Sydney: Some anarchists celebrate New Year’s Eve by dropping eighteen banners from five empty buildings in the CBD

Found on Indymedia-Australia:

Some Sydney anarchists celebrate NYE by dropping 18 banners from 5 empty buildings in the CBD
Black Rose books – January 5th, 2012

On New Years Eve while the city streets were packed with drunken revelers and riot cops, a group of anarchist dropped 18 banners from five empty buildings in centre of Sydney. Sound-systems were also set up in two of the buildings with an anti-police hip hop/punk/dubstep mix which blasted out onto the streets. Anarchist slogans and symbols were sprayed on the windows in the buildings and on buses and banks in the streets below.

One of the locations from which we dropped 4 banners and set up a sound-system was a 7 story office building, chosen in solidarity with comrades in the Occupy Sydney movement who had recently squatted the space for a week in an attempt to build a social centre. [Read More]

Sydney: Workshop about squatting movements in Europe, at Occupy Sydney

Next saturday, January 14th, from 4:00pm to 5:00pm, let’s go to Occupy Sydney’s free school, there’s gonna be a workshop about squatting movements in Europe!

Location:
Occupy Sydney
Martin Place
CBD, Sydney
(In the case of heavy rain on Saturday, we will relocate some of Free School to the Visual Arts Space at 43/51 Cowper Wharf Rd. Walk through the Domain from Martin Place.)

The workshop is about squatting movements in Europe, focusing on the diversity of squats we can find in France and in Spain, taking different examples like the squats open in Barcelona in 2010 during the general strike and some other examples in France. A few words will be told about the intersquat solidarity in Europe and about the international website squat.net.
Some tips will be given about how to find and open and empty space. And afterwards, a discussion will happen, making links/relations between what happens in Europe and what happens in Sydney/Australia.

 

UK – Police Raids on Occupy Squats

As UK occupations squat more buildings the police, many of whom have criminal records are flouting the law to harass protesters, the Lords are debating making squatting residential buildings illegal, the government plans to make hundreds of thousands homeless and Occupy LSX is threatened with eviction.
[Read More]

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Watching the value of property melt away – The increase in squatting across the U$A

Although it is hard to hear what is really happening on the ground in U$A, it appears that recently there has been an increase in squatting in cities across the United States. Obviously, squatting is often a covert activity, but it seems that a few factors have dovetailed to facilitate the emergence of a new, public squatting movement. This sWatching the value of property melt away –
The increase in squatting across the U$Ahort article will provide a background to these events and a report of the actions which we have heard about. Hopefully these are merely the tip of the iceberg….
[Read More]

Police Harass Occupy Liverpool at Legal Squat

The “new location” is a squat in a derelict office block on Preston Street and until the above message was posted its location was kept secret. I always thought the decision not to tell anyone the new location was odd but I have heard that it was intended as a half-way-house for the camp to re-group and store their stuff before moving on to a new camp. The old location was extremely exposed and as a result was often battered by high winds; I’m surprised the occupiers stayed as long as they did.
[Read More]

New York City: An interview with Rob Robinson from Picture the Homeless and Take Back the Land Movement

Published in “Brisbane From Below” n°1 (Brisbane, 2011).

Could you tell us a bit about yourself and how you became involved with Picture the Homeless?

No problem. I became involved with Picture the Homeless after spending 10 months in a NYC shelter. I was advocating within that shelter for better maintenance conditions, adherence to rules and better food. The director advised me to take my work to a higher level and I joined something called the New York City Coalition for the Continuum of Care (NYCCCoC). This group makes up 33% of the vote on how some 60-80 million USD are spent on homeless services. Picture the Homeless had access to the email list of (NYCCCoC) and I started to receive emails about the work they were doing. I showed up at a housing meeting in November 2006, liked what I heard and became a member. [Read More]

Ontario (Canada): An Interview with John from Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP)

Published in “Brisbane From Below” n°1 (Brisbane, 2011).

Justice, Dignity, Resistance: An Interview with John from Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP)

Could you tell us a bit about yourself and how you became involved with OCAP?

I was a worker at a factory in Ontario in the 1980s and, after being made unemployed, I helped form a union of the unemployed. In 1990, this organization helped out in the campaign that led to the formation of OCAP. [Read More]

Berlin: Arson attack at Georg von Rauch Haus

Yesterday morning (25/12/11) around 7 am two separate fires broke out in the house, one in the basement, another one in the stairway of the house. At that time not only the residents were in the house, but also several party
guests, at the whole around 150 people. The fire left 12 people injured, two of them with multiple broken bones, after they jumped out in panic from the windows of the first floor. Two kids are also among the injured people.
[Read More]

Sheffield: Salvation Army Citadel Occupied and renamed Citadel Of Hope

Occupy Sheffield has taken possession of the former Salvation Army Citadel (at Cross Burgess Street, Sheffield) on the basis of a so-called ‘Section 6′ notice [1]. The building has lain idle since 1999, and has been open and unsecured for over two months. Occupy Sheffield will make the building safe and secure and will then open it for public use. Occupy Sheffield will be inviting any community groups that have lost the ability to pay for a space due to funding cuts to come and make use of the building. The building has been renamed ‘The Citadel of Hope’.
[Read More]

Occupying housing from the Pope Squat to Occupy Toronto

It was a sweltering afternoon in late July 2002 when the armoured vehicles of the Toronto Police Emergency Task Force pulled up in front of our building. Quickly we started barricading the door with an old desk, if they were coming to kick us out we weren’t going to make it easy for them. We waited tensely as the cops approached the door with submachine guns drawn.

Our crime? We dared to take over an abandoned building in the middle of a housing crisis.

We all survived that early raid and were eventually allowed back into the building where we lived for the next three months — dubbing it the “Pope Squat” as we occupied it during the pontiff’s visit to Toronto.
[Read More]

Brighton: Squatters Resist Eviction Attempt

This morning at 8am, less than 48 hours after a possession order was granted by Brighton Magistrates Court, the Brighton and Hove council attempted to evict the occupiers of Ainsworth House on Wellington Road, Brighton.

The building has been occupied for less than a month by at least 25 people. Despite the fact Christmas is only 4 days away, the council is pushing ahead with plans to make the occupiers (including vulnerable people with disabilities) homeless. For more info see the previous indymedia article here.
[Read More]

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Barcelona: Almost two months in CSOA Castillo

For almost two months we have occupied the Castillo (Castle) in Les Planes on top of the Collserola mountain range in Barcelona. Since then a lot has happened, with this we would like to inform you about recent developments. Firstly most of the cleaning and rennovation work is, in parts completed and the social centre can present its frst events program:

[Read More]