Dear groups, individuals and collectives „Es ist besser unsere Jugend besetzt leere Häuser als fremde Länder“ (In our youth it is better to squat empty houses than foreign countries“).
Under this motto some young people started squatting houses in Rigaestrasse and in the rest of Friedrichshain in the early 90’s, creating places where they could collectively live, organize and resist.
Particularly in the following years many of the squatted houses were evicted or pressed to sign contracts as a result of the so called „Berliner Line“ (Berliner Linie) which aimed to push people into a capitalistic (consumptive) lifestyle. Even the contracts didn’t prevent houses getting evicted in many cases. Nevertheless a few of the originally squatted houses persist as active spaces.
Discounting these projects that have remained, with somewhat affordable rent – the rest of our Kiez has undergone drastic changes in rent costs and real estate prices that are obvious to see / hard to ignore, with formidable and unfordable prices for flats. [Read More]
Berlin: Signs against the gentrification, the Rigaer street party
Berlin: Solidarity sabotage with those incarcerated as part of Operation Pandora in Spain
As a sign of our solidarity with projects raided on December 16th, 2014, in Barcelona and in other cities as well as the comrades detained in the course of Operation Pandora, we burnt a vehicle of DHL in the early hours of January 5th, 2015, in the neighbourhood of Neukölln in Berlin.
DHL was attacked not only for their collaboration with the army, but also for the reason of international distribution of vehicles of this company, which constitutes an appropriate target for sabotage actions. [Read More]
Berlin: Our Own Private Germany
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a group of squatters from East and West set out to build their own unified Germany. And, despite endless parties, questionable hygiene, and neo-Nazi turf wars, they pulled it off.
[Read More]
Amsterdam: Rent Rebels, screenings and discussion with activists from Berlin
On the weekend of the 21th and 22nd of November we are welcoming people from Berlin to screen with us the very recent film about the Renter Rebels in the Berlin, a quite popular and diverse movement that emerged in the last couple of years and that struggles against massive gentrification and forced evictions of renters that take place at high pace. That weekend shall serve as space for discussion and exchange with the people from Berlin, about experiences being made in struggle, the urban restructuring that goes on in Berlin, and the self-organisation of all kinds of people to fight against it. Besides of being inspirational the events shall also be a space to come together and exchange ideas and experiences related to the unacceptable housing situation in Amsterdam and necessary housing struggles. Descent housing in its various forms and shapes and the city itself is not for profit but for us, the people, and a basic need of everybody independent of social status. [Read More]
Berlin: The squatted school by refugees in danger of eviction
Comrades, companer@s y companer@s,
In december 2012 refugees occupied an empty old school in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
Now the green government of Berlin- Kreuzberg want to evict the 50 still remaining refugees.The ultimatum to leave the school voluntarily ends on october 31 friday, 2014.
A violent eviction now is very much possible.
REsist Now
[Read More]
Hamburg: Nazis threaten to destroy Rote Flora; Antifascists call for mobilization – 15th November
After the Nazis’ show of force last Sunday in Cologne, largely tolerated by the police’s repression of antifascists’ counter-demonstration, the Nazis and their football hooligans are planning “a revolution” on November 9 in Berlin, and attacks against Rote Flora autonomous social center in Hamburg during another demonstration on November 15. They plan similar demo in Wuppertal this weekend. [Read More]
Berlin: Updated 3/7: Fight against eviction of squatted refugee school
Berlin: Squatting memories
When, for a short time at the beginning of the nineties, the underground was in charge of East Berlin’s centre, activist and photographer Ben de Biel was there: at Kunsthaus Tacheles, at I.M. Eimer, and as the founder of MARIA Club. Today, de Biel has moved on from organizing events and now works as the press relations officer for the Piraten Partei. In this monologue, part of a series of artists and other key cultural figures speaking openly about their artistic experience in the city, de Biel told us about his own Berlin experiment.
[Read More]
Schwarzwohnen: The spatial politics of squatting in East Berlin
East Berlin’s squatter movement erupted across the city after the fall of the wall in 1989. But what role did housing activists in the 1980s play in shaping an alternative vision for the contemporary city?
In September 1988, an anonymous report appeared in the East German underground magazine Umweltblätter describing the plight of a group of squatters who had occupied 61 Lychenerstrasse in the Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg. In the squatters own words, they had “occupied the house in order to overcome the contradiction between, on the one hand, the many vacant and decaying houses [in Berlin], and on the other, a growing number of people in search of housing”. As “squatters (Instandbesetzer),” they proclaimed, “we will resist the further cultural and spiritual devastation of the country.”[i]
[Read More]
October 19th: European Day of Action for Housing
