Dijon: Lentillères Spring Festival, Commons Week

By: fawda - May 3rd, 2024  Filed under: Communique, News

On May 31st, June 1st and 2nd, we will celebrate the 14th anniversary of the beginning of the occupation of the Quartier Libre des Lentillères!

Since 2010, from land clearing to self-construction, 9 hectares have gradually been occupied by gardens, fields, cabins, parks, orchards and collective places open to all.

After having snatched the abandonment of phase 2 of the misnamed “eco-city of market gardeners” (éco-cité des maraîchers) project in 2019, and started a dialogue with the city council for the last 2 years, we find ourselves once again threatened by the city’s appetite for concrete. An “ultimatum”, taken out of the mayor’s pocket on a Sunday morning at dawn, forces us to question the indivisibility of the 9 hectares that make up the neighborhood, to make way for an urbanization project on a strip of 1.14 hectares. This pressure undermines the trust and exchanges that we had tried to establish in recent months. [Read More]

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Dijon: Ransacking at l’Engrenage

By: fawda - April 20th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Very early this Tuesday morning, a police force accompanied by an armada of construction machines was deployed to devastate the land on Avenue de Langres that had been occupied for almost a year.
Several bulldozers, excavators, trucks and the DESERTOT company’s manitou were mobilized to try to put an end to the gardens, as well as loggers who were in charge of cutting down the trees.
The municipality deploys the great means. Flowers, blades of grass, everything goes. The will is clear: nothing must remain of what can look like greenery.
This ransacking operation comes at the beginning of spring, whereas for weeks the gardeners had been working to make this place an open and shared place of passage between the residents.

The house located in the middle of the gardens remains protected by a court decision, and will not be evicted today (unless the cops decide to illegally force their way in). It is thanks to the presence of the inhabitants in this house that the alert was given early in the morning. The call relayed by friendly neighbors allowed people to converge in solidarity from the first minutes. They tried to block the construction machines by overtaking the police force that had just been set up. Some people were thus able to reach the house to defend it, while several others climbed on the roof of the house. [Read More]

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Dijon: Justice orders the eviction of the Engrenage Gardens in 6 months!

By: fawda - March 20th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Press release from the Engrenage Gardens

Since June 17, 2020, we occupy a wasteland renamed “Les Jardins de l’Engrenage“, avenue de Langres in Dijon, to prevent the real estate development of 307 housing units “Garden State”, which plans the destruction of this precious natural space.
Without ever having visited the land to appreciate its soil qualities and the dynamic life created in the neighborhood, the Mayor of Dijon launched in August 2020 a legal procedure to evict the gardeners and occupants of the house located on the plot. After having pronounced in November 2020 the eviction of the gardens only (still suspended), the Dijon Court of Justice has just rules its judgment this Friday, March 19, 2021 concerning the occupied house: the judge pronounces an eviction order but grants the occupants a 6-month delay to leave the premises.
We take note of this decision: for us, each day, each week, each month gained in this fight against the destruction of nature, is a victory against adversity. Gardeners at the Engrenage, Dijon residents protecting this space, we will take advantage of the next 6 months to root ourselves even more solidly in this land that we take care of, just like the vegetables that will grow there for a new season in the collective vegetable garden and the allotment gardens. [Read More]

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Dijon: Invitation to come and discover the Quartier Libre des Lentillères

By: fawda - November 30th, 2020  Filed under: News

With this second lockdown, we sense that we will have to learn to live with the global pandemic a little longer. For some time now, we had also understood that we would have to deal with the ecological crisis. Rather than gently waiting for the next state of emergency, what we are trying to build here at the Quartier Libre des Lentillères is a possible way to continue to live in spite of these crises. By imagining and creating a world that makes us envious, built of non-market relationships, based on solidarity and a sense of the common, connected to the environment in which we find ourselves, organized in self-management.

From a small, very localized struggle against an urbanisation project such as there are so many of them, a neighborhood rich in the diversity of its activities (from market gardening to self-construction, from small gardens to neighborhood festivals) was built over 10 years, without planing, trying this and that, and also rich of people who come along, garden and live in it. And rich in possible imaginations. Together we are constantly reinventing ourselves collectively. [Read More]

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Dijon: Engrenage Gardens under threat. Vegetables and trees are rooted, they will not leave.

By: fawda - November 11th, 2020  Filed under: News

The decision of the Dijon court has confirmed the eviction of the land occupied by the Engrenage Gardens as of November 20. The house is not affected by this decision. Despite the headlines in the local press suggesting that the case is closed, the vegetables are growing, the gardeners are gardening and the walkers are wandering around!

After the October hearing, the court handed down its verdict on November 4. According to the local press (le Bien Public). “The court noted the occupation without right or title of the land located between 45 and 65 avenue de Langres and ordered their eviction within fifteen days if necessary with the help of the police force. The court, however, declared itself incompetent with respect to the occupation of the small house. » [Read More]

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Dijon: attempt to evict the Engrenage Gardens

By: fawda - July 24th, 2020  Filed under: News

Early this Friday morning, the occupants of the Engrenage Gardens were woken up by municipal police officers and three backhoe loaders that had been sent to ravage the vegetable gardens. The rapid arrival of supporters allowed them to stop the advance of the machines. The protagonists’ account of the events.

Waking up this morning, to the sound of the “beep-beep” of the bulldozers. Astonishment to discover the Jardins de l’Engrenage, surrounded by the barriers and the police. The beans, the tomatoes (already red!): crushed, the branches of the trees: torn off, the hedges: crushed. The brutality of the machines, facing the thorns of the brambles.

Sponsored by whom? Why was it ordered? The city? The property developer? Nobody on the spot wants to answer our questions. No one to dialogue except the police force and the steel of the machines.

So we’re holding. Together. We hang on, we climb, we watch. We call friends and neighbors. Yesterday they were there for the market, and since June 17, 2020, to share around these gardens a moment of music or petanque… Today we saw tears in their eyes. Since the taking of this land how many gardening tips, crafts and small services have been exchanged; how many stories around this neighborhood and the lives of its inhabitants! So we resist, again. [Read More]

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Dijon: Land occupation on Avenue de Langres

By: fawda - June 17th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Statement from the June 17 Collective – Land occupation in Dijon as part of the June 17 appeal against the repeated intoxication of the world!

Today wednesday June 17th 2020, despite the rain, we were nearly four hundred people to demonstrate from the Place de la République to the abandoned plot located at 63 avenue de Langres. Armed with spades and pitchforks, the participants were able to clear the land to make gardens, set up new meeting and breathing spaces in the heart of the neighbourhood, plant vegetables, debate the common future on this land and beyond, or share a meal.

This land is threatened by a real estate project carried by the council which, with a great deal of “greenwashing” communication, is trying to impose yet another useless urban plan. According to the INSEE, there are more than 6000 vacant homes in the commune of Dijon alone. Except for the municipality – which wants to grow at all costs to establish its status as a “metropolis” – for whom is it a priority to have more new housing? [Read More]

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Ljubljana: Zadruga Urbana, little urban-agrarian platform

By: fawda - August 1st, 2014  Filed under: News

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]

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Catalonia: Can Piella threaten, demonstration October 13th

By: fawda - October 11th, 2012  Filed under: News

Can Piella is a rural-urban squat, in Montcada i Reixac, near Barcelona, that laid ignored for ten years or more. The ruinous land and dilapidated farmhouse of Can Piella was replenished and renovated by local people, in solidarity, who grew their own food sustainably and autonomously. Can Piella might be evicted on October 14. I claim, this eviction should stop because people have ‘right to their spaces’, ‘right to grow their own food’ and ‘right to nature’, at the interface of faulty neoliberal knowledge and policies and forced inclusion of capital-intensive farming.

Stop the eviction of autonomous spaces

This article asks Mr. Claudio Fernández Alejandro Montero (Judge of the Court of First Instance No. 3 Cerdanyola) for the withdrawal of the interim eviction order issued against Can Piella and its associated members who were connected with the conservation, preservation and effective use of the rural-urban spaces of Can Piella. [Read More]

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Ljubljana: What is Zadruga Urbana?

By: fawda - March 7th, 2012  Filed under: News

“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]

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Slovenia: Ljubljana Community Gardens & Seed Swap

By: fawda - May 23rd, 2011  Filed under: News

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]

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