Berlin: Solidarity with Gare Squat and arrested comrades in Athens

By: fawda - December 2nd, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

On Sunday, the 26th of November, OPKE units and plain cloth officers entered the Gare-Squat in Exarchia. Although there was resistance from the inside, the eviction was completed in the afternoon with four people being arrested, who were in the house at that time.

The eviction of Gare is directly connected with the attempt of the state to raise the pressure on the resistance before December 6th and to occupy strategic points. The 6th of December is the anniversary of the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos, who was shot by a cop nine years ago in Exarchia. Since then, every year on that day it comes to riots and fights with the cops, where they try to take over the neighbourhood confronting a massive resistance, terrorizing it with chemicals and detentions.

As active friends and comrades of Rigaer Straße in Berlin, we are in solidarity with the fight for Exarchia, as a self-organized and ungovernable district. Our aspirations, our concerns and straits, but especially our hopes connect us in the fight for a life without authorities. The Gare-Squat, as an active part in this fight, plays an important role for the local structures with an international orientation and their history is our history. Because of this reason, the eviction and the permanent siege of the house, as well as the daily police-terror, is an attack on us. [Read More]

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Biel (Switzerland): Reclaim The Streets against gentrification! Bahnhöfli stays!

By: fawda - November 21st, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

The last squatted house in Biel, Wahnhof, is in danger of eviction! The property-management-department wants to kick out the squatters before the end of the year, to break down the house without any upcoming construction-projects. so it will be an empty place for many years again…
In the meanwhile we got a visit by the Director of public trade inspectorate. He told us that “Bahnhöfli” can stay for now. How long he couldn’t or didn’t want to say. We are supposed to get it written down.
This doesn’t change much so far. Gentrification is still going on in Biel and everywhere.
Therefore we RECLAIM THE STREETS against gentrification and the destruction of autonomous spaces.
Come all and support the struggle for more alternative spaces.

Saturday 25 november 2017
15:30 at Guisanplatz in Biel/Bienne

Bring banners, instruments, trailers, bikes, skateboards. Be creative!
Defend autonomous spaces!
For more squats and trailer parks! [Read More]

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Manchester: Lessons of Cornerhouse

By: fawda - November 21st, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

The Cornerhouse is a former theatre in Manchester squatted from January to August 2017 by self-organised homeless people linked to the Manchester Activist Network. This is their story.

As the final pieces of our belongings, donations and clothes were brought out of the infamous Cornerhouse it was time for Manchester Activist Network to reflect back on six months of occupation. From the Loose Space festival and surviving three eviction attempts, to the rough sleepers we housed and three other squats opened over that time, this had been a busy, and at times stressful but productive period that none of us will ever forget.

The biggest thing that came out of the Cornerhouse was a reaffirmation of the need for solidarity when we are faced with big issues. In order to fully tackle rough sleeping and stop the rise in homelessness we all need to be prepared to give a little of ourselves. Not money, but from inside of us. We need constructive dialogues, we need to drop the egos, forget about the “company line,” reflect on what we put our energies into and how we can change as individuals. Only then can we better the systemic problem that is homelessness. [Read More]

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Moonee Ponds (Melbourne): Husk Collective

By: fawda - November 14th, 2017  Filed under: Communique

Statement from Husk Collective, active since August 2017.

We acknowledge that we are occupying land rightfully belonging to the Wurundjeri-willam of the Woiwurrung language and belief group. we pay respects to Elders past and present and would like to express gratitude for the knowledge that has been shared with us. this land is stolen. sovereignty never ceded.
We continue to benefit from colonisation and genocide which are ongoing to this day. we also acknowledge the combined effects of colonisation, racism, patriarchy and the western binary gender system.
We take our lead from the struggles and resistance of Koorie people and invite everyone to join us to work towards undermining colonisation through learning, listening and contributing to the resistance.

We are husk (housing unicorns & solidarity kittens), a noncismen people’s house project. we use empty buildings to provide housing and to create a welcoming social space for noncismen, because unused property is a waste, an injustice and an ongoing tool of dispossession. we are taking the first steps towards ensuring that we respect the true authority of the land we occupy, with the goal of participating in a small way towards the decolonisation project. [Read More]

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Amsterdam: Support with We Are Here against an eviction

By: fawda - November 14th, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

Solidarity with We Are Here. The residents of the Nienoord 2 (squatted since April 17th 2017) received the police letter announcing their evition: Friday morning 17 November 9:00, their property must be “left empty”. The general meeting of Sunday November 12th has permanently decided: The inhabitants will not leave the house voluntarily. They call all sympathisers of their movement to come in great numbers to their house to support their peaceful resistance. Sympathisers, let us support them and show that we do not accept this degrading policy of deterrence. We are here and we need each other to fight the system that oppresses us all. [Read More]

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Porto Alegre (Brazil): “When anarchy disturbs” Library Kaos statement about the prosecution against anarchists

By: fawda - November 2nd, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

There are many things to say, but we will start with the most urgent. In the 25 of October began an anti-anarchist persecution against FAG [Federação Anarquista Gaúcha] Parhesia institute, Pandorga squat and some individuals who had their spaces and houses raided by cops. If not all, probably a good part of the anarchist diversity was reached and several of them spoke firmly from their agreement against repression. And this is a fresh air that strengthens every one who feels sedition.

It is evident that the aim of the agents of repression also points against us, against the publications we have made or in which we participate. And that is what we are going to say. “The chronology of the Anarchic Confrontation”, the one that collects information from 2000 to 2015, and the one that collects the anarchic trigger of 2016, both are the books that are being exhibited as “evidence” of vandalism, attacks, and criminal acts. Among the many ways anarchism has to search for freedom, these books speak of anarchic informality as an option according to the current domination’s face. Further, we clarify that these books speak of actions but not only anarchists ones. The focus of the books is the diffusion of anarchic actions. To be more precise, it spread actions in which we feel the aroma of anarchy. And between anarchism and anarchy there are differences that may be delicate but which are important. [Read More]

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Athens: Today City Plaza is one and half years old

By: fawda - October 21st, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

22 April 2016 – 22 October 2017: One and a half years of City Plaza
Today City Plaza is one and half years old.

On April 22, 2016, 250 activists and refugees took over the hotel City Plaza in the center of Athens. A hotel which like many other businesses stood closed for 6 years after the economic collapse and the government’s policies of austerity. This abandoned hotel was transformed into a Refugee Accommodation and Solidarity Space. Since then the solidarity initiative has, for more than 500 days, provided free and decent housing to over 1700 people in the center of Athens, irrespective of their nationality and residence status. These people are housed in the hotel’s 120 rooms, 350-400 persons at a time, a third of whom are children.

There are other ways you can measure what’s been happening here over the past 18 months; with the 385,000 warm meals served by the kitchen group or with the 35,000 working hours spent at security posts by the hotel’s entrance and on the balconies of the building. With the 13,560 hours of shifts at the reception desk or with the more than 32,700 rolls of toilet paper distributed by the warehouse team. It can also be counted in 156 full van-loads of fresh vegetables and meat; or in the countless hours spent cleaning the building, or in the medical center, in the hours spent teaching in the two classrooms, or in the women space and in the playground or with the 18 tons of heating oil used in the boilers and radiators. [Read More]

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UK: Manchester homeless call out council ‘one way ticket’ scandal

By: fawda - October 19th, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

Following revelations that Manchester Council has spent £10,000 on one-way tickets to push rough sleepers out of the city, activists have been expressing their disdain for executives’ excuses that the measure is aimed at “reconnecting” people with relatives who can help.

In a statement, Manchester Activist Network (MAN), which has been heavily involved in homeless self-organising in the city explained the real way in which the system works:

Person becomes homeless. Person goes to local town hall. Person is told no housing available, all the money is in Manchester. Person goes to Manchester and asks for help. Person told they have no local connection, go back home. Person kicks off a bit. Person is offered a train ticket to stop them from staying in Manchester long enough to be considered as having a local connection (six months). Decision time. Go back to the place that’s already failed you (and has a waiting least of two years+) or stay and take a chance in a city where at least the public care even if the council doesn’t. [Read More]

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Fay-de-Bretagne (France): L’Ancre Noire

By: fawda - October 6th, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

L’Ancre Noire (the Black Anchor) is the new name of an old farm and reintegration center, CHRS Le Val – squated in the summer of 2016 halfway between the village of Fay-de-Bretagne and the ZAD of Notre-damme-des-Landes.
Here we live in a day-to-day struggle for the autonomy of the self against the institutional integration – either of our bodies, of our heads as for our common and living places.
We do not recognize any document legitimating – or not – someone of living where he is, neither in a logic of nationality, housing or any property or social organization form.
Here we take possession of our lives and capacities, in an urge for our individual and collective aspirations, taking for goal, our Joy – without papers, without property, without politic nor authority to divide us in this emancipatory quest. [Read More]

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Ljubljana: Call for October Revolution Festival in Autonomous Factory Rog

By: fawda - October 2nd, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

Dear dead revolutionaries,

the dream has shattered and we are still being frustrated by the currents of history.
It has been one hundred years since the scandalous revolutionary powers of the past rose against their feudal overlords, now known as the October revolution. Countries have been torn apart by war and the lords were struck with raw and violent critiques of the working people. Vengeance was sweet and yet perhaps impotent, the war was loss for all we know.

Our frustrations could be thought of as a deep need for reinterpretation, an indignation, a struggle for social justice, a thirst for change. But in the last hundred years all we had was change. Our cities and our bodies, our discourses and work processes went through innumerable changes both wonderful and terrible – most of them irreversible. Revolution has revealed itself to be an ambiguous and yet fascinating concept.

The time has come to light up the furnaces of Rog once again and to take a stand for and with our dead revolutionary companions in the old factory turned autonomous art and social activist squat. Rog’s vast size, history and the nature of its fight against the municipality make it the perfect ground for a minimundus where we can meet and debate the current questions of the street, by the street. [Read More]

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Utrecht: Watertower squatted to protest squatban, later evicted

By: sisulscz - October 2nd, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

Yesterday (October 1) a water tower in Utrecht (in the Netherlands) was squatted to mark seven years since the criminalisation of squatting. The long empty building (which was already squatted in the past) is a perfect example of the necessity to occupy empty buildings. A big banner was put on the building saying ‘Fuck the squatban.’ Unfortunately the state responded with overwhelming force and evicted the building the same day. According to reports, seven people were arrested, six squatters and one person outside for “insulting the police”. Solidarity with the arrestees!

Here follows a (quickly translated) statement from the squatters:
[Read More]

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Amsterdam: ADM’s XX Birthday Festival

By: fawda - September 29th, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News, Press release

ADM celebrates her porcelain jubilee!
Take a gentri-vacation on the ADM reservation

The squatted cultural freespace ADM exists 20 years in October. And that will be celebrated at the 12th, 13th and 14th of October 2017. Three days full of spectacle you do not want to miss. Artists, performers and visitors from all over the world will come to ADM this weekend to celebrate that there is still a place where unnecessary regulations do not exist, the hands of the clock are not breathing in your neck and where non-conformers walk freely.

For three years, ADM’s continued existence is under pressure, there are countless lawsuits and a lot of media attention. In early August, the court decided that the municipality of Amsterdam has to enforce the areal planning, with the result that ADM should be evicted. If this actually is going to happen is the big question, the municipality must still determine whether the so-called owner is allowed to execute the building plans. All in all, this does not change the ideals, life-lust and cultural expression of the ADMrs or the celebration of ADM’s birthday festival! [Read More]

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