Dijon: a look back at the public meeting to present the agri-cultural park of the Maraîchers ecocity

By: fawda - June 23rd, 2024  Filed under: Communique, News

Press releases from the assembly of the Quartier Libre des Lentillères.
First press release distributed before the public presentation:

The Quartier Libre des Lentillères reaffirms its willingness to dialogue with the city of Dijon!

Since 2010, hundreds of people have been cultivating the land, organising cultural events, offering markets and meals on donations, self-managed on the 9 hectares of the Quartier Libre des Lentillères. We are still united by the desire to collectively continue the project we are carrying out for this district.

A dialogue began 18 months ago at the initiative of the city council, and we have taken an active part in it. We want to consider all possible forms of sustainability for the Quartier Libre des Lentillères, its activities and its uses, including in the form of legalisation. [Read More]

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Dijon: Lentillères Spring Festival, Commons Week

By: fawda - May 3rd, 2024  Filed under: Communique, News

On May 31st, June 1st and 2nd, we will celebrate the 14th anniversary of the beginning of the occupation of the Quartier Libre des Lentillères!

Since 2010, from land clearing to self-construction, 9 hectares have gradually been occupied by gardens, fields, cabins, parks, orchards and collective places open to all.

After having snatched the abandonment of phase 2 of the misnamed “eco-city of market gardeners” (éco-cité des maraîchers) project in 2019, and started a dialogue with the city council for the last 2 years, we find ourselves once again threatened by the city’s appetite for concrete. An “ultimatum”, taken out of the mayor’s pocket on a Sunday morning at dawn, forces us to question the indivisibility of the 9 hectares that make up the neighborhood, to make way for an urbanization project on a strip of 1.14 hectares. This pressure undermines the trust and exchanges that we had tried to establish in recent months. [Read More]

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Poznan: Eviction of Rozbrat is approaching. Demonstration on september 10th.

By: fawda - August 10th, 2022  Filed under: Communique, News

After years of fighting for preservation of Rozbrat, the most critical moment in almost thirty years of history of this place is coming. A court hearing will be held on September 15th, at which a final judgment is to be issued, giving a green light to the eviction of Rozbrat.

Practically, this means throwing out over twenty inhabitants, as well as a number of socio-political, cultural and environmental initiatives gathering hundreds of people. It is also a real threat to a part of the West Greenery Wedge, which is effectively protected against construction development by Rozbrat.

Although a threat has been hanging over us for many years, the culmination of which is expected in September, Rozbrat tirelessly continues its activities. We do not stop to oppose the neoliberal and anti-social policy of the Poznań authorities, which represent interests of business at the expense of needs of the majority of the city’s residents. [Read More]

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Dijon: Ransacking at l’Engrenage

By: fawda - April 20th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Very early this Tuesday morning, a police force accompanied by an armada of construction machines was deployed to devastate the land on Avenue de Langres that had been occupied for almost a year.
Several bulldozers, excavators, trucks and the DESERTOT company’s manitou were mobilized to try to put an end to the gardens, as well as loggers who were in charge of cutting down the trees.
The municipality deploys the great means. Flowers, blades of grass, everything goes. The will is clear: nothing must remain of what can look like greenery.
This ransacking operation comes at the beginning of spring, whereas for weeks the gardeners had been working to make this place an open and shared place of passage between the residents.

The house located in the middle of the gardens remains protected by a court decision, and will not be evicted today (unless the cops decide to illegally force their way in). It is thanks to the presence of the inhabitants in this house that the alert was given early in the morning. The call relayed by friendly neighbors allowed people to converge in solidarity from the first minutes. They tried to block the construction machines by overtaking the police force that had just been set up. Some people were thus able to reach the house to defend it, while several others climbed on the roof of the house. [Read More]

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Dijon: Justice orders the eviction of the Engrenage Gardens in 6 months!

By: fawda - March 20th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Press release from the Engrenage Gardens

Since June 17, 2020, we occupy a wasteland renamed “Les Jardins de l’Engrenage“, avenue de Langres in Dijon, to prevent the real estate development of 307 housing units “Garden State”, which plans the destruction of this precious natural space.
Without ever having visited the land to appreciate its soil qualities and the dynamic life created in the neighborhood, the Mayor of Dijon launched in August 2020 a legal procedure to evict the gardeners and occupants of the house located on the plot. After having pronounced in November 2020 the eviction of the gardens only (still suspended), the Dijon Court of Justice has just rules its judgment this Friday, March 19, 2021 concerning the occupied house: the judge pronounces an eviction order but grants the occupants a 6-month delay to leave the premises.
We take note of this decision: for us, each day, each week, each month gained in this fight against the destruction of nature, is a victory against adversity. Gardeners at the Engrenage, Dijon residents protecting this space, we will take advantage of the next 6 months to root ourselves even more solidly in this land that we take care of, just like the vegetables that will grow there for a new season in the collective vegetable garden and the allotment gardens. [Read More]

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Dijon: Invitation to come and discover the Quartier Libre des Lentillères

By: fawda - November 30th, 2020  Filed under: News

With this second lockdown, we sense that we will have to learn to live with the global pandemic a little longer. For some time now, we had also understood that we would have to deal with the ecological crisis. Rather than gently waiting for the next state of emergency, what we are trying to build here at the Quartier Libre des Lentillères is a possible way to continue to live in spite of these crises. By imagining and creating a world that makes us envious, built of non-market relationships, based on solidarity and a sense of the common, connected to the environment in which we find ourselves, organized in self-management.

From a small, very localized struggle against an urbanisation project such as there are so many of them, a neighborhood rich in the diversity of its activities (from market gardening to self-construction, from small gardens to neighborhood festivals) was built over 10 years, without planing, trying this and that, and also rich of people who come along, garden and live in it. And rich in possible imaginations. Together we are constantly reinventing ourselves collectively. [Read More]

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Poznan: Anarchists successfully stop allotment gardens eviction

By: fawda - November 18th, 2020  Filed under: News

Anarchists from Rozbrat squat in Poznań, together with other groups, have successfully stopped the eviction of neighbouring allotment gardens “ROD Bogdanka”.

The allotments are a part of the city’s green belt and have been used by the community since 1953. For decades, the land belonged to the state treasury. In the early 90s, it was acquired by a somewhat shadowy developers’ company Darex. Darex took out a loan to purchase the land, but then never paid it back while still maintaining their ownership rights. As of today, the company is still listed as an official owner in the land registry records for both the allotments and Rozbrat.

Over the years, the municipality of Poznań attempted to reclaim the land, but so far without too much luck. In the meantime, the land has become a prime estate for developers and dramatically increased its monetary value. The developers, of course, plan to turn it into some form of a posh “regeneration” project and have been harassing both the allotment holders and the squatters from Rozbrat to get them to move on. In the past year, there were reports of arson on the allotments, and Darex has also been threatening the plot holders with absolutely overwhelming financial penalties should they chose to hold on to their gardens. By these methods, they have successfully intimidated many people to leave their plots; however, a few are still remaining. [Read More]

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Dijon: Engrenage Gardens under threat. Vegetables and trees are rooted, they will not leave.

By: fawda - November 11th, 2020  Filed under: News

The decision of the Dijon court has confirmed the eviction of the land occupied by the Engrenage Gardens as of November 20. The house is not affected by this decision. Despite the headlines in the local press suggesting that the case is closed, the vegetables are growing, the gardeners are gardening and the walkers are wandering around!

After the October hearing, the court handed down its verdict on November 4. According to the local press (le Bien Public). “The court noted the occupation without right or title of the land located between 45 and 65 avenue de Langres and ordered their eviction within fifteen days if necessary with the help of the police force. The court, however, declared itself incompetent with respect to the occupation of the small house. » [Read More]

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Minneapolis: Open Growth Space evicted

By: sisulscz - September 8th, 2020  Filed under: Communique

Open Growth Space, an occupied garden project in Minneapolis, is in the process of being destroyed by the landlord right now (September 7)!


[Read More]

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Dijon: Land occupation on Avenue de Langres

By: fawda - June 17th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Statement from the June 17 Collective – Land occupation in Dijon as part of the June 17 appeal against the repeated intoxication of the world!

Today wednesday June 17th 2020, despite the rain, we were nearly four hundred people to demonstrate from the Place de la République to the abandoned plot located at 63 avenue de Langres. Armed with spades and pitchforks, the participants were able to clear the land to make gardens, set up new meeting and breathing spaces in the heart of the neighbourhood, plant vegetables, debate the common future on this land and beyond, or share a meal.

This land is threatened by a real estate project carried by the council which, with a great deal of “greenwashing” communication, is trying to impose yet another useless urban plan. According to the INSEE, there are more than 6000 vacant homes in the commune of Dijon alone. Except for the municipality – which wants to grow at all costs to establish its status as a “metropolis” – for whom is it a priority to have more new housing? [Read More]

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Rubí (Catalonia): Rally against the risk of eviction from El Mirlo community garden

By: fawda - February 14th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Call out from El Mirlo community garden.

Saturday 15 February 2020, 12:00, rally in front of Rubí train station.

If the speculator persists, El Mirlo resists!

May 2016, we occupied the land on 44 General Prim Street, opposite the Ateneu Anarquista la Hidra, owned at that time by Arrels CT Finsol, a BBVA real estate company, in order to build a community garden among all of them. Since then we have been giving life to this space, making use of an abandoned land. El Mirlo (the Blackbird) and its plants have not stopped growing with the effort of all of us, day after day and in each of the open days to the neighbors that are organized every 15 days. We cultivate vegetables, medicinal plants, tubers and we do it all together to learn together and thus share knowledge. The garden is also a meeting place for people and groups, a corner protected from the asphyxiating pollution and asphalt of this city. [Read More]

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Brazil: Olive Garden urban occupation under threat of eviction

By: sisulscz - February 7th, 2020  Filed under: Communique

Activists from the Black Flag anarchist collective report that the squatted site, which houses more than 200 families in the southern Brazilian city of Araquari, is fighting back against threats from the City Hall to send the dogs in.

Jardim das Oliveiras (The Olive Garden) is a self-organised squatted zone near the center of the city which has existed on the site for more than a decade, but received a court repossession order just before Christmas giving them 30 days to leave.
[Read More]

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