Southwark, London: Residential occupation in protest of council housing sell-off and Section 144

By: dolph-l - October 28th, 2013  Filed under: News, Press release

Housing activists have occupied a property owned by Southwark council which was due to be auctioned today at a starting price of £2.3 million.

They have occupied the building to stop the sell-off of yet more public housing stock when the borough faces a severe housing crisis with almost 25,000 people on the housing waiting list and increasing numbers of people forced to sleep rough on London’s streets.

The occupation is also a challenge to section 114 of the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO) introduced last September which criminalised squatting in residential properties. This law has meant that homeless people seeking shelter in empty buildings can find themselves with a prison sentence. [Read More]

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Hackney, London: Art School starting up at 195 Mare Street Social Centre next week

By: dolph-l - October 26th, 2013  Filed under: News

Hello everybody. Your social center at Mare Street is back with an art school open for all!

Born from the creative needs of our residents and our friends, we are building an art studio, a darkroom and a series of workshops where you can come, learn and share your skills with everybody.

Our art studio and darkroom are being built from scrap and every help is welcome. Today we are starting to clear the space on our basement that will give place to these. If you want to help us out just show up today with good working mood and let’s all make this happen! Also we will need some materials to start working, so if you have something around that can help it would be great. [Read More]

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Brighton: Appeal coming up!

By: sisulscz - October 25th, 2013  Filed under: News

The appeal of the third squatban resister is coming up in Brighton!

In a week and a half, on the 30th and 31st of October, our friend Dirk will finally have his appeal against his conviction for Squatting a Residental building. We call on all squatters to come to this appeal and support Dirk! Fuck S144!

Down with Weatherley, up the squatters!
[Read More]

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Calais (France): The Eritrean Squat has been evicted

By: fawda - October 22nd, 2013  Filed under: News
Evicted squat, Rue Neuve, in Calais

The Eritrean squat in rue Neuve has been evicted, 70 + people newly in the street. Tents, sleeping bags, blankets are very much needed. Most of all we need activists to go to Calais and support!

Following lots of arrivals to Italy via Lampedusa there are now well over 100 Eritreans present in Calais. They are escaping a brutal dictatorship and a long war with Ethiopia. There are a record number of women from Eritrea and Ethiopia in Calais, most are in the safe space opened by No Borders. The ‘jungles’ where Eritreans and Ethiopians wait to go to England are full over the limit. Following the tragedy a shipwrecks south of Lampedusa, causing the death of over 350 people, mainly Eritreans, there have been protests in Italy and in many European cities.

After the Syrians went on hunger strike and occupied the pedestrian entrance to the ferry port, the camp of the Syrians in front of the place of food distribution was not disturbed by police for a while. About 50 people sleep there, including some minors. Today however a large number of police went around the place of food distribution. The Syrians in this camp are asking for support. [Read More]

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Spain: European Court of Human Rights halts eviction of families

By: sisulscz - October 21st, 2013  Filed under: News

[Note – this story is taken from mainstream press]

The European Court of Human Rights has blocked the eviction of a group of families in northeastern Spain who have been squatting in a block of flats owned by the country’s bad bank. [Read More]

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Schwarzwohnen: The spatial politics of squatting in East Berlin

By: sisulscz - October 21st, 2013  Filed under: News

East Berlin’s squatter movement erupted across the city after the fall of the wall in 1989. But what role did housing activists in the 1980s play in shaping an alternative vision for the contemporary city?

In September 1988, an anonymous report appeared in the East German underground magazine Umweltblätter describing the plight of a group of squatters who had occupied 61 Lychenerstrasse in the Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg. In the squatters own words, they had “occupied the house in order to overcome the contradiction between, on the one hand, the many vacant and decaying houses [in Berlin], and on the other, a growing number of people in search of housing”. As “squatters (Instandbesetzer),” they proclaimed, “we will resist the further cultural and spiritual devastation of the country.”[i]
[Read More]

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Cardiff (Wales): The Red and Black Umbrella Collective invite you to their festive Two Year Anniversary

By: dolph-l - October 21st, 2013  Filed under: News

If you’re organised enough to carry ’round a diary (I am definitely not) penciling in the
1st AND 2nd of November is highly advisable as it will see our first festival!

A two day event ending on the 2nd November to celebrate 2 YEARS of the occupied building in Cardiff. Easy enough to remember, right?

Beginning as a vague plan to host an Anarcho-Folk festival in Cardiff; the event has now evolved into a two day celebration of the ‘Brolly.
The space it has provided us has been invaluable to many, so we invite anyone and everybody who has shared the space with us to come, in particular any guests we have had to stay, musicians who’ve played and individuals who’ve led any lessons or workshops. Please come and celebrate with us! [Read More]

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Calais (France): Summer of evictions reaps devastation

By: fawda - October 21st, 2013  Filed under: News
Calais_Beer_house_eviction

As we come towards the end of the summer no borders are counting there losses, every shelter has been raided, trashed, evicted on multiple occasions, leaving many of the migrants on the streets without tents or sleeping bags. Added to this, the rain and the cold are sapping any remaining energy, and many are sick.

The project no borders have been most involved with, that had become a shelter for the most venerable woman, children, elderly and injured people in small house called Victor Hugo or often by the migrants the woman’s house. This project has gone through many changes from being a social centre on the first floor enabling many migrants to cook their own meals to kitchen for activist groups round Europe.

Unfortunately with the massive pressure put on the space by the police evictions, the rules decided by the women of the house aren’t being respected, as there are many men coming with no other place to go leading to a desperate situation. [Read More]

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Barcelona: Communiqué of the Kasa de la Muntanya squat about dismantled CCTV camera

By: fawda - October 21st, 2013  Filed under: Communique, News
Kasa_de_la_Muntanya_Barcelona

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. by Edward Everett Hale

In words of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, “kill the exception to confirm the rule”, and so, keep the smooth functioning of the system. The new society of control is here. It is not us who have discovered it, we’ve just suffered it, as everyone else.

A few days ago, the group Stop Control detected a police CCTV camera in the Esperança hospital looking at us, at the Kasa de la Muntanya squat. This group has made a step forward and has decided to go where this vigilance, dominance and espionage device was located. They rendered it useless and, not considering it enough, they made their action public. [Read More]

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Girona (CAT): Mas Castelló evicted

By: R! - October 16th, 2013  Filed under: Communique, News

Today, Wednesday 16th October, at 6am, while police officers tried to break down the front door to the house, others climbed a ladder and broke a window to the dining room. They held us in a room while they searched the house. The “Brigada de Información” (Political Police) have seized material (fanzines, a computer, mobile phones, tools…). A person got hit at their head while trying to protect their dog from the police.

We counted more than 10 vans of riot police.

Six people have been subpoenaed to make statements in Figueras on 11th November, accused, according to the court papers, of Usurpation and possibly Sedition.

http://torresmasaltashancaido.espivblogs.net/

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Calais: CMS callout to come and crack buildings

By: dolph-l - October 15th, 2013  Filed under: News
Winter is coming, shelter is a priority in Calais. The police have evicted and destroyed almost our shelter – buildings, camps, tents – in the past weeks.

There are empty buildings all over Calais town. We need people to come and open and secure them! We need people with skills and energy to join and support our resistance to this border.

Calais Migrant Solidarity have squatted a social centre, as it gets colder, more and more people are trying to sleep in it. Whilst we try to keep it a safe space for vulnerable people and people working on the ground, it’s getting over filled.

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October 19th: European Day of Action for Housing

By: dolph-l - October 15th, 2013  Filed under: News
Housing for people, not for profit!

We are confronted with a brutal European austerity regime which continues to transform our livelihoods into financial assets for global speculation, which violates the universal right to housing every day, which destroys democracy at all levels and has no socially acceptable solution for the crisis of capitalism. Not only since the crisis it is the poor and excluded who get hit by this system especially hard: un- and underemployed, homeless, precarious workers, immigrants, Roma, students, single mums, and everybody who is not willing to fit into a capitalist mode of reproduction. This group is now becoming the majority of society.

How the capitalist systems plays out in the diverse housing markets in Europe might be different, but the underlying logic of neoliberal politics, privatization and financialization of our homes is the same.
This is why we aim to stand up, to unite our struggles and to broaden our movements. We will not let us be divided by neoliberal politics.

Join our struggle on October 19th!

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