San Francisco (California): Three Arrested as SFPD Raid Squat “The Crows’ Nest”

By: xxx - August 6th, 2013  Filed under: News

Sunday August 4, 2013; morning
426 Capitol Avenue, San Francisco, CA

Three politically active people were arrested this morning at a squatted home in the Ocean View district of San Francisco at 426 Capitol Avenue. The house had been squatted for three months as a home for activists and people in need of housing.

This raid and arrest happens during the so called Eviction Free Summer, a campaign of actions to keep people in their homes in response to the foreclosure crisis. The foreclosure crisis is being perpetuated by some of the biggest banks in the United States, who have been accused of predatory lending practices and other illegal actions against homeowners. Since 2007, the foreclosure crisis has displaced at least 10 million people from more than four million homes across the country. [Read More]

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Oakland (USA): Squat defense for the Stay Away Squat

By: fawda - August 6th, 2013  Filed under: News
Oakland_StayAway_1

We are the squat collective at Stay Away in East Oakland. Tuesday, August 6th makes two full weeks we have been living behind the barricades in order to defend and save our home, a radical space, and one of the lasting vestiges of the Occupy Oakland movement. We are still struggling. We are asking the community of the Bay Area; fellow squatters, fellow radicals, our comrades to come out and help us in the event of an attempted forcible removal by the Sheriff’s Department. Oakland has lost too many of its radical spaces. We are facing the same evil corporation, REO Homes LLC, that evicted the G-Spot–another radical space–and the state and corporate forces are trying to quash our movement to live free.

This house has a two year history that rose directly out of Occupy Oakland, and has gone through many changes with many members, but it has remained, and will remain, an activist house. Members of this collective work or have worked with various groups from Food Not Bombs to Cop Watch as well as founding the Park Gardens and many other activist groups. We are a diverse group or individuals working together collectively to provide a space that is liberated from corporate control of our lives, and to be an example of how we can live free of the chains of capitalism. [Read More]

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Cardiff (Wales): ACAB take over Canton Police Station

By: dolph-l - August 5th, 2013  Filed under: Press release

In the early hours of Sunday morning, we entered and occupied Canton Police Station. We did not ask for permission, as it is our legal right to do so. Given Cardiff Police abandoned the building over a year ago, kindly leaving twelve different open windows for us to choose our entrance from, permission seemed a bit of a formality anyway.

We squat because we believe that corporations and landlords have no right to hold property empty for their own profit while people less lucky are homeless, that people should not have to sell their freedom to employers or jump through government hoops to put a roof over their heads, and that the police should not be allowed to act as hired muscle for the rich and powerful, consistently ignoring, abusing and outright breaking the law to maintain the interests of the ruling classes. [Read More]

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Hamburg: Open letter to Saskia Sassen

By: sisulscz - July 30th, 2013  Filed under: News

Dear Ms Sassen,

in an interview with the German daily ‘tageszeitung’ published on May, 25th 2013 you answered extensively with regards to your position as curator of this year’s international building exhibition (IBA) currently underway in the Hamburg borough of Wilhelmsburg. Throughout the interview you emphasize that there can be no talk of
‘gentrification’. You virtually refrain from corroborating your statement with hard facts beyond your repeated statement that the managers of the building exhibition show ‘goodwill’ and that it is their ‘declared aim’ to not drive out the ‘local residents’.
We were quite surprised to read this. Judging by a few of your texts which we have studied, it was our understanding that it is your intention to point out a growing polarization as a result of the development of ‘global cities’.
[Read More]

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Cracow: We ask for solidarity actions with social centre “Gromada”

By: Rosa - July 28th, 2013  Filed under: News

Squat “Gromada” was created in the centre of Cracow, near the main railway station, in the district, which is particularly attractive for developers.  For many years the building was empty, so it’s condition is getting worse and worse. On the 12th of July group of activists in Cracow announced the official opening of the socio-cultural centre in this building. The event was accompanied with the Cracow Rhythms of Resistance. Activists organized a picnic for neighbours.

[Read More]

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Eviction of new “Legal” Squat in Calais.

By: midnight - July 27th, 2013  Filed under: News

On Wednesday morning banners were dropped from a disused building belonging to the State on Rue de Quatre Coins reading ‘A Roof is a Right’ and ‘This is a legal squat’. The building had been occupied for many days beforehand, although clandestinely, and being safely past the 48 hour point, after which the police cannot enter or evict without a court order by French law, the occupants decided to make their occupation public. Police Nationale arrived shortly after but then left again to return with more police, but did not try to enter seemingly understanding their legal position and respecting the rights of those inside. A representative from the town hall also showed up, as well as a police forensics technician, who both took pictures of the door (and the legal notice that had been taped to it) but did not find anything to have been damaged and left again.

However, the next day at 7:30 AM around thirty PAF arrived and forced entry into the building by breaking the front door and climbing in an upper story window. Three people who were inside were arrested and taken to Coquelle, where they were held without food for ten hours, but then released without any charge or summons despite refusing to cooperate with police or identify themselves.

[Read More]

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Calais (France): Squat on Victor Hugo served papers

By: midnight - July 27th, 2013  Filed under: News

Occupied now for a month and a half, the squat on Boulevard Victor Hugo was visited by the city bailiff and a vanload of CRS yesterday so that they could take the name on the house and begin legal proceedings.

One week after the beginning of the occupation, the Assistant Mayor Phillippe Mignonet showed up with police and used obvious demagogy to try and convince us of our illegitimacy, but without actually being able to do anything. The politician (who holds extremely right wing views and celebrates repression against migrants in general) told us, “I will make your life hell. It’s not a threat, it’s a promise!”

Although this may be his intention, he is in fact completely impotent in the face of our occupation. This was acknowledged by the article in the Nord Littoral newspaper entitled ‘Un groupe de No Borders indélogeable’, which stated that despite the passage of the police and the municipality it’s impossible to dislodge the squatters after 48 hours of occupation without going through a legal process. [Read More]

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Oakland: All Out To Support The Stay Away Squat!

By: sisulscz - July 26th, 2013  Filed under: News

Last week, residents at the Stay Away received an eviction notice from the Alameda County Sherriff, ordering them to vacate by this Tuesday, July 23rd. The Stay Away is a squatted four-unit apartment building that was started in November of 2011 in the midst of the events surrounding Occupy Oakland. It has housed numerous people since it began and provided free rent for those who needed it. Now it is threatened with destruction at the hands of REO Homes LLC, a predatory entity that has bought hundreds of foreclosed houses in the City of Oakland (especially West Oakland).
[Read More]

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Calais: Global No Border squat on Rue Caillette safe for now

By: midnight - July 20th, 2013  Filed under: News

Today (June 18) the court in Calais declared the municipality’s request for the eviction of the squat on Rue Caillette “unreceivable” for procedural reasons. This means that the city will have to resubmit and argue their case all over again before being able to evict, giving those living there more valuable time before being forced back onto Calais’ streets. Here is an open letter which was submitted for the defence by the occupants.

The ineptitude of the municipality in how they handled this case has been surprising although very welcome. Apparently, when forced to respect the law and abide by procedure the city does not know what to do, having gotten so accustomed to breaking down doors and throwing people out over the years (old habits die hard). [Read More]

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London: Roma Solidarity

By: sisulscz - July 20th, 2013  Filed under: News

In picture: rubber-cloved police smirk as they chase away Roma in a dawn raid on 19 July against the Marble Arch encampment in London’s high-class Park Lane district, assisted by immigration officers and staff from the Romanian Embassy. Some seventy people, including children, had been sleeping in the open under blankets and plasic.
[Read More]

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Krakow: New social centre

By: sisulscz - July 19th, 2013  Filed under: News

(12.07) At six o’clock in Krakow group of activists announced the opening of a new stand-alone on the street Worcella 8 The building is located at the retail park, arousing controversy for years now has a chance to become a space for grassroots socio – cultural.
[Read More]

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Chania (Crete): 9 years of occupation for the Rosa Nera squat

By: fawda - July 18th, 2013  Filed under: video

Rosa Nera http://rosanera.squat.gr/

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