From the 15th to the 18th of february, we carried out a tagging offensive on the walls of Montreuil! Hoping that these walls will carry for a long time to come our solidarity with the threatened places, the ZAD du Carnet, our friends in Toulouse and Rigaerstrasse 94 in Berlin.
Love, courage and support to the ZAD du Carnet, to the friends of Toulouse, to Rigaerstrasse 94 and to all the projects and houses threatened with eviction.
Long live the squats, for anarchy. [Read More]
This morning, February 10th, we had the pleasure to be woken up by the bailiff accompanied by the cops. We were given the eviction order.
On February 4, the local elected officials and the harbour manager gave formal notice to the prefecture to demand the eviction of the ZAD du Carnet, during a hearing in summary proceedings at the administrative court of Nantes. We expect to learn the court’s decision any day.
After 5 months of pressure from the cops, the fascists, the mayors who are waiting for their checks, and the media smearing us, this time they think they can finally subdue us.
We have strong reason to believe that the decision will be to our disadvantage and will order our eviction. We expect the cops taking action within the next few days. So we need moral, human and material support!
Let’s not wait for their deliberation to organize ourselves! If you want to defend the ZAD du Carnet: it’s now or never! [Read More]
In September, an unoccupied house in Toulouse‘s Minimes district is squatted and, following legal proceedings, the occupants benefit from the winter truce (recently extended from March 31 to June 1 as part of the health crisis). These two months of extension alone trigger an update of the anti-squat media and political wave of recent months.
On February 7, the newspaper La Dépêche, published a miserable article on the “so-called” situation of Roland, a former employee of the same newspaper… The affair invaded social networks and media in the days that followed, leading to the massive presence of journalists, always there to defend the owners, possessors and other dominants.
Each time, it’s the same rhetoric, the same bogus story: old people who would be put out on the street by squatters. For them, the fable is attractive: it is the landlords who would be in misery and it is the squatters who would be at the origin of the evils of old age. Behind this fable, which plays on pathos, are clear objectives: to support the intensification of repression against squats by promoting new laws reinforcing the rights of landlords (ASAP law and other proposals to parliament). But no one is fooled: if some elderly people cannot afford the EPHAD (housing establishments for dependent elderly people) and others occupy empty houses, it is because the states and capitalism organize and maintain the misery of billions of people, elderly or not. [Read More]
On Thursday, January 21, 2021, in the middle of winter, the forces of law and order and the prefecture proceeded to evict the Grande Ourse squat, a place of militancy and solidarity. It housed many homeless people, students, the working poor … The issues of poverty, equality, solidarity, were at the center of the actions carried out by its activists, they regularly organized rounds to distribute food to people on the streets. People from outside the city could also get together, there were regular cultural events, film screenings, debates… But what is the problem, at a time when students in Angers are facing a housing shortage, at a time when the covid-19 crisis is plunging an increasingly large proportion of young workers into poverty? The problem is that these activists are holding a political discourse, that by occupying an unused building the holiness of private property has been called into question. That’s unacceptable, we don’t question that, especially when that questioning benefits people who don’t intend to use it for capitalist ends, especially when it benefits people who advocate values other than competition and individual financial enrichment. So here we are, the prefecture will return the furniture store to its legitimate owner. He will be able to put back beds where no one will ever sleep or make other projects allowing him to increase his capital a little more. [Read More]
This library project is part of the more general dynamics of our place of life since February 2020. We are about fifty people from all paths of life occupying these buildings belonging to the department of Val de Marne. We are squatting to meet a need to have a roof over our heads and because we refuse to give in to the blackmail of work, rent and money. In short, we squat to find a place to live and to fight.
Since our installation, we have developed various activities that we wish to pursue as best we can despite the pandemic and continue to develop new ones. It is for these reasons that we now present our new library. This self-managed library is, in the continuity of our place, anti-capitalist and against all forms of oppression. Just like our solidarity market, the film club, the sports hall or the various workshops, it is part of a desire for autonomy against institutions, to develop our own contents in a break with a commercial logic. Thus, in this struggle, and since, just like going to the cinema, a book costs at least 10 bucks, we wish to make available for free all the books we can get. This library is thus composed only of recuperation, donations (and theft). We see it as a participatory place for meetings and exchanges and encourage as many people as possible to take advantage of it to propose various activities such as reading circles, book presentations, sales and all other things. This library wants to be as varied as possible. It includes books ranging from theater to political theory, practical guides and novels. A feminist mobile shelf, made up of the meetings without cis men taking place at our place, will also be available during the opening days of the library. A children’s corner with games and stories is also present.
The library will now be open every other Sunday on the same day as the film club sessions, and the return of books will be possible either every Sunday during the solidarity market or through a box in front of our house. Loans will be for a period of one month, renewable for two weeks. We are counting on you to come and read, discuss, participate and meet us! [Read More]
After having evicted us from the various places where we tried to find shelter, they even came to evict us from a parking lot, no negotiations possible, no additional time. The places must be free as soon as possible.
Collectif Geronimo
Solidarity, not just a word
What do you see when you take a walk around L’Ile Saint Denis – along the river banks, under the bridges, through the squares, the park? Everywhere desperate people hiding in tents, in flimsy constructions of plastic and wood, in the bushes, in any hole they can find. Hiding from the freezing cold, and hiding from the police with their batons, dogs and choking gas.
Over the weeks before the occupation we checked inside the Pavillon Solidaire several times, we wanted to be completely sure no one was using it. What did we find? The doors left open, rubbish piled up, mould growing everywhere, building work unfinished, foul stench of food left to rot, the garden clogged up with leaves, the building literally rotting.
These days it’s a cliché to say we’re living in scenes from a zombie movie. But that’s just what it seemed like, an abandoned house whose inhabitants have fled the apocalypse. A house that could provide a shelter from the cold and fear outside – at least for a few people, at least for a little while. [Read More]
A quick and very fresh hello straight from the camp, temperatures have dropped below -4C, but we are all alive. Thanks to the help of several volunteers from associations, we were able to survive this night.
A few people came to bring us a little human warmth, coffee and pastries.
Thank you for your support!
Current location: Landscaped park, Saint Nazaire.
Edit: Small morning visit of the municipal police, we keep you informed of the rest of the events!
Collectif Geronimo
After getting evicted this morning around 9am from La Maison Géronimo, the squat at 33 Rue Emile Littre in Saint-Nazaire, we had moved to a spot behind the Madison night club Rue Henri Gautier, but even there, we were not welcome. As for now, we are looking for a new spot to move on. [Read More]
This Tuesday, December 8th at 6 am, a large police force breaks down the door of a squat in Toulouse, to pick up 2 people and their trucks. We see outside a dozen CRS vans, several OPJ cars, and other hardly identifiable units. They are masked and armed, and about fifty of them are walking around the building. In their words, the objective is “a police operation targeting two people”.
The cops go directly to the trucks of the targeted people who will be picked up as well as their vehicles which leave on two tow trucks.
In addition to filming the entire operation, the cops take pictures of the buildings, the faces of the people around, the license plates, the vehicles and the dogs. Apart from the vehicles and these two, nothing else is taken, they do not search more. In 1 hour the operation is finished and the cops leave.
We’ve heard that the same type of operations took place precisely at the same time in other cities. [Read More]
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]
We, Collectif Solidarités Cusset, have occupied a vacant building at 4-6 rue de l’Egalité in Villeurbanne since Wednesday 18 November. We are a neighborhood collective bringing together residents of Cusset. Since the first lockdown, we have decided to organize ourselves collectively in the face of the health and social situation in order to propose a concrete and popular solidarity with the most precarious: students, unemployed, undocumented workers, workers, large families, retired people…
For 4 months, we tried to contribute to the food and health emergency by distributing food and hygiene products in the form of a free market, with the support of several associations in town. Over these 4 months, twice a week, we held these distributions, and it is more than 80 families and isolated people that we helped.
Strengthened by this experience and the multiple links that we have built, we re-mobilized at the beginning of this second lockdown, notably through the organization of marauds. These allowed us to see that our means were not equal to the great precariousness in which too many people found themselves, especially those who had no housing. [Read More]
