Since the early morning hours the police have been clearing the two occupations at Mozartstraße 3 and Klarastraße 17. The fact that the owners, with the support of the police, are now putting an end to this is an expression of Freiburg’s misguided housing policy: the city supports profit-oriented companies in their activities, while the active design of open and free spaces and the use of empty buildings are criminalized.
Over the last few days, a free space has developed in both spaces which has been gratefully used by supporters, interested parties and the neighbourhood: Whether animated discussions, exciting lectures or simply coffee and cake, the programme was as varied as the people in it.
We feel that the fact that the owners are now putting an end to this with the support of the police is an expression of Freiburg’s misguided housing policy: profit-oriented companies are supported in their activities by the city, while the active use of open and free spaces and the use of empty buildings are criminalised.
We wish a broad public attention for both occupations during the eviction and refer here to the action “day X+2”, which will take place two days after the eviction. There we would like to make clear our support for Mozart3 and Klara17 and set a clear sign for affordable living space. [Read More]
Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany): Mozart3 and Klara17 squats evicted!
Berlin: 2019 A decisive year ?
Within the next days the contracts of Liebig34, Potse, Drugstore, Großbeerenstraße 17a and Syndikat are ending. The future of many other projects like Meuterei, Rigaer94, Brauni is not much clearer. Whether they just have more time or the so called owners are playing with concealed cards, we have to develop and adopt a defense for these projects.
A good moment to go into a counteroffensive
The restructuring of the city is thundering on and even a bourgeois middle class can not ignore the consequences anymore. The City is becoming more and more dense and those that still fit in it richer with every wave of gentrification. Houses are getting forcefully vacated, renovated and turned into condos. Renters get forcefully evicted when the so called owners are coming up with more modern schemes of maximizing their profit, renters cannot keep pace with rent raises or are just plain “too annoying”. The last vacant lots are getting covered with new luxury lofts even when they very well were used since their beginning by the people around. Commercial premises are being rented out at such a steep price that businesses inevitably have to become more high priced and exclusive even when the operators might not want that. [Read More]
Berlin: Attacks on Google and gentrification
On Thursday 1/11/2018 we did some work using angry hammers on the door of a Google office under construction in Tucholskystraße, Berlin.
Even if a Google campus is not to be set up in Kreuzberg for the time being, Google remains an engine of our alienated daily life and an instrument of authority. To attack Google, control and dominion, be it with graffiti, solidarity, hacking or hammers, is necessary in order to breath with self-determination.
The essence is in the liberating decision to act in person.
On Saturday night of 03/11, an evil spirit took the initiative to damage an ex neighbourhood shop in Friedelstraße 54. The poltergeist destroyed the walls, the windows, the pipes and the floors. Of course with every regard for those who live in the house.
As Halloween is over, one can foresee that the building will remain doomed for the whole year. Little is known about spirits, except that they seek company, usually remain alone and let themselves be cast out most unwillingly. This should be clear to businesses and possible tenants as they decide to rent the haunted place in Friedelstraße 54. [Read More]
Frankfurt (Germany): Arson attacks against squats and self-organized spaces
Since September, five arson against squats and other self-organized spaces have taken place in the region Frankfurt. On 15th September, the first attack took place in Schwalbach, a village just on the outskirts of Frankfurt. A barn at the self-organized project “Knotenpunkt” was set on fire and the fire spread to other buildings including one people living in. It became uninhabitable as a result of the fire and the subsequent firefighting, luckily no one got injured. Property damage is estimated at more than 200,000 Euros. On 13th and 15th November, three arson attacks against squats in Frankfurt (“Au” and “Assenland”) took place, but in every case the fire were the fire was noticed quickly and the comrades were able to extinguish the fire directly. On December 3rd, a shed in the project “Schwarze 7” in Hanau – small city 30km from Frankfurt – was burned down as well. [Read More]
Berlin: They‘re coming closer! International call to support Rigaer94
On the 15th of November, five hundred cops, including special forces with assault rifles, attacked Rigaer94 to make a house search in the case of a trouble in a shop some month before. The investigation is labeled as „robbery and bodily harm“. A video published by the shop owner shows, that this is an obvious lie in order to create a reason for a martial attack against rebellious structures. The pigs came at 6 o‘clock in the morning and managed to open the doors quickly, meanwhile aiming with their rifles towards anyone showing up at the windows.
In the same moment, four other houses were searched in different areas of Berlin in this issue. Later the Minister of Interior, Andreas Geisel (Socialdemocratic Party), declared that all this was not politically motivated but instead was an offensive against the criminal underworld. But everyone knows that the raids were nothing else than attacks on anti-authoritarian ideas and combative structures in order to claim the monopoly on violence.
In addition to the pigs, the guy who declares himself the lawyer of the official housowner (the british mailbox company Lafone Investments Ltd.) entered the scene in Rigaer Strasse in the company of some construction workers in order to destroy the doors of the house. But he was stopped by the presence of comrades and finally sent away by legal threats by the lawyer of Rigaer94. Nevertheless the presence of the dubious circles that claim the ownership of the house for several years now, is again a meaningful sign. [Read More]
Germany: We squatted Mannheim! Friedenstrasse 44 occupied
Two weeks ago humans were chased from their homes in Hambacher Forst. Whilst the main public focus was on the protests in the forest, already for years people have been forced out of the surrounding villages. And so also in Mannheim.
Rather than only concerning local inhabitants, coal mining in the Rhineland is also a global problem.
It doesn‘t matter if it‘s a question of the dormouse seeing their old oak being destroyed, local farmers seeing their fields dry out and settlements being torn down, humans having to leave the streets in which they first learnt to ride a bicycle, or Peruvian villages being threatened by melting glaciers. All living creatures suffer in common, from this problem from the behaviour of RWE and this destructive culture in general. Multinationals like RWE and politicians need to take responsibility for this issue. If they are not willing to change their methods of energy production, then we as ordinary people are obliged to act.
We are not willing to accept the destruction of these homes, so we‘re occupying them to prevent this. In doing so, we intend to open up a space for free and self-organised living, one that encourages creativity and quality of life and supports each one another in the struggles against RWE. We demand from RWE to give those people the houses back who want to return.
Living in rural areas became attractive to a lot of humans. Far away from an anonymous life in small, unpayable flats in the concrete jungles all over the world where people can help each other, live together and where living projects of different generations can be possible.
We want to make this possible together in unity. With people who live together in Mannheim since decades. With people who lived here and already left with their families. With people who came here to fight the structural destruction of nature. And with people who were forced to flee from their homes in other parts of the world, just to be chased away once again from here. [Read More]
Berlin: Liebig34 must stay!
We are Liebig 34, a self-organised anarcha queer feminist house project in Berlin-Friedrichshain made of different collectives: the Infoladen Daneben, the-queer-feminist living-project Liebig34 and the queer feminist eventspace L34-Bar. 40 people from all over the world with different backgrounds and gender identities collectively live together whitout cis-men, trying to create a “safer political space“ without hierarchies, a space where we try to develop, extend and exert anti-patriarchal practices, where we reflect power structures, privileges and where we empower each other.
Liebig 34 was squatted in 1990 and later legalized like many other houses in east-Berlin. After the failed attempt to buy the house collectively, a contract was made for 10 years.
Now, december 2018, our contract is coming to an end.
Our house, like over 200 others around Friedrichshain, is owned by Gijora Padovicz and his company Siganadia Grundbesitz GmbH, famous for the systematic buying, eviction and destruction of houses and houseprojects for commercial profit in detriment of affordable housing spaces for all. [Read More]
Germany: Hambacher Forest Solidarity
In the course of militarized assault on the meadow on August 28, an activist from the forest was taken down off the kitchen roof after updating the outside on the situation in the meadow and arrested He was taken to the police HQ in Aachen, where he was identified. It was found that there is still an outstanding fines for previous acusations resulting out of actions in the Hambacher Forst. The police therefore threatened with a sentence of 150 days jail. The daily rates were advanced by a solidary private person who is no financial standing to cover the costs long term. As fines are an attempt to drain financial resources of the movement please help us gather funds to at least repa this sum. We ask you to carry together this penalty of 1500 € (10 € x 150 days) ! Please participate in this donation call. No JUStice – no peace!
[Read More]
Cologne: Street blockade against possible eviction of Autonomous Center
About 800 people blocked Zülpicher Platz in Cologne, Germany on Friday to protest against eviction threats against the autonomous center (AZ Köln).
The protesters reclaimed the streets and demanded not to evict the autonomous center in Cologne. About 40 initiatives are active in the autonomous center. The city of Cologne is planning to evict and demolish the building. Negotiations with city authorities did not bring a satisfying solution.
People took the streets of Cologne once again on Friday to make clear that if the city takes the autonomous center, people will reclaim the streets. Cops kettled the blockade on Friday night, including by-passers on Zülpicher Platz. The lackeys in uniform again and again attacked people.
At 09:30pm cops released the kettle and people spontaniously marched to the autonomous center AZ Köln.
Berlin: The Senate speaks of housing policy – we make it
Last whit Sunday, ten empty houses were squatted in Berlin and Potsdam. From a villa over a former kindergarten to a whole house. What was dead speculative mass for years was filled with life. Even though some of the occupations were abandoned very quickly, #besetzen (occupying) was not just a symbolic action. Each empty building was placed in its context and for almost all objects there were concepts that showed a possible use in the sense of a solidary urban policy. It has always been emphasized that not the vacancy is the problem, but the principle of (private) ownership of useable and living space, which makes speculation possible. But speculation is not only about vacancy, but also about inhabited and used areas. This means that it can displace anyone and anything. Whether they are youth centers, day-care centers, a late night kiosk or entire blocks of flats. Therefore, on May 20, it was clear: Spaces must be occupied and defended. On this day, especially the Bornsdorferstraße 37b (Borni) in North Neukölln and the Reichenbergerstraße 114 (Friedel54 in exile) in Kreuzberg were to be defended as self-managed places for the moment and on the long-term to become places to organize the struggle for a city policy from below.
They do not want negotiations, they just want violence.
[Read More]
Berlin: Raid in Rigaer Str. 94
Two weeks ago the current reinforcement of the siege of Berlin-Friedrichshain’s Nordkiez culminated in yet another crazy raid in Rigaer Str. 94, at the center of the so called “danger zone”. Two residents were imprisoned.
At approximately 8 o’clock in the morning on 29th March 2018 our dear friend was assaulted and arrested by special forces. 350 pigs were luring around the neighbourhood and waiting for him to be alone, walking his dog, Raf. Only then they dared to approach him. They ripped off his keys and entered Rigaer94 to raid his home. Dozens of pigs supported with ballistic shields and backed up by helicopter entered his flat, seeking to humiliate his teenage daughters, who, too, rank very high on the pigs’ personal lists of enemies of the law and order.
After two long years of round the clock siege, this is the most recent climax of escalation and police terror in our Kiez*. The answer won’t be violent enough.
In the course of the action another resident of Rigaer94 was arrested. They both are kept imprisoned in JVA Moabit. [Read More]
Bonn: Former Iranian Embassy Squatted and Evicted
The former Iranian embassy in Bonn was recently squatted in solidarity
with political activism, feminist struggles and prisoner rights in Iran.
Unfortunately it has now been evicted. It was occupied on International
Women’s Day, Thursday March 8, and was raided by over one hundred riot
cops one week later.
Apparently the building no longer had special status since the embassy
had moved to Berlin and had been empty for twenty years since the
reunification of Germany. Mainstream media in Germany and Iran
(including the Tehran Times!) reported that four “opportunists” had been
removed and it was unclear if they would face any charges. You can read
the manifesto of the squatters on the Institut für Anarchismusforschung
blog below and follow them on twitter.
[Read More]
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