At 1am this morning, 14th June 2012, over a dozen police vans raced down City Road, towards Finsbury Square. Accompanied by two or three coaches of bailiffs in orange jackets. They quickly formed a line round the site and dragged those asleep out of their tents. Some being aware of the police coming climbed into the barricade built over three of the wooden pallet houses, with one masked protester at the top of a tree in the square.
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London: Finsbury Square Eviction
Netherlands: Conversation with filmmaker João Romão on Dutch squats
By Our man in Amsterdam
A new documentary on the squatters’ movement by João Romão, a Portuguese economist and activist living in Amsterdam, has just been released. Squatted Freedom, a one-hour limited-budget film, combines archival footage and interviews with current and former squatters to examine the history and politics of the movement as well as the wave of recent, violent evictions of squats in Amsterdam.
Squatted Freedom is a fascinating film. The story of the squatters’ movement, past and present, is both captivating and inspiring. Violent confrontations between police and squatters have been taking place since the 1980s and continue into the present. Squatted Freedom reaches its climax during an intense standoff and eventual confrontation between squatters and riot police attempting to evict a prominent Amsterdam squat, a scene which Romão and his colleagues were lucky enough to capture on film. [Read More]
Squatting against austerity: Occupy Pisa grows and evolves
Squatting is on the rise again in these times of austerity (see for example the recent occupations of flats in Southern Spain, mostly carried out by housewives and families). An Italian project that’s caught my attention since its beginning is in Pisa, where last year’s Occupy protests evolved into the reappropriation and transformation of abandoned buildings for the benefit of the local community.
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London: Palestine Place
Activists in London have a tradition of reclaiming abandoned buildings, sometimes to use them as social centers, sometimes for definite periods of mobilization. On the last weekend in May, the latest such center was opened, but this time with a very singular focus.
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Madrid: Call for international solidarity with La Casika
Letter from La Casika C.S.O.A. – Call for international support
La Casika is a squatted, self-managed social center in existence for 14 years. During these years, numerous collectives of various types (ecologist, feminist, collectives that defend animal rights, antifascist, anticapitalist, neighborhood movements, educational, cultural…) have felt that this space is theirs, forming part of it, using and developing a range of activities: lectures, educational workshops, music, film, and theater festivals, art expositions, debates….the diversity and quantity of activities developed at La Casika, have made it into a cultural, social, and political reference point not only for Mostoles, but also for the rest of Madrid and the State, and has provided our town with a meeting point for reflection and alternative action, where the values of the capitalist system have been overcome by self-management. [Read More]
Milan: A building is not enough!
Hundreds of people are blocking a street in Milano protesting for the eviction of a skyscraper of 32 floors they were occupying. Torre Galfa, near Stazione Centrale, has been taken the 5 of May by Macao, a group of artists, video makers, journalists, immaterial workers to make a new arts center, to strengthen relationships between art and society and protest against abandoned buildings. [Read More]
Thessaloniki (Greece): Banner drop by the anarchist Radio Revolt in solidarity with squatted spaces
“On Thursday, August 2nd, we dropped a solidarity banner in solidarity with occupied spaces, in the context of ten anti-repression days declared by the translation counter-information network Contra Info.
In the same context of propaganda actions, late in the evening of Sunday, August 5th, at 22.00 (GMT+2) the anarchist radio-revolt will broadcast a thematic radio show regarding the authorities’ strenuous efforts to suppress (once again) Delta squat in recent days, with the assistance of the public electric power corporation (DEI), which has attempted to cut off the squat’s electricity supply. The live radio broadcast will include updates on repressive attacks against other squats and self-organized spaces.” [Read More]
A Future for the Occupy Movement? Occupy Our Homes in the US, And People Before Profit in South London
As the Occupy movement signals its reappearance, many observers have been wondering where its focus will be. In fact, even before the coordinated wave of evictions of Occupy camps across the US last November, and the later eviction of Occupy London outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, questions had been raised about where the movement should direct its attentions next, and empty property had arisen as a regular focus.
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Germany: First Declaration of the Hambach Jungle
The Forest is now squatted!
A part of the Hambach forest has been squatted in order to save it from the excavators send by the gigantic energy corporation RWE to dig up brown-coal. During a cultural festival in the woods, under the slogan „Forest not Coal“, activists pulled up platforms in the trees.
At the festival people from different groups met up, forming a broad coalition to get active in saving the Hambach Forest and stopping the extraction as well as the combustion of the coal beneath it.
According to the plans of RWE, the Hambach forest, near Cologne, shall be completly destroyed to make space for the largest open-cast mine in Europe in the next few years.
During the festivity people got the chance of taking responsibility by godfathering their special tree and protecting it their way(s). By squatting we are also taking over responsibility godfathering our trees, protecting them our own way.
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Dutch government wants to silence critic on queen
Comrades,
Today saw our dear server Squat!Net unreachable for several hours due to a court order directed at http://grotebroek.nl. The public prosecutor didn’t take kindly to a picture (mirror) of a poster announcing the Hang The Queen Party at this legalised squat in Nijmegen (NL). Considering this an insult to the monarchy and thus a felony offense, they ordered the datacenter colocating our server, Leaseweb, to take down the site.
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London: SQUASH Picnic Attendees facing SOCPA Charges
The following piece has been written by Ashleigh Marsh, one of five currently being prosecuted under SOCPA legislation for her role is taking part at a picnic and sleep-out on the 31st October 2011, in order to visually show the effect that the criminalisation of squatting would have on between 20-50,000 people in England and Wales, ie having to sleep rough. Ashleigh is active in her community, for example working to get a new skateboard park built for local people in Woolwich, one of most deprived areas in London. SQUASH fully support Ashleigh and all the defendants as they face disproportinate charges, from Monday 23rd April, under the draconian and anti-democratic SOCPA law. This is Ashleigh’s story…
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Athens (Greece): K-VOX Social centre reoccupied by hundreds tonight
More than 1,000 people at Exarcheia square solidarity concert. VOX, the social centre that was evicted and sealed off by police yesterday, has been reoccupied by hundreds of people in solidarity tonight. People tore down the steel plates sealing off the social centre and as of midnight (GMT+2) there were approx. 1,000 people attending the solidarity concert called by the centre’s collective. There are police forces in the periphery of Exarcheia but there does not seem to be any attempt for them to intervene as of yet.
[Occupied London]
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