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]
Saint-Julien-des-Points (France): Opening of the Hotel des Ratels!
Brussels: the municipality chooses repression and lies rather than solidarity
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]
Brussels: Update from the Solidarity Requisition Campaign
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]
Rotterdam: building squatted in Delfshaven
A number of Rotterdammers have squatted a building in Delfshaven. They want to make a statement to the city council. Rotterdam has been pushing people on the minimum wage out of the city for years. The activists are now drawing a line and want a higher minimum wage and affordable housing.
Inequality in Rotterdam is becoming more and more visible. Everywhere in the city, social housing is poorly maintained and demolished to make way for expensive housing. Rents continue to rise in our city and the income of Rotterdammers with a minimum wage or a benefit is lagging behind. There is also less and less room for their social activities and initiatives. They are being pushed out of our city. There seems to be no place for them anymore.
We do not accept this. That is why we support the Rotterdammers who have moved into the building at Havenstraat 231. They are claiming back a piece of Rotterdam to draw attention to the struggle of many Rotterdammers. Together with them we want the wealth and space in our city to be distributed more fairly. Only then can every Rotterdammer participate and have a place. This can be done by raising the minimum wage to 14 euros per hour in 2022 and by properly maintaining and renovating social housing.
Our city council did not want to listen before. Once again we call on them to ensure that every Rotterdammer can live affordably and have a decent income. We call on the City of Rotterdam to choose for us.
We want a thriving, colorful city in which everyone can live and thrive instead of survive. [Read More]
Brussels: new occupation of empty building
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]
Poland: New forest occupation
At the beginning of the Carpathians, where the area is still only hilly and where wolves, bears and lynxes live freely, wood is being cut because a piece of virgin forest was not classified as a national park. It planned to become one, in the fifties. Now it is not even nature reserve. This year it is planned to take 30% of the trees from the forest, all the big ones that are not declared as natural monuments. The job of cutting tree is apparently not even profitable: the two local forest management companies have received more than ~30 million euros in the last 8 years because of deficit. 3 times more than the 23 national parks of Poland.
A big part of the forest has never been attacked: it is on the slope and before, it was too difficult to go there with machines. In other words, it is a virgin forest located right next to a national park. If roads are built now to get to the wood, it is not only bad for the groundwater (the water then flows down the roads and is no longer “caught” in the forest), but also for the bears, which have build their sleeping places at least 2 km away from the roads. Many endangered species of lichen and moss live there, as well as protected woodpeckers and owls.
So on January 3, activists moved in to block the access road. With two skypods, the Wilczyce (female wolves) protect the forest on site, because petitions and blockades of the forest management company were not enough. Everyone is invited to join the protest.
The occupation is called Nora 219Ⓐ. Nora is the polish word for wolf’s burrow and 219a is the number the forest management compagny gave the piece of forest.
Website: nora219a.blackblogs.org
Twitter: @nora219a
Instagram: kolektyw.wilczyce
Email: wilczyce [at] riseup [dot] net
If you send us an email, we can help you to find public transport, because their websites can be complicated.
The exact location of the occupation is 49.12642° N, 22.71411° E, two kilometers straight on the way from the Bison Park Pokazowa zagroda żubrów w Mucznem.
Via Hambach Forest
Ile-Saint-Denis (France): The Pavillon Solidaire, solidarity with refugees
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]
Amsterdam: Public announcement of the occupation of Afrin squat
Since the 29th of December 2020, the anarchist organisation for reconstruction of militant proletariat occupied a building in Amsterdam. (the address of the squat will be announced together with the call for an open assembly inside the squat).
Aims and principles & Points of Unity of Afrin Squat Assembly:
All the problems we face today are caused by- and made worse by the existence of the state and capitalism, which serves and protects the interests of the ruling class and the bourgeoisie. While the rich benefit of disaster capitalism and get even richer of the crises, the proletariat has to bare the burden of the crisis and pay for the bailouts of the rich. The real virus is neo-liberalism and the dangerous pandemic is capitalism. We believe nothing is more important than for the struggle to continue, to be in class solidarity with each other and to self organise against all forms of exploitation and authority.
We believe in solidarity and the need for self-defence by any means necessary. Capitalisms needs crises and the state will always use these emergencies, whether it is imperialistic state war or a public health crisis, to increase their power and to suppress self organisation and resistance. The state is the one responsible for any death as a result of the pandemic, as the public health system is gutted, funding for imperialist wars and the military is still increasing.
As long as the state and capitalism exist, safety only exist for the rich and for fascists, and such a word as safety does not have any practical meaning to the oppressed. Social control and suppression created by the state during the pandemic tries to criminalise any type of class solidarity and resistance against the state and capitalism. The social problems such as homelessness, unemployment, poverty and the horrible conditions of immigrants locked up in concentration camps (AZC) are only made worse in these times.
[Read More]
US: Over 40 Units At Port Of Tacoma Travelodge Occupied To Provide Emergency Housing
Tacoma Housing Now reports on an ongoing housing occupation that so far has housed over 40 people for over 4 days at the Port of Tacoma Travelodge. This situation is unfolding, so follow them on social media for updates.
We’re on day 4 of the hotel occupation and settling in for night 4! Negotiations with the hotel owner, city, and county start tomorrow, but we have 50-70 people ready to defend if needed. Housing activists from Tacoma Housing Now, Seattle (the Yellow House), and Olympia have coalesced into a broad Puget Sound coalition that will support housing actions in each other’s cities. Most of our medics on-site are veterans of the recent far-Right battles in Olympia that saw two antifascist protestors shot. We’re also in a chat with housing organizers from Philly, Ashland OR, Medford OR, El Sereno CA, and Los Angeles trading tactics and media tips — the national movement is growing.
Hannover (Germany): New squat evicted
On Sunday December 6, a freshly squatted building in Hannover was evicted. Twelve people from the group “Sonst besetzen wir” had occupied it during a housing protest of about 800 people. The city then decided to evict and police took the details of those who stayed inside, they might be charged with trespass.
“Sonst besetzen wir” released a statement saying “For more than a year and a half, the houses at Schulenburger Landstrasse 158, which are owned by the city of Hannover, have been largely empty. Despite worthy announcements, the city has not yet renovated them and made them available to homeless people. In view of the corona pandemic and temperatures being at freezing point, urgent action must be taken.” [machine translation]
Villeurbanne: the Collectif Solidarités Cusset opens a squat in the rue de l’Egalité
We, Collectif Solidarités Cusset, have occupied a vacant building at 4-6 rue de l’Egalité in Villeurbanne since Wednesday 18 November. We are a neighborhood collective bringing together residents of Cusset. Since the first lockdown, we have decided to organize ourselves collectively in the face of the health and social situation in order to propose a concrete and popular solidarity with the most precarious: students, unemployed, undocumented workers, workers, large families, retired people…
For 4 months, we tried to contribute to the food and health emergency by distributing food and hygiene products in the form of a free market, with the support of several associations in town. Over these 4 months, twice a week, we held these distributions, and it is more than 80 families and isolated people that we helped.
Strengthened by this experience and the multiple links that we have built, we re-mobilized at the beginning of this second lockdown, notably through the organization of marauds. These allowed us to see that our means were not equal to the great precariousness in which too many people found themselves, especially those who had no housing. [Read More]
Nantes: New squat on rue Babonneau. You can’t lockdown people outside!
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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