and entertaining events while also acting as a base from which to launch actions to reclaim our public space from corporations and government, and strike at the very heart of capital. We will show the mega rich and powerful that we will not stand for their greed and corruption. [Read More]

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Brazil: Olive Garden urban occupation under threat of eviction

By: sisulscz - February 7th, 2020  Filed under: Communique

Activists from the Black Flag anarchist collective report that the squatted site, which houses more than 200 families in the southern Brazilian city of Araquari, is fighting back against threats from the City Hall to send the dogs in.

Jardim das Oliveiras (The Olive Garden) is a self-organised squatted zone near the center of the city which has existed on the site for more than a decade, but received a court repossession order just before Christmas giving them 30 days to leave.
[Read More]

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Barcelona: About the Cinètika, on free and self-managed spaces

By: fawda - February 5th, 2020  Filed under: Communique

Our solidarity, mutual support and recognition of the humble, consistent, lively and generous daily work that the Cinètika does from an anti-capitalist, feminist, libertarian and inclusive position, open to all the neighbors and all the struggles of the neighborhood and the city. A work of resistance and construction of alternatives from direct action and self-organization. Also from critical culture, constant debate. There is no better discourse than the practice and it is already a few years of having recovered from money, from the market a space, occupying it, making it public without it being institutional. This shows that it is possible to do things in order without authority, that it can work without subsidies. A space for creation, to experiment freely.

There are more and more of them, and they can be seen in experiences such as the Cinètika. They encourage us to know that they exist, that we can use them, that we can support ourselves by creating networks of people and places where we can organize ourselves. It is not by chance that in Barcelona and in so many others, so much money wasted from institutions, so much bureaucracy and entertainment professionals, is born and is maintained in the face of cultural and political mediocrity. Experiences of free thought, of counter-culture, of free communities. Essays on the world we want to build. [Read More]

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Athens: “The best days have yet to come”

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

On the 2nd of February we took the initiative to burglarize our own house. Gare is not just for the members of Gare, it belongs to the entire movement. We hung a banner in solidarity with the free spaces and in solidarity with D. of Gare banner saying “Power to the wanted Comrade D. Chatsivachiliadi, Solidarity to the Squats, The State is the Only Terrorist”. We do this action in solidarity and also as an act of resistance: our way of fiercely protecting our ideas, our lives, our spaces, our houses, and our futures.

On 26th of August, Gare was evicted and bricked up and was one of the first in a new wave of repression against the free spaces. Gare was one of the first targeted because the job of the state is to smash the most radical parts of the movement in order to clear the way for further repression and pacification. The state is trying through law and police oppression to put a straight jacket on the furious body of the oppressed peoples. In October, after a robbery action which led to the finding of a weapons cache, including the weapons of Revolutionary Self-Defense. D. was forced on the run and made a fugitive by the state. [Read More]

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Vienna: Still lovin´squatting! Action in solidarity with squats! Smash §92a!

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

In November 2018, activists occupied an empty building in Vienna. They called their new house “Nele”. The occupation has been evicted after three weeks. There was a massive presence of police, including a lifting ramp, an emergency air cushion from the fire department and helicopters.
16 of the evicted people refused the ID control by the police and have been arrested. Two have been identified nonetheless, one other was put into custody for several months.
One of the two identified persons, who stayed on the pitched roof got a letter demanding a payment of 3808 €. The claim is that the person put themselves in danger by climbing the roof; hence is responsible to pay for the overblown police operation.
When the “Sicherheitspaket” (safety package) became law on may 25, 2018, in Austria, the §92a was updated. Because of the new interpretation of §92a SPG, it’ s now possible that people who cause a police operation can be obliged to pay for its costs if they bring themselves in danger.
Especially that the authority to decide, whether a person is in danger or not lies within the police makes this new way of interpreting the law vulnerable for misuse against all kinds of social or environmental activism. Simply people blocking a street in protest, everything could be affected by this new interpretation of the law. [Read More]

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Rotterdam: Two other evictions and 19 new arrests in Tweebosbuurt

By: fawda - January 23rd, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Yesterday, one apartment was evicted by the police on Tweebosbuurt. On their way back, the police stopped in front of one of the squats in the neighborhood and tried to get in. This place is protected by house peace and an ongoing legal procedure.
The inhabitants went outside to talk to the police and ask them to stop. The police refused to give the reason of their presence, and asked for everyone’s ID (some people were even still inside) without legal justifications. Two employees from Vestia were with them, laughing at the situation. Some inhabitants refused this abusive and illegal control. Somebody was arrested. They brought them at Zuidplein Police Station for a few hours, and physically forced them to give fingerprints and took pictures of their face. They got out of the police station 4 hours latter and came home safely.
We though it was going to calm down, but we were wrong. Today, we saw the neighborhood police going back and forth Tweebosstraat controlling people’s ID. One of the inhabitants rang to the door of one of the squat and got arrested almost immediately while he was walking in. Some people went downstairs immediately and asked the police the reason for this arrest. They wouldn’t say. They asked for everyone’s ID again, without any legitimate motive. People insisted to know the reason of the arrest, and they answered “You don’t have anything to do with this kind of people, go home and let us do our job”. Most likely, this was a racist statement because the person that was arrested was obviously not Dutch. They threatened that person of being “removed” of the country. [Read More]

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Germany: Hambi Stays

By: sisulscz - January 18th, 2020  Filed under: Communique

The news have reached us yesterday that the german government has decided that the Hambacher Forest should not be cut down. This is a statement of the Hambacher Forest Press Team:

This news brings us neither joy nor despair. We interpret this as part of a political strategy aimed at delegitimising the Hambacher forest occupation. In the following points we clarify this as an attack on the climate justice movement.

Mike from the Hambacher Forest says “I can’t accept that Hambacher Forest is used as a smokescreen to hide the ongoing ecocidal and imperialistic policy of the German state”
[Read More]

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Brighton: Don’t despair, organise! DIY Kodak Collective squatted night shelter

By: fawda - January 14th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

London Road in Brighton is a clear example of the austerity crisis in Britain. The road is lined with closed businesses and people in every doorway. On Christmas Eve, a group of community activists opened the doors to a squatted night shelter with a sign that read “Room at the Inn”, inviting rough sleepers to get warm over the Christmas week. The DIY Kodak Collective, named after the photography shop that used to be there, is still holding the shelter weeks later – as well as space for people to sleep, there are daily communal meals, a place to create art and a free shop. The building has become somewhere safe, warm and creative for homeless people to escape the winter weather, socialise and sleep, and, as it is a DIY shelter, people are able to exercise their own autonomy when it comes to using the space.
[Read More]

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Athens: Counterculture events on Exarchia square

By: fawda - December 28th, 2019  Filed under: Communique, News

On Sunday, December 22nd, we organised a day-long event at Exarchia square, in answer to the pre-announced municipal event–front for oppression that was to take place at noon of the same day.

The municipality of Athens under Bakoyannis plays a central part in selling out our neighbourhoods and answers every attempt of resistance with more and more repression. In Exarchia, it tries to camouflage the repression and gentrification of the neighbourhood that translates into shops, the metro, raises in rent, a sterilised and controlled environment, with superficial events and actions accompanied by the media twisting the story and armed goons. It wants to impose its superiority by cleaning the square, where it removes our posters and our speech from the neighbourhood and as a symbol of its domination it pins down a tree, like in a conquered space. We view this event as one more aggressive act of political and cultural distortion of the ground of Exarchia, one that we had to answer by cancelling it through our active presence throughout the day. We couldn’t allow this fiesta of hypocrisy, where there wouldn’t have been space for us, anyway. [Read More]

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Brighton: Squatted Night Shelter

By: sisulscz - December 28th, 2019  Filed under: Communique

As Brighton becomes more glamorous and sparkles in the shop windows cost like gold, the city is only managing to house the rich and the privileged. There are too many buildings on our streets which have been left empty, dilapidating and neglected by selfish landlords who are apparently blind to the hundreds of people sleeping in bags outside of these doorsteps. Brighton has the second worst amount of homeless to London, and the council cannot seem to do anything about it.
We have scrubbed up + loved up one of these empty buildings to make an emergency shelter for people who would otherwise sleep outside. There is room for 10 people to stay at night and downstairs there is a soup kitchen!
Please spread the word about the space to friends seeking shelter.
Any donations will be accepted gratefully, and here are some photos of the accommodation.

Facebook – DIY Kodak Collective: Squatted Night Shelter

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