We’re told the only solution to the housing crisis is to build more homes. Just whack up enough new build flats and the market will sort itself out and make things a bit more affordable, right? But if you’re a person who’s getting kicked out of a council estate so that it can be flattened and then gentrified, it is in fact the building of houses or yuppy flats that is the cause of your housing crisis, not the solution.
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London: DiY regeneration shows how to solve housing crisis
Islamabad (Pakistan): Update on katchi abadis
On Wednesday August 26, the Supreme Court of Pakistan requested that the city of Islamabad stop the demolitions of katchi abadis (squatter settlements) [previously on S!N]. The court viewed the evictions as unconstitutional and also wanted to know why the city had ordered property owners not to rent to the evicted squatters.
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London: Organising in our Communities
Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth (HASL) have been organising together for two years on housing, benefits and other issues we face relating to poverty. Over time we have explored ways to make our organising more accessible and better addressed to our diverse needs. There are people in our group for whom English is not their first language, some are the sole carers for their children, some have mental or physical disabilities, or struggle with various other difficulties that living in poverty can entail.
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Amsterdam: Koole Maritime BV demolishing the nature on the ADM terrain without permits
Koole Maritime BV did come three times to the ADM terrain and started destroying the nature without the proper permits.
They were stopped on all three occasions by the police, but every time they managed to take out more and more nature.
Koole Maritime tells a different story each time about putting in some kind of road.
They started out saying that it was supposed to be an emergency road, then they said a temporary building road and now they say it needs to be an official road with drainage and everything.
That road, they claim is going to a new office building of theirs at the waterfront, but they haven’t obtained permission to build this.
They already started building this road without knowing whether they can continue any of their planned activities on the terrain, as the council did NOT give permission for this yet. [Read More]
Call out for an International Week for Anarchist Prisoners
In summer 2013 members of several ABC groups discussed the necessity of introducing an International Day for Anarchist Prisoners. Given there are already established dates for Political Prisoners Rights Day or Prison Justice Day, we found it important to emphasise the stories of our comrades as well. Many imprisoned anarchists will never be acknowledged as ‘political prisoners’ by formal human-rights organisations, because their sense of social justice is strictly limited to the capitalist laws which are designed to defend the State and prevent any real social change. At the same time, even within our individual communities, we know so little about the repression that exists in other countries, to say nothing of the names and cases involving many of our incarcerated comrades.
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Paris: Against states and their borders
This text on the wave of sans-papiers occupations in Paris tells important lessons for those involved in migrant struggles on the strategies used by liberal democratic states to contain them. If we anticipate these moves, how can we pre-empt them? And what strategic targets are based near you?
Original French text in Lucioles #23 with the title ‘Against states and their borders: revolution’; roughly translated by Rabble.
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CZ: The situation of our comrades in prison
English info about the Fenix case in Czech Republic originally posted on 23/06/2015, updated 21/07/2015, still current
Non-vegan diet, isolation, boredom, 90 minutes of daylight, meeting people through bars and hardened glass. These are just some of the conditions our comrades experience whilst imprisoned. In this article we would like to describe the everyday reality of imprisoned anarchists and outline ways to support them. We call for support of all four defendants and especially for Martin an I., to whom the next few weeks may be critical. We also call for exerting pressure on the Pankrác prison to respect Martin’s vegan diet and towards improving prison conditions in general and Ruzyně prison to respect I.’s vegan diet.
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Morocco: Brutal ‘Fortress Europe’ evictions, people flee to Forest Camps
The EU and Spain pay Morocco and other countries
to persecute migrants en route and to let them dump unwanted and undocumented migrants there.Desperate immigrants from war torn countries that for decades have been ‘debt cows’, milked for abusive debts by the IMF and western banks are terribly persecuted. Just enough are let close to Europe’s borders so they can bargain for more ‘aid’.
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Amsterdam: The Elephant, new social center threatened with eviction
On the 26th of July a commercial space at the Eerste van Swindenstraat 391 in Amsterdam that had been left empty by property speculators was squatted with the intention of transforming this empty shell into a community social centre: The Elephant.
This space was managed by real estate agency Van Maarschaalkerwaart, known to deliberately leave properties empty for a long time, as a means to make profit through speculation on property markets.
This is a widespread trend amongst property corporations, contributing to the gentrification process in the Dapperbuurt in which small businesses and low-income family are displaced from the neighborhood, through the raising of rents, lack of maintenance and other means. This has taken shape in the destruction of community and cultural spaces, as well as pressure on small businesses, forcing closures. This feature of the gentrification process can be noted clearly in the the closure of two social centres in the Dapperbuurt, as a result of corporations such as DeKey raising the rent to extortionate rates, in order to sell to property developers, speculators, hipster bars, and chain stores. [Read More]