London: Against Apolitical Squatting, communique by Squatters and Homeless Autonomy

By: fawda - November 14th, 2015  Filed under: Communique, News

Coming to Terms

In Camden, an eight-month squat is evicted by pigs and three are arrested under Section 144, the 2012 ban on residential squatting. A man in a SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SQUAT t-shirt waits for NELSN to forward a text. Two arrive from a council-estate squat further north. Builders begin to secure the building. Against Section 144, against increasing precarity and repression, broken self-identity and fractured organisation, London squatting seems to have begun a coming-to-terms.

Attempts to surround the fragility of the squat scene with nostalgia have come thick and fast: Remember the Squatters’ Union; remember unrestricted residential squatting; remember squatters’ rights. As ever this nostalgia is a thinly disguised dose of forgetfulness: Squatting has always meant struggle; and no mourning for a golden age can deny the permanence of our struggles and the permanent need to politicise them. [Read More]

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From Shanghai to San Fran, the rent is too damn high

By: fawda - October 28th, 2015  Filed under: essay

Fueled by years of record-low interest rates, a new housing crisis is rearing its head from London to L.A. This time, however, it will not go uncontested.

Capitalism is a strange beast. Though incredibly resilient in the face of systemic crises and remarkably adaptive to ever-changing conditions, it never truly overcomes its structural contradictions. As the Marxist geographer David Harvey often points out, it merely displaces them in space and time.

The global financial crisis of 2008-’09 has been no exception in this regard. In fact, the very response to that calamity has already laid the foundations for the next big crisis. And just like its immediate predecessor, it looks like this one will be centered, at least in part, on a massive speculative housing bubble. [Read More]

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London: Sweets Way Resists, In Support Of Supporting Each Other

By: fawda - October 23rd, 2015  Filed under: Communique, News

In the last week we celebrated the release of the two Sweets Way protesters who have been held on remand since the evictions at Sweets Way on the 23rd and 24th of September. That the magistrates granted bail without the requirement for the two protesters to give their names or any other details is a victory and testament to the moral grounds for resistance against the eviction of the estate.

The campaign has been a tough one for all involved, and it would be wrong to say it has been a picture-perfect example of political resistance the whole time. The campaign is a constantly-evolving thing, and we have all done our best to move with the times as circumstances have changed. With many different groups with different agendas coming to Sweets Way, particularly in the final couple of months, it became difficult to maintain the original image that was portrayed all the way back in February. Certainly there were displays of behaviour that did not sit well with people involved in the campaign or with outside supporters and spectators. [Read More]

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Poznan: Conference “The cities for people – not for profit”

By: fawda - October 11th, 2015  Filed under: News

6th – 9th November 2015, Poznań, Poland

Greater Poland Tenants’ Association together with European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the are inviting you to the conference of tenants’ rights groups. The congress will take place in Poznań between 6th and 9th November 2015.

It has been many years since we can observe the expansion of precarity of housing condition all over the world. The neoliberal policies are forcing increasingly larger clusters of a society to outlay more and more: privatisation of common resources, welfare cuts, limiting citizens’ rights, mass evictions, gentrification and proliferation of banks on the housing market. These techniques are of international scope – the results, with varying dynamics and at different stages are discernible everywhere in the world. It is absolutely essential to create a network of solidarity in struggle for decent housing conditions. We are obliged to expose the radius of human rights violations, including the right to decent living, that shall not be aligned neither with one’s economic status nor their origin. We have to reveal the genuine character of EU and UN-Habitat policy (UN-Habitat Conference, Quito, Ecuador, October 2016) aiming to blow “the right to the city” and “the right to housing”. [Read More]

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London: Report back from anti-gentrification fuck parade

By: dolph-l - October 4th, 2015  Filed under: Communique, News

Last Saturday over a thousand people came together at the ‘Fuck Parade’ to resist gentrification and the social cleansing in London’s East End. It was a beautiful expression of feeling put into action.

It kicked off under Shoreditch High Street arches with three or so massive music rigs, fire breathing and buzzing energy. A couple of hundred at first, mostly anarchists, squatters and social housing eviction resistors. The solid bloc continued to grow, as the informal march went through the streets chanting with flares and flash grenades, holding space and blocking roads, picking up more and more local people off the street and out of the estates as it passed. At points the demo was around a thousand people. [Read More]

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London: Sweets Way facing estate-wide eviction

By: dolph-l - September 23rd, 2015  Filed under: Communique, News

Support needed at Mostafa’s at 6am Wednesday [24th] for 2nd round of evictions!

After a brutal day, Sweetstopia was evicted, as was the People’s Regeneration Show Home, but Mostafa and the Sweets Way Resists community house remain. We expect bailiffs and police to return tomorrow (Wednesday) morning and need support. Please come to 46 Sweets Way at 6am if you can, to help keep Mostafa in his home! [Read More]

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Bristol: Direct Action against Estate Agents

By: sisulscz - September 1st, 2015  Filed under: Communique

Award giving in recognition of services to landlords and their rights. We proudly presented bricks through windows of CJA estate agents in Southville on the night of 31st August. All windows smashed and the international squatter symbol painted on their wall. Because despite the ban on squatting houses everyone should have a decent home.
[Read More]

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Amsterdam: The Elephant, new social center threatened with eviction

By: fawda - August 13th, 2015  Filed under: Communique, News

On the 26th of July a commercial space at the Eerste van Swindenstraat 391 in Amsterdam that had been left empty by property speculators was squatted with the intention of transforming this empty shell into a community social centre: The Elephant.
This space was managed by real estate agency Van Maarschaalkerwaart, known to deliberately leave properties empty for a long time, as a means to make profit through speculation on property markets.

This is a widespread trend amongst property corporations, contributing to the gentrification process in the Dapperbuurt in which small businesses and low-income family are displaced from the neighborhood, through the raising of rents, lack of maintenance and other means. This has taken shape in the destruction of community and cultural spaces, as well as pressure on small businesses, forcing closures. This feature of the gentrification process can be noted clearly in the the closure of two social centres in the Dapperbuurt, as a result of corporations such as DeKey raising the rent to extortionate rates, in order to sell to property developers, speculators, hipster bars, and chain stores. [Read More]

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London: Waiting For Eviction And Them Dirty Bailiffs

By: sisulscz - July 23rd, 2015  Filed under: Communique

We may not have otherwise have said – but up until now that is – for the last 8 or so weeks we have been occupying (squatting) 2 commercial properties in the two adjoining North London Boroughs of first Islington and at this time of writing Camden.

The crew moved from Central London following a number of evictions, 41 to be precise, some high profile and others not so.
[Read More]

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Their Law: The New Energies of UK Squats, Social Centres and Eviction Resistance in the Fight Against Expropriation

By: fawda - July 13th, 2015  Filed under: essay

For anyone old enough to remember themselves as a teenager during the nineties, with fond memories of piercing their own ears (multiple times) whilst listening to the second album of The Prodigy ‘Music for a Jilted Generation’ [self-​piercing nostalgia optional], they will recognise ‘Their Law’ as the musical response to the criminalisation of rave culture’s collective enjoyment of ‘repetitive beats’ directly legislated in Section 63(1)(b) of the Criminal Justice Act and Public Order Act 1994. The metallic screams and staples pulsate into an abrupt “fuck them and their law” where the Braintree boys quarterise their angry sentiment against enclosing law, the voice of a radical resistance felt in lower frequency bass, vibration, body, the tribe, the people — rave terms.

I think of Their Law when I think of the energy and metabolism of many communities now fighting the heartbreaking effects of unabated private property acquisition in the UK, of the fierce passions contesting the market-​obsessed policies enacted through unapologetic and unconcerned legislative processes that are entirely ignorant of the difficulties people are facing on a day-​to-​day basis just to be. [Read More]

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Now that it’s undeniable: Gentrification in Hamilton 2015

By: pinkxedge - July 3rd, 2015  Filed under: essay

From The Hamilton Institute

Introduction

For the past several years, we’ve been talking quite a lot about gentrification here in Hamilton. In the current moment, as the vanguard of art galleries decisively give way to boutique shops and condos, as sections of town are repurposed into bedroom communities for people who work in Toronto but can’t afford to live there, what do we mean when we talk about gentrification? Two years ago, even the arts industry fucks could claim, without feeling too dishonest, that they were creating something local and durable. Now we watch their flagship galleries and favourite restaurants close while a Starbucks and McMaster satellite campus open in Jackson Square, with condos going up on all sides. You were the footsoldiers of gentrification – don’t say we didn’t warn you.

[Read More]

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Berlin: Signs against the gentrification, the Rigaer street party

By: fawda - June 24th, 2015  Filed under: Communique, News

Dear groups, individuals and collectives „Es ist besser unsere Jugend besetzt leere Häuser als fremde Länder“ (In our youth it is better to squat empty houses than foreign countries“).
Under this motto some young people started squatting houses in Rigaestrasse and in the rest of Friedrichshain in the early 90’s, creating places where they could collectively live, organize and resist.
Particularly in the following years many of the squatted houses were evicted or pressed to sign contracts as a result of the so called „Berliner Line“ (Berliner Linie) which aimed to push people into a capitalistic (consumptive) lifestyle. Even the contracts didn’t prevent houses getting evicted in many cases. Nevertheless a few of the originally squatted houses persist as active spaces.
Discounting these projects that have remained, with somewhat affordable rent – the rest of our Kiez has undergone drastic changes in rent costs and real estate prices that are obvious to see / hard to ignore, with formidable and unfordable prices for flats. [Read More]

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