Lyon: Call for donations. Help the inhabitants of Maria!

In the last few months, a new squat has been opened in the Guillotière district of Lyon. The residents are single mothers, single people and families. The personal situations are diverse, but all come together around the same need: to have a roof over their heads, which the metropolis and the public authorities are apparently unable to provide. In Lyon, the number of people on the street is estimated at around 3,000, including 310 children and 700 young isolated minors. What is happening at Maria is an opportunity, but also the fruit of everyone’s perseverance, hope as a banner, solidarity as a weapon!

Help the inhabitants of Maria!

We are launching a fund in order to provide for the primary needs of the inhabitants:
– to buy large quantities of non-perishable food and hygiene products,
– pay the health costs of those who cannot benefit from social security,
– acquire games and educational material for children.
In order to guarantee good living conditions for the inhabitants of Maria, we must also continue the work that has been started to ensure the healthiness of the apartments. However, we lack money to buy the necessary materials and tools. When all this has been solved, the residents would also like to organise cultural events. [Read More]

Zürich: Juch area evicted

Statement on the planned eviction of the Juch area.
Thursday May 21st.

The city of Zurich maintains its ultimatum regarding the Juch area. Tomorrow, on Friday, May 22, 2020, at midnight, the squatters must leave the Juch area; otherwise the police will threaten the violent eviction announced by the city.

But there are still no reasons for the eviction. Although the city, under pressure from politicians and the people of Zurich, gave a “reason” for the eviction of the Juch area during the last eviction threat of one month – the space would be needed for building installations by HRS Real Estate – there is still no evidence that this justification is tenable. Neither the public nor politicians have any construction plans from HRS Real Estate which indicate that it actually needs the site right now for the construction of the adjacent stadium. Only a few months ago, there was talk of a long-term interim use of the site, mediated by the city. [Read More]

Greece: Repression and Resistance during the Pandemic

In coordination with the anarchist media collective Radio Fragmata, we present the following report from Greece about the ongoing efforts of the Greek government, along with business owners, police, and fascists, to take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to intensify repression—and the efforts of anarchists, migrants, prisoners, rebel workers, and others to fight back and open up spaces of freedom.

These updates are adapted from Radio Fragmata’s monthly contribution to the “Bad News Report” podcast about the current situation in Greece. We hope to spread awareness about this situation and to bring more listeners to the podcast itself; we recommend the “Bad News” report and the Anarchist/Anti-Authoritarian Radio Network as a whole. [Read More]

Amsterdam: New Policy. No Eviction for Emptiness…

As a squatter in Amsterdam, looking back on the past year is painful. 2019 dealt heavy blows to a movement that didn’t seem capable of much more than taking the beating. The city has lost its largest squats and despite numerous squatting actions, hardly any new buildings have survived the end of the year. What’s more, politicians tried to introduce a law at national level to further criminalise squatters while the media reported time and time again how afflicted property owners are being deceived repeatedly by squatters. To top it all off, the mayor concludes the year with a report on a new policy designed to implement a more rigorous approach to squatting.
There’s not much left to say beyond 2019 having been a rather grim year, making it difficult to paint a hopeful picture for squatting in Amsterdam in 2020.

We look back on a year in which we, above all, lost a lot. [Read More]

Zürich: mobilisation and call for solidarity

While the city is being bombarded with the slogan “Stay at home. Please. Everyone.” calls for people to hide in their own homes, the squatters from the Juch are given an ultimatum of 4 days until they are kicked out on the streets.

So, in the shadow of the Corona crisis, people are driven from their homes and cultural freedom is destroyed. This happens without giving reasons, announcing plans nor showing a building permit. The last weeks have probably caused some wet dreams among authoritarian forces and so it is not really surprising that a hard wind is blowing against us right now. Nevertheless, we are speechless about the impudence of the city government, which on the one hand rambles about solidarity and at the same time imposes completely counterproductive, repressive measures against a left-wing project. Last Saturday, the Corona argument was used to try to nip the pandemic-proof demo “Safety for all refugees” in the bud. Although all the precautionary measures recommended by the Confederation are being implemented, it is not possible in this city to take to the streets during a protest. However, it seems justified for the Social Department to put residents of a squat on the streets without giving any reason? [Read More]

Zürich: Juch eviction threat

On April 20, we received mail from the city of Zürich regarding the possible uses of the Juch site. The letter from the Department of Social Affairs informed us that Juch is to be prepared for potential future use from Monday, April 27. Reconstruction and demolition work is also scheduled to begin on April 27. Thus we, the squatters and users of Juch are requested to clear the area by midnight on Friday April 24. So we are supposed to clear an area within four days which we have built up over half a year.

The city of Zürich is calling for the evacuation of the area with the slogan “Stay at home. Please. Everyone” the population to stay at home. The people who live here have no second home. Their home is the Juch-area. If Juch is evacuated, there will be several dozen people who have no place to go to protect themselves and others. [Read More]

Calais: Coronavirus, housing and deportations

For more than two weeks now, France has been on lock-down. With most French people unable to leave their homes, migrants in Calais are still being evicted from theirs. Human Rights Observers in Calais have counted 45 deportations since March 17th. A police union, Synergie-Officiers, has called for an end to these daily deportations, but the department and prefecture still insist they continue. The PAF (Police Aux Frontiers) have stopped carrying out these daily deportations in the city, initially retreating to their work in the detention centre. This just means different cops do them (CRS and Gendarmerie).

The crisis that is the states’ response to the coronavirus pandemic does not show any signs of letting up. Additional powers are being granted to states from now. As one example (stay aware of others) of the state using the pandemic to meet its goals that could not otherwise be easily achieved, Greece used it to justify evicting many families from the Politechnio squat.

In Calais, health and sanitation have already been used as excuses for deportations. Despite a later ruling against the closing of shops and restaurants in the jungle, armed police seized food, water, gas, cigarettes in 2016, under pretext of “sanitary control.” Calling it a humanitarian intervention, in 2014, the state evicted about 650 people because of scabies and sanitation. Neither then nor now, the state took responsibility for creating these conditions for people or gave solutions. [Read More]

Berlin: “We will squat…

… until we no longer have to.” That’s what we have always said. In times of “emergency”, this wording can be expanded to an appeal: “You have to join in!”

Covid-19 is hitting more and more areas of the world and it turns out that the so-called emergency is the rule. For, where people are called by the supposedly necessary and strict father state: “Stay at home!”, not everyone has a home. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the state itself has been pushing up for a long time the numbers of homeless by evicting them. At the same time, the state closes day-care centers that the homeless need for the measly bread of mercy and a little soap and water. In its brazen double standards, the state then exhorts patriarchally, “Pay attention to hygiene!”

“Avoid social contacts!” That’s what the governments demand. But where should refugees retreat to, when they are penned up in camps and deportation prisons at Europe’s external borders and the German periphery? With human rights – such as asylum, freedom of movement and housing – they were also deprived of the opportunity to effectively protect themselves against Covid-19. [Read More]

Athens: Anti-Covid19, network for Mutual aid and Struggle

In the unprecedented social conditions we are living in, the spread of coronavirus has taken critical dimensions for the national healthcare systems and the capitalist mode of production as well as social organisation in general. For the system to survive, state and bosses implement totalitarian politics and a further devaluation of our lives. [Read More]

Athens: Cops inside the University of Economics. Vancouver squat symbolically reoccupied

It all started on Monday 24 February inside the grounds of Athens University of Economics, when an off duty cop in plain clothes got off his bike and began harassing an immigrant street vendor outside the front gate. The policeman was spotted by anarchist students due to his boots and his helmet that bore the police insignia and was immediately confronted. In his panic, he began running inside the university grounds and managed to trap himself in a dead end corridor, pulled a gun on students and with his finger on the trigger threatened to shoot them while pointing the gun at them for at least 5 minutes, while desperately calling his colleagues on the phone to come and rescue him. The students, not losing their cool, but at the same time not taking a step back demanded he puts the gun down and exits the university grounds. Few minutes later scores of riot policemen stormed the university and attacked students during school hours with flash bang grenades and asphyxiating gas creating chaos because of one imbecile cop that thought he was a cowboy. [Read More]

Athens: Update from the trial for the eviction of Gare squat

Three were the accused at yesterday’s trial for the police operation of the 26th of August 2019, when the new wave of state attacks against squats begun. The charges were those relevant with illegal occupation, in another words the offense to private property, and the new package of prosecutions against squatters which is theft of water and electricity.

The accused, each with their own speech , defended the moral right to the use of an abandoned building for social and political work, on top of the “housing needs” and they denied entirely the responsibility of the charges . They referred to the open procedures, events, political and cultural which Gare squat housed, and to the public bath which was operating daily and in a self organized way by its users , the migrants, homeless and excluded. [Read More]

Athens: Notara 26 attacked by cops

THEY DON’T INTIMIDATE US, THEY INFURIATE US!

Last night at Notara26 Refugee/Migrant Housing squat, we were attacked for the third time in the past six months by the state uniformed bullies.
Around 4:30 am – only a few minutes after one more attempt by undercover police to intimidate one of our comrades who was on her way to our squat- a riot squad, totally unprovoked, surrounded our squat twice.
The first time they were flashing their torches and laser pointers into our lobby persistently trying to see our faces and how many we were. They then withdrew for about ten minutes but came back reinforced. Τhis time apart from torches and laser pointers, they tried to force our squat’s door open.
These practices of the uniformed state terrorists DO NOT SCARE US! We are here, we continue our everyday struggle against fascism, racism and repression. We form strong solidarity and comradeship ties.
The only result this kind of bullying can have is to bring us even more together and our ranks closer!!!
There is only one thing to say…
WE SHALL MEET AT THE BARRICADES [Read More]