Lyon: Maria Carré trial. Call for a rally. No eviction in the middle of winter!

By: fawda - March 11th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

In spite of the promises of the Metropolis of “no one kicked out to the street”, Grand Lyon Habitat (the social housing provider of the city) asks for an eviction without delay and without respect of the winter truce for the inhabitants of the Maria Carré squat. Several dozen people, including many families with children, are at risk of being made homeless. Call for support in front of the court of Lyon (67 rue Servient, 69003) on Friday 12 March from 8.30 am for the trial.

Through Grand Lyon Habitat, the Metropolis of Lyon, held by “the left” and “the greens” is preparing to put back on the street one of the most populated squat of Lyon. In the summons to the trial, they demand an eviction without delay and an end to the winter break.

This new attack follows a year of harassment by the public authorities against this place and its inhabitants:
– broken doors, intrusion and ID checks… the disgusting methods of Grand Lyon Habitat
– in the middle of winter and illegally, Grand Lyon Habitat drills the wall of a squat!
– the cops ransacking garbage containers in front of a building in the Guillotière district and making racist controls. [Read More]

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Lyon: call for a rally to support the inhabitants of the Duracuire squat threatened with eviction

By: fawda - March 2nd, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Le Vinatier, owner of the Duracuire squat, building occupied by migrants, is threatening to evict them. Let’s come and support them. Call for a rally on March 3 at 2pm in front of Le Vinatier to support the inhabitants of the Duracuire threatened with eviction.

Do you know the Duracuire? Who are we?

Le Duracuire is the new name of the former Medico-Psychological Center of Caluire, attached to Le Vinatier, renamed by its new occupants. Since December 2019 more than 60 exiled people, most of them asylum seekers, young adults or families with children have settled in the building, which has been unoccupied for several years.
They found shelter here after having endured a daily wandering for several months following the eviction of the Amphi Z squat in Villeurbanne in September 2019, which put more than 200 people back on the street. After such events, the squat of Caluire decided to call itself the Duracuire, not without some humor,
On December 18, 2019, the place was inaugurated with the neighbors. As the building was not intended for accommodation, a lot of energy was needed to make it habitable. [Read More]

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Brussels: the municipality chooses repression and lies rather than solidarity

By: fawda - March 1st, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Press release – Solidarity Requisitioning Campaign

On Friday 26th February we wanted to squat the old Pacheco Hospice in the city centre. Our action clearly did not please the municipal politicians – Khalid Zian, president of the CPAS (Centres Publics d’Action Sociale) and Philippe Close, mayor of the City of Brussels – who opted for violent repression rather than negotiation. In the evening, we were bluntly kicked out by the police. 38 people were detained for several hours and will be fined. People were kicked in the head and verbally abused. We wonder where such a strong reaction against a solidarity action that has been rather well received in other municipalities and by the region in recent weeks comes from. Why does the city of Brussels not want to allow the use of a CPAS building that has been empty for 4 years to house people in difficulty?

The CPAS justifies the eviction by the fact that a temporary occupation is currently being considered and that a public call for tenders will soon be launched. Khalid Zian, the president of the CPAS, goes so far as to falsely assert that an occupation for accommodation would have been possible “on condition that it was properly supervised and agreed upon beforehand”. However, the municipal authorities have been approached several times about this building (by the Voice of the Undocumented – la Voix des Sans Papiers – already 2 years ago, by the Region this winter for emergency accommodation) and have each time refused to make the building available. [Read More]

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Brussels: political appropriation with the agreement of occupation of the squat rue de Koninck

By: fawda - February 26th, 2021  Filed under: News

The group, which had been squatting since March 2020 in a former printing shop at 44 rue Honoré Longtin in Jette, was threatened following last October’s eviction order. Launched in December, an occupation campaign led to the opening of several squats (L’Hospitalière in Saint-Gilles, the Citydev building, the Sleeping Beauty and the Opel Garage in Molenbeek) and the relocation of the inhabitants of the Jette squat to these new squats.

Communiqué of the Solidarity Requisition Campaign, February 25, 2021:

A media, political and associative requisition of our action ! Unbelievable false press release of the commune of Jette (and taken again in several media) !

While for many months, the public authorities were unable to find an answer to the situation and did nothing, they are today congratulating themselves for having found a “definitive” solution (false: the agreement is signed for one year) and are reappropriating the solidarity and self-organized response of our Campaign: the requisition of an empty public building. [Read More]

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Brussels: Update from the Solidarity Requisition Campaign

By: fawda - February 12th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

On December 18, 2020, L’Hospitalière was open! Since then, the Solidarity Requisition Campaign continues! Here the news from the different buildings.

L’Hospitalière:
A precarious occupancy agreement has been signed: 80 places of decent housing have been opened, in a building that was otherwise doomed to remain unoccupied. This occupation will also allow the collectives to organize their struggles for the regularization of undocumented migrants and for dignity!

Citydev building:
Negotiations are underway, we hope to be able to conclude a one-year agreement (at least until the end of March 2022). About 30 people are already living in the building. We are waiting for the heating to be turned on again and for the fire department to visit us so that we can complete the move of the Jette occupancy. In all, 200 people will be able to live there. [Read More]

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Brussels: new occupation of empty building

By: fawda - January 16th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

As of Friday, January 15, 6,936 square meters formerly used by Opel – located at 552 chaussée de Gand in Molenbeek – are occupied to rehouse some of the 200 people about to be evicted from their homes in Jette. The opening of this new squat in Molenbeek follows the opening of the Hospitalière, a former clinic in Saint-Gilles that has become home to 80 people since December 18. This action announces the launch of a campaign of “solidarity occupations”.

As collectives and associations of people with and without papers, actors of the right to housing, inhabitants of Brussels, we are organizing ourselves once again with our means to enforce the right to housing and to demand the regularization of undocumented migrants.

We will continue to open and occupy empty buildings as long as the public authorities do not provide sufficient structural responses to the social and health crisis. By launching this campaign, we affirm that we are determined to organize ourselves in the face of the absurdity of thousands of empty buildings while hundreds of people sleep outside in our city. The opening of about ten squats has made it possible to house several hundred people during the spring 2020 confinement. Today, we want to make this solidarity and self-organized response visible, while refuting the idea that this is a structural and sufficient solution. It is up to the public authorities to make it a priority. [Read More]

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Ile-Saint-Denis (France): The Pavillon Solidaire, solidarity with refugees

By: fawda - January 8th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

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]

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Nantes: New squat on rue Babonneau. You can’t lockdown people outside!

By: fawda - November 3rd, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Every evening during the meal distributions the volunteers of l’Autre Cantine (the Other Canteen) meet single men, families with babies and children who have no accommodation. They are out in the cold, often in the rain with wet clothes and wet mattresses. In September they even saw their belongings being thrown in the garbage by the municipal police. They ask us where to sleep and if the state will shelter them.
Since last March we have been in a sanitary crisis due to Covid-19 and have been locked again for 4 days. But them, how can they lock them outside? Why don’t the State and the town hall plan anything? Neither masks, nor shelter, it is once again the most precarious who are voluntarily forgotten.
It is inconceivable for us to see a hundred people on the street, it is a heartbreak to which no one can remain insensitive. This is why we support the new occupation of an empty building, 2 Rue Babonneau!
L’Autre Cantine promises material aid (clothing, mattresses, blankets, food) to the building’s occupants until the state takes over. [Read More]

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Lyon: evacuation of Collège Maurice Scève

By: fawda - October 28th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Press release following the evacuation of the Collège sans frontières Maurice Scève by the collective support migrants Lyon Croix-Rousse, October 28, 2020.

The evacuation of the Collège sans frontières Maurice Scève on October 27, 2020 went off without a clash with the police, which is appreciable after the violent intrusion on October 6. We regret that, for what could only have been a move, such a police deployment was necessary (preventing in particular the supporters from being on the premises), stigmatizing these young migrants as potentially dangerous, whereas they are rather endangered by the lack of State support, but we note that all the actors on the spot did their utmost to ensure that the operation was carried out in good conditions.

The collective would like to thank the elected municipal and metropolitan officials and the mediators who came to the site despite the early hour of the morning, showing their commitment to ensure that everything went as smoothly as possible.

The collective and the inhabitants also thank all the neighbors who came in large numbers to show their unfailing support and their vigilance during the day, and who, since the opening of the place, have been able to see in these young people something other than the image that some try to convey about them, and have been able to integrate them with benevolence. [Read More]

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Susa Valley: Call for demonstration in Claviere

By: fawda - October 23rd, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

The self-organized refuge ChezJesOulx calls everyone for a walk of resistance sunday 1st november at 11h from Claviere. The walk will be preceeded by a day of discussion on related topics such as: the border and the repression deriving from it, the detentions in the CPR, the exploitation connected to migratory flows in the Saluzzo countryside and beyond, at the occupied Casa Cantoniera in Oulx on the 31st of october at 11h.

Solidarity is under attack on both sides of the border, from the high valsusa to the briançonnais. In Italy, the Casa Cantoniera Occupata has continued for two years now to provide a free and self-determined space for all people who want to fight for their freedom of movement. The principles of self-management, anti-authoritarianism and direct solidarity guide our political project. As part of an investigation involving more than 170 people, 17 of them have received a residence ban from the border territory, the first time a precautionary measure is confirmed against an occupation.

In France, the occupied house in Gap, Cesai, was recently evicted, although this did not prevent the reopening of a new space, Chez Roger. In Briançon, the new mayor, Arnaud Murgia, declared open hostility to all solidarity initiatives, with the intention of closing the Maraudes and the CRS legal refuge,legally under possible eviction from the 28 of october. In addition, at the end of the summer, 60 new gendarmerie units were mobilized at the border between Montgenèvre and Claviere to increase the level of surveillance and pushbacks, with the support of the Italian police. But, as several cases already demonstrate, closing the borders, the places of association and struggle has never been a deterrent to migration. [Read More]

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Nantes: what future for the Maison du Peuple?

By: fawda - October 17th, 2020  Filed under: News

After a year of hard work, the Maison du Peuple was able to meet its challenge: a place open to all, capable of accommodating those who needed it unconditionally. Hundreds of people, families with children in difficulty have found a place to rebuild (education for children, unconditional support by the State, etc.). But also to offer a meeting and gathering place to the inhabitants of the city, to set up solidarity actions, to let artistic and sports talents (painting, visual arts, music, dance, etc.) flourish. And yet, this place of life and mutual aid is now threatened with eviction.

There are many reasons for this: the Maison du Peuple is a squat and does not, moreover, meet the safety standards that would allow it to be a permanent place of accommodation. It does not matter that the Maison du Peuple was able to safely accommodate homeless people at the time of confinement: it must close! Supported by various associations of all faiths, the leaseholders found themselves obliged to disassociate themselves from the silence of the public authorities. The work that would have made it possible to rehabilitate the premises was not undertaken despite repeated requests. [Read More]

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Bordeaux: the Free Zone squat under eviction threat

By: fawda - October 16th, 2020  Filed under: News

Alert, Friday morning, October 16, police officers came to the Free Zone squat (La Zone Libre) and began a census of the inhabitants, then abandoned it due to the absence of many (work, school, various activities). When questioned, they suggested that the eviction could take place on Monday morning, October 19th.
A support meeting to propose mobilization and response to this unacceptable eventuality took place at the Free Zone.
A concert in support of the Free Zone was planned for this Sunday at the Rocher de Palmer (a concert hall and loyal support for the Free Zone), in Cenon.
In addition, a rally will be held on Saturday, October 17, at 3:00 pm, Place Pey Berland, in support of the March of the Undocumented and against squat evictions.

The Gravelotte squat on September 25th, then Lajaunie squat on October 2nd, mass evictions of squats resumed in Bordeaux. Each time, hundreds of people, families, and children are thrown into the streets in a veritable “state abuse”.
The Zone Libre (also known as the Ramadier squat in Haut Cenon) with its 80 families, 300 people, and 100 children (80 of whom are in school), is threatened. [Read More]

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