London: Kurdistan Place

Kurdish youth and supporters, some linked to Plan C, have occupied a vacant building near Edgware Road.

Kurdistan Place was occupied by friends of Anna Campbell last week in solidarity with the Kurdish Freedom Movement. In a statement, the occupiers said:

We want this space to enable learning about Kurdish culture and Kurdish liberation’s emancipatory politics. We also want this space to enable solidarity and anti-capitalist organising. Anna was involved with a similar project in 2012 called Palestine Place, an occupation of a building in Chancery Lane, which was set up to highlight the need for solidarity, support and knowledge about the occupation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank and the ongoing siege of Gaza by Israel and Egypt. We want to use this space as a means to promote radical social change and revolution.

[Read More]

Notre-Dame-Des-Landes: Until where will we go with this scam of negociations??

I haven’t signed the files project nor do i believe in negociation with a State. I don’t want to discuss with this oppressor, i just simply and only want to destroy it. But still I feel concerned by this process of legalisation that includes almost all lands and sites on ZAD, this area that I see as a whole and not only as my little home, this last one today being destroyed anyways.
We’re calling negociations the injuctions of the prefect, while I really don’t see when have we been negociating. When have we won any advantage of this situation? When have we said anything else than “Yes yes madam, we’re scared, we’re nice people!”? And today again it’s still a topic to go and sign the (agricultural) projects, without even waiting for the ones not accepted yet?! One more time, our famous limit of when will we stop being cheated is pushed further.

Some of the plea that are FOR the legalisation and HURRY let’s legalise appears absurd to me, I stay puzzled between: are this convinced people fooling their ownself or me? I don’t think that we can be smarter than the ennemy when we play his own game.

Here are the plea that are being said :
[Read More]

Berlin: The Senate speaks of housing policy – we make it

Last whit Sunday, ten empty houses were squatted in Berlin and Potsdam. From a villa over a former kindergarten to a whole house. What was dead speculative mass for years was filled with life. Even though some of the occupations were abandoned very quickly, #besetzen (occupying) was not just a symbolic action. Each empty building was placed in its context and for almost all objects there were concepts that showed a possible use in the sense of a solidary urban policy. It has always been emphasized that not the vacancy is the problem, but the principle of (private) ownership of useable and living space, which makes speculation possible. But speculation is not only about vacancy, but also about inhabited and used areas. This means that it can displace anyone and anything. Whether they are youth centers, day-care centers, a late night kiosk or entire blocks of flats. Therefore, on May 20, it was clear: Spaces must be occupied and defended. On this day, especially the Bornsdorferstraße 37b (Borni) in North Neukölln and the Reichenbergerstraße 114 (Friedel54 in exile) in Kreuzberg were to be defended as self-managed places for the moment and on the long-term to become places to organize the struggle for a city policy from below.

They do not want negotiations, they just want violence.
[Read More]

A Coruña: A Insumisa social centre evicted

Last Wednesday, the municipal police have evicted the A Insumisa social centre in Galician city A Coruña. The space originally belonged to the Ministry of Defense until, after more than 15 years of abandonment, it was ceded to the city council. In November 2016, it was reclaimed by residents of A Coruña and since then it has been carrying out a range of social and cultural activities organized through open assemblies.

After it was occupied and set up as a social centre, the city council came up with their own proposal to turn the space to a cultural project similar to the one already set up by the citizens: except that it was to be managed by the council. The council’s proposal was rejected by the local residents and participants of A Insumisa, who defended the local self-managed project that already worked well without the intervention of the town hall and without public funding. After this defeat, the city council initiated the eviction process, which was finalised last Wednesday. [Read More]

South Africa: Another Comrade has been shot by the eThekwini Municipality

*Attack on Abahlali by the City continues*

The armed forces working for the eThekweni Municipality continue to relate
to impoverished black people in the city like an army of occupation,
especially when poor people are organised outside of the ruling party.
Today at 11 am the notoriously violent Anti-Land Invasion Unit demolished
Mr Ndumiso Mnguni’s house in our Foreman Road branch. This was a brazenly
illegal and criminal act.

When Mr. Mnguni went into the house to remove his possessions he was
attacked and shot at by the Anti-Land Invasion Unit security. As we release
this statement Mr Mnguni is in theatre in a critical condition. The doctors
are trying to remove the bullet in his stomach. We are praying that the
mighty God saves his life.

The very surprising part is that the only house that was demolished in
Foreman Road is that of Mr. Mnguni which is in the middle of the settlement.
[Read More]

UK: Should we be worrying about a further assault on squatting rights?

On the 8th May the Evening Standard carried an article titled “Squatters law has wiped out almost all illegal home invasions in London” pointing out that less people were arrested for squatting in residential properties last year than when S144 first came in (what a surprise!).

On the 11th May some Tory MP called Philip Davies wrote to the Secretary of State for Justice [sic] to ask “what assessment he has made of changes in the prevalence of squatting in commercial premises following the introduction of the criminal provisions contained in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012” (to which the answer was that no data is collected).

Neither of these is unusual, but as the last attack (leading to S144) started with attacks from the “Standard” and some Tory MP, we should be prepared for an upsurge in attacks and for calls for full criminalisation.

But this time round, thanks to the Sofia House squat, other occupations, the Grenfell Tower disaster and other events, squatting, and generally requisitioning empty properties should be more easy to defend/push for. And we seem to have a leader of the opposition who would hopefully be less pliant.

Source

Rome (Italy): You cannot evict the feminist city!


Un video di Julia Lindblom. Rome, spring 2018. [Read More]

Berlin: New squats!

Places open as of 14:52 today:

Odenwaldstraße / Ecke Stubenrauchstraße (Steglitz) #OdenEckeStuben
Finowstraße / Ecke Frankfurter Allee (Friedrichshain) #EckeFinow
Bornsdorfer Straße 37b (Neukölln) #Borni
Reichenberger Straße 114 (Kreuzberg) #Friedel54 im Exil
Petersburger Straße 16 (Friedrichshain) #Peter16
Arndtstraße 13 (Kreuzberg) #Arndt13
Regattastr. 277 (Grünau) #Funkwerk
Rummelsburger Landstraße #Bootsschuppen
Karl-Marx-Straße 145 (Neukölln) #KMS145

More infos as it happens at https://besetzen.noblogs.org/ and https://twitter.com/besetzenberlin

ZAD: Live Blog second wave of expulsions

You can see the live ticker over on enoughisenough

09:52am Clashes at the edge of the forest at Bellevue. Images by @ZAD_NDDL

Klaxon radio: If you are north of the Rohan forest, to the Datchacha, there is a a special unit of cop dressed in light blue who ambush people and make surprise arrests. So watch out, do not stay alone!

09:22am Cops attack with gas at the Bellevue camping. Image by @ZAD_NDDL

09:00am Solidarity protests in Rennes scheduled for 18:00 (06:00pm) at Sainte-Anne tonight. As we reported earlier there will also be solidarity protests in Paris: RDV 18:00 (06:00pm) at belleville.

08:54am Cops checking id’s and bags on a field next to the chemin de Suez. Images by @JFrancoisMartin

08:42am A digger arrived at the La Saulce crossing.

08:11am, The cops took the Saulce crossing. Image by @JFrancoisMartin

[Read More]

South Africa: Police attack in Germiston

Yesterday afternoon all the shacks on the Zikode Extension Land Occupation
were demolished again. Tonight a large number of police officers, from
various units, including a SWAT team, launched an unprovoked, violent and
brutal attack on the nearby Good Hope Settlement in an attempt to prevent
people from moving back to the occupied land. Rubber bullets were fired and
tear gas was used. Individuals were targeted and threatened. There has been
at least one confirmed arrest.

This is an emergency statement. Events are still unfolding, the police are
still occupying the settlement and people are currently scattered and in
hiding. We have not been able to account for everyone or to hold a meeting.
Full details will be available tomorrow morning when people have been able
to regroup.

Today is day six of the occupation. The struggle for land and dignity
continues.

Abahlali baseMjondolo Emergency Press Statement

South Africa: New Land Occupation in Germiston

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement May 12 (with update May 13 below)

Last night more than two hundred people occupied unused land in Germiston,
on the East Rand in Gauteng. We laid out our design for the occupation in
the afternoon, built throughout the night and slept on the occupied land.
Around 350 stands have been marked out via a democratic and carefully
planned process. The new occupation has been named the Zikode Extension in
honour of S’bu Zikode.

On the 8th of November last year residents of the Good Hope Settlement in
Germiston attended the Land Summit called by Gauteng MEC of Human
Settlements Paul Mashatile. He told us that we must identity available land
and that his Department would then sit and talk with us with a view to
acquiring that land.
[Read More]

Call for financial support of AntiRep!Net

Supporting and participating in AntiRep!Net is showing your solidarity in maintaining a wide variety of tools and act with other networks in resisting and fighting back different forms of repression and oppression.

The project is maintained by anonymous and autonomous people. Some with no (legal) income or papers or no national attachment. It would be nice to share a bit of solidarity if you like the projects and ideas we put in place. We work with very modest and very limited financial resources, mostly from visitors or other occupants of the zone, and especially with a lot of heart. We put our skills to use in sharing and maintaining tools and resources, in workshops and exchanges for radical (H)Activists and other rebels. Help us resist repression, fight back and attack all forms of oppression from all sides !

Online and international options to support AntiRep!Net financially :
Crowdfunding / PayPal / BitCoin – 12QEmdkZJ4UcxbsfinCUPaVRuWWvwcRxgm
[Read More]