Poznan: One of the oldest European squats calls for solidarity in face of eviction threat

By: fawda - June 6th, 2019  Filed under: Communique, News

Rozbrat, an anarchist squatted space in Poland, has called for solidarity in face of eviction threat.

Rozbrat is located in the western Poland city of Poznan. The property was squatted in 1994 and since then it became an alternative politics and cultural centre. It also serves as a home for over 20 people, and is both temporary and permanent shelter for homeless people.

The principal idea behind the space is grassroots organising and self-governing. It is a home to the local Anarchist Federation branch and Food not Bombs among others. The activists involved in Rozbrat have been very much part of the local and beyond projects, including Anarchist Black Cross, the Free Caucasus Committee and Workers Initiative Trade Union. The squat has also been hosting many grassroots initiatives, such as the anarchist library and publishing house, the printing workshop, self-education initiatives, bicycle workshop, a sports club, and a rehearsal space for musicians. Over the years, thousands of events have been organised at Rozbrat, including concerts, exhibitions, theatre plays, lectures, seminars, meetings and workshops. [Read More]

Tags: , ,

Zurich: House occupied on Bachtobelstrasse

By: sisulscz - June 3rd, 2019  Filed under: Announcement

A house on the Bachtobelstrasse 102 in Zurich was occupied on 28 May. We ain’t moving and we would like to thank all those who came by or otherwise gave us solidarity.

The house is still under threat. The so-called owner wants to demolish it. We do not and will not accept this.

If you want to support us, please contact ambach [at] tutanota [dot] com or just pass by.

Wir bleiben alle!

Article on Barrikade, translated by PazTrez

Tags: , ,

Catalonia: Police persecution, so normal

By: sisulscz - June 3rd, 2019  Filed under: Communique

The police station of the Mossos d’Esquadra of Banyoles demonstrate their commitment to the repression against the anarchists. At the moment they act under the pseudonym of traffic police but make it clear who they are trying to intimidate by their worst gunmen on duty… as it is not pure chance that they stop and threaten the same person 3 times in a week. This same comrade also suffers persecution by secret-police officers in Barcelona…so clumsy that it´s difficult not to recognize them, as for example last Tuesday, May 28th (15.40h; c/Nació; Clot).

One of the gunmen from Banyoles cops was already known to us as he once pointed his gun at our comrade, 7 years ago, with no reason in a traffic control (exit AP-7 Girona Nord) and then threatened to kill him! Logically he refused to give his badge number then but now threatens to fine the comrade between 600 and 30.000 Euro for not having a Spanish residence and driving a car registered in his country of origin in the EU… (anything is possible with the Gag Law!).
Also recently the cops appeared several times at his home (a house in the countryside) which gives the suspicion that he is being investigated “at ground” to fuck up his life again after evicting his squat one year ago (Kan Bici).

Being consistent with your ideas can be dangerous in this country already that even the “alternative” bars are full of secret-cops and police “out of service” to control what cooks and talks, what consume and who knows whom.

This is how free we can feel until the opposite is proved…
800 reasons to rebel against all domination and authority!

Health & Anarchy
A.C.A.B.
See you at Agro-Crust IX (11th to 14th July 2019)

Trespass [ES version]

Tags: , ,

Hannover (Germany): Squatting action at Klagesmarkt

By: sisulscz - June 3rd, 2019  Filed under: Communique

On Wednesday evening a house at the Klagesmarkt was squatted. At one point 250 people took part in the occupation. The eviction by the police took place in the early morning hours of the following day.

In a world of rising rents and a lack of affordable housing, people have decided to squat a house that has been empty for at least four years. The shop space on the ground floor of the house was to be used for social and cultural activities to enrich the neighbourhood.

A varied programme with concerts and other cultural events was planned for the duration of the occupation. On Thursday, the neighbourhood was to be invited to develop joint plans for the use of the house with coffee and cake. Unfortunately, this idea could not be put into practice, as the owners preferred to file a criminal complaint and to have the house evicted by the police during the night. The squatters offered to talk about possible usage options but the owners rejected; apparently further vacancy is desired instead.
[Read More]

Tags: , , , ,

Bern (Switzerland): Paint for Fabrikool

By: sisulscz - June 3rd, 2019  Filed under: Communique

The eviction of Fabrikool is far from forgotten. With this action, we show our solidarity with the Fabrikool, all evicted, existing and future free spaces.

Therefore we left a painting with the content: “FABRIKOOL BLIeBT KOOL” (Fabrikool stays cool) at Neubrückstrasse on the evening of 31 May 2019.

[Read More]

Tags: , ,

Freiburg (Germany): Squatted former police station evicted after 45 hours

By: fawda - May 28th, 2019  Filed under: Communique, News

Eviction of the F52 in broad daylight +++ 25 arbitrary controls +++ Masked policemen jog through child day-care centre +++ State government favours misappropriation and speculation with batons

“Attention, attention. This is the first, second and final announcement…” With these words, the head of police operations, Harry Hochuli, started the eviction of Fehrenbachallee 52. There was no willingness to negotiate, the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg had already filed a criminal complaint in the evening the occupation started. We criticize the ruthless actions of the Freiburg head of operations, also in the face of the fact that the adjacent kindergarten would have been empty an hour later. The children could easily have been spared the traumatizing appearance of a masked and helmeted riot squad. Now the spacious property was returned to its inglorious state of vacancy.

The demand for affordable living space and self-organised district centres continues to grow, and not only in the western part of the Stühlinger district. We still demand the construction of a large rest house for people with refugee experience and more than ever it is necessary to fight for anti-fascist district centres and social perspectives through direct action. [Read More]

Tags: , , ,

Wassenaar: Living in a Haunted Palace

By: fawda - May 20th, 2019  Filed under: Communique, News

King of Slums

Early in July 2018, the rapidly decaying historical manor house and the surrounding wooded park Ívicke at Rust en Vreugdlaan 2 in Wassenaar were squatted. Built as a little paradise — degraded to a real estate speculator’s plaything. His name is Ronnie van de Putte: a man with an eye-catching reputation in the world of real estate, infamous for speculating with prime locations and deliberately letting cultural heritage rot away for decades. In the seventies and eighties he acquired the nickname the ‘King of Slums’ and ‘Van de Beerputte’ (‘beerput’ is Dutch for ‘cesspool’). Van de Putte made a fortune buying real estate and reselling it for profit, but he never built or developed anything. For decades, Bever Holding (the real estate fund held by Ronnie and his wife Ria) has left a trail of slums and urban voids throughout the Netherlands and Belgium. Among Van de Putte’s most noteworthy achievements are the total deterioration of a former monastery in Zeeland (abandoned for thirty years) and inviting the collapse of an old horse stable in Noordwijk, creating quite a stir in March 2018, after the place burnt for the third time and the owner still refused to clean up the mess. Also his “Void of Palace” (where the Palace Hotel was located) and the Vuurtorenplein are an ongoing subject of conflict between Van de Putte and the municipality of Noordwijk. In Leiden, a little further south, Ronnie played the same game with the ‘Void of Van de Putte’, right in front of the train station. In 2005, during the kick-off of the nationwide Woonstrijd! Action Tour (‘Woonstrijd’ means ‘Fight for Housing’), the void and the neighbouring office building were squatted and turned into Vrijplaats Multipleks († 2015). Due to clerical errors, the municipality failed to expropriate the building from Van de Putte, which, in 2010, resulted in councilman Van Woensel (VVD: the liberal party) acquiescing to the ‘King of Slums’ and rewarding him handsomely for twenty years of deceiving the municipality: to the tune of 17,9 million euros! [Read More]

Tags: , , , , , ,

Netherlands: JaKra! squatting yearbook 2018 released

By: fawda - May 20th, 2019  Filed under: News

JaKra! is initiated by KSU Den Haag (The Hague Squatting Info Centre). In this book project we would like to look back on a number of developments and events in the past year, together with squatters and housing activists in different places.
It turns out that squatting is still necessary and useful — as some of the stories in the first JaKra! issue (squatting yearbook 2018) demonstrate. Housing is a necessity. There needs to be space for autonomy. Protests against speculation, social degradation, and miserable urban regeneration are necessary. We must fight for an inclusive city with sufficient affordable housing and non-commercial places to go out and meet people.
By sharing some of our successes and setbacks on an annual basis, we hope to contribute to creating more intercity involvement and solidarity between squatters and housing activists in the Netherlands and beyond and to inspire more people to become active themselves, helping to build an effective movement for the housing struggle.
In the Netherlands JaKra! #1 will soon be available for 5 euros in the subversive bookshops Rosa (Groningen), the Opstand (Den Haag) and the Fort van Sjakoo (Amsterdam) and soon also available to download. The book is bilingual, Dutch-English. [Read More]

Tags: , , , , ,

Madrid: Statement of the anarchist compañeras arrested on May 13

By: fawda - May 20th, 2019  Filed under: News

In the early morning of May 13, an anti-riot unit was breaking into our homes and the anarchist space La Emboscada (The Ambush) – three weeks after its inauguration – together with the 21st group of the Provincial Information Brigade of Madrid, dedicated exclusively to spy and hunt anarchists. We were informed that they were bringing a search and arrest warrant for two of us on terrorism charges. During the search, which lasted approximately 6 hours, comrades from all over Madrid came to show their support.
Meanwhile, the police seemed especially interested in taking clothes with them: coloured and black coats, concrete coloured scarves, scarves, flower scarves, specific footwear; they were also interested in agendas, calendars, some notebooks, some annotations, notes between the pages of books, computers, hard disks, memory cards, usb, mobile phones, photographic and video cameras, CDs and DVDs, construction tools and, especially, hammers; as well as stickers, patches and T-shirts of the brand M.A.L.P.; posters and propaganda in relation to the G20 counter-summit in 2017. [Read More]

Tags: , , , , ,

Night of rage in the streets of Bern in response to repression and eviction of Fabrikool squat

By: sisulscz - May 20th, 2019  Filed under: Communique

On Friday May 17 there was a demo against the eviction of Fabrikool. On May 18 there was a night of rage and resistance against the eviction and the recent wave of repression started in the Swiss capital.

May 17
On May 17 about 400 people marched through the streets of Bern loud and self-determined. It was a strong and clear sign to oppose the decision of the canton and shows that free spaces like the Fabrikool are necessary and must be fought for. During the whole demonstration we were fed with the finest food.

AGG, f*ck you! Hebeisen und Vatter: You really f*ck up!
Ps. Full speech on www.fabrikool.ch (German)

May18
In the night from Saturday to Sunday we participated in the offensive actions against the police in the area around the Reitschule (riding school). We see today’s move as a necessary response to the recent repression in the Bern area. Today our anger was so big that the police had to withdraw several times. We see this as a sign of success and as an emerging motivation to continue to stand in the way of the state and the police.

We are people who show solidarity with the evicted Fabrikool. We would like to point out that the Fabrikool was fought for within the militant actions around the Effy29 eviction. The state’s fear of a new conflict ultimately led to the Fabrikool not being evicted. Today’s actions should recall the time around the Effy29 eviction. Every eviction has its price!
[Read More]

Tags: , ,

Bern (Switzerland): Fabrikool evicted

By: fawda - May 14th, 2019  Filed under: News

Since the early hours of the morning, the squatted Fabrikool house in the Länggass in Bern has been evicted by representatives of the canton and cops. The building is closed off on a large scale and surrounded by about 25 riot cops with dogs. All the trees around the building are cut down, a scaffold erected, all the windows screwed up from the inside with boards and everything outside, from pizza oven to trampoline to outdoor kitchen, is dismantled and cleared away. Again and again cops with bolt cutters and sledgehammers were sighted, eagerly working on their destructive work in the building. The highly motivated cantonal representative Beat Keller is, of course, personally on site and is not too sad to help clear away.
Many people in solidarity – also from the neighbourhood – are on site and observe what is happening. Throughout the morning, several people were subjected to person checks, district bans were imposed and two young people were arrested after being searched and detained by a bunch of robocops.
Just because the authorities think they can let off steam in our house is not the end of it! Therefore: Keep your eyes and ears open, more information will follow. [Read More]

Tags: , , , , ,

Ljubljana: Open call of The Autonomous Factory Rog

By: fawda - May 11th, 2019  Filed under: Communique, News

Against violence of the City Municipality of Ljubljana – for Open Dialogue

The users of the Autonomous Factory Rog are observing the statements and moves of the management of the City Municipality of Ljubljana with concern. By denying dialogue, refusing recognition of users’ activities, with financial sanctions and open threats of eviction, it suggests that the repetition of the 2016 conflict is expected.

Let us remember, at that time the Municipality attempted to vacate the factory premises and establish a construction site in the middle of the night with private security officers, but encountered a large number of users who wanted to protect those premises, in which they developed alternative culture, social and political organization, a sports program and other activities free of charge since 2006. Following up, these users appealed to their adverse possession rights and did not want to leave. The rights were later acknowledged by the district court in Ljubljana. From that moment on until the conclusion of the property rights lawsuit the construction work had to be discontinued. [Read More]

Tags: , ,