Category: West Midlands

Squat­ters Estate Agents Opens In Lon­don

As part of the Space Is The Place — Side Step­ping The Prop­er­ty Lad­der series of events tak­ing place in var­i­ous Lon­don autonomous spaces over the week­end of the 11th and 12th April, a squat­ters estate agents has been set up.

The squat­ters estate agents is based at a new squat­ted venue in Bowl Court, Shored­itch and opens Sat­ur­day at 10am. A dis­play shows a num­ber of emp­ty prop­er­ties around Lon­don along with details about their loca­tion, his­to­ry and suit­abil­i­ty for squat­ting. The prop­er­ties range for aban­doned hous­es and flats, to pubs, shops and even gov­ern­ment build­ings. Some would suit small res­i­den­tial squats and oth­ers grand large scale hous­ing com­mu­ni­ties, squat cafes, freeshops or social cen­tres.

Dur­ing the week­end you’ll have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet up with oth­ers in need of hous­ing and go out as a group to put the emp­ties of Lon­don back into good use. Before the end of the week­end you could have your­self and your friends a new home.

The dis­play boards will also be made avail­able at oth­er autonomous spaces over the week­end and beyond.

It’s not to late to con­tribute to the project. Please sub­mit your own emp­ties lists ASAP to the.rampart AT gmail DOT com

———-

Over the last three weeks peo­ple have been prepar­ing an aban­doned ware­house in Shored­itch (Lon­don) to host events over the week­end of the days of action for squats and autonomous spaces. This week, artists have been trans­form­ing the place for an exhi­bi­tion themed around land use, gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, hous­ing and reclaim­ing space. The build­ing opens on Sat­ur­day at 10am with a pro­gram of films, dis­cus­sion and skill shar­ing till 7pm and again on Sun­day. The space will also be host­ing a freeshop and squat­ters estate agency.

The four storey build­ing had been delib­er­ate­ly left emp­ty for years even though the plan­ning author­i­ties won’t allow it to be demol­ished. Instead of using using/renting or sell­ing the build­ing, the own­ers have instead total­ly gut­ted the inside to deter squat­ters, stairs removed, floor­boards pulled up, pipework yanked out and toi­lets smashed. As if that was­n’t bad enough they have left the build­ing open to the ele­ments with smashed win­dows and a bloody great hole torn out of the roof. It does­n’t take a genius to fig­ure out that the devel­op­ers are wait­ing for the build­ing to fall into dis­re­pair enough to jus­ti­fy its demo­li­tion.

Despite all the dam­age it was con­sid­ered worth squat­ting any­way, part­ly due to the sym­bol­ic val­ue of occu­py­ing and ren­o­vat­ing a build­ing that the own­ers are leav­ing emp­ty while they wait for it to fall apart, but also because it has most of the attrib­ut­es we want­ed and is very con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed.

Right on the edge of the city of Lon­don, the squat is over­shad­owed by a mas­sive new 700 mil­lion pound devel­op­ment site push­ing out into Shored­itch. A huge glis­ten­ing glass tow­er block is the first of many that will be built here, trans­form­ing the area com­plete­ly. The ware­house stands alone with earth movers parked in the open area between it and the con­struc­tion trains and tow­er blocks, an almost exact real life repli­ca of the image used on the April2008 web­site.

The squat is locat­ed in Bowl Court which is up Plough Court next to the junc­tion of Great East­ern Street and Shored­itch High Street.

—

What next in Lon­don?

After this last week­ends decen­tralised actions for squats and autonomous spaces we’ll be hav­ing a fol­lowup event at the new Bowl Court social cen­tre. It will be a chance to hear about what went on in oth­er cities in the UK and else­where in the world. There will be videos and slide shows of actions and exhi­bi­tions of pho­tos and art­work. The squat­ter estate agents will also have been updat­ed and open for busi­ness again.

More impor­tant­ly it will be a chance for peo­ple from dif­fer­ent spaces to get togeth­er (every­one was too busy dur­ing the days of action them­selves) and dis­cuss some of the issues raised. Part of the aim of the days of action was to bring autonomous spaces togeth­er and cre­ate inter­con­nec­tions for bet­ter col­lab­o­ra­tion and mutu­al sup­port in the future. Of the var­i­ous social cen­tres in Lon­don, three are close to evic­tion with­in the com­ing weeks (the womin­space is due to be evict­ed this wednes­day 16th). How do we move for­ward togeth­er in defend­ing the auton­o­my we cre­ate? How do we extend the links between exist­ing social strug­gles and our autonomous spaces? What roles can and should these spaces be play­ing in pro­duc­ing rad­i­cal social change?

Please invite your friends.

Lon­don wide autonomous spaces net­work meet­ing and a meal.
Sat­ur­day 19th April from 2pm at the Bowl Court Squat off Plough Yard, off Shored­itch High Street

—

News from Lon­dons autonomous spaces…

New squats; more meet­ings; evic­tion alert; Brad Will revis­it­ed; days of action fol­lowup; the film they tried to ban; 56a Infos­hop and more… With the days of action for autonomous spaces now behind us it’s time to look for­ward. Tak­en from the ram­pART mail­ing list, this is a round up of news and events relat­ing to Lon­don’s social cen­tres. Get involved.

» Bowl Court Squat

Three weeks since we entered the aban­doned ware­house on Bowl Court, we opened on Sat­ur­day with not only the esen­tials like floor­boards, stairs, run­ning water and flush­ing toi­lets but also an art exhi­bi­tion, cin­e­ma, squat­ters estate agents and a ping pong table. If you did­n’t get down there you can find pho­tos on indy­media or come down next sat­ur­day to see for your­self and hear more about the days of action (see below).

» Meet­ings meet­ings meet­ings

With the new Bowl Court space open in Shored­itch we’ve decid­ed to alter­nate ram­pART mon­day organ­is­ing meet­ings between the venues. Next mon­day, (21st April), the meet­ing will be at Ram­part Street. Events pro­pos­als for either space should be made at a Mon­day meet­ing. How­ev­er it seems we just can’t get enough of meet­ings and we’re hav­ing a house
meet­ing at Bowl Court tonight (Tues 15th, 7pm) to dis­cuss and decide prac­ti­cal issues relat­ing to the use of the space.

We’re also organ­is­ing a Lon­don wide autonomous spaces net­work meet­ing for next sat­ur­day, see below for details.

» Evic­tion Alert

The Womin­space (womynspace.blogspot.com) has been turned down an appeal and bailiffs are due to evict tom­morow at 10.20am (Wed 16th). They are request­ing peo­ple come down for break­fast at 9:30am to offer sup­port.

The squat is by the canal at 4a Cor­bridge Cres­cent, E2 near Mare Street. Near­est tube, Beth­nal Green.

» Pop­u­lar Upris­ing in Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co, 2006.

April 18 at 8pm

Please join us at the Bowl Court Squat on Fri­day, for a screen­ing of the film “Brad, One More Night at the Bar­ri­cades” (55 min). Brazil­ian film­mak­er and media activist Miguel will be on hand to dis­cuss his doc­u­men­tary trib­ute to a fall­en friend and will also show anoth­er one of his films.

When Mex­i­can para­mil­i­tary forces shot Brad Will (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Will) in the chest, killing him, his cam­era fell from his hands. But it did­n’t stop record­ing. It con­tin­ued mov­ing from hand to hand, telling Brad’s sto­ry, as well as the sto­ry of the move­ment of move­ments that he was a part of. From the squats of New York to the forests of Ore­gon, from the anti-glob­al­iza­tion protests in Seat­tle, Prague, Que­bec to the pop­u­lar upris­ing in Oax­a­ca, Brad’s cam­era paints us a pic­ture of what his life was about, and what so many of his friends con­tin­ue to strug­gle for.

Dona­tions will go to help Miguel con­tin­ue his tour. DVDs will also be on sale.

Venue: Bowl Court off Plough Yard, off Shored­itch High Street

» Days of Action Fol­lowup

Sat­ur­day 19th from 2pm

After this last week­ends decen­tralised actions for squats and autonomous spaces we’ll be hav­ing a fol­lowup event at the new Bowl Court social cen­tre. It will be a chance to hear about what went on in oth­er cities in the UK and else­where in the world. There will be videos and slide shows of actions and exhi­bi­tions of pho­tos and art­work. The squat­ter estate agents will also have been updat­ed and open for busi­ness again. Addi­tion­al­ly there will be a lon­don wide autonomous spaces net­work meet­ing and a meal. Doors open 2pm . More details on indy­media.

Venue: Bowl Court off Plough Yard, off Shored­itch High Street

» The Film They Tried to Ban — On the Verge

Mon­day 21st at 7pm

Police have inter­vened across the coun­try to cen­sor ‘On the Verge’ an inde­pen­dent doc­u­men­tary about the Smash EDO cam­paign to shut down the Brighton’s weapons man­u­fac­tur­er EDO MBM. So far estab­lish­ments in Southamp­ton, Chich­ester, Bath and Oxford as well as Brighton have come under police pres­sure to can­cel film show­ings. In Brighton police inter­vened to pre­vent a show­ing at the Duke of York’s Cin­e­ma, just one
hour pri­or to the sched­uled pre­miere.

Cos lots of folk missed it’s first Lon­don screen­ing at House­mans (could­n’t fit any more in) there’s anoth­er chance to see this impor­tant movie at LARC next Mon­day.

Venue is 62 Fieldgate Street, near­est tubes Aldgate East and Whitechapel

» Keep Informed

Those of you south of the riv­er may be espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed to know that the 56a Infos­hop (www.56a.org.uk) have start­ed doing an irreg­u­lar email newslet­ter to let you know what’s been hap­pen­ing and what’s going to hap­pen at the Infos­hop as well as bits and pieces from else­where. If you would like to recieve their newslet­ter then send an
email to : 56ainfoshop-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

———-

Build­ing now in hand for the week­end of events in Birm­ing­ham — for timetable see http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20387

We have now occu­pied the build­ing for this week­end’s events — so peo­ple are need­ed down there tonight and tomor­row morn­ing to pre­pare for the demo and week­end work­shops…

The build­ing is the for­mer King­field Heath sta­tion­er’s offices and ware­house, between Brad­ford Street and War­wick Street in Dig­beth (on the 50 bus route and very near the Spot­ted Dog pub). It’s an absolute­ly enor­mous build­ing, we are only using a small frac­tion of the space with­in it. The “main entrance” is on Brad­ford St, but the entrance that we are using is the one on War­wick St — about 50 yards up from the Spot­ted Dog, on the right side of the road. Hope­ful­ly by tomor­row morn­ing we will have the “Free Space Brum” ban­ner to adver­tise it from the out­side.

No elec­tric­i­ty or water as yet but hope­ful­ly these will be sort­ed tomor­row (and the land­lord of the Spot­ted Dog, has kind­ly offered us the use of his pub kitchen for water, and pos­si­bly also cook­ing).

Bring down any­thing you want to make the place look nice — posters, can­dles, coloured fab­ric, cush­ions, mat­tress­es, etc. We already have chairs and tables which were already in the build­ing.

The space will be open to the pub­lic tomor­row morn­ing to pre­pare for the demo out­side the Coun­cil House at 2pm.

For any more info, direc­tions from the city cen­tre, or if you are there and no one seems to be there to let you in, please call the social cen­tre phone on 07527580190…

freespacebrum@riseup.net
http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/birmingham_social_centre

—

Last week­end a tem­po­rary autonomous space was opened up in the cen­tre of Birm­ing­ham in response to a Europe-wide call out for actions to defend squats and free space (see http://april2008.squat.net/).

An aban­doned ware­house on War­wick St. in Dig­beth was the venue of three days of work­shops, talks and dis­cus­sion on diverse themes: from the strug­gles of the indige­nous peo­ples of Mex­i­co, to the Dis­abil­i­ty Rights Move­ment in the UK; from 12v pow­er work­shops, to ‘seed bombs’ and gueril­la gar­den­ing; from pub­lic sec­tor work­place organ­is­ing, to bicy­cle repair. Hot food was served each day with music in the evening and spon­taeous sculp­ture and paint­ing pop­ping up around the build­ing through­out.

The impe­tus for this event hap­pen­ing was not from any sin­gle group, agen­da or cam­paign, but a col­lab­o­ra­tion between dif­fer­ent groups and indi­vid­u­als. The empha­sis through­out was to encour­age such col­lab­o­ra­tion and to pro­mote a gen­er­al ‘lets do it our­selves’ ethos. In ret­ro­spect it was a unique­ly sup­port­ive syn­the­sis of dif­fer­ent needs, issues, tra­di­tions and inno­va­tions.

Whilst the space was timed to co-incide with the Europe-wide call out, the week­end high­light­ed a num­ber of spe­cif­ic issues in Birm­ing­ham over acces­si­ble social hous­ing, privi­ti­sa­tion of pub­lic space and the gen­tri­fi­ca­tion of Dig­beth.

For exam­ple, one group active in cre­at­ing the space, the Dis­abled Activist Net­work, are cur­rent­ly cam­paign­ing in Brum on the issues of acces­si­ble social hous­ing and the planned clo­sure of day cen­tres across the city, to be replaced by pri­va­tised ‘ser­vices’. Mem­bers of that net­work felt strong­ly that they should not be cam­paign­ing to ‘save’ day cen­tres giv­en their reliance on the med­ical, ‘pater­nal­is­tic’ mod­el of dis/ability. Rather, the argu­ment went, we should be cam­paign­ing for their replace­ment by some­thing more along the social cen­tres mod­el. In syn­the­sis­ing these views, the free­space col­lec­tive decid­ed that while cam­paign­ing and work­ing in the long term for an acces­si­ble and inclu­sive social cen­tre, we could also respond to the call out and put on a tem­po­rary social cen­tre for the week­end as a project to focus on.

We con­sid­ered many build­ings and open sites across the city of Birm­ing­ham, with var­i­ous cri­te­ria in mind. We want­ed easy pub­lic trans­port links, acces­si­bil­i­ty and a fair­ly cen­tral loca­tion. The groundswell of oppo­si­tion to the Coun­cil’s gen­tri­fi­ca­tion of Dig­beth meant we quick­ly grav­i­tat­ed to Dig­beth, despite the issues that might give us in terms of ful­fill­ing some of our cri­te­ria, in par­tic­u­lar find­ing a build­ing in good nick. Giv­en the prob­lems gen­tri­fi­ca­tion is already caus­ing the area, with music venues being intim­i­dat­ed by a very few of the inhab­i­tants — abet­ted by Birm­ing­ham City Coun­cil — of the jer­ry-built yup­py flats they erect next door, we felt a respon­si­bil­i­ty to the area to try and add weight and tex­ture to the exisit­ing cam­paign to ‘Keep Dig­beth Vibrant’. Coun­cil plans might be con­strued as insult­ing to the peo­ple of Dig­beth, as they give the impres­sion Dig­beth is a run down, emp­ty black hole of post-indus­tri­al mis­ery, in dire need of res­cu­ing by our ever so uncor­rupt coun­cil and their friends in the con­struc­tion indus­try. Dig­beth, while not with­out an ele­ment of post-indus­tri­al mis­ery is a vibrant com­mu­ni­ty, and sure­ly under no illu­sions about ‘devel­op­ment’. The word means that which caus­es some­thing to unfold; growth, and so let us be under no illu­sions that what is going on is ‘devel­op­ment’. It is gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, the process of replac­ing the poor work­ing com­mu­ni­ty, replaced by exclu­sive ‘lux­u­ry’ flats that turn out to be crap build any­way. Social cleans­ing. Not just a ques­tion of com­pet­ing ‘lifestyles’, this process is inher­ent­ly polit­i­cal.

Links were made with the Keep Dig­beth Vibrant/Noisy com­mu­ni­ty and their sup­port for the tem­po­rary autonomous zone can­not be over-val­ued. A web­site on the issue is http://www.keepdigbethvibrant.co.uk/

Of the week­end, one par­tic­i­pant com­ment­ed:

“It was a fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence. It felt like a gen­uine, unmedi­at­ed gath­er­ing of human beings — some­thing which is quite alien in a cul­ture where most, if not all, of our dai­ly inter­ac­tions with fel­low sen­tient beings are via state or com­mer­cial mech­a­nisms. It was a time and place where skills were learned and taught, ideas were exchanged, faces mas­saged, friends made, and much fun had.

“The sup­port of the pub just down the road was invalu­able — giv­ing us access to toi­lets and clean water — and demon­strat­ed that what we were doing was not about hav­ing a loud par­ty or con­grat­u­lat­ing our­selves on how ultra-rad­i­cal we are, but about sup­port­ing a cause that means some­thing to the local com­mu­ni­ty, as well as par­tic­i­pat­ing in a move­ment that spans the con­ti­nent.

“It showed that we, the ordi­nary peo­ple of the world, have the pow­er to cre­ate some­thing worth­while just by work­ing togeth­er, even as our cap­i­tal­ist rulers try so hard to con­vince us that we don’t.

“In our own small way, we have proved them wrong.

“Now we have to do it again. Again and again, except big­ger, bet­ter and with more involve­ment from a wider range of peo­ple. The pow­ers that rule our lives can do so only as long as enough of the pop­u­la­tion believes that they are indis­pens­able. By tak­ing direct action such as this, by let­ting it grow and let­ting it be seen — espe­cial­ly by peo­ple who would not cur­rent­ly con­sid­er them­selves ‘rad­i­cal’ — we can show that this is not so.

“No snowflake ever feels it is respon­si­ble for the avalanche, but get enough of them togeth­er and they are lit­er­al­ly unstop­pable.”

There was no short­age of imag­i­na­tion and enter­prise for auton­o­my. Plans were dis­cussed to cre­ate an eco-friendy com­post toi­let in the build­ing, to decrease our reliance on our friend­ly local pub. Unfor­tu­nate­ly we did not have time to sort out all of the prac­ti­cal­i­ties but we will be plan­ning towards hav­ing com­post toi­lets in our next space.

Events began on the Fri­day morn­ing with a ban­ner mak­ing work­shop, with pre­pared ban­ners dis­played. Peo­ple were also still focussed on clear­ing up the space and try­ing to work out if there was any pos­si­bil­i­ty of mains elec­tric­i­ty or run­ning water. On dis­cov­er­ing the exist­ing mains sup­ply was unwork­able, the planned 12 volt lights and a sound sys­tem were set up run­ning from leisure bat­ter­ies ( which are sim­i­lar to car bat­ter­ies but far bet­ter suit­ed to pow­er domes­tic appliances).The bat­ter­ies can be charged by solar pan­els or wind tur­bine, show­ing that you don’t need mains elec­tric­i­ty, being an unsus­tain­able and waste­ful source. This time around we cheat­ed by charg­ing the bat­ter­ies down at the pub! But we will try and get hold of some solar pan­els for next time.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly the anti-gen­tri­fi­ca­tion demo called for 2pm out­side the Coun­cil House was some­thing of a wash out, with a low turnout, per­haps a les­son in tak­ing on too much. While the ‘Stop sell­ing Off Our City’ ban­ner was hung on the social cen­tre’s exte­ri­or, more ban­ners were put up inside throught the course of the day.

Fri­day night’s open mic ses­sion includ­ed a vari­ety of songs about class, Birm­ing­ham, war and neo-colo­nial­ism from dif­fer­ent singers, inter­spersed with poet­ry and musi­cal impro­vi­sa­tion The fun con­tin­ued well into the night. Urban explo­ration occured, guid­ed tours of the enor­mous build­ing we found our­selves in being offered, and there were some frankly aston­ish­ing moments of phys­i­cal com­e­dy avail­able which I won’t go into too much detail, but imag­ine Buster Keaton in that Chap­lin film where he gets caught up in the machine and you get the idea. It real­ly was that good.

Sat­ur­day dawned, and after fur­ther work on the build­ing and a break­fast, work­shops began at 11am with a dis­cus­sion of social cen­tres, and num­bers con­tin­ued swelling. Bicy­col­o­gy arrived with their won­der­ful bike main­tainance work­shop, com­plete with info­s­tand, par­tic­i­pants shar­ing and learn­ing thi­er main­tainance skills. The Birm­ing­ham man who was involved in bike main­tainance work­shops in the run up to the West Mid­lands Cli­mate Camp Neigh­bor­hood was par­tic­u­lar­ly impressed with the skills, knowl­edge and teach­ing abil­i­ty of the women from bicy­col­o­gy. Thanks to them for com­ing along.

After a very well recieved lunch — com­pli­ments to the chef — there was an exit­ing and engag­ing talk on the Zap­atista move­ment by an artist and activist of Mex­i­co, now res­i­dent in the UK. The talk cov­ered amongst oth­er things the his­to­ry of the Zap­atista rebel­lion, out­lin­ing the key goals of their resis­tance: con­trol over land, direct polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion and the right to pro­tect their lan­guage and cul­ture. Broad­er themes were touched upon too, such as glob­al­i­sa­tion. After this there was an intro­duc­tion to the Local Exchange Trad­ing Scheme, or LETS as it oper­ates in Birm­ing­ham, giv­en by one of their key admin­is­tra­tive work­ers.

The sec­ond after­noon ses­sion was tak­en up by two work­shops. 12volt elec­tric­i­ty, co-facil­i­tat­ed by three dif­fer­ent peo­ple, began with a the­o­ret­i­cal dis­cus­sion, look­ing at the basics of elec­tric­i­ty in non-tech­ni­cal lan­guage employ­ing metaphor to get across the key con­cepts, as well as the engi­neer­ing involved in set­ting up 12volt sys­tems. This was fol­lowed by a hands-on prac­ti­cal ses­sion, get­ting peo­ple used to mea­sur­ing volt­ages, wiring up lights and a look at the 12volt sound sys­tem. Work­shop two was a talk on dis/ability rights; the con­cepts and the move­ment were cov­ered in a way which par­tic­i­pants report­ed opened their eyes to new ideas about the pol­i­tics of ‘dis­abil­i­ty’.

After din­ner, the poi/fire spin­ning workshop/demonstration took place, which cer­tain­ly looked good from where I was stand­ing. Made the place come alive and was a wel­come ‘spec­ta­cle’ to those not direct­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing.

On Sun­day the high­ly antic­i­pat­ed permaculture/transition towns work­shop proved to be an engag­ing, rad­i­cal and politi­cised dis­cus­sion of the issues. Key points were about the nature of per­ma­cul­ture, it’s his­to­ry and rel­e­vance today, how it has changed as a con­cept and how we prac­tice it every­day. There was a vision excer­cise in imag­in­ing what a per­ma­cul­tured post-tran­si­tion world might be expe­ri­en­tial­ly from the moment we wake up. What will our homes look like, our break­fasts, the world out­side our homes? On tran­si­tion towns, after the basics were into­duced, key ques­tions were how do we ensure the tran­si­tion move­ment remains out of the hands of local busi­ness elites, and is non-hier­ar­chi­cal?

Sun­day after­noon was tak­en up with two prac­ti­cal work­shops and one dis­cus­sion. While the sten­cil mak­ing con­rt­ibuted to the ongo­ing spon­ta­neous arts occur­ing througout the event, dec­o­rat­ing the build­ing, gueril­la gar­den­ing con­sist­ed of mak­ing ‘seed­bombs’, a rad­i­cal ‘no dig’ approach to the prac­tice. This labour inten­sive work­shop was inter­rupt­ed for around an hour by the talk on the forth­com­ing pub­lic sec­tor strikes, and the state of indus­tri­al activism in the pub­lic sec­tor in the city, which was a pro­duc­tive and cer­tain­ly infor­ma­tive dis­cus­sion. For those inter­st­ed in fol­low­ing up, there is a union organ­ised ral­ly in Vic­to­ria Square, Brum City Cen­tre on Thurs­day 24th April, 12noon to coin­cide with a strike over pay cuts.

The ‘What next?’ dis­cus­sion round­ed off the event, dis­cussing the next steps for brum­free­space, on Sun­day evening after din­ner. Anky, one par­tic­i­pant said “The food was won­der­ful, thanx to “Food not Bombs”…really inspired my cook­ing, we got the water & light­ing and sounds sort­ed real­ly well I thought, we have so much ener­gy and cre­ativ­i­ty amongst us!”

And a final per­spec­tive:

“One of the great­est strengths of the week­end was the diver­si­ty of peo­ple that it wel­comed. This was the first time I had ever been involved in occu­py­ing a space, and it gave me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get togeth­er with so many dif­fer­ent peo­ple — to meet new peo­ple that I had­n’t met before, and to cel­e­brate the new friends that I had made since becom­ing involved in Free­space Brum in Jan­u­ary. It’s fair to say that each per­son who vis­it­ed had par­tic­u­lar inter­ests, and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to lis­ten, learn and dis­cuss the var­i­ous inter­ests in a free social space that was­n’t just inter­est­ed in tak­ing your mon­ey was real­ly valu­able. And it was fun too! We took an emp­ty build­ing and for a few days we gave it colour, life, music and com­mu­ni­ty. In return, it gave us fun, cel­e­bra­tion, edu­ca­tion and the deter­mi­na­tion to bring some­thing more per­ma­nent to Birm­ing­ham. Well done to every­body involved in set­ting it up and thanks to every­body who vis­it­ed, pro­mot­ed it and helped out. Par­tic­u­lar thanks must to go to the amaz­ing peo­ple from the Spot­ted Dog pub, all the speak­ers who gave their time to hold work­shops (I man­aged to get to the LETS and Zap­atista talks, both fan­tas­tic) and every­body who trav­elled from out of town to help us. Love to all, and here’s to the future.”

More pho­tos

—

The next meet­ing of Free­space Brum will be at 7pm this Wednes­day 23rd April, at the Spot­ted Dog Alces­ter St.

———-

Announc­ing The New Squat: Loca­tion (Not­ting­ham)

The new squat, which has been occu­pied as part of the week­end of action for free cul­ture and autonomous spaces has so far been suc­cess­ful­ly tak­en. Please come along, we real­ly need peo­ple to help clear the space and make it one of our own! So where is it? The build­ing is known as the Old Coun­ty Hall, 23 High Pave­ment, Not­ting­ham City, NG1. It is the build­ing straight oppo­site the Gal­leries of Jus­tice. For gen­er­al info or direc­tions, please ring us on 075 3449 6679. For a map see: http://tinyurl.com/5wld5k

We hope to see you there soon!

For more pho­tos see http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/396162.html
———-
Bris­tolians take part in Inter­na­tion­al homelessness/squatters action day

A vacant city cen­tre build­ing, the Lit­tle The­atre in Col­ston Street, was occu­pied this morn­ing by home­less Bris­to­lians as part of a co-ordi­nat­ed day of action round the world.

Hun­dreds of thou­sands of square feet of vacant prop­er­ty stands idle in the city whilst Bristol’s hous­ing reg­is­ter list­ed over 20,000 peo­ple and ris­ing when it was scrapped last year. Whilst most peo­ple don’t want to live in prop­er­ty not orig­i­nal­ly built as hous­ing any roof over your head is bet­ter than none. The absur­di­ty of fast ris­ing home­less­ness fig­ures whilst large build­ings lie emp­ty, some­times for years, has not escaped the notice of Bristol’s home­less peo­ple.

The gov­ern­ment has also decid­ed to drop pro­pos­als in the last bud­get to scrap busi­ness rate relief for vacant prop­er­ties. Many own­ers of the largest vacant prop­er­ties in the city will con­tin­ue to pay lit­tle or no tax on their emp­ty build­ings and have no incen­tive to let them. Police and Fire Brigade both recog­nise these increas­ing num­bers of ‘voids’ cre­ate fire haz­ards, ‘crack hous­es’ and attract oth­er crime.

Last year’s North­ern Rock cri­sis and increas­ing bank­ing jit­ters should only serve to remind peo­ple how, by hand­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for eco­nom­ic deci­sions over to the pri­vate sec­tor, Gor­don Brown has left one of the most impor­tant respon­si­bil­i­ties of gov­ern­ment to a fail­ing mar­ket. The council’s appalling new ‘choice based let­tings’ scheme, intro­duced this year, which relies on the dis­abled, poor, men­tal­ly ill and elder­ly to ‘house them­selves’ has effec­tive­ly scrapped their statu­to­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty over the last 60 years to house the most vul­ner­a­ble in soci­ety.

The occu­pa­tion will con­tin­ue over the next few days with pub­lic events and will con­tin­ue beyond to remind the coun­cil, pub­lic, Shel­ter and oth­er agen­cies that home­less peo­ple will con­tin­ue to assert their right to house them­selves where the gov­ern­ment has failed. Bris­tol squat­ters believe the coun­cil and home­less char­i­ties have shrugged off the des­per­ate plight of tens of thou­sands of home­less peo­ple in the city because they have lit­tle eco­nom­ic clout.

Con­tacts

For more info call: Sven on 07786 166477, Miri­am on 07964 292775, Jake on 07910 077111 or oth­ers on 07528 953230 or 07591 631230.

Links

With the Broad­mead Expan­sion and its spillover into St Pauls and Old Mar­ket that is dis­plac­ing our local com­mu­ni­ties, the time is now to take mat­ters into our own hands and reclaim our pub­lic spaces.
REPAIR NOT REDEVELOP — Yup­pie flats are not part of a sus­tain­able future and are push­ing social hous­ing out of the city cen­tre. Resist the dis­place­ment of local peo­ple and join the parade!
http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/article/688145
http://april2008.squat.net/index.php/category/english/l…ef/en

http://www.squatbristol.org.uk

———-

AUDACIOUS SPACE CINEMA
@ oppo­site Pri­mark on the Head­row (21–27) in the city cen­tre at the old hous­ing advice cen­tre, Leeds
07526 261061

Presents… a week­end of rad­i­cal doc­u­men­taries

Occu­py, resist, squat!

Fri­day 11TH APRIL 2008

7 — 8pm Euro­pean autonomous Spaces Part I

Direct Action against Apa­thy shorts on ‘autonomous spaces’. DAAA made some doc­u­men­taries back in 2005 about Euro­pean autonomous spaces. Here we fea­ture three of them: Barcelona, our very own A‑spire from Leeds and a secret loca­tion!

8–9pm – Rob New­man
Live from the 2007 Camp for Cli­mate Action, we have Rob Newman’s hilar­i­ous and polit­i­cal sharp stand up on oil, war and direct action.

Sat­ur­day 12TH APRIL 2008

2 — 3pm Euro­pean autonomous Spaces Part II
Back with 3 more shorts from Direct Action against Apa­thy: Not­ting­ham (Sumac Cen­tre), Chris­tia­nia and Ams­ter­dam

3 — 4 pm Boom — the sound of evic­tion
Sto­ry of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion and resis­tance from down­town san Fran­cis­co

4 — 5 pm Those who dance
Inspir­ing sto­ry of resis­tance from Ross­port in Ire­land where a com­mu­ni­ty is tak­ing on the mas­sive multi­na­tion­al Shell to stop them build­ing an oil pipeline.

5 – 5.30pm The sto­ry of Joe Hill
Sto­ry of leg­endary itin­er­ant, folk hero Joe Hill — a key agi­ta­tor and wob­bly (IWW) organ­is­er

5.30 – 6pm Hands of our homes
Short doc­u­men­taries abot com­mu­ni­ties resist­ing pri­vati­sa­tion and PFIs from around the UK

6 – 7.30pm The Take
Sto­ry of work­ers in Argenti­na who occu­py their fac­to­ry after the 2001 eco­nom­ic crash.

7.30 – 9pm Dock­ers
Sto­ry of amaz­ing 1994 Liv­er­pool dock­ers strike whose strug­gle spread around the world.

AUDACIOUS SPACE COLLECTIVE
leedssquat@googlemail.com

The space was tak­en with­out too much fuss last night, and opened its doors to the pub­lic about 3pm today. On going in, it was obvi­ous that a lot of effort had gone into prepar­ing the infos­hop and beau­ti­fy­ing the inside. There was free cof­fee and snacks, some peo­ple were watch­ing a film and some were hand­ing out lit­er­a­ture on the pave­ment out­side.

For any­one who does­n’t know the area, The Head­row is right in the very cen­tre of town. The coun­cil vacat­ed this build­ing (it used to be the hous­ing advice cen­tre) so they could sell it on to be anoth­er exclu­sive bou­tique; the hous­ing office was moved to some­where fur­ther out of town and hard­er for peo­ple to access.

Per­haps they were pre­scient when they chose to write in their dis­play, “The Hous­ing Advice Cen­tre Is Chang­ing.” It cer­tain­ly has. If you go in now, you’ll learn all about how to squat and take con­trol of your own hous­ing prob­lems!

Come and pop in if you have a chance.

–

The Auda­cious Space cafe is now shut as of ear­ly Sun­day evening, but every­one is anx­ious to main­tain the momen­tum of this week­end, so there will be a meet­ing for peo­ple inter­est­ed in what to do next on Wednes­day this week at 7pm to dis­cuss ideas, and have a bit of an Auda­cious Debrief.

Call the usu­al num­ber (07526261061) or email leedssquat@googlemail.com for loca­tion. It will be par­tic­u­lar­ly good if peo­ple who did­n’t help in putting on the space, but came down and liked what they saw, came along to see how to get more involved.

And a MASSIVE MASSIVE WELL DONE to every­one who put on and came down to and par­tic­i­pat­ed in this amaz­ing event! Let’s keep the momen­tum going!

———-

Day of Action for Squat­ting and Autonomous Spaces, Brighton, 12/04/08.

A video of pix­ies reclaim­ing the pub­lic space of Brighton with some ban­ner drop­ping. To our sur­prise the pigs did­n’t show up. The weath­er was great. The day went well.

Video Squat Lev­el — video/mpeg 13M
a href=“http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2008/04//396394.mpg”>Video Squat Lev­el — video/mpeg 13M

The day had start­ed with some tree climb­ing. After few hours the first ban­ner was dropped. The ben­der was then erect­ed on the Lev­el and the food acquired from skips was dis­played on the table to be eat­en for free by the mem­bers of pub­lic. The sec­ond ban­ner was dropped an hour lat­er. The crowd gath­ered and there was some gui­tar play­ing to fol­low by the after-par­ty. The day went well.

I went home before the start of the par­ty… please add your own accounts of the day/night.

———-

MESHO, The 16-page tabloid spoof paper about squat­ting, home­less­ness and autonomous spaces is out!

Ape­ing the METRO mast­head, watch out if you see what looks like a METRO on a tube train or bus — it might be a MESHO

Look out for MESHO in all the squatted/autonomous spaces opened up this week­end in cities across Britain.

Alleged­ly the paper near­ly didn’t hap­pen because three sep­a­rate print­ers pulled out at the last minute fear­ing a legal come­back – or claim­ing they did­n’t have insur­ance. One excused them­selves because they print METRO, before anoth­er final­ly oblig­ed at the last minute.

What does MESHO mean? Well it looks like METRO but is an ana­gram of HOMES. So there.

Down­load MESHO on pdf (16 page, tabloid size, 4.7mb) at www.schnews.org.uk/satire/pdf/mesho.pdf

———-

On the night of Fri­day 11th April offices of Angel Group [Leeds] came under attack. This was part of the days of action in sup­port of squats and autonomous spaces.

Angel group make their mon­ey by pro­vid­ing poor qual­i­ty hous­ing for asy­lum seek­ers, prof­itting from vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple and racist asy­lum laws.

This com­pa­ny were tar­get­ted as part of the days of action in sup­port of squats and autonomous spaces because hous­ing is a right, not a means to make prof­it. This com­pa­ny are known to exploit their posi­tion of pro­vid­ing hous­ing to vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple who are not in a posi­tion to com­plain, get­ting away with pro­vid­ing sub­stan­dard acco­mo­da­tion.

The front of the Angel group offices were redec­o­rat­ed, slo­gans paint­ed, and locks glued. 12 com­pa­ny vehi­cles were attacked with paint strip­per, spray paint, and had their tyres slashed.

This should send a mes­sage to Angel that their racist busi­ness will not be tol­er­at­ed.

———-

SPACE INVADED!

Man­ches­ter Space Invaders land­ed on Thurs­day night.… Dodgy TV kicked off the week­end with films about squat­ting (includ­ing the OK cafe) and a trib­ute to Free par­ty stal­ward Char­lie.. This was fol­lowed by a late night open­ing at the new social cen­tre. Intre­pid Invaders then took to the skies for a night of auda­cious ban­ner hang­ing around the city to pro­mote the week­end and No Bor­ders.…

Fri­day night was the open­ing bands night at the squat, with every­thing from punk to folk, via elec­tro ran­dom­ness. This was a fundrais­er for the Base­ment Social Cen­tre; which lives on through the col­lec­tive despite being tem­porar­i­ly shut down.

On Sat­ur­day the Man­ches­ter space invaders took to the streets to reclaim some ‘pub­lic’ spaces…The fam­i­ly fun­day was a suc­cess despite being some­what over­shad­owed by the cor­po­rate pres­ence of the Man­ches­ter swimath­on in Cathe­dral Gar­dens. The space invaders sup­port­ed the teenagers who are con­stant­ly moved on and tar­get­ed by police for assem­bling in ‘pub­lic’ spaces. With a range of music, from bike soundsys­tems to a folk and sam­ba band, we hung out in the sun­shine with the I bike MCR art parade. We made ban­ners, paint­ed faces, did tai qi..and were enter­tained by a magi­cian!

In the evening, up to 200 squat­ters and No Bor­ders activists held an unau­tho­rised demon­stra­tion in the city cen­tre. Accom­pa­nied by a sam­ba band and two soundsys­tems mount­ed on bike trail­ers, they marched from Vic­to­ria Sta­tion into the North­ern Quar­ter, along Mar­ket Street and Kings Street, through Spin­ning­fields into Castle­field.

The event, called by the group Man­ches­ter No Bor­ders, called for the defence of squat­ted spaces and the free­dom of move­ment for all. Squats and autonomous spaces face a hard time from the author­i­ties. Yet, for many peo­ple, espe­cial­ly some migrant com­mu­ni­ties, they are the only alter­na­tive to home­less­ness.

The demon­stra­tion high­light­ed the ridicu­lous­ness of hun­dreds of hous­es stand­ing emp­ty, while many of us face extor­tion­ate rents, mort­gage repay­ments or evic­tion threats.

At the end of the march in Castle­field, the pro­test­ers suc­ceed­ed in tak­ing sym­bol­ic action against the rede­vel­op­ment of the area, occu­py­ing an old pub and hav­ing a cel­e­bra­tion of autonomous spaces. The rede­vel­op­ment of Jackson’s Wharf into a block of flats was recent­ly fought off by local oppo­si­tion; but in many parts of the city the bat­tle has been less suc­cess­ful.

After the demon­stra­tion some space invaders took off to a par­ty in an old fur­ni­ture ware­house in Ard­wick, but this was sad­ly bust­ed by the police and shut down after a cou­ple of hours..

—

Pic­tures and report by Man­ches­ter No Bor­ders of the FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT and DEFEND AUTONOMOUS SPACES demon­stra­tion on Sat­ur­day, April 12th (see www.april-12.blogspot.com).

Last Sat­ur­day evening, up to 200 squat­ters and sup­port­ers fol­lowed our call for an unau­tho­rised demon­stra­tion in the city cen­tre. We were accom­pa­nied by a sam­ba band (Rhythms of Resis­tance) and two soundsys­tems mount­ed on bike trail­ers. With the cops not both­er­ing to show up, we marched undis­turbed from Vic­to­ria Sta­tion into the North­ern Quar­ter, along Mar­ket Street and Kings Street , through Spin­ning­fields into Castle­field.

The demo in itself was already a great suc­cess! We car­ried three big ban­ners read­ing ‘Free­dom of Move­ment for all – defend autonomous spaces’, ‘No Bor­ders, No Nations – against migra­tion man­age­ment’, and ‘Occu­py – Resist’. There was a ban­ner drop along the route, hun­dreds of spoof ‘Mesho’ news­pa­pers were giv­en out, and it was great to see a hun­dred peo­ple sprint down Kings Street past all the posh shops.

But as some­one said, this was not just a demon­stra­tion. In Castle­fields, we suc­ceed­ed in col­lec­tive­ly occu­py­ing Jack­son ‘s Wharf, an old pub that was the focus of a suc­cess­ful local cam­paign against rede­vel­op­ment. Up to a hun­dred squat­ters entered the aban­doned build­ing, hang­ing ban­ners from its bal­cony and open­ing bot­tles of cava that No Bor­ders had pro­vid­ed! Even the cops seemed hap­py to see an old pub being brought back to life for a cou­ple of hours.

And let’s not for­get that the events in Man­ches­ter coin­cid­ed with dozens of build­ing occu­pa­tions, protests and street par­ties across Europe, in cities as diverse as Lon­don, Ams­ter­dam, Vien­na and Prague. World­wide, tens of thou­sands attend­ed.

Our actions have clear­ly shown the ridicu­lous­ness of hav­ing hun­dreds of hous­es stand emp­ty, while social and com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres are being shut down and indi­vid­u­als face extor­tion­ate rents, mort­gage repay­ments or evic­tion threats. With sky-high rents forc­ing the poor to the mar­gins, the creep­ing pri­vati­sa­tion of pub­lic space, and a coun­cil will­ing to close down vital com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sell off swathes of the city cen­tre to lux­u­ry prop­er­ty devel­op­ers and retail­ers, there has sel­dom been a time when fight­ing for autonomous spaces in Man­ches­ter has been more impor­tant.

We need to recog­nise bor­ders where they appear. The restric­tions cre­at­ed by cap­i­tal­ist social rela­tions and the prop­er­ty sys­tem abol­ish­es com­mon ground, seg­re­gates accord­ing to wealth and own­er­ship, and in doing so throws up bor­ders all around us. Con­trol of the move­ment and asso­ci­a­tion of peo­ple — whether at the micro-lev­el of our inner cities or the macro lev­el of inter­na­tion­al migra­tion is a glob­al issue that must be chal­lenged.

We should fight to cre­ate spaces in Man­ches­ter not sim­ply as bases of resis­tance or cel­e­bra­tion (though we hope they can pro­vide this), but to encour­age a depar­ture from the sys­tems that con­trol us. For cen­turies, peo­ple have migrat­ed across bor­ders and have occu­pied spaces to live in as a way to take con­trol of their own lives. They choose to leave their own pasts, in an effort to claim auton­o­my over their future lives.

The demon­stra­tion on Sat­ur­day was a cel­e­bra­tion of this.…Thank you to every­one who par­tic­i­pat­ed!

———-


Squat­ted Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den Reopened in Read­ing as Part of Days of Action!

On Sat 12th April, actions took place across the world in defence of squats and free spaces. In Read­ing, anti-cap­i­tal­ists man­aged to re-open Com­mon Ground squat­ted com­mu­ni­ty gar­den for the day, with a com­mu­ni­ty BBQ and music show, despite a year of strug­gle with the author­i­ties for con­trol of the space.

Over the last two weeks local activists have been busy qui­et­ly tidy­ing up the gar­den, build­ing new fur­ni­ture and fix­ing a new lock on the gate ready for re-open­ing. How­ev­er, a few days ago, RBC changed the locks and re-secured the gate with bar­ri­cades. No wor­ries though…

For starters, pub­lic­i­ty has been cir­cu­lat­ing for the last month, not only detail­ing the planned re-open­ing, but also explain­ing a ‘Plan B’ for if the author­i­ties sucess­ful­ly stopped the open­ing. RGA declared that, if stopped, the entire event would relo­cate to space right out­side the Coun­cil build­ing, police sta­tion and courts, reclaim­ing it from their author­i­ty (and their pri­vati­sa­tion plans…)

Hap­pi­ly though, this proved unnec­es­sary. On Sat­ur­day, activists from RGA were at Com­mon Ground at 7am, doing work to pre­pare for open­ing time. Come 1pm, as peo­ple began to arrive, the fence came down and moved aside to cre­ate a large (unblock­able!) entrance to the gar­den!

Over the course of the day, many peo­ple came through the gar­den, from local neigh­bours express­ing their sup­port to anar­chist com­rades from oth­er parts of the coun­try. Local down­pours were dealt with (ok, gazee­bos had to be bought) and as the day went on to get brighter and dri­er, more and more peo­ple arrived. Every­body relaxed and enjoyed a free BBQ untill evening fell and musi­cians began to arrive. From 6pm onwards, a diverse crowd of fam­i­ly and friends, neigh­bours and punks, gath­ered around for a drink (or two in a few cas­es!) and showed their appre­ci­a­tion for the acoustic tunes and pos­i­tive mes­sages plied by PJ & Gaby, Neil Suther­land, Kel­ly Kemp, Clay­ton Bliz­zard and Sam Rus­so. Final­ly, a few sober com­rades tidied the whole place up and the crowd drift­ed off into the night, before the fence was re-attached, secur­ing the gar­den, and sev­er­al tired but chuffed anar­chists went off the bed.

Just to men­tion, this is only one per­sons opin­ion but in many ways this was the most suc­cess­ful event held in Com­mon Ground yet. Ok, a few neigh­bours com­plained when a cou­ple of vis­it­ing hip­pies start­ed their drum­ming, but this was quick­ly dealt with and at least one of those neigh­bours was lat­er seen danc­ing on her bal­cony to PJ & Gaby. Aside from that, this was the first event held at the gar­den which was com­plete­ly left alone by the author­ites. Pre­vi­ous events have hap­pened despite inter­fer­ence (such as injunc­tions, evic­tions attempts and hired secu­ri­ty guards) but this was the first time they sim­ply stayed away. Over the last year the activists involved have proved to the coun­cil that they wont be stopped and that attempts at crim­i­nal­is­ing the project achieve noth­ing except wast­ing a lot of mon­ey. Clear­ly, Sat­ur­day was a major vic­to­ry, with the coun­cil giv­ing up.

Keep­ing the gar­den open every­day may prove impos­si­ble due to the size of the organ­is­ing col­lec­tive and the lack of per­ma­nent occu­pa­tion mak­ing it easy for RBC to sim­ply re-secure the gate each time it is opened. How­ev­er, the prob­a­bil­i­ty of a com­mu­ni­ty gar­den being cre­at­ed legal­ly near­by as a result of this project means RGA have proved direct-action gets the goods and a fair few neigh­bours have expressed an inter­est in get­ting involved in this local anti-cap­i­tal­ist organ­i­sa­tion for fur­ther projects.

Cheers to all involved for a good day and sol­i­dar­i­ty to all the oth­ers around the world who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the days of action!

Notes for the edi­tor or the ‘real­ly real­ly inter­est­ed’.…

*The gar­den, orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed by local squat­ter, neigh­bours and anti-cap­i­tal­ists ‘RGA’ (Read­ing Grass­roots Action), sits on Read­ing Bor­ough Coun­cil (RBC) owned land which had been left a derelict junk­yard for at least five years pre­vi­ous­ly. Through dona­tions and recy­cling, the gar­den was cre­at­ed almost for free and organ­ised through reg­u­lar direct­ly-demo­c­ra­t­ic meet­ings. Despite RBC gain­ing an evic­tion order for the squat­ters and an injunc­tion ban­ning the gar­den being opened, it was opened in May 2007 with over 200 peo­ple pass­ing through over the day and was then opened every­day and enjoyed by many diverse mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty over the sum­mer. The gar­den was final­ly closed down and the squat­ters evict­ed (after two pre­vi­ous evic­tions were seen off by local protest) in Octo­ber. Short­ly after, three activists were arrest­ed attempt­ing to reopen the gar­den and the gar­den has again been left derelict by RBC for five months.

katesgrovegarden(AT)yahoo.co.uk
http://www.rgacollective.org.uk

———-
Ams­ter­dam RTS pho­tos — more info about what hap­pened over the seas at links below
==========

Announce­ments about oth­er events tak­ing place over the days of action in Lon­don & else­where, here

Inter­na­tion­al round-up on Indy­media and most up-to-date, the main web­page for the week­end.