A recently squatted building was publicly opened this morning in Calais, on rue des Prêtres. The building was an abandoned homeless shelter capable of accommodating at least 50 people. People started gathering outside the building around 11 o’clock this morning in support of the people already barricaded inside. A neighbour-collaborator called the cops, even going as far as to offer them a hand when they arrived. By around 2.00 some 12 vans of riot cops had the building surrounded, and those inside had already climbed up on the roof. Around 4.30, they started pushing away the people outside and smashing down the front door of the house with a battering ram. The deputy mayor of Calais who’s name isn’t important enough to publish was holding the battering ram together with the riot cops. Not managing to break down the door, they smashed in a window and opened the front door from the inside. [Read More]
Calais (France): New Occupation
For years, the government and the prefecture of Calais have been destroying living places. For years, people in Calais have been assaulted by police and fascists and have had their belongings destroyed . For years, people are forced to live in fear and insecurity because they are foreigners. [Read More]
Budapest: Városliget, occupied park
A group of determined people have stopped the government’s plans to cut down trees in Budapest’s biggest and most loved public park, Városliget, at least for now. How long will they be able to do so, we’ll see. The government wants to remove the museums found in the Royal Palace and relocate them to a to-be-created museum quarter carved out of the park. It is a very costly mega project that is just as unpopular as the compulsory Sunday closure of shops. Spending all these huge sums of public money, without any transparency, in a time when schools and hospitals are falling apart, is absolutely unnecessary. People understand it’s about two things. First, to distribute the EU funds Hungary receives among loyal friends who get these projects well overpriced, and so our Prime Minister can finally move in the castle where the Hungarian kings lived. A true story of rags to riches: from a mud-brick shack on the edge of a village to the Royal Palace. If people let it happen. [Read More]
Notre-Dame-Des-Landes (France): Communique on the meeting with the Calais hunger strikes
This Wednesday 23rd March, four 2012 hunger strikers from Nantes, accompanied by four activists, met with the Calais hunger strikers. Here is their testimony:
“We are here in support, in sympathy, in bringing our experiences, but certainly not to bring advise.
Compared to theirs, our experiences were very light: they have been on hunger strike since March 2nd, isolated in the southern part of the jungle that was destroyed, with a background noise of bulldozers flattening rubble, and the polce that surround them. [Read More]
Notre-Dame-Des-Landes to Calais: Call-out for decentralised actions against the Socialist Party
The weekend of 26th to 27th March, a call-out for decentralised actions against the Socialist Party was launched by the anti-airport movement.
Come to Calais, it’s possible to link these struggles. It’s why we invite you to reach Calais from Friday 25th March. There is no housing infrastructure, come with your own plan for sleeping, duvets, tents, supplies, etc… Be as autonomous as possible. There are some not too expensive restaurants in the jungle, put in place by refugees. Camp water isn’t drinkable. Bring what you need. It’s possible to reach the town centre by bus. If needed, an on-site telephone number : 07.51.02.17.33 and the legal number 07.51.55.72.54. [Read More]
Toulouse (France): Call for 10 days of People’s self-defense
From Friday 15th to Sunday 24th April 2016 @ the self-managed social center in Toulouse (C.S.A)
For almost 5 years now, we, members of the CREA (Campagne de Réquisition, d’Entraide et d’Autogestion ; meaning : Requisition, Mutual Aid and Self-managing campaign) [occupy] private and public empties for housing, organising and living regarding to our own needs and with our own ressources. We refuse to watch a city change according to rich people desires and see financial interests wage war to poor people. Since the very beginning of our campaign, We oppose the speculative logic of misery organised by the authorities in charge and by capitalism because We aim for living in dignity ; and, as could be expected, We suffer a repression which only increases every year. [Read More]
Hungary: Joining forces? Conservatives raise their voices
I will start this post with a piece of news that at first glance may not seem especially noteworthy. Viktor Orbán’s grandiose plans for rebuilding large portions of Budapest include the creation of a “museum quarters,” part of which would be built in Városliget, the Hungarian capital’s more modest Central Park. The city, especially the Pest side, is very short on green areas, and from the very beginning many people objected to the project on ecological grounds. Others objected to Viktor Orbán’s burning desire to move his office into the historic castle district, within whose medieval walls Hungarian kings once resided. Today parts of the royal castle, built in the nineteenth century, are used to house the National Library and the National Gallery. Among Viktor Orbán’s extravagant plans is the reconstruction of the monstrously huge royal castle, which requires moving both the National Gallery and the National Library elsewhere. The trouble is that there are no suitable buildings where these two important institutions could be relocated. Hence, the idea of a “museum quarters” and perhaps even a new building for the National Library somewhere near the National Museum in downtown Pest. All this would, of course, cost an enormous amount of money and would, in the process, destroy the “city park.” [Read More]
Athens: Gesture of solidarity with the squatters in Vancouver Apartman
Late in the evening of March 13th 2016, the Vancouver Apartman building which is squatted for a little over a decade came under attempted arson attack, when a Molotov cocktail landed in front of a door on Mavromataion Street.
At a time when the anarchist squat in Vancouver Apartman building is threatened with eviction, because of reconstruction plans by the Athens University of Economics and – above all – Business, it comes as no surprise that nationalist scum have rushed to assist the institutional repression. [Read More]
Marseille, France: Week of action in solidarity with eviction resistance in the Calais jungle
Following the recent evictions in Calais, a week of action in solidarity with the resistance of the ’’jungle’’ took place in Marseille. The various actions contained in this communique were anonymously contributed by numerous individuals and groups. All the targets chosen collaborate in the repression, subjugation and deportation of migrant and/or paperless people in Calais and elsewhere.
Below is the list of actions as they were communicated by those responsible: [Read More]
London: Interviews and highlights from Grow Heathrow’s 6th birthday party
London’s most famous eco-squat, Grow Heathrow, celebrates 6 years of inspired resistance. We go along to the party and talk to activists there about their struggles, their successes and our shared future.
Grassroots Takeover radio show: https://soundcloud.com/grassroots-takeover/happy-birthday-grow-heathrow
source: Occupy London http://occupylondon.org.uk/listen-here-to-interviews-and-highlights-from-grow-heathrows-6th-birthday-party/
UK: 6 reasons to support your local squats
Squatting has always been a direct solution to housing need, providing homeless people with immediate free housing that they can have some control over. Squatting has changed over the decades, from taking over entire empty streets neglected by councils in the 1970s to now moving into empty business premises before developers manage to tear them down and throw up yuppie flats in their place.
Changes in the law and attitudes (particularly from property owners who are taking a much greater interest in their empty properties these days), as well as the hyper-gentrification of inner-city neighbourhoods have made it much harder to squat at a time when there is greatest housing need. Solidarity with your local squatters is more important than ever. Here are some of the reasons to support your local squat – and the growth of the wider housing movement – and how to get involved:
[Read More]
London: Pop-up social centre closes
Housing activists occupied the prime property – next to Harrods – to build support for the Kill the Housing Bill demonstration on Sunday 13 March, which saw up to 10,000 people take to the streets in central London.
Radical Housing Network, a network of grassroots housing campaigns, used the empty building – known as “Our House” – to host a community-led week-long programme of workshops, talks and performance in response to London’s housing crisis and its effect on communities. The week of action was reported by the Independent newspaper among others.
[Read More]
Radar Online Agenda
