Black Cat Occupied social centre evicted and Reoccupied!

Yes­ter­day saw the evic­tion of the Black Cat Cen­tre, a squat­ted social cen­tre that for 3 months became a gen­uine­ly well used and val­ued com­mu­ni­ty resource, involv­ing hun­dreds of local peo­ple in var­i­ous capac­i­ties. The evic­tion was met with a 17 strong sol­i­dar­i­ty demo, but no resis­tance from the inside as the evic­tion came slight­ly ear­li­er than expect­ed.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -

Fol­low­ing the evic­tion of the Black cat Cen­tre yes­ter­day, the build­ing has been re-squat­ted. Local activists and res­i­dents, act­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the recent­ly evict­ed Black Cat squat­ters last night squat­ted the build­ing again, and intend to con­tin­ue oper­at­ing it as The Black Cat Social Cen­tre. Speak­ing to Bath Activist Net­work last night, one of the new squat­ters, a res­i­dent of Old­field Park, said ‘The work that the orig­i­nal Black cat squat­ters put into the social cen­tre was so inspir­ing, and such a ben­e­fit to the com­mu­ni­ty that we felt that we had to act, and re-open the social cen­tre to the com­mu­ni­ty for as long as pos­si­ble’.

This lat­est devel­op­ment means that own­ers Cabot will have to re-insti­gate court pro­ceed­ings to evict the new squat­ters. The occu­piers last night said that, as with the last occu­piers, they were keen to enter into a rent pay­ing agree­ment with Cabot in order to keep the space in com­mu­ni­ty use for as long as pos­si­ble.

The new squat­ters intend to have the Black Cat, with all of its pre­vi­ous uses and events run­ning by Fri­day morn­ing.

For more infor­ma­tion, or for an inter­view with the new squat­ters, call 07794774938
bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk