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[Admin: The Sexta Grietas Network circulated this statement and asked for signatures. We reproduce it below with the signatures obtained.] Statement of Solidarity with the Struggle against the Maya Train, a Megaproject of Death Traducción en español Traduction française April 15, 2020 We salute the efforts of the Indigenous and Popular Council of Xpujil (CRIPX […]
Statement of Solidarity with the Struggle against the Maya Train — Chiapas Support Committee
Shared with thanks from Enough 14 /Squat.net
Squat solidarity! This MayDay squatters from across the U.K. have come together to co-ordinate decentralised actions across the country to highlight our plight and address our needs. Both residential and commercial buildings have been occupied to provide housing for ourselves and the others left high and dry during this time of crisis, and banners have been dropped in support by squats not yet facing imminent eviction. Land has been taken to repurpose for clean open space and food, and food distribution is taking place to aid all who are struggling.
Originally published by Squat Net.
Due to the COVID-19 crisis, emergency legislation was introduced and put a stay to all evictions for 90 days. However, it took just three weeks for the judges to surrender to the pressure from bailiffs, landlords and banks, and amend the law. Squatting cases will continue to be heard via phone, and bailiffs are now again smashing through our doors the way they always have – but this time we’re in the middle of a global pandemic and it’s scarier than ever before.
Evictions make us sick. In both the metaphorical and physical sense. The government that we didn’t choose values landlords’ and millionaire owners’ property laws higher than public health or our lives and the lives of people we love. We recognise though that it’s not a matter of choosing a “better” government as for us, it ends up being the same. We are a collective of communities living on the margins of society. Some of us are BIPOC, migrants, refugees, queer and trans people. Some are people living with disabilities, managing various health conditions, healing from trauma and domestic abuse. All of us are building our own refuges, homes and chosen families. COVID-19 has only magnified our already existing health, housing and power inequalities.
We find further discrimination in the illegal evictions that have taken place in these last weeks, as well as the well-evidenced police harassment of those of no fixed abode or street homeless – despite the lockdown rules not applying to those without homes. The government plan to house the homeless has proven to be worthless as people find themselves not able to get a spot, or treated like dirt when they do. State provision has already failed so many. Councils are running out of money, all the while council housing sits empty by the thousands. Specialist services such as domestic violence survivor support and LGBTQI+ housing and support services are fighting to be able to offer much needed refuge. Meanwhile it is estimated that the number of long-term empty homes in England now exceeds 226,000 (this figure is significantly higher if taking commercial properties into account).
The precarity we face is the same precarity lots of other people will recognise – it’s living payslip to payslip in insecure housing. It’s having little to no savings, little to no social network and sweating to get benefits that barely cover necessities. Government’s “solution” to make receiving universal credit easier and suspending evictions (which will only postpone them) is a temporary fix. It won’t solve the crisis that started way before the pandemic did. Some say COVID-19 is a crisis for capitalism. We say: to be so, it would have to destroy or at least scratch any of the structures that stay exactly the way they’ve been, the way they’ve been designed to be. It’s us – squatters and renters – who get hit the hardest while landlords enjoy their mortgage holidays and property owners fill out eviction papers.
We will not ask permission to find a safe place to sleep and stay alive. We will sleep wherever we can and want to. Whether in one of the 837272819191? empty buildings or abandoned unused land plots lying around or take up secret corners on OUR streets, if that’s the place we find the most safe. We will survive in the ways we need to and know.
We can’t just see this as a return to “normal”, and like all other aspects of our lives, we need to forge new paths and refuse to be crushed by a crumbling capitalism trying desperately to maintain its grip on the population. Our actions today are not those of politely asking to be reconsidered by the state, or begging to have the amendment overturned. We’re not asking for their kindness as we already know they’ve got none for us. We acted today because for us, solidarity means attack – attack on the legal amendment and the idea of housing as a commodity.
Demand space to stay safe. Take it if you have to.
Squatters across the UK, May 1, 2020.
Post-action report from one crew in London:
On Friday we squatted a disused residential block to house ourselves and others, and we were prepared to fight for it. In light of the amendment to Practice Direction 51Z allowing squatters to be evicted, we decided to attack. We will always be targets of the law. The law does not respect us, why should we respect the law? Our target today was the heinous law criminalising residential squatting. However once we gained access to the building we discovered the council had stripped and smashed each flat to make them uninhabitable. In this situation and in the reality of COVID-19, we decided to leave. In usual circumstances, our way would be to fix what the council has destroyed, with time and collaboration this would be possible – this time, we decided it’s not safe for us and others. This estate is in one of the most deprived boroughs in the country, and the council continues to claim they’re lacking resources. We saw and continue to see with our own eyes that these resources exist, they are just not being used by design.
The first flat we found our way into was in a fixable state, almost liveable. As we continued further into the block the flats we opened were more and more fucked, every last bit of wire stripped, and the fixtures smashed.
“We need to build more housihng they say, smash up this beautiful bathroom they do”
People squatting are often threatened with criminal damage charges. These images show the common injury and assault that councils and corporates inflict on our precious housing.
We are not discouraged, quite the opposite. Our successful action today encourages us, and we hope encourages others, to continue opening residentials, knowing that through mutual support we will one day we will find the one that we call home. (We are pleased to hear that another residential building was taken in south London and continues to be held).
Fuck Section 144, fuck the amendment to PD51Z, fuck the law, squat the world.
– signed: The Resi-rectors
Dandelion Salad Updated: April 30, 2020 Originally published May 1, 2016 The Laura Flanders Show on Apr 26, 2016 Author and professor Peter Linebaugh discusses his new book, The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day. Later in the show filmmaker Avi Lewis discusses worker-owned factories in Argentina, and Laura focuses on the […]
The Incomplete and Wonderful History of May Day + Chris Smalls: Support May Day Strikers — Dandelion Salad
London. UK. May Day call out of the Green Anti-Capitalist Front. Originally published by the Green Anti-Capitalist Front. May 1st is well known as international workers day across the globe, but this year we want it to be known as a day where anyone who is sick and tired of capitalists and the state threatening their…
#London, #UK: #MayDay Revolt Call Out — Enough 14 –
PHOTO SHARED ON INDYMEDIA:::Objects looted by anarchists from the Véritas del Raval supermarket (Barcelona) // Objetos saqueados por los anarquistas del supermercado Véritas del Raval (Barcelona)
shared from: https://www.metropoliabierta.com..Arturo Esteve 30/04/2020
The robbery occurred in a chain store in Raval
The robbery occurred yesterday Wednesday, in one of the Veritas stores in the Raval neighborhood. Specifically, this is the supermarket located at 17 Dr. Dou Street, as confirmed by sources close to the company to this medium. According to the same sources, there have been threats in recent days against various establishments of the premium supermarket chain.
The action has an anarchist political component. According to the Indymedia, portal, after the looting some leaflets were launched “inciting looting supermarkets and rebelling against this system that makes us starve.”
On the web they have shared an image (see above) with the stolen products and with various anarchist messages. “Loot your local supermarket”, “steal and destroy”, “in my hunger I command”, or “Daddy State I do not ask what you have stolen” are some of the phrases that accompany the stolen food from Veritas.
SHARED WITH THANKS FROM 325 HEREApr 29, 2020
According to corporate media during the last fortnight, there was a wave of arson attacks in the Netherlands against cell phone repeaters. The last one reported by the corporate media took place in Groningen. “Fuck 5G” was written on one site.
The actions did not appear to be claimed. At least 15 attacks took place according to information released by the Dutch government through the media. Apparently, the first fire was in Beesd on April 4. Since then, transmission masts have also caught fire in Neerkant, Rotterdam, Nuenen, Dronten, Groningen, Oudenbosch, Veldhoven, Tilburg and Almere.
Stop 5G: Worldwide Actions, EU Cities Call for a Ban on 5G …People across the globe are protesting 5G. 5G Crisis Actions 2019 July 27, 2019 – New Day of Action Against5G: An Undeniable Risk A New Day of Action against5G has been planned July 27 and called 5G Crisis: An Undeniable Risk. This demonstration has been organized through Americans for Responsible Technology. This video from the 5G Crisis website highlights that this is not a simple …
Reportedly, none of the antennas were 5G carriers, with 2G, 3G and 4G masts. Police reported that the sabotage method was similar at each site. An instigator of the Groningen fire was caught on a surveillance camera. European police officials are reportedly being removed from terrorism cases to investigate arson attacks on 5G cell phone towers.
Continue reading “Wave of sabotage against 5G: Netherlands and UK:”
shared from RT with thanks , tweets and illustrations added
Follow RT on New York City tenant groups have joined a growing movement for a statewide rent strike as the continued coronavirus shutdown makes working – and paying – impossible. The state’s eviction moratorium expires in June.
The majority of tenants in the Cosmopolitan Houses complex in Woodside, Queens have joined a rent strike that hopes to enlist upwards of one million New Yorkers, set to begin May 1, organizers told the Wall Street Journal on Monday. Strikers have pointed to the impossibility of making the steep monthly payments as the economy remains in suspended animation due to the coronavirus pandemic. Also on rt.com MILLIONS infected? Cuomo says NY antibody tests suggest Covid-19 less fatal than previously thought
The Queens tenant group is part of a growing movement aimed at convincing a sizable chunk of New York renters to withhold their payments next month in the hope of forcing state lawmakers to impose a “universal cancellation of any rent, mortgage or utility payments owed or accumulated during the length of this crisis.”
They hope to involve even those who can afford to pay, and have circulated a “rent strike toolkit” for would-be strikers interested in drafting in their neighbors. Strikers in New York are expected to be joined by groups in Philadelphia, Chicago, multiple California cities and elsewhere across the US.
Led by the Upstate/Downstate Housing Alliance, the New York rent-strike movement has brought together an impressive coalition of tenants’ rights and labor groups to petition for a total suspension of all payments for the duration of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s ‘New York Pause’ order, which has brought the state’s normally-bustling economy to a standstill and thrown millions into unemployment.
They also want a $10 billion investment in affordable housing, to include improving the quality of existing public housing, repurposing vacant properties into permanent housing for the homeless, and topping up the budget for subsidized housing.
While New York has adopted a three-month moratorium on evictions, the freeze is scheduled to end in late June and does not forgive renters’ mounting debts. Housing advocates are worried all hell will break loose when housing courts reopen and renters suddenly owe three months’ worth of payments.
Some 39 percent of New Yorkers were already living paycheck-to-paycheck in March, according to PropertyNest. With the state’s unemployment benefits website MIA for the first three weeks of the shutdown before rumbling back to life earlier this month, even those who were able to afford their rent for April may be looking at a lean May, especially given the city’s notoriously high cost of living.
Just 55.7 percent of New Yorkers surveyed by PropertyNest expected to be able to pay their rent “as usual” come May 1, though a sizable percentage more (15.8 percent) planned to borrow the money, pay late, or work out other agreements with their landlords.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic made New York its epicenter, striking down upwards of 17,000 people in New York City alone, both city and state were rapidly losing residents to economic factors. People have been fleeing the state due to its high cost of living for years, with their chief financial fear reported as “living in debt forever,” according to a 2019 survey by GoBankingRates.com – a worry that is unlikely to have evaporated now that so many have lost their jobs.
When the smoke clears, the eviction moratorium lifts, and landlords find themselves facing the possibility of trying to pay their own mortgages with thousands of vacant units, they may wish they’d been more patient with their struggling tenants.
The Free 