[Squat!net]

At 6:30am on 3rd May antiriot police and carabinieri squads coordinated by Digos and ROS, stormed Asilo Occupato, the squats on Corso Giulio Cesare and Borgo Dora and two houses in Turin and Barge; the local media also mentioned raids carried out in Bologna and Cuneo, of which we have no confirmation.

The pretext for this repressive operation, which led to six comrades being arrested, is an alleged scuffle that took place outside Asilo last February at the end of a night event; the charges are kidnapping, aggravated damage and resisting public officials. Antonio from Lecce, Antonio Sardo, Camille, Fabiola, Fran and Giada were taken to the prison of Le Vallette, and there’s mention of an unconfirmed seventh arrest.

In the meantime, as the cops are taking it easy and don’t seem to want to go away in spite of the arrests made, we are calling for the squatters still on the roof to join the gathering on Corso Brescia, corner with via Alessandria. [Read More]

Heavily armed officers from the General Investigations and Special Operations Division of Italy (Digos) broke down the front door and invaded the Asilo Occupato (occupied asylum) building in Turin on Wednesday, arresting six activists.

Occupants of the anarchist-run space, located on Via Allesandria, in the neighbourhood of Aurora, resisted for several hours on the roof of the property before the raid. Carabinieri (Italian militarised police) also participated in the repressive operation.

Among the detainees are four Italians (Fabiola De Costanzo,Antonio Pittalis, Antonio Rizzo, and Giada Volpacchio), a Frenchwoman (Camille Casteran) and a Spaniard (Francisco Javier Esteban Tosina), who were detained as a “precautionary measure.”

The arrests are related to a clash with carabinieri guards that took place on February 28th in the vicinity of Asilo. Agents alleged obstruction and damage to a police vehicle as they prepared to carry out the identification of a “suspect” but were stymied by the arrival of 15 people who blocked them from doing so.

Asilo Occupato has been targeted by repressive institutions for months, which have issued several precautionary measures against people who visit it, such as a ban on residing in Turin or preventive detention. In December, eight people were arrested for “not respecting residence prohibitions” imposed on them in a major dawn raid. [Read More]

Summary by act for freedom – A suspicious parcel was spotted by a Digos patrol outside the premises of a fascist Casapound bookshop on New Year’s Eve. A bomb disposal expert called to the scene in order to detonate the device was seriously injured by its explosion. Shortly afterwards several anarchists’ homes were raided by the police in Florence and other areas in Tuscany. Prosecutors started an investigation for attempted murder.
Another operation, ‘operation Panico’, unrelated to the action against Casapound, was carried out by the cops on 31st January against 35 anarchists of whom 3 were put under house arrest and 7 were inflicted various restrictive measures. Villa Panico squat was also raided and closed down. The charge pressed with operation Panico is criminal association and refers to a number of episodes that took place in the city in 2016. [Read More]

Supporters of Milan’s longest-running squatted social centre remain on high alert after a threatened eviction order slated for November 24th by the centre-left city administration failed to materialise.

In a statement on Thursday 24th Grupo Anarchico Bruzzi-Malatesta, which is linked to the squat at 19 Torricelli St, wrote*: “From the tone of the eviction order we feared that we really had reached the final phase, so we were on a higher alert and a special mobilisation with the constitution of a committee of defence. On the day a service was put on to give the defenders breakfast, and as the day went on around 80 comrades filled the building in solidarity, including many anarchists.

“To our relief though, possibly because of the organised defence and mobilisation, we got the news that the eviction had again been postponed for another three months. Only after that did people start to filter away. [Read More]

UPDATE 8.45 In via Agucchi everyone decided to resist to the end against the barbarity of the institutions and the police against the homeless! Tomorrow at 8 am a resisting breakfast will take place, followed by a social lunch at 1 pm, and a metropolitan assembly of the housing struggle at 4 pm! The housing struggle movement will resist one minute more than them!
UPDATE 7.30 With great perseverance we keep resisting on the roof, while the picket of the supporters managed to outflank the blockade of the oppressors in uniform: children, families and occupiers have warm nourishment for dinner on the roof as well! It is a day featuring joy and resistance! Thanks to Eat the Rich and Campi Aperti, thanks to who resists on the roofs, on the vehicles and in the streets, thanks to who builds everyday a beautiful and solidal Bologna! [Read More]

THE SHIP HAS LIFTED THE ANCHOR AWAY “ASSILLO” IS BACK

On the 24th of october we squatted a building in Trento, Italy.

We need places to live differently and and where we can organize ourselves. The demonstration that those are not only our needs is proved by many and many people who joined the experience of the “Assillo” and “Villa Assillo”, places left empty for years that started to live again for months before the police came and evicted us destroying the roofs – because police fear our will to manage our own lives.

[Read More]

Update 7.30 pm
The solidal picket beneath the Ex-Telecom building keeps growing in numbers, reaffirming that no one will leave without a satisfying solutions for all the occupiers.

Update 6.05 pm
After an assembly on the roof the occupiers deemed acceptable the proposal made by the social workers, that promise housing for everyone. They swore to debate as soon as they get down the roof in order to assess whether the proposal can be deemed satisfactory enough. Meanwhile the supporting picket that was called in front of the Ministry of Infrastructures in Porta Pia was charged. Water cannons were used in order to disperse the crowd. A youngster that fell ill was carried away in an ambulance, another one is at the hospital. The use of water cannons even destroyed some traffic lights. There were charges also against the supporting picket in Alessandria, in a day of struggle for housing rights that is getting recognized all over the country. [Read More]

Binario 68, an eclectic squat born in March 2014 in a huge disused tobacco factory in the suburbs of Lecce, was evicted by cops and Digos in the early hours of Wednesday 2nd September. After a year and a half of initiatives, meetings, talks, concerts, parties, exhibitions, tattoo circuses and other activities, the occupiers were thrown out of their home by the usual bastards in uniform, but not before resisting till the end.

A spontaneous demo through the centre of the town, a confrontation with the mayor of Lecce in the corridors of the town hall, a lot of noise and rubbish bins upturned on pavements following the intervention of the cops, as many people arrived in solidarity from all over the province. The day ended with the occupation of another abandoned building, just to show how the Binario 68 squatters, however varied a group they are, don’t like the city of Lecce, its luxury shops and restaurants, prudish citizens, political leaders, radical chic leftists, historic centre transformed into a disgusting shop window for rich shoppers, cops, cameras, fascists, and so on. [Read More]

A No Borders Camp has been happening on the Franco-Italian border since June, when the French government shut the border to refugees without travel documents or legal status.

From the camp’s website:

The No Border Camp of Ventimiglia started on the 11th of June, when a group of migrant moved on the rocks in order to resist the police eviction, identification and continue to struggle for their freedom. A group of migrant moved on the rocks in order to resist the police eviction, identification and continue to struggle for their freedom. From that day solidarity networks from different territories have been working to build a permanent laboratory of resistance to repressive politics we see in action on borders. [Read More]

We translated our editorial from almost two months ago, which was written soon after a first, successful “March of the  Peripheries”, a day in which people from working-class and suburban neighbourhoods rose along housing rights militants  and activists to tackle the gruesome Lupi housing plan, preventing people living in housing occupations and squats from  accessing basic services and citizenship rights.

As the Lupi minister himself was forced to resign after his associate Ettore Incalza – a longtime state manager which did supervise great unnecessary works’ projects such as the TAV high-speed railway – was prosecuted for corruption, a second march of dignity approaches in Bologna and other initiatives are developing in other cities, to reaffirm the people dignity against the neoliberal austerity and the individualist dogma of the Renzi government.

The struggle for housing rights gave an important message on January 31. A real mobilization that featured thousands of people taking the streets all over the country. It was able to address the social composition that lives in the housing occupations as well as those many characters – both involved in the politics of housing and in the more general and inclusive debate on the city and its criticism – that ended up at its side in the streets and in the squares. [Read More]

The eviction campaign kicks off in order to pave the way for the approval of the new regional law on housing. While people are still resisting in via Baracca, the movements’ response gets organized. Let’s march from Piazza Medaglie d’oro at 6pm today.

A direct attack against housing struggles. Early this morning, police showed up in large numbers at the new housing occupation in via Benedetto Marcello-via Toselli corner. After the eviction was carried out, as the readily arrived solidarity picket was surging, rumors came about a massive police deployment close to via Baracca. At about 10 am some 12 police wagons closed the street in both directions, carrying out the eviction of the building located at number 18 in that street, a place that was occupied since last summer and that was hosting the social space of struggle, too.

During the eviction, the occupiers tried to crack the police blockade, stirring up a charge. Nobody was reported to be hurt. At the time of writing, some occupiers still resist inside the building. Meanwhile a picket of the Movimento di lotta per la casa (Housing Struggle Movement) assembled in piazza Puccini, close to via Baracca, calling up a march for this evening at 6 pm in order to counter the evictions, starting from piazza Medaglie d’Oro in the Novoli neighbourhood. [Read More]

The story of ExMoi begins with two open wounds: the countless empty buildings in Turin, and the countless refugees living on Italian streets and in Italian train stations.

Back in 2006, the Turin municipality and the national government spent over 140 million euros in building a new neighbourhood to host athletes for the Winter Olympic Games. This was in an area that once held the city’s biggest wholesale market (MOI – Mercato Ortofrutticolo all’Ingrosso). Designed by international architects and built according to the latest ecological and sustainable design criteria, the Olympic Village was finished in 20 months. It was used for around 16 days and left mostly empty after the Games ended.
[Read More]