Dublin: Squatting & the property question – Personal Possessions & Communal Property v Private Property

By: fawda - October 23rd, 2015  Filed under: essay

After an illegal eviction on Phibsborough Rd. in June much debate arose surrounding the legitimacy of the squatters and their rights to take over empty and unused properties and put them to use. This piece looking at the issue of squatting and property rights was written by a WSM member and an An Spreach member who was evicted on that day from the property.

—Personal Possessions & Communal Property v Private Property—

While one’s immediate reaction to using and living in an empty home or putting workplaces/land to use that is legally owned by another individual or company may immediately be that it is illegitimate or morally wrong, this article aims to deconstruct the argument that individuals, legal or real should be able to dominate and/or control property for their exclusive use, or to leave it rot at the expense of others. The ideas and justifications for private property go to the heart of the capitalist/statist system and its ability to control resources and the means to life to the exclusion, exploitation and detriment of the majority of the planet’s population. [Read More]

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Resisting the next wave of real estate speculation in Spain

By: fawda - October 22nd, 2015  Filed under: essay, video

Stop_BlackstoneA new speculative bubble may be taking shape as global investment firms buy devalued real estate in Spain. Will they beat a new path of dispossession?

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Spain was flying high. After extensive economic liberalization and adoption of the euro in the late 1990s, all indicators pointed up. Spain boasted the highest use of cement in the European Union, fifth worldwide, as close to a million houses were built in 2006 alone — more than France, Germany and Italy combined. Many were convinced that prosperity was here to stay.

But the boom was built on an asset bubble, where skyrocketing housing prices and unprecedented amounts of credit for developers and homeowners — and thus vast indebtedness — created the perfect storm. While more than six million new homes were built and house prices increased by over 200 percent from 1996 to 2007, in the years since then Spain has seen millions of vacant properties accumulate, housing production at a standstill, price declines of over 65 percent from their peak, and hundreds of thousands of home repossessions. [Read More]

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Bologna: Police comes to evict the Ex-Telecom building, resistance ensues both inside and outside it!

By: fawda - October 20th, 2015  Filed under: News

20151020_Bologna_eviction_Ex_Telecom_buildingUpdate 7.30 pm
The solidal picket beneath the Ex-Telecom building keeps growing in numbers, reaffirming that no one will leave without a satisfying solutions for all the occupiers.

Update 6.05 pm
After an assembly on the roof the occupiers deemed acceptable the proposal made by the social workers, that promise housing for everyone. They swore to debate as soon as they get down the roof in order to assess whether the proposal can be deemed satisfactory enough. Meanwhile the supporting picket that was called in front of the Ministry of Infrastructures in Porta Pia was charged. Water cannons were used in order to disperse the crowd. A youngster that fell ill was carried away in an ambulance, another one is at the hospital. The use of water cannons even destroyed some traffic lights. There were charges also against the supporting picket in Alessandria, in a day of struggle for housing rights that is getting recognized all over the country. [Read More]

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Dublin: Summer of evictions – video interview

By: fawda - October 19th, 2015  Filed under: Interviews, video

An interview about the wave of occupations and evictions that took place in the first half of 2015 in Dublin. It includes Grangegorman, The HSE houses, Phibsboro Road, Dream House, The Bolt, Avocado Bastard, Firehouse squat.
Video includes footage from many of the places mentioned and some rather random photos for the segments where we lacked video or photographs. [Read More]

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Dijon (France): Détournement in solidarity with Les Lentillères, “No hero no martyr”

By: xxx - October 16th, 2015  Filed under: News, video

2015-09-No-Hero-No-Martyr-prez

7min. 190Mo AVI [Download | French version] [Read More]

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London: Noise demo in solidarity with the Sweets Way prisoners this Saturday – cancelled

By: dolph-l - October 15th, 2015  Filed under: News

Update from Sweets Way Resists 15/10/15: “We can announce that today the 2 protesters were granted bail, and they retain their anonymity! We will therefore not be attending HMP Wormwood Scrubs on Saturday…”

Let’s make some noise for our friends and defenders of the Sweets Way Estate!

During the evictions on the Sweets Way Estate 19 people were arrested. 16 of those were in defence of Mostafa, the last remaining tenant. Despite being a passive resistance, they were arrested for obstructing the high court enforcers. We all believe these arrests were unjust, and 2 of the arrestees have asserted their right to remain anonymous. As a result, the state has incarcerated them, holding them on remand while the police take their time investigating their identities. [Read More]

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Münster (Germany): Social centre opens its doors

By: sisulscz - October 13th, 2015  Filed under: Communique

We have squatted a house! What happened?

We have opened the doors to the old Hauptzollamt in the Sonnenstraße 85 in Münster, Germany on the second weekend of October [Oct 9] for us and everybody! The building has been empty for several years. It costs, according to Westfälische Nachrichten (local newspaper), „several million.“ This is too expensive for us. But we would not give a single Euro for it either. We want the Zollamt to be a non-commercial space, for meetings, discussions and workshops, for art and music, a place for neighbourhood community and joint organisation. In short, this space is going to be transformed into a social centre – a space where everyone feels welcome.
[Read More]

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Hambach Forest (Germany): Another comrade in freakin jail

By: sisulscz - October 12th, 2015  Filed under: Communique

Only days after our comrade Jus was released from prison, after spending nearly three months locked up, another comrade has been kidnapped by the police.

On Wednesday 7th October, a person blockaded one of the conveyor belts in the Hambach mine. [Previously on S!N] When this belt stops, the diggers stop moving and the trains cannot be filled with coal. This mine is the second biggest open cast mine of Europe, and the Rhineland area is the biggest CO2 emmitter in Europe.
[Read More]

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Poznan: Conference “The cities for people – not for profit”

By: fawda - October 11th, 2015  Filed under: News

6th – 9th November 2015, Poznań, Poland

Greater Poland Tenants’ Association together with European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the are inviting you to the conference of tenants’ rights groups. The congress will take place in Poznań between 6th and 9th November 2015.

It has been many years since we can observe the expansion of precarity of housing condition all over the world. The neoliberal policies are forcing increasingly larger clusters of a society to outlay more and more: privatisation of common resources, welfare cuts, limiting citizens’ rights, mass evictions, gentrification and proliferation of banks on the housing market. These techniques are of international scope – the results, with varying dynamics and at different stages are discernible everywhere in the world. It is absolutely essential to create a network of solidarity in struggle for decent housing conditions. We are obliged to expose the radius of human rights violations, including the right to decent living, that shall not be aligned neither with one’s economic status nor their origin. We have to reveal the genuine character of EU and UN-Habitat policy (UN-Habitat Conference, Quito, Ecuador, October 2016) aiming to blow “the right to the city” and “the right to housing”. [Read More]

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Amsterdam: ADM’s 18th Birthday Festival

By: fawda - October 6th, 2015  Filed under: News

official festival poster ADM Blijt FestivalThe ADM is the biggest and longest surviving cultural freehaven in the Netherlands, known over the whole world due to 18 years social and cultural renewal and hospitality. It is an organically grown village in the western harbours of Amsterdam, arising from the longing to experiment in all possible areas. The ADM is a niche in the margin of organised society. A laboratory where the arrangement of our daily lives is practised as an art form, where the development of simple and sustainable solutions are automatic and innovation is not trendy but pure necessity.
The people of this self-regulating community are closely linked to each other by the space, visions and creations they share. On the terrain live some 130 people from all ages, nationalities and walks of life. Amongst them are: children and pensioners, theatre-makers and stage-builders, inventors and technicians, dancers and musicians, actors and directors, craftsmen and -women, sailors and buccaneerss, life-lovers and ‘different-thinkers’…
We improvise with time and money, test our place in the ecosystem, tinker with human relationships and build sculptures, compositions, heat sources and means of transport using another’s waste. In a direct interaction with our environment we thus create alternative ways of living, sharing, learning and growing. [Read More]

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London: Mamelon Tower squat evicted by riot cops after 6 hour showdown

By: fawda - October 6th, 2015  Filed under: Communique, News

Yesterday (Monday 5 October) TSG riot cops alongside bailiffs came in force to evict the Mamelon Tower squat in Kentish Town, North London, which had been occupied by “Squatters and Homeless Autonomy”. The Met’s finest meatheads met impressive barricades and concerted resistance and it took six hours for them to enter the building. Six people were arrested for “affray”. A noise demo took place yesterday evening outside the police station where they were being held. We will post further updates and calls for solidarity as we get more news. We repost below the statement by SHA on yesterday’s events, and also the statement they published when they first squatted the building. [Read More]

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London: Report back from anti-gentrification fuck parade

By: dolph-l - October 4th, 2015  Filed under: Communique, News

Last Saturday over a thousand people came together at the ‘Fuck Parade’ to resist gentrification and the social cleansing in London’s East End. It was a beautiful expression of feeling put into action.

It kicked off under Shoreditch High Street arches with three or so massive music rigs, fire breathing and buzzing energy. A couple of hundred at first, mostly anarchists, squatters and social housing eviction resistors. The solid bloc continued to grow, as the informal march went through the streets chanting with flares and flash grenades, holding space and blocking roads, picking up more and more local people off the street and out of the estates as it passed. At points the demo was around a thousand people. [Read More]

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