Ljubljana: Zadruga Urbana, little urban-agrarian platform

Zadruga Urbana (Urban Cooperative in English) embodies the idea of an urban-agrarian platform that aims to connect collectives and individuals in order to improve self-sufficiency through direct action. It is based on shared principles of horizontality, autonomy and self-organization. Our vision is to bring together individuals and collectives regardless of previous experience, in a non-hierarchical way, to promote autonomy in local food production and freer access to public land.

We are not satisfied with the current system of food production and therefore try to raise people’s awareness of options for producing their own food, consuming locally and being autonomous – all through collective gardening. Our venture enables individuals with no land of their own to produce food. It gives them a better overview of some of the possible ways to self-organize, coupled with sensitivity for their local environment. Furthermore we believe it is necessary for a collective movement to take that process into their own hands. [Read More]

Ljubljana: What is Zadruga Urbana?

Zadruga Urbana” is a group of people who came together with the shared dissatisfaction for the current system of food production, who believe in the necessity for a collective movement to take the process into their own hands. We believe that collective gardens raise people’s awareness of producing their own food, consuming locally and being autonomous/productive, enabling individuals without land of their own to produce food with a sensitivity for their local natural environment.

Our group wants to bring people together to learn and promote the ideas to find solutions for change towards a more sustainable life regardless of previous experience. Everyone is welcome to participate in our gardens and network, to learn and share the skills of producing our own food. We aim to use local seeds and to fertilize our crop naturally.

Our vision is to connect individuals and collectives in a horizontal, non-hierarchical way, to promote autonomy in local food production and freer access to public land. We also plan to reclaim/collectivize more locations in urban spaces and organise guerilla gardening. We hold regular lectures and talks on a range of permacultural and environmental topics such as beekeeping, composting and germination which are free to attend. We have a plans to create vegetable and seed bank/market as well as social kitchen with produce which is in line our aims. [Read More]

Brazil: The rise and rise of the landless movement

The landless: no longer to be ignored.

At first sight it looks like a festival. The makeshift tents hung with colourful hammocks, the rousing Brazilian beats blaring from speakers, even the portaloos – like a mini Glastonbury sprung up in a small town in the Brazilian Amazon. There are stalls selling cold drinks, food on paper plates, even handmade jewellery. The details give it away though. Children run laughing, but the adults look old, tired, tense. Some have brought battered electric cookers with them, powering them with home-made generators.
[Read More]

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La Salamane (FR): Call for occupation!

CALL FOR OCCUPATION, La Salamane (40 min from Montpellier, France) The municipalities community of the Clermontais is planning to build a commercial area of 70 Ha on agrarian land between la Salamane and Clermont l’Hérault (40 min from Montpellier, France). About 30 Ha are already owner by Système U, a French supermarket chain, to build a gigantic center for storage that has already been classified under the French SEVESO rating as slightly environmentally dangerous. This area contains a few empty houses, some vineyards and some fruit trees. The land expropriations already started for the few owners that didn’t sell their propriety yet and the bulldozers are starting to tear down the vineyards. [Read More]

Notre-Dame-des-Landes / Nantes (France): A land occupation to make an autonomous village

The ZAD, July 9, 2011,

We are a hundred, we just occupied the land in order to make a autonomous village, to overcome the fight against G8 we gathered together to start to build up a concrete moment of alternatives and struggles.

It’s been a while that we think about the idea to change the way of protest against G8 summits, against pressure, the expected appointment, police traps and event hopping.
By preparing this long term “Camp” which we want to call village, here on La ZAD (Zone to defend) we want to expand this mobilization, take our time for reflection and exchange, linking the global and local struggle…. Our rage is intact: our energy too! [Read More]

Slovenia: Ljubljana Community Gardens & Seed Swap

On the second day of our stay in Ljubljana PEDAL jumped on bikes with spades and forks and trowels for a working tour of four community gardens in the city. The group organising and looking after these gardens ‘Zadruga Urbana Collective Vrt’ have just started another garden in the autonomous free space Metelkova where together we built a bike fence and a compost system, and began work on a permaculture design for the land.

As we went in the sunshine to build more beds on an community allotment, our new friends explained that the growing spaces are on land set to be developed in to park space. The people who grow here have not gone through a council to gain a small plot but effectively have squatted the land- choosing an area and simply starting to work the land with little or no problem from authorities. This contrasts our restricted growing spaces in the UK where in some parts of London you are put on a 20-30 year waiting list. [Read More]

Monars (Catalunya): Rural squatt meeting from july 1st to 4th of 2010

Hi family!

A small mass mail to tell you about the next Meeting of Rural Squatting, in Monars, a squatted village (La garrotxa, Catalonian Pyrenees, Northern Spain) from 1st to 4th of July, 2010.

Each year this meeting is made in different villages in order to talk, exchange information about access to land through squatting, relationships in community, self organization, self sufficiency, health, “education”…

Hope to meet you there.

Love & Freedom.

For more information in spanish:
http://mislatacontrainfos.blogspot.com/2010/06/alta-garrotxa-1-4-juliol-jornades.html

See also, in english:
http://reclaimthefields.org/

Julien

Athens (Greece): Exarcheia self-organised park under police attack, 5 arrested

In the early hours of Friday 4. 9. 2009 the self-organised park in Exarcheia once again came under attack by the police. Earlier, police jeeps tried to cross through Messologiou Street: the very same street where Alexis Grigoropoulos was assassinated in December. People present tried to resist the shameless police provocation; only moments later a full-scale police operation saw riot units surrounding the area, tear-gassing the people present and throwing them a percussion grenade. During the conflict a cop pulled out his gun, threatening to shoot.

From those arrested, one (charged with a “misdemeanor”, that is, graffiti) will be at court on Monday and other four will appear on Tuesday. The four are charged with felonies: molotov cocktails and stone-throwing, except according to eye-witnesses, not a single molotov was thrown in the area last night! They are all held in detention until then and it is possible they might be ordered in pre-trial detention – in Greece this can last up to 18 months.

In an hour or so, an assembly will begin at the park, spontaneously called after last night’s events. More info will follow. A more detailed account of the events is up on Athens IMC:

More info: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1074386

 

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