Ghent: statement from ‘t Pand! Demonstration 25 October

By: fawda - October 18th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

More than 1800 citizens want us to intervene at the city council, but we were gagged. The city does not call itself responsible for the housing crisis. We received the mandate from these 1800 citizens to ask the city council to speak out against the privatization of ‘t Pand.

We do not intend to remain silent. If participation and democracy are not empty concepts, we must make our voices heard now. Come with us to the City Council. Together we will take the floor and ask:
– Address the housing crisis: no privatization of the property and commons in general
– Through co-creation and participation, provide a public interpretation for ‘t Pand
– Investigate other financing options for commons than the sale of public heritage.

We will gather at ‘t Pand, Lange Steenstraat 16, at 18:00 and then head for our board, the city council. [Read More]

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Amsterdam: Take back Mokum! Hotel Marnix squatted during ADEV

By: fawda - October 16th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

During the ADEV (Amsterdam Danst Ergens Voor) demonstration on 16 October 2021, former Hotel Marnix was squatted on Marnixstraat 382. Statement from Pak Mokum Terug! action group :

Amsterdam is in crisis. Housing is unaffordable. People with low and middle incomes are being chased out of the city. There is no room for young people. The commercialization of the center has attracted masses of tourists who make the city unlivable, while property owners, investors and large companies enrich themselves endlessly. There is no room for alternative culture. Amsterdam is losing its soul.

We, the collective Pak Mokum Terug! (Get Mokum Back!) are young Amsterdammers who have had enough. We no longer want to accept the trend that our city can only be inhabited by the rich. That economic and commercial interests are all-important. That we cannot shape our city, its culture, the way we live, ourselves. Therefore we claim the city, we claim the space for the people of Amsterdam, we take back Mokum. [Read More]

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Ghent: PANDPaRaDe, demonstration on 12 October

By: fawda - October 8th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Judges, the city and the province want the property owners to get rid of the property (‘t Pand) in order to sell it to rich investors.
This is done without any consultation from the former residents and without listening to the citizens of Ghent themselves. The right to property is again more important than the right to a decent and affordable roof over one’s head.
The judge has given us 8 days to vacate the premises. They may be able to sabotage the occupation but that does not end the fight.
More than 1800 citizens want us to intervene at the city council and here too we were silenced. The city does not hold itself responsible for the housing crisis. Therefore, we call on everyone to come out onto the streets with your pots and pans, and together we will make our point:
– tackle the housing crisis: no privatisation of the property and commons in general
– no eviction of the inhabitants
– citizens’ participation in our commons, including on the city council

We gather on Tuesday 12 October at 6 pm at Lange Steenstraat 16 ! [Read More]

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Berlin: Illegal eviction of Køpi wagenplatz. Supposed owner gave falsified signature in court. Nevertheless eviction plan goes ahead.

By: fawda - October 8th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

On the 8th of October 2021 we gave a press conference in front of Köpi. Read our statement:

Just a week before the eviction of the Køpi wagenplatz we received the report from the official investigator for signature verificationthat the signature presented at the trial in May 2021 by the supposed owner Yervand Chuckhajyan of the postbox company Startezia GmbH differs from previous signatures and is therefore false.

The falsification, and the fact no one ever saw Mr Chuckhajyan, reinforces our suspicion that the supposed owner of this postbox company does in fact not represent the company and is actually another fraud of the real owner of this postbox company, Siegried Nelhs of SANUS AG.

At the trial also the judge Claudia Wolter noticed the different signatures, criticized the supposed owner for not being present at the trial and questioned his lawyers about their relationship with their client. Nevertheless the judge decided that if Startezia GmbH pays a security deposit of 200.000€ the eviction can go ahead even before our appeal hearing. Again we see that justice is not blind, that the court favours suspicious anonymous postbox companies with enough money over the lives, homes and futures of dozens of people. [Read More]

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Berlin: Rigaer94 – First statement on the raid of 6th of October, 2021

By: fawda - October 6th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

The Berlin cops, today, 06.10.2021 at 7am, wearing their dirty trash-bag uniforms and carrying shields full of color from the resistance on 17th of June and armed, raided our political structure and living space, Rigaer94. Once again, as everyday, the servants of the state fulfill their commands and obey to the capital. The state guarantees the order of the capitalist system, so to squeeze even more profit from people and their living spaces, gain power over every life, destroy any political idea that fights against them and oppress any individual who does not fit to their plans in this capitalistic, patriarchal and racist society. It is clear that the Berlin cops still work with Lafone Investments Ltd. and are their mercenaries, who execute orders of the plan to get rid of Rigaer94 and so to force the gentrification process of Nordkiez, Friedrichshain – after they lost their last attack on us in June this year. [Read More]

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Montreuil: Support Le Marbré – Let’s Defend our spaces – Attack the city of the rich

By: fawda - October 5th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Le Marbré opened its doors in september 2020, since then the marble dust and rockwool has made room for a living space and a space of radical autonomous* and self-organized political organisation. Diverse ideas carrying a discourse against market logic, against capitalism and all oppression , on the search of a rupture with the state and all existing cross and meet in this space. Some of the bigger lines around which people around Marbré organize are housing, anti-gentrification, social struggles, prison, specism, feminism and borders. The place is organised through an open general assembly and happy to welcome new people and groups.

Some words on the situation
We met a first eviction in february 2021, but successfully reopened the building the next day which gave us a lot of strength. Since september 2021 we are facing a new threat following our eviction process. The ruling received in june 2021 admitted us cumulative delays of 3 month + a 2 months grace period + the winter eviction break(1.11-1.4.). But the bailiff seems deaf on that ear: he signed a request to leave the space by september 23. [Read More]

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Utrecht: Building on the Archimedeslaan resquatted

By: fawda - October 3rd, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

On October 1, 2021, exactly 11 years after the Kraken en Leegstand (squatting and vacancy) law came into force, the buildings on the Archimedeslaan 16 were resquatted. The squatters protested against the continuing vacancy of the former student housing. Although the law should prevent vacancy, the vacancy rate has only increased since then. This while squatting and the squatting movement have been criminalized and prosecuted.

The squatters want to show that squatting is still a legitimate option in addressing and fighting the housing crisis and homelessness. Indeed, squatting still serves as an effective tool against speculators and housing corporations who use houses as tools to make a profit. The squatters wonder why, in times of a real housing crisis, the development of houses is delegated to profit-oriented organizations. [Read More]

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Montreuil: vicious eviction of the Maison de l’Ermitage by the City Council?

By: fawda - September 30th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

We share here the leaflet of the “Support Committee for the Maison de l’Ermitage of Montreuil” of September 28, 2021. Return on a strange practice of eviction in the city of Montreuil, accompanied by a history of the place… Meeting on Saturday (October 2nd) 2pm at the Parole Errante to organize solidarity! The Ermitage is a place of life, of self-organization, but also the backstage of many solidarity initiatives in the city of Montreuil and in Paris! Let’s defend the Ermitage house!

Since 2018, the house at 18, rue de l’Ermitage was occupied. Property of the Montreuil City Council since 1990 and until then rented to relatives of successive mayors, it had remained vacant since the arrival in power of Patrick Bessac, but the situation of housing distress of Ms. Fahima LAIDOUDI, her son and other occupants without housing had led us to squat it. Since this summer, talks were underway with the mayor’s office and the prefecture to resolve the housing problems of its occupants and to decide on a collective future for this house, which should not be sold off to real estate developers, but used for the common good. [Read More]

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Berlin: eviction of Køpi Wagenplatz, 15 October

By: fawda - September 21st, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Dear comrades!

We have now received the date for the eviction of Køpi Wagenplatz. On 15 October 2021, at 10:00 AM!
Therefore, we call for action weeks from now on, on one hand to push the topic of the planned eviction massively in the public and to mobilize, on the other hand this should once again give the opportunity to network, to discuss, to learn and to organize.
The action weeks should take place from now until the planned eviction as long and continuously as possible.
For this we need your support!
If you want to organize an info- or discussion event, a workshop or open skill sharing, please write us the dates and publish them yourself on Stressfaktor and other event pages.
Banners can be put up anytime and anywhere, posters and stickers can be put up, flyers can be distributed and soli photos can be published. A drink in your bar/pub could temporarily be called ‘Køpiplatz bleibt!’ or whatever you can think of, just do it! Also writing solo statements and spreading our info + events, articles and statements help us out!
If you have space in your location for such an event, but don’t want to or can’t organize anything yourself, you are also welcome to contact us in order to be able to refer other groups without rooms if necessary.
Also groups with event ideas but no location are welcome to contact us. [Read More]

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Lyon: for immediate and permanent rehousing of those evicted from the Feyzin squat

By: fawda - September 21st, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Press release following the occupation of the Clémenceau gymnasium on Thursday 16 September, feedback on the course of the occupation and the negotiations with the prefecture.

On Thursday 16 September at 7:30 am, the eviction without prior notice of the Feyzin squat was allowed by a huge police force. It seems that neither the prefecture, nor the DDCS, nor the Ofii, nor the Metropolis, nor the Salvation Army, considered it necessary to warn the inhabitants of an operation which seemed to have been planned for weeks. Many people had, the day before, left the squat after the information had leaked, for fear of the police intervention. They were therefore not taken into account in the accommodation system (despite social diagnoses which normally lead to care even in the absence of the inhabitants at the time of the eviction). The figures given by the prefecture and the press are therefore largely underestimated. Out of 120 to 150 people counted in the squat, only about 50 people were taken by bus to the Chabal barracks, an accommodation center in Saint Priest known for its undignified reception conditions. If 14 people “refused” the offer of accommodation, it is because it was conditioned to an assisted voluntary return, which simply consists in accepting to be deported. Do we have to remind the prefecture once again that these people are here to stay and that neither their presence nor their right to unconditional accommodation is negotiable? At the end of this operation, and without counting the people who have been lost, at least thirty people, alone or with their families, found themselves on the street that day. [Read More]

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Notre-Dame-des-Landes (France): The Mohawked Salamanders Burn Down the Salamander’s School – Why We Attacked the Zad

By: xxx - September 19th, 2021  Filed under: News

“I simply didn’t see where the inevitable reformism was coming from this time, discreetly but surely, from those who speak of insurrection and autonomy by the thousands of copies.”
Quote from “The movement is dead… Long live reform”, November 2017.

The Zad was our pirate ship, the mother of all Zads. It emerged in a time with no way out and it was as if the world became a little more bearable. Like a brief glimmer of light, a possibility breaking through the thick, sticky fog of our future. For those of us who lead full and busy lives, off the beaten track, it was the knowledge that there would always be a place to welcome us if we were on the run. A place where the state would never come for us. A place where we would always find allies to feed us, to clothe us, to hide us in the folds of its hedges.

And this very state, which crushes us, kills us, hunts us, was given the Zad three years ago by a handful of opportunists. Those who, only yesterday, claimed this territory as being in “secession”.

This despicable betrayal, which took place behind the backs of those who confronted the police on the barricades, cannot be forgotten. Even less so when the local Comintern has come up with a project for an École des tritons [salamanders'(1) school], to celebrate the three year anniversary of what they call victory.

Rebuilding on the Planchettes(2) then? How can we not exult in rage at this umpteenth provocation? How can we not cry vengeance for the devastated East? [Read More]

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Lyon: occupation of the Clémenceau gymnasium for immediate and permanent rehousing of those evicted from the Feyzin squat

By: fawda - September 16th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

This morning, Thursday 16 September, around 7:30 am, without prior notice, more than 20 vans of the national and municipal police, CRS units, PAF (Border Police), accompanied by representatives of the prefecture, the town hall, DDETS/DDCS, Ofii and the Salvation Army, deployed a huge operation to evict the Feyzin squat, the former Georges Brassens school. Since February 2020, the place was sheltering 100 to 200 people, families and isolated people, and was under pressure, threats and lawsuits from the owner, the multinational Total.

No one, neither residents, nor supporters, nor associations, had been officially warned of the intervention. Most of the inhabitants were not able to recover all their belongings. Would it be more important for the institutions responsible for providing unconditional housing for everyone to protect Total’s image from yet another scandal than to respect the residents and their right to housing? [Read More]

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