Brussels: a hundred residents mobilise to avoid eviction

By: fawda - May 7th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Press release 7 May 2021. Brussels city – a hundred residents are mobilising to avoid eviction: the building has been empty since 2017 and belongs to Belgium’s second largest fortune.

The building was squatted by the “Solidarity Requisition Campaign” in March. Following the occupation, negotiations were started in order to reach an agreement and sign a temporary occupation agreement with the owner, Viscountess Caroline de Spoelberch. Despite encouraging beginnings, the latter is now backing down and has obtained an eviction order. The residents are mobilising to avoid being thrown out on the street in the midst of a social and health crisis.

A hundred or so people have been living for over a month in the gigantic building , which overlooks both Rue de Livourne and Avenue Louise. Purchased in 2018 for 18 million euros by Caroline de Spoelberch, it has remained unoccupied since then. For this reason, the “Solidarity Requisitioning Campaign” took over the building at the end of March and several groups of homeless or badly housed people, including the Voice of the Homeless BXL and the Voice of the Homeless Family, quickly moved in. [Read More]

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Brussels: School 404 evicted after fire

By: fawda - April 18th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Press release of the school 404

This Saturday, April 10th, a fire took place in the former school 14, rue Capronnier 1, in Schaerbeek. Renamed School 404, this place was inhabited since March 2020 by about thirty people and several associations including Hope4ever and the ASBL 404. Fortunately, there were no physical injuries. On the same day, the municipality enforced its decision to evict these inhabitants from their dwelling by the police.
The course of this day and those that followed, the handling of the situation by the public services, the forces of order, the firemen, the media and the owners of the place, reveals various mistreatments, discriminations and abuses of all kinds.

We will not keep quiet about our anger and refuse that once again, our dissident voices are silenced and stripped of their political dimension. We refuse the stigmatization of squatters, and claim squatting as one of the most relevant and emancipating political dynamics in the city of Brussels today. [Read More]

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Arlon: the Zablière evicted

By: fawda - March 15th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Early this monday morning, March 15, the forces of disorder evicted the zadists present in the area. The Arlon police mobilized last night with the support of the federal police on the outskirts of the Zablière to begin an eviction at dawn. This method of intervention without prior notice aims to avoid having to confront the movement as a whole, to prevent solidarity and resistance from organizing.
Motivated by a study of the local police attesting that the zadists were “a serious threat to security” the eviction was able to take place outside the classic legal channels; an eviction must be served by bailiff several days in advance. Nine zadists were arrested. It is essential that we do not let them make us invisible.
Vincent Magnus talks about an end of the saga, let’s show him that he is not at the end of his surprises, let’s be numerous at the beginning of the evening. Let’s bring back to the center of Arlon the resistance movement that he did not want to meet this morning. Let’s remind once again that we are a large and diverse movement, rich in colors and motivation! [Read More]

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Brussels: the municipality chooses repression and lies rather than solidarity

By: fawda - March 1st, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Press release – Solidarity Requisitioning Campaign

On Friday 26th February we wanted to squat the old Pacheco Hospice in the city centre. Our action clearly did not please the municipal politicians – Khalid Zian, president of the CPAS (Centres Publics d’Action Sociale) and Philippe Close, mayor of the City of Brussels – who opted for violent repression rather than negotiation. In the evening, we were bluntly kicked out by the police. 38 people were detained for several hours and will be fined. People were kicked in the head and verbally abused. We wonder where such a strong reaction against a solidarity action that has been rather well received in other municipalities and by the region in recent weeks comes from. Why does the city of Brussels not want to allow the use of a CPAS building that has been empty for 4 years to house people in difficulty?

The CPAS justifies the eviction by the fact that a temporary occupation is currently being considered and that a public call for tenders will soon be launched. Khalid Zian, the president of the CPAS, goes so far as to falsely assert that an occupation for accommodation would have been possible “on condition that it was properly supervised and agreed upon beforehand”. However, the municipal authorities have been approached several times about this building (by the Voice of the Undocumented – la Voix des Sans Papiers – already 2 years ago, by the Region this winter for emergency accommodation) and have each time refused to make the building available. [Read More]

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Brussels: political appropriation with the agreement of occupation of the squat rue de Koninck

By: fawda - February 26th, 2021  Filed under: News

The group, which had been squatting since March 2020 in a former printing shop at 44 rue Honoré Longtin in Jette, was threatened following last October’s eviction order. Launched in December, an occupation campaign led to the opening of several squats (L’Hospitalière in Saint-Gilles, the Citydev building, the Sleeping Beauty and the Opel Garage in Molenbeek) and the relocation of the inhabitants of the Jette squat to these new squats.

Communiqué of the Solidarity Requisition Campaign, February 25, 2021:

A media, political and associative requisition of our action ! Unbelievable false press release of the commune of Jette (and taken again in several media) !

While for many months, the public authorities were unable to find an answer to the situation and did nothing, they are today congratulating themselves for having found a “definitive” solution (false: the agreement is signed for one year) and are reappropriating the solidarity and self-organized response of our Campaign: the requisition of an empty public building. [Read More]

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Brussels: Update from the Solidarity Requisition Campaign

By: fawda - February 12th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

On December 18, 2020, L’Hospitalière was open! Since then, the Solidarity Requisition Campaign continues! Here the news from the different buildings.

L’Hospitalière:
A precarious occupancy agreement has been signed: 80 places of decent housing have been opened, in a building that was otherwise doomed to remain unoccupied. This occupation will also allow the collectives to organize their struggles for the regularization of undocumented migrants and for dignity!

Citydev building:
Negotiations are underway, we hope to be able to conclude a one-year agreement (at least until the end of March 2022). About 30 people are already living in the building. We are waiting for the heating to be turned on again and for the fire department to visit us so that we can complete the move of the Jette occupancy. In all, 200 people will be able to live there. [Read More]

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Arlon: Call to resist. Eviction threat at the Zablière on January 26

By: fawda - January 22nd, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

For more than a year, a piece of land has been torn from the concrete. The former Schoppach sandpit, where wild animals and plants used to coexist with Sunday walks, is threatened by a zoning project for businesses including offices and parking lots, and this since it was bought from the municipality by Idelux-Aive.

Some people decided to occupy this forest in order to defend it against this threat, responding to a call from local residents desperate for attention to their voice. This year was an opportunity to bring about another turning point in the struggle “for the climate” by making it take a real ecological and social turn; from the occupation of roundabouts by yellow vests to a forest occupation by Zadists. In this way, the tree houses made it possible to hear the cries of the birds.

For a year, the winter, police and mafia threats did not succeed in lowering the mood of the Zablière’s occupants, not even a few slanderous opponents. From this impulse of resistance were born direct actions, a book of photos and poetry, a film, a free university, friendships and a lot of other things impossible to describe without being there. [Read More]

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Brussels: new occupation of empty building

By: fawda - January 16th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

As of Friday, January 15, 6,936 square meters formerly used by Opel – located at 552 chaussée de Gand in Molenbeek – are occupied to rehouse some of the 200 people about to be evicted from their homes in Jette. The opening of this new squat in Molenbeek follows the opening of the Hospitalière, a former clinic in Saint-Gilles that has become home to 80 people since December 18. This action announces the launch of a campaign of “solidarity occupations”.

As collectives and associations of people with and without papers, actors of the right to housing, inhabitants of Brussels, we are organizing ourselves once again with our means to enforce the right to housing and to demand the regularization of undocumented migrants.

We will continue to open and occupy empty buildings as long as the public authorities do not provide sufficient structural responses to the social and health crisis. By launching this campaign, we affirm that we are determined to organize ourselves in the face of the absurdity of thousands of empty buildings while hundreds of people sleep outside in our city. The opening of about ten squats has made it possible to house several hundred people during the spring 2020 confinement. Today, we want to make this solidarity and self-organized response visible, while refuting the idea that this is a structural and sufficient solution. It is up to the public authorities to make it a priority. [Read More]

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Brussels: Festival du Coucou Puissant, 3rd edition

By: fawda - October 4th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

For the third consecutive year, the Festival du Coucou Puissant will be held in Brussels from October 8 to November 1, 2020. There are countless private, public or unclassifiable spaces, temporarily occupied in our big city. This festival wants to make visible the occupations and the interstices of creation, alternative housing, resistance and collective experimentation that tries to develop there. The Coucou Puissant wants to be autonomous and self-organized. We are aware of the diversity of places and practices (squat, legal ones with a temporary contract…). We are also aware that there are fewer and fewer squats in Brussels to the benefit of occupations negotiated in advance… This questions us and we wonder how to assert the dynamics of the squats? In the current context of “post” confinement and the eviction period coming back, we also want to affirm our support with the very young “anti-eviction front”. The nomadic program of the festival will be able to support places in peril. The festival wants to be a space of solidarity, meeting, debate, autonomy, celebration and emancipation. [Read More]

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Brussels: l’École 404, new squat in Schaerbeek

By: fawda - May 23rd, 2020  Filed under: News

L’École 404 is a squat in Schaerbeek that opened shortly before the announcement of the lockdown. In this former school lives a mixed collective of about twenty people from different backgrounds.
During the period of the confinement, we did not open the space to the public. However, the school has been fitted out over the last two months to create work and meeting spaces intended primarily for the inhabitants of the neighbourhood and for militant networks.
You’ll find a wood and metal workshop, a lab for the development and printing of silver photography, participatory permaculture gardens, a sewing and drawing workshop, a craft beer brewing workshop, a projection room, meeting and reading areas, a multi-purpose gymnasium. All these spaces are intended to open gradually to the public after the confinement. We hope that the meetings and workshops that will be held here will not only be led by our initiative, but also by those of other collectives, associations and individuals. [Read More]

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Brussels: Demo march 21. A roof for everybody!

By: fawda - March 19th, 2018  Filed under: Communique, News

Why protest?

Because the housing crisis can not be ignored. There are between 15,000 and 30,000 empty dwellings in Brussels, while there are around 4,000 homeless people. 40,000 families are on the waiting list for social housing, with waiting times varying between 8 and 12 years. Lastly, rents on the private market have steadily increased in recent years. As a result, households whose incomes do not exceed € 1500 have to average 60% of their budget to rent.
Because, in spite of this context, the government has passed an anti-squat law, which puts people in risks to go to jail for squatting empty houses to sleep in.
Because this law appears in a general movement of repression: the constant criminalization of the undocumented and the individuals who are in solidarity with them, the installation of surveillance cameras in the streets, the police and military presence in the public space are as much clues to a desire for global control.
Because applicable solutions exist (right of requisition, right of public management, …) or have been proposed incessantly by associations for the right to housing (consequent increase of the number of social housing, framing of the rents …).
The authorities refuse to apply them.
As for us, we continue to squat, we continue to protest!
For the demo to be enjoyable for all participants, take care of the ones and avoid unconscious or oppressive behaviors.

Wednesday 21 march,2018 – 18:00, Place Bara – Baraplein, Brussels

nonalaloiantisquat [at] riseup [dot] net
https://squ.at/r/4jg5
https://squatbelgium.noblogs.org/post/manif/

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Gent (Belgium): Kraaiennest, new squatted social center

By: fawda - February 17th, 2018  Filed under: News

On 15 february 2018, a few hundred people were demonstrating in Gent against the squatting ban. They ended up occupying a big empty building for people in need of housing. The banner on the squatted building is stating: “What is not allowed is still possible“. From 23 till 25 February, the action weekend against the squatting ban will take place in Gent. This new social center is called Kraaiennest. More events in Gent are to be found on Chiropractor.

Sociaal Centrum ‘T Kraaiennest
Brabantdam 33, 9000 Gent, Belgium
kraaiennest [at] riseup [dot] net
https://kraaiennest.noblogs.org/
https://squ.at/r/4bke

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