Monday saw an eviction without court order in Dublin involving Garda and private security / builders at Villa Park, Dublin 7. The house had been left abandoned for at least two years according to neighbours before being brought back into use last October by people who needed a home. One of them told us that it was a “Beautiful house that was to be demolished in order to make a new route to warehouse / bakery behind it but neighbours objected and planning permission was refused. The person claiming ownership seemed to be very wealthy and is listed as a director of over 28 companies.” [Read More]
Riga: “The Capital of Empty Spaces”. Dealing with the Shrinking of the Great Baltic City
It’s a dead-eyed building the colour of a paving slab, set back from the street outside at the end of a pockmarked driveway. Looming behind the roof like a figment of a bad dream is a colossal edifice, copper-coloured, precision-cut and cartoonish, a child’s conception of a skyscraper, chiselled out of the twilight sky. This is Riga, capital of Latvia, and here, we’re on the other side of the tracks – literally: the railway lines leading into the city centre cordon off the Old Town from Maskavas Forštate (the Moscow Suburb), usually referred to as Maskačka, the sprawling, chaotic and large ethnic Russian district associated locally with crime and unemployment. The hulking skyscraper beyond is Riga’s most visually inescapable legacy of the fifty-year Soviet occupation – constructed in 1956 in the Stalinist classical model, a scaled-down colonial cousin of similar edifices in Moscow and Warsaw.
But today, though the building may look like the same drab grounded rectangle as ever, internally, it’s bursting with energy. Clusters of people hover around eating, talking or playing undirected music, some line the walls, looking at pictures and felt-tipped imperatives on drawing boards. The little rooms upstairs host workshops on a number of practical and impractical subjects, from improvisation to soap-making. Cakes and vegetarian food emanate endlessly from somewhere. A Latvian-language poster stuck on the inside of the door urges (or promises) “Latvian-Russian friendship”. At one point everyone squashes themselves into the truncated hall to listen to a speech. [Read More]
Dublin: Better to Squat Than Let Homes Rot
On the merits of Squatting as a tactical response to the permanent housing crisis.
While the government says there is no money to build social housing, they seem to forget the fact that there are over 270,000 vacant houses, flats and apartments scattered around the country, and over 30,000 in Dublin alone. There are over 90,000 people waiting on the social housing list in Ireland – but there is quite an easy answer to the housing crisis, the government doesn’t even need to stretch itself any distance to address. they simply need to introduce a law to legally allow people to squat properties that have been empty for over 6 months, or relax the laws to make it easier to squat. Coupled with a sensible social housing strategy, based around people’s actual needs and not purely profit for landlords, the housing/homeless crisis could be greatly reduced.
No government loan schemes, no sub-standard, gentrified social housing projects, and no need to wait for a new property bubble to develop to finish off the economy altogether. Over one billion a year is provided by the government to create and sustain social housing in Ireland over a two year period. The majority of this is a simple giveaway and effectively a government subsidy to private landlords (including large and small landlords, hotels, hostels and B&Bs), as the money goes straight into the coffers of already property- and capital-rich individuals/companies. It is largely dead money to those homeless or precariously homed people who have no choice but to pay artificially inflated rent for, in many cases, sub-standard and dangerous accommodation. [Read More]
London: Grow Heathrow’s 6th Birthday, 4-6th March
On March 1st 2010, Transition Heathrow members swooped on an abandoned market garden site in Sipson; one of the villages to be completely tarmacked to make way for a third runway at Heathrow.
6 years later, and Grow Heathrow is still here.
This weekend we’re celebrating this hub of social activity and resistance against Heathrow’s 3rd runway, and the hundreds of you who have made this happen over 6 years.
Come and celebrate with us!
Friday 4th March
3 – 5pm: The Beauty is in the Struggle: Come along to the Sipson mural. Add your hand prints to the many celebrating the beauty that lies in the struggle of Sipson Village. Outside the Zayani restaurant UB7 0HU.
Open Mic Night: Join us in the evening for vegan cuisine and music. Bring your instruments! [Read More]
Greece: The self-organized refugee squat Orfanotrofio in Thessaloniki
The following audio is a recording made by activists of the self-organized refugee squat Orfanotrofio in Thessaloniki, Greece. This material has been made available to us by our comrades at Crna Luknja, the anarchist radio show at Radio Student in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.
The comrades of Orfanotrofio tell about the conditions that led to squatting this place in Thessaloniki in the beginning of last December and about their struggle to keep the place despite of all obstacles. [Address of refugee squat Orfanotrofio: Grigoriou Lampraki 186, Thessaloniki. Bus 14/14a at bus station “Orfanotrofio”].
This is on the self-organized refugee squat Orfanotrofio in Thessaloniki. (Length: 5:30 min). You can download the audio at: archive.org (wav | mp3 | ogg).
Here you can listen to it directly:
[Read More]
Utrecht: “The Office”
New squat in Utrecht!
On the 6th of January 2016 we occupied an empty Office building in t’Goylaan 125-127, Utrecht.
There is a Soupcafe every Sunday at 7, if you want to help cooking, come by at 3.
The Soupcafe is held in the 5th floor cafeteria with panorama view, everybody’s welcome.
Nantes, France: Police station repainted in support of the ZAD of Notre-Dame-Des-Landes
Whilst the cases of the last legal occupants of the Zad were being judged this Wednesday [January 13th 2016], we set out to repaint the red police station facade of the Beaujoire neighbourhood, in the purest tradition of Nantes-style greenwashing.
We’re not fooled: we know well that every court defeat implies a confidence uptake for concreters to go further in the airport project. [Read More]
Brazil: The Passe Livre movement in São Paulo
The struggle for the right to the city, against the intensification of exploitation and valorization is complex and diverse. May it be people in Berlin stopping an eviction, squatting houses in Amsterdam, taking squares in Greece or fighting for free public transportation in Brazil. A state with a massive territory, huge cities and as in so many places a classist, racist and sexist division of labour that expresses itself among other ways through the public transportation system. As Anarchist Radio Berlin we had the opportunity to talk with an activist of the Passe Livre movement from Sao Paulo, Brazil, about their struggle.
Length: 17:04 min
You can download the audio at: archive.org (wav | mp3 | ogg).
Here you can listen to it directly:
[Read More]
Lille/Toulouse, France: Spontaneous march and flaming barricades in solidarity with the ZAD
Lille, France: Support action to the blocking of Nantes’ ring-road
At this very moment in Lille [Saturday 9th January] a day/evening is being held of support to the ZAD of Notre Dame des Landes and the inhabitants that face trial this Wednesday 13th January. More than 100 people gathered in the General Assembly decided to show their support to Nantes protesters that are currently blocking Cheviré bridge. [Read More]
Notre-Dame-Des-Landes, France: Final communique of the 9th January tractors-bikes demonstration
The entirety of the anti-airport movement, with all its organizations and collectives, prepared the demo of January 9th in less than ten days. It was needed to demand the immediate abandon of the eviction trial initiated December 7th and re-scheduled for January 13th by AGO (airport conglomerate)/VINCI (contractor) in the name of the State. The eviction process concerns 4 farms and 11 family homes…
We would like to thank the farmers who came with their tractors, more than 450, to yell the rage of the world of small farmers. These eviction threats, which don’t even respect the winter truce (evictions are normally forbidden in the winter months- until march, because it’s cruel), with threats to seize land, property, and livestock, with exorbitant daily fees if they stay, are unprecedented, and intolerable. We would like to thank the more than 20,000 people who came, on bike or on foot, to bring their support to the residents and farmers. [Read More]
Nantes, France: 20,000 people protest Notre-Dame-Des-Landes airport construction
400 tractors, 1,000 cyclists and 20,000 marchers turned up on the ring road on the periphery of Nantes to protest the Notre-Dame-Des-Landes (NDDL) proposed airport, and support the ZAD ongoing occupation.
Protesters argue that building a new international airport is a climate crime, adding to and encouraging flight carbon emissions.
But also it turns productive agricultural land into non-productive fields, tarmac and terminals, while also endangering biodiversity and the habitat of 130 protected species. Surveys of the site have identified at least five legally protected species that have not been taken into account by the project records made available to the investigation and related prefectural orders. [Read More]
Athens: New squat in Themistokleous St. 58 in Exarchia
In the evening of Sunday, January 10th 2016, we occupied the empty building on Themistokleous St. 58, in Exarchia, Athens. The intention is to open up a place where migrants who are blocked here in Greece, because of the European migration policies, can live and self-organize free from state control. We are a group of individuals from different places and of different contexts, connected through the fight against States, nations, borders, lager, prisons, capitalism; eventually against every part of this rotten system of domination that oppresses us. We are open to anyone who agrees with our basic principles and wants to participate in the project without a hidden political agenda.
This squat isn’t meant to be a public service. We aren’t “volunteers” and we don’t see migrants as victims. One of the challenges of this project will be to overcome in practice the separation imposed on us by borders and citizenship. This house seeks to become a place where people organize themselves and learn from one another mutually, regardless of their origins. [Read More]
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