Warsaw: Press release Elba squat

On the 16th of March around 11am a group of workers from “Skrzecz” security agency entered unlawfully the premises of Elba, an alternative social centre in Warsaw. The security was hired by the landlord, the Finnish company Stora Enso. At this time there were several people on the ground who were beaten and forced out of the buildings. The security agents left a path of destruction inside the buildings and took away belongings of the residents of the squat. In the course of actions of the secutity agents money disappeared. This unlawful raid and illegal actions were actively supported by a group of police officers. As a matter of fact they made it impossible to defend against the agression of the security agents and did not react on countless incidents of breaking the law.

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Warsaw: Elba squat violent eviction

Today/now.., without warning, Elba squat in Warsaw is being violently evicted. Elba is the longest running and largest independent cultural center in Warsaw.

This is a part of a Polish live report, translated with g00gl, source: http://poland.indymedia.org/pl/2012/03/55240.shtml
Please share info if you know more!

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France: 3 busy days on the ZAD

In the afternoon of monday March 5th the tenants of a house at les Ardillières moved out and left the house to the Conseil général (the owner). Two hours later the CG had a company board up the house. A few squatters came by and decided to have a word with the workers. Three cops show up and the squatters decide to call their mates. About twenty people show up and decide to squat the house. The workers and cops move out and call backup. The police had their tires stabbed.

At 7 PM 5 sections of riot cops arrived (from the direction of la Paquelais) who escorted the local gendarmes who first beat everyone out the garden and next evicted the house violently. A physiongnomist called several people by their supposed names. Several people got injured. [Read More]

London: 100 police illegally evict social centre

One of London’s largest and most active social centres was evicted Friday morning by around 100 police from the Territorial Support Group. According to reports, occupants were rudely awakened by an unruly mob of riot police breaking the inner door to their sleeping area. As no legal process had been initiated, an old warrant for the building was used as a pretext for the eviction. Occupants were in shock with the latest move by the authorities which allegedly defies nearly all the basic rights for every person to justice, as well as contravening Section 6 of the Criminal Law Act 1977.
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Tatekawa Tent Village’s Call for International Action to Stop the Exclusion of Homeless People (March 6, 2012)

Please support the Tatekawa Tent Village by sending a message to the Koto Ward office to protest recent evictions.

The situation is dire and your responses could help prevent another eviction.

Please send faxes to the three parties listed below before the end of March.
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Montréal, Canada: Police violence and retaliation

Since the last February14th, a vast strike movement is shaking the post-secondary studies sector (colleges and universities) in the province of Québec. This general strike movement, mostly lead by a left-wing coalition of student unions – the CLASSE (French acronym for Broad Coalition of the Association for Student Syndicalist Solidarity) – has set itself, as an immediate objective, the cancellation of the recent 25% tuition fees raise implemented by the neoliberal government of Québec, the second such raise in 4 years, after more than 15 years of tuition fee freezing. The movement is now 125,000 striking students strong and many strike votes will be held in the coming weeks by student assemblies. Many massive street demos gathering thousands of people, as well as blockade actions have been organized, triggering more and more police repression.
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Ljubljana: What is Zadruga Urbana?

Zadruga Urbana” is a group of people who came together with the shared dissatisfaction for the current system of food production, who believe in the necessity for a collective movement to take the process into their own hands. We believe that collective gardens raise people’s awareness of producing their own food, consuming locally and being autonomous/productive, enabling individuals without land of their own to produce food with a sensitivity for their local natural environment.

Our group wants to bring people together to learn and promote the ideas to find solutions for change towards a more sustainable life regardless of previous experience. Everyone is welcome to participate in our gardens and network, to learn and share the skills of producing our own food. We aim to use local seeds and to fertilize our crop naturally.

Our vision is to connect individuals and collectives in a horizontal, non-hierarchical way, to promote autonomy in local food production and freer access to public land. We also plan to reclaim/collectivize more locations in urban spaces and organise guerilla gardening. We hold regular lectures and talks on a range of permacultural and environmental topics such as beekeeping, composting and germination which are free to attend. We have a plans to create vegetable and seed bank/market as well as social kitchen with produce which is in line our aims. [Read More]

Italy: Eviction of Baita Clarea

Eviction of “Baita Clarea”(a house constructed by activists which is in the area of the future highspeed train line) and murder attempt in Val Susa.

On saturday a peaceful nationwide demonstration of more than 50,000 participants against the construction of a highspeed train line between Torino and Lyon took place in Val Susa in the west of Torino. After the demonstration the police started beating up about 500 participants of the demonstration on their way home to Milano at the central train station in Torino.
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Reading, UK: Lasting Roots

“Process to remedy Katesgrove ‘eyesore’ begins” read the Get Reading headline on 23 February 2012. The following article explained that “plans for a new community garden in Katesgrove could blossom” following a recent council decision to purchase a piece of derelict land. This news means a lot to the members of Reading L&S as it marks the ongoing victories of a land occupation they first began six years ago.

In late 2006, a group of friends squatting in a closed down women’s centre on a busy junction in the Katesgrove neighbourhood of Reading, hatched a plan. The three council owned buildings next door had been derelict for years and the gardens behind them had become a junkies paradise. The ‘secured’ gardens had long become unsecured and needles were strewn everywhere where any child could find them.
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New squat in Cologne, Germany: Our first statement

On 2nd March 2012 we, a group of leftist people, squatted an abandoned building at Deutz-Mülheimer-Straße, near the old industrial complex of the KHD-Group in Cologne.

We want to develop a collective here. The squat is a place for both, working and living beside the capitalistic enforcement. We want to live with each other without hierarchically structured regulation.

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Spain: the Big Squat

“If they evict us, I don’t know what we’re gonna do. Now we have nothing”, says Trini, who lives with his partner and son in one of the eight squatted houses in a building at the center of Madrid. The 500 euros she earns taking care of elders is the only income of her family. As with most of the families that had been forced to squatting, Trini and her family want to pay for their house, but at a fair price. “I have a son and I want him to learn that he have to work hard to gain things”, explains Trini.

Since 2007 there were more than 350,000 evictions for unpaid mortgages, according to the Spanish Association of People Affected for Embargoes and Auctions. Many of these evictions have left entire families with children without homes and, have even been the cause of several suicides, like the case of M.P., who hanged himself in the street on November, 2011, in Catalonia, after being evicted with his wife and two children.

The situation of housing in Spain is especially paradoxical. While hundreds of thousands families have lost their homes, in 2001 there were more than three million empty houses and today there could be six millions. Meanwhile,the financial entities had became the mayor real states of the country. Bankia alone owns more than 5 million euros in properties. [Read More]

Cardiff, Anarchist Social Centre

We are the Red and Black Umbrella Collective, a group of anarchists based in Cardiff, Wales, squatting an old pub on Clifton Street. Since the end of October 2011 we’ve worked hard to restore the derelict building and have opened our doors for gigs, workshops, film nights, people’s kitchen, prisoner support letter writing and language lessons. The social centre includes an info shop, free shop, radical library and bike workshop. This is just the beginning, and there is much more to come in the autumn of this year.

We’ve had the police and landlord break in illegally, as well as visits from the fire fighters, arson police and South Wales Echo, who we told to fuck off because they’re a reactionary right wing newspaper. Despite all this, somehow we’re still here, and we intend to be here as long as possible. [Read More]