It’s now more than one month since the occupation of the Forest House, and that the cabins replace the massively destructive machines in the forest. We are here, and good here.
In spite of the cold and the snow, in spite of the pressure exerted by the gendarmerie[1], in spite of the various attacks that we have suffered, in spite of the frequent sabotages of structures, life goes on at the Maquizad.
On Tuesday December 16th, a large police operation took place in the Spanish State. Fourteen houses and social centers were raided in Barcelona, Sabadell, Manresa, and Madrid. Books, leaflets, computers were seized and eleven people were arrested and sent to the Audiencia Nacional, a special court handling issues of “national interest”, in Madrid. They are accused of incorporation, promotion, management, and membership of a terrorist organisation. However, lawyers for the defence denounce a lack of transparency, saying that their clients have had to make statements without knowing what they are accused of. “[They] speak of terrorism without specifying concrete criminal acts, or concrete individualized facts attributed to each of them” 2. When challenged on this, Judge Bermúdez responded: “I am not investigating specific acts, I am investigating the organization, and the threat they might pose in the future” 1; making this yet another case of apparently preventative arrests.
Four of the detainees have been released, but seven have been jailed pending trial. The reasons given by the judge for their continued detention include the posession of certain books, “the production of publications and forms of communication”, and the fact that the defendants “used emails with extreme security measures, such as the RISE UP server” 2.
We reject this Kafka-esque criminalization of social movements, and the ludicrous and extremely alarming implication that protecting one’s internet privacy is tantamount to terrorism.
Riseup, like any other email provider, has an obligation to protect the privacy of its users. Many of the “extreme security measures” used by Riseup are common best practices for online security and are also used by providers such as hotmail, GMail or Facebook. However, unlike these providers, Riseup is not willing to allow illegal backdoors or sell our users’ data to third parties.
[Read More]
[Other Pandora solidarity actions in Leipzig, Barcelona, Lisbon, Paris and San Francisco]
In support of our anarchist and feminist compañeras detained recently as part of the so-called “Pandora case”, and making clear our revulsion at this murderous capitalist and heteropatriarchal system, on the 30th of December 2014 from the colony of the Canary Islands we carried out actions of sabotage against ATMs and painted some graffiti in solidarity with the accused. [Read More]
In solidarity with anarchists arrested in Spain, we wrecked the Deutsche Bank branch in Leipzig.
On the 16th December 2014 in Spain, different police forces conducted coordinated raids in 12 apartments, resulting in 11 anarchists arrested. One of the pretexts for why the raids took place was that the accused had destroyed cashpoints. [Read More]
[Other recent solidarity actions in Lisbon, Paris and San Francisco]
On Saturday, December 27th, 2014, at 5pm, demonstrators took to the streets in the city centre of Barcelona in solidarity with anarchists detained in the context of Operation Pandora at the request of Judge-executioner Javier Gómez Bermúdez.
Protesters started to march on broad streets, shouting slogans in solidarity with the detainees, and against the police, prisons and the State. The demonstration ended up in the Gracia area. Upon entering this neighbourhood, hooded comrades uninhibitedly attacked many bank branches, several multinational shops, as well as the 5-star Casa Fuster hotel (which was the Nazi Germany’s consulate in Barcelona in 1936, prior to being the headquarters of the revolution’s defense committee in the spring of 1937, until it was taken by the Falange in 1939, and became a luxury hotel during the Transition, after the associative neighbourhood movement attempted to turn it into social facilities). [Read More]
--- PRESS RELEASE on behalf of autonomous solidarity for Love Activists, London. BEGINS ---
‘Twas the night before Christmas, in the High Court of the land,
Where Justice was guided by the invisible hand…
While some with full bellies were nestled in bed;
The homeless and hungry had hopes to be fed….
As we already informed you in previous article, the squatted autonomous centre Klinika (situated in former clinic owned by state, now in decay and without any real plans how to revive it) in Prague was evicted on 9th of December, despite having support from neighbourhood, people from wider cultural scene and even from council of local municipality, Žižkov. The struggle continues and Klinika needs any kind of support more than before.
While there still were (and still are) some kind of negotiations going on between delegates from Klinika and various state and city organizations, a solidarity happening took place in Prague on Saturday 13th of December. Up to thousand people joined and walked through the neighbourhood in a possitive mood. After the march was finished in front of Klinika, a group of attendees occupied the house for a few minutes, but after they were persuaded by so-called “Anti-conflict team” of the police, they left without any force being used on them. However, the police used this issue as an excuse to displace people from public spaces around the house in quite a brutal way – the organizer of demo was beaten down for no obvious reason, people were pushed to fall down the hill, two ended up in hospital… [Read More]
On the 1st of December 2014 we were notified that Caferağa Solidarity’s Mahalle Evi – where we’ve been living since January 2014 – would be evicted on Friday the 5th of December, at 10am, due to an inquiry of the General Directorate of National Property (Real Estate/Milli Emlak), with the assignment of the district governorship and by execution of the police forces.
As soon as we heard this news, we tried our best to reach you through all means of communication. We used social media, email, phone calls as well as posters, banners, videos and texts. We called for a solidarity gathering with the squatted community centre on the 5th of December, at 9am. [Read More]
Responding to a recent call out, Grow Heathrow sent wishes of solidarity to Hambacher Forest on Thursday.
Hambacher Forest is a camp comprising four occupations in the Rhineland of Germany, which is protesting against the expansion of one of the largest opencast brown coal mines. The mine is a disaster, not only in terms of the impact on the climate from this dirty fossil fuel, but also for the local residents of the nearby villages that would be destroyed to make way for the mine’s expansion. In addition the natural ecosystem would be totally devastated.
In recent weeks activists in Hambacher Forest have been carrying out a number of actions against the felling of this ancient forest. There have been a number of arrests and one of the tree-occupations was evicted at the beginning of December. [Read More]
Tonight (12.12.2014) this city should live again. We took the streets with music and good vibrations to put down a marker against the ongoing gentrification. This upgrading of our city provokes, that liveliness, sociability, clearances and unconventional cultural projects are being lost in entire districts.
Desolate concrete-jungles like Google-Quarter, Europaallee, Zurich west or PJZ reveal the utterly significance of money and wealth whereas own ways of composing our lives, alternative projects as Binz and Labitzke-Areal are being destroyed and banned.
Tonights action should motivate you to get active. We don’t want to leave our city to freeholders, to money, to capitalists or public-private-partnership-nations or any other oppressing authorities!
Origin and permit of residence, wealth and obedience mustn’t matter to whom can live in this or any other place in the world! [Read More]
The demonstration planned for this coming Saturday against the eviction and demolition of De Vloek has been banned by the Mayor of The Hague. Even the judge decided to support the city’s fallacies. We are calling on everybody to come this Saturday at 15:00 to the Kerkplein to NOT demonstrate together.
Protesting has been made impossible and we will also let this be known. We will assemble on the Kerkplein with tape on our mouths. Demonstrating has been prohibited, but coming together on the Kerkplein is not forbidden. To be able to demonstrate, one needs to have a right to free speech, and this has been taken away from us. We will symbolically illustrate this.
Because this demonstration would have involved many different people, including children and the elderly, we are canceling the demonstration. We have absolutely no faith in the empathy of The Hague police, and we don’t want children and elderly people to be beaten up by them. [Read More]
It was just under a year ago that the SQUASH Team got wind of the death of a homeless man in Kent, who had frozen to death sleeping outside a derelict residential property. After the arrest of Alex Haigh for squatting an empty housing association (L&Q) property, the death of Daniel Gauntlett (35) exemplified the injustice of the new law s144 LASPO, making squatting residential buildings a criminal offense. On further investigation, we found out that the police had spoken to Mr Gauntlett that day; SQUASH suspect that they told him not to try entering the empty bungalow on a freezing February night, or he would be arrested. SQUASH immediately put out a press release condemning the death: “Homeless Man Prevented From Squatting Dies” [SQUASH Campaign, 1 March 2013]
[Read More]
