Amsterdam: Anarcha-Feminst Group squat building on Sint Willibrodrusstraat

By: fawda - June 5th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

New chapter in the zero tolerance policy towards squatting in Amsterdam. In the evening of friday 4 June 2021, many people are taking part in a squatting action in the Pijp. A house is squatted, banners hanged, slogans chanted, fireworks lighted up, a neighborhood letter handed out. Cops are showing up in big numbers, claiming squatters are caught in the act. They want to evict right away. The big group and neighbors are all together pushed away from the area. Later in the evening, riot cops won’t find anybody inside the squatted house which is ending boarded up by a private company. No arrests are reported.

Statement by the Anarcha-Feminst Group Amsterdam:

Today we squatted Sint Willibrodrusstraat 15 owned by ‘evil corp’ Blackstone. This building has been empty for a long time. today we ended this situation of emptiness and speculation by giving the house back its purpose.

Fuck Blackstone, eat the rich!
Stop speculation, squat the world

We are told that there are not enough houses for everyone, that there are not enough spaces for the refugees and migrants coming here fleeing imperialist wars and economies that have been destroyed by (neo)colonialism. It is unacceptable that the media blame migration for the fact that we all seem to struggle to find a home.There is no problem of a lack of space, there is no “housing crisis”, the only problem is the unequal distribution of wealth. The problem is capitalism. [Read More]

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Madrid: La Ingobernable opens a Social Rights Office in the center of the city

By: fawda - May 7th, 2021  Filed under: Communique

The collective that squatted the building at 39 Gobernador St. announced this morning that they have occupied a building at 5 Cruz St. to “resist in common and conquer new rights”.

With the slogan “Social rights to change everything”, the collective of La Ingobernable has started this new project that they have called Office of Social Rights (ODS, Oficina de Derechos Sociales). In a communiqué they explain that it will serve to “resist in common and conquer new rights” because they cannot “wait any longer” and point out that the current crisis of covid19 “hits us with other pandemics: hunger lines, distrust, fascism, precariousness, racism, speculation, loneliness, pessimism and fear,” they claim.

The ODS will have seven axes that respond to seven social urgencies: the right to housing, the right to food, the right to protest, labor precariousness, transfeminisms and dissidence, basic income and community health. It is this context of social emergency, which has prompted the collective to raise the slogan “Social rights to change everything”, with a commitment to “resist in common” and open this space where “develop, protect and fight for social rights”. [Read More]

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Brussels: a hundred residents mobilise to avoid eviction

By: fawda - May 7th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Press release 7 May 2021. Brussels city – a hundred residents are mobilising to avoid eviction: the building has been empty since 2017 and belongs to Belgium’s second largest fortune.

The building was squatted by the “Solidarity Requisition Campaign” in March. Following the occupation, negotiations were started in order to reach an agreement and sign a temporary occupation agreement with the owner, Viscountess Caroline de Spoelberch. Despite encouraging beginnings, the latter is now backing down and has obtained an eviction order. The residents are mobilising to avoid being thrown out on the street in the midst of a social and health crisis.

A hundred or so people have been living for over a month in the gigantic building , which overlooks both Rue de Livourne and Avenue Louise. Purchased in 2018 for 18 million euros by Caroline de Spoelberch, it has remained unoccupied since then. For this reason, the “Solidarity Requisitioning Campaign” took over the building at the end of March and several groups of homeless or badly housed people, including the Voice of the Homeless BXL and the Voice of the Homeless Family, quickly moved in. [Read More]

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Saint-Étienne: le Steal, new squatted space

By: fawda - April 22nd, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Since Sunday 18 April 2021, we have been occupying le Steal, a former music school in Saint-Etienne, which has been empty for several months and which belongs to the city. We wish to make it a place of struggle, life and discussions open to all.
We occupy this building because we refuse to choose between a growing precariousness and a world of profit more and more dehumanizing, to always more toiling while others amass billions and to rent slums while the city hall leaves buildings to the abandonment. This place is meant to host various cultural and political events and to support anti-capitalist, anti-racist, LGBTI+, ecologist struggles, etc… and therefore open to all people and groups wishing to organize, meet and discuss around them.
We will keep you informed about the next events and we want to keep the communication around this place.
Do not hesitate to come and meet us! [Read More]

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Amsterdam: squat eviction, what happened at Oudezijds Voorburgwal 136

By: fawda - April 21st, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

This is going to be personal, this is going to be emotional. We are people with feelings, with political convictions, with longing for freedom. Our struggle and our wounds are written and felt in our bodies. We are angry and we are sad, we are tired and we are determined. Evictions are public spectacles, collective traumas. Certain people are to blame. So we will name them and we will shame them.

Why we squatted Oudezijds Voorburgwal 136:

There are many reasons to squat. The line between personal reasons and political is – as always – blurred. We not only squat because of a need for affordable housing with an imagination of what this space could be, but also with anger towards the racism, colonialism and capitalism this building represents. Watch the video to see our political statement. [Read More]

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Basel: actions days, new squat on Florastrasse 23 evicted

By: fawda - April 21st, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

TOGETHER AGAINST EMPTINESS – WHO OWNS THE SPACE?“
APRIL 17-23, EVERYWHERE

With the rapid deepening of structural inequalities, lack of solutions, and the economic crisis amplified by Corona, a void has entered many of our minds, bodies, future plans, social interactions, relationships, and wallets.
Stay at home and do nothing? We have a different idea of solidarity! Let’s denounce grievances together! Point out where the problems of the crisis are buried! Question the principles of our society! Share experiences! Time for unconventional solutions! Civil disobedience is more than appropriate! Solidarity with hand and foot can be lived! Together against emptiness!

This morning, april 21 2021, Florastrasse 23 was occupied. The house has been empty for a year and should have been used again. The owner, however, was not happy about this news and called in the police without further notice. A constructive conversation or other negotiation between the squatters and the owner was unfortunately not possible. The house was thus evicted by the police after a few hours. There were no arrests. [Read More]

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Dijon: opening of a house for exiled women and gender minorities

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

A house for exiled people in Dijon

Since Wednesday, April 7, a house located at 23 avenue Roland Carraz in Chenôve has been occupied, with the objective of making it a place of residence for exiled women and gender minorities. Women represent nearly 30% of asylum seekers, but they are still invisible in the media and public discourse.
However, being an exiled woman, and even more so being LGBTQIA+, means being exposed to more difficulties, on the one hand on the migratory routes but also once you arrive in France: precariousness, sexual violence… and administrative violence, inflicted by the whole asylum application process. In the OFPRA offices, among other absurd and painful justifications, LGBTQIA+ people are obliged to prove their sexual orientation or gender, undergoing the heavy (and often impossible) task of telling their intimate story, while possibly not being believed if they do not fit the stereotypes. [Read More]

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Athens: Zizania, new squatted social center in Victoria

By: fawda - April 6th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Welcome to Zizania, a squatted social center in Victoria, at the corner of Fylis and Feron streets. May it be a neighbourhood space for self-organisation, social interventions, collective resistance and community building. Let’s meet in this space for sharing thoughts, food, coffee, clothes and whatever else we can imagine. For freeshops and free haircuts, for caffeneios and screenings, for learning and reading, for workshops and assemblies. Let’s celebrate it as a step towards the liberation of more public spaces, let’s make the best of this opportunity, as we are the ones who shape and take on our own struggles and shouldn’t rely neither on other people, designated institutions, nor better circumstances to do so.

With Zizania we foremostly aim to create a breathing space from the racist, sexist, capitalistic violence of the state and society. We envision a space of interaction and exchange between people of different backgrounds, origins, identities and ages, who speak different languages and have different opinions. These are conditions we must create and concretise together, through meeting each other, strengthening relationships inside and between our communities and connecting our struggles. For too long we have only been dreaming about something like this – surely we weren’t the only ones – and now we want to take action. In that spirit, we invite you to bring your issues, ideas, initiatives, and struggles to discuss how we can shape this space together. [Read More]

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London: Copshop squatted

By: sisulscz - March 21st, 2021  Filed under: Communique

Squatters and autonomous activists have occupied the former Clapham Common Police Station to demand the withdrawal of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill and the end of the femicide recently highlighted by the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met police officer.

As the closest cop shop to where Sarah was last seen, the occupation of this building holds particular importance and meaning at this time. Although the bill has been postponed, we have to keep fighting it to ensure it does not pass. And in the meantime, violence against women continues. We must seize this moment where we find ourselves UNITED in rage, unified in our fight against the ongoing global femicide and to remember people like Sarah, Blessing Olusegun and countless others and to build our fight to end violence against women.

We also seek to bring attention to Section 4 of the Bill which criminalises trespass, a racist move by this Tory government which will affect predominantly travellers and van dwellers but also squatters, protest camps and the homeless. We hope that all those who resist the expansion of police powers in the Tories Bill will also join us in resisting any amended versions of that Bill which retain this racist attack which will make a travelling way of life almost impossible.
[Read More]

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Bern: call for solidarity at the new squat on Wasserwerkgasse

By: fawda - March 18th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

On Monday 14 March 2021, we occupied the house at Wasserwerkgasse 17 in Bern. Our existences are highly threatened due to acute housing shortages. Furthermore, in the current crisis, the people who suffer the most are those who are already in difficult circumstances. Under the current circumstances, as well as the general developments in the city’s spatial policy, it is regrettably an impossibility for people with low incomes to get access to urgently needed spaces in the city. Our ideas for the use of the house include living and working spaces as well as integration projects and low-threshold meeting possibilities in the form of non-commercial offers for everybody. People without papers, people with small incomes, people who are fed up with overpriced pop-ups and cool ice scream shops, people who do not orient their lives on capitalism and people who want to shape their lives and their environment together and decide not to live in rented apartments. We want to live, offer space for people who are systematically excluded and be a sustainable and solidary alternative to the individualized and consumer-oriented throwaway society! [Read More]

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Amsterdam: report back from the 8th of March squatting action

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

Today, in honor of 8th of March, we, Anarcha-Feminist Group Amsterdam, organized squatting action (in the Spuistraat) with demonstration. Due to security concerns, it was organized silently, sharing call-out in private channels. Despite this, more that 60 comrades came to support our action! 3 banners (“Woman life freedom”, “Sex work is work”, “destroy patriarchy, fight capitalism, smash the state”) were dropped with flares from the windows of the squatted building. Police were present, but no one was arrested.

Our political statement:

We are told that there are not enough houses for everyone, that there are not enough spaces for the refugees and migrants coming here fleeing imperialist wars and economies that have been destroyed by (neo)colonialism. It is unacceptable that the media blame migration for the fact that we all seem to struggle to find a home. This is an example of scapegoating migrants and refugees.
There is no problem of a lack of space, there is no “housing crisis”, the only problem is the unequal distribution of wealth. The problem is capitalism.
We are being pushed out of our city by rising rent prices and gentrification. Social housing is being sold off privately and the lack of affordable housing means working class people are forced to leave the city. Even people with essential professions such as teachers, healthcare workers and social workers are forced to move. People struggle to pay rent while speculators are given free range to do as they please. Some private investors have hundreds of houses, for example, prince Bernhard has more than 600 houses, and the owner of this building, Anthonie Mans, owns over 100 other properties in the Netherlands. Waiting lists for social housing are ridiculous and it can take from 8 to 14 years for people to get a place. But for every homeless person there is an estimate of 750m2 of empty building in Amsterdam. [Read More]

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Saint-Julien-des-Points (France): Opening of the Hotel des Ratels!

By: fawda - March 3rd, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Hello!
We are the occupants of the Hotel des Cévennes in Saint-Julien-des-Points (Lozère), a hotel that has been emptied and abandoned for 15 years (bring your tools, there’s work to be done!) that we want to make livable and alive.
In this context of “health emergency” where the government is tightening the authoritarian and security screw more and more, let’s open breaches, possibilities and places to improve our lives.
The building is a big hotel, it could be a multifaceted project, participatory and in connection with the inhabitants of the surrounding area. Come to meet us, exchange, plan together … Any human and material help is welcome, to your ideas and commitment!
We would like a place where the difference and the choices of each person are respected. Thus, no form of oppression of gender, class, race (non-exhaustive list !!) will be tolerated within the building, take care of us ! [Read More]

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