Portugal: Voices from an okupation. The assembleia de occupação de Lisboa

By: fawda - September 30th, 2017  Filed under: essay

Ongoing reflections on an okupation in Lisbon (continuing a discussion) …

The essay below, which we share in translation, is by Tiago F. Duarte, a member of the Assembleia de occupação de Lisboa, a collective responsible for the recent occupation of a residential building in Lisbon’s centre. We share the essay not because we agree with everything that is stated therein – for example, its overly marxist reading of history, of the opposition of the city and the countryside, of class conflict, and its reduction of occupation to a means or tactic of anti-capitalism when it is as much an end and a strategy (that is, these distinctions are in the end not only meaningless, but problematic) – but because of its insistence in reading “okupation” as a radical politics. [Read More]

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Amsterdam: ADM’s XX Birthday Festival

By: fawda - September 29th, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News, Press release

ADM celebrates her porcelain jubilee!
Take a gentri-vacation on the ADM reservation

The squatted cultural freespace ADM exists 20 years in October. And that will be celebrated at the 12th, 13th and 14th of October 2017. Three days full of spectacle you do not want to miss. Artists, performers and visitors from all over the world will come to ADM this weekend to celebrate that there is still a place where unnecessary regulations do not exist, the hands of the clock are not breathing in your neck and where non-conformers walk freely.

For three years, ADM’s continued existence is under pressure, there are countless lawsuits and a lot of media attention. In early August, the court decided that the municipality of Amsterdam has to enforce the areal planning, with the result that ADM should be evicted. If this actually is going to happen is the big question, the municipality must still determine whether the so-called owner is allowed to execute the building plans. All in all, this does not change the ideals, life-lust and cultural expression of the ADMrs or the celebration of ADM’s birthday festival! [Read More]

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Lisbon: Building occupied by ALOX collective

By: sisulscz - September 26th, 2017  Filed under: Communique

September 15:

Number 69 of Marques da Silva Street is occupied. The action is born of an initiative by a group of people, without any institutional affiliation, united by the desire to give life to an abandoned building.

Over the last years, the right to inhabit the city of Lisbon has been the target of numerous attacks. In a scenario of economic-financial crisis and austerity, a change in the rental law by the previous government created new business opportunities for investment funds and other speculating entities. At the same time, the image of the city as sunny, picturesque and peaceful, promoted by the tourist industries, contributed to an increase in the number of people interested in visiting and living in Lisbon. The market, as well as prices, are on a high. Neighbourhoods in which formerly rents were minimally accessible have their values rise brutally. The destructive re-composition of ways of life in the city, now reserved for those who can pay the most, is illustrated by the repeated examples of evictions.
[Read More]

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France: The State Attacks Indymedia-Grenoble and Indymedia-Nantes… Solidarity!

By: sisulscz - September 26th, 2017  Filed under: Communique

Following the publication of a communiqué claiming responsibility for a fire in a garage at a Grenoble police depot (gendarmerie) during the night of September 20th/21st, Indymedia Grenoble and Indymedia Nantes have been threatened by the French police. The administrators of these sites have received emails from the Central Office for the Fight Against Crime Linked to Information Technology and Communication (OCLCTIC) demanding that the concerned articles be removed from the sites under (in) 24 hours, otherwise rendering the sites liable to blocking and dereferencing.
[Read More]

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UK: The social centres roundup

By: fawda - September 23rd, 2017  Filed under: News

For all its small size and general impoverishment the libertarian socialist movement actually runs a surprisingly large amount of real estate around Britain, all on non-hierarchical lines, by and for the people of the cities and towns we’re in. Housing co-ops, bookshops, bike collectives, archives, distros, printers and the like are all part of the collective mix. Below, Freedom News briefly rounds up some goings-on at 15 radical social centres and spaces over the last few months. [Read More]

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Proposal to create an International Anarchist Defence Fund

By: sisulscz - September 21st, 2017  Filed under: Announcement, Communique

In summer of 2017 a few activists discussed the idea of creating an International Anarchist Defense Fund.

Why is it needed?
Basically, it is a Fund that is supposed to financially help anarchist who got in trouble for their activism (either repression or medical problems). It’s true, there are a bunch of ABC chapters or other support groups all over the world, but in many places there are still not enough money or activists to maintain a solidarity campaign on their own. Thus, this fund is seen as a way to complement the work existing solidarity groups and to provide support to individuals with no or little support.
[Read More]

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Hambach Forest (Germany): One Hundred Cops Spend 11 Hours Evicting a Tripod

By: sisulscz - September 21st, 2017  Filed under: Communique

On September 19th at 8 o’clock in the morning approx 100 cops entered the millenarian Hambacher Forest [previously on S!N], occupied for last six years blocking the expansion of RWE’s open cast lignite mine, to remove the “The Tripod”, a live-in barricade. The official state line was that it was to keep the roads open for emergency vehicles in case of accident occurring in the forest. The emergency vehicles are the harvesters, bulldozers and loaders of this years cutting season which will begin on Oct. 25 and the “accident” is the global climate chaos, millions of premature deaths a year, and irreplaceable habitat loss to which Hambacher (cynically named after the forest its destroying) Mine: single largest net CO2 emitter in Europe, is not an innocent bystander to but rather a culprit extending its effect through emission and pollutants and through RWE Global Power Conglomerate machine impacting and destroying communities and ecosystem from Colombia, England and Germany to Siberia.
[Read More]

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Slovenia: Autonomous Spaces under Threat. For Communal Disobedience – Against Passivity

By: fawda - September 11th, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

For the last year the autonomous spaces in the region were deeply marked by a tense athmosphere fueled by constant threats and some serious attacks. In the summer of 2016 the mayor of Ljubljana Zoran Janković ordered the attack of a private security company with neonazis in its ranks on the Autonomous Factory Rog. The community managed to successfully repel the initial attack only to be later confronted with an ongoing and attritive court procedures that threaten to leave individuals with heavy financial and other penalties. In the winter of 2016/17 a new squat Argo in Izola/Isola that had only started with activities was targeted by the machinery of »the bad bank« or BAMC. The latter hired a private security gang which soon after the turn of the year forcefully emptied the squat. Not far away in Koper/Capodistria Inde has been under intense siege since the winter, at first by the orders from BAMC and lately by some enthusiastic local entrepreneurs. Sadly it seems that the battle for Inde is over. Sokolski dom in Novo mesto has been for an entire year dealing with repeating calls from the local autorities to stop with activities and the court procedures are under way. [Read More]

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Prague: Klinika under threat of eviction

By: fawda - September 8th, 2017  Filed under: Communique

On Tuesday 5th September 2017 the Prague municipal court by its decision opened the way for the eviction of Klinika. Our appeal was rejected as the court upheld the view of the state (owner of the house) that they were within their rights not to extend the contract with us. The collective is convinced that the autonomous social centre can remain functioning regardless of the decision. It is senseless to destroy a functional social centre visited by thousands of people for an uncertain and highly uneconomical reconstruction of the building into offices, whose approval alone will take a few years due to the need to change the zoning regulations which do not allow offices at the site.

Klinika started in November 2014 by occupying a former lung clinic, which had stood empty since 2009. It was evicted by the police after only 10 days but after months of negotiations the state agreed to a contract with the social centre for a year with the expectation that the contract would be extended. [Read More]

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Greece: Solidarity with the imprisoned comrades in Italy from 111 Squat in Thessaloniki

By: fawda - September 8th, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

On August 3rd 2017, cops raided several houses and occupied spaces in Florence (eviction of Riottosa squat), Rome and Lecce, aiming at the arrest of 8 comrades from Florence. This specific operation concerns 2 attacks. The first concerns the placing of an explosive device at a fascist bookstore that has connections with Casapound, on new years day last year, resulting in the injury of the bomb disposal cop (who lost an arm and eye). The second attack was with molotov cocktails against police facilities on April 4th 2016. The 2 attacks took place in Florence. Cops claim that they identified people through phone taps, surveillance, and identification of dna samples.

The charges are: “attempted homicide” for the 5 comrades from the first case, and “manufacturing, possession, and transportation of an explosive or incendiary device to a public place” for all comrades, all of this in the frames of “consisting a criminal organization”. A few days later 6 comrades were released while the charges remained, and 2 comrades were imprisoned for the attack on the fascist bookstore. One of the 2 comrades has had all communication forbidden. [Read More]

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Turin: Updates on the 3rd May arrests

By: fawda - September 4th, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

A court of review hearing, held to decide over Kam, Fran, Antonio, Beppe and Lorenzo ended a few hours ago. The charges that led the five comrades behind bars and banned Monica and Michela from the city were discussed, in order to decide if the measures imposed before the trial were to be modified.

Even if the hearing was held behind closed doors we learned that a large assortment of cops was in the courtroom: plain clothes officers from Porta Palazzo police station, Digos officers, screws, [prosecutors] Padalino’s and Rinaudo’s bodyguards and a bunch of carabinieri. They were all there to highlight the power that they hold in a courtroom. Power transferred through court papers and the reconstruction of that night’s events, like the events of many other nights, days and moments spent in a corner of some police station or in the streets during a police check. Anything that happens before and after, the cause and the effect, are mixed up to create a tale that is more effective on paper, the assessment of the charges and the weight of the sentence.

Nothing to be surprised about; the violence of the cops’ control in the streets is backed up by the violence of the sterile language of court papers, imprisonment and the limitation of freedom. We won’t dwell on the chronological order of that night’s events. It’s more interesting to look at what those events have provoked more generally. [Read More]

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