Gentrification

Leipzig, Germany: Vonovia offices attacked in solidarity with Biologico!

Posted on 2022/01/21 - 2022/01/21 by darknights

Vonovia has perfected the capitalist exploitation of the basic human need for shelter: apart from outrageously high rents, the company utilizes an endless list of inhumane practices to exploit and terrorize their renters (e.g. systematic fraud in additional costs, general refusal of maintenance, as well as extortion of drastic increases in rent via “modernisations”). Through all of this Vonovia is rapidly advancing gentrification and the housing shortage. Especially in the east of Leipzig this displacement has become increasingly obvious, in hardly any other part of the city the rent is increasing as quickly. Vonovia plays one but not the sole part in profiting massively from this development and in actively advancing it. Our actions are part of the diverse resistance against the so-called ‘valorization’ of neighbourhoods and the displacement of their residents. Militant attacks are one of many means in this fight, they are legitimate and necessary. Direct economic damage drags the ones responsible into the lime light and decreases their profits. But we must not stop there. Let’s work together in many different ways to achieve a city where living together in solidarity is prioritized over the profits of big real estate companies. Let’s create vivd and rebellious neighbourhoods and let’s find ways to connect the various fights against gentrification!

Let’s also not forget about our comrades and friends in other parts of the world. Their struggles are our struggles. The squat “Biologico” in Thessaloniki has been evicted in december of last year. This squat served as a place where social struggles were united with the fights of students and where resistance against valorization and displacement was organized. In their call to action they write: “This one week should serve as another chance for fighters, individuals and groups in Greece, Europe and the whole world to show their solidarity with the squat Biologico which has existed for 34 years and is now at risk of eviction. They should do so with any means necessary and in any way which seems useful. Each eviction has its price. Be prepared, be cautious, solidarity is our weapon.”

We hope seeing the broken windows in Vonovia’s offices brings a smile to the faces of some renters suffering under this company’s harassment.

Let’s burst the bubbles of investors’ dreams! For a city for all!

Source: de.indymedia

Exarcheia: THIS IS NOT A MUSEUM, THIS IS WHERE WE LIVE!

Posted on 2022/01/21 by darknights

As you may have already understood, on the buses, in the streets, in the shops, cameras are watching and recording our every step. The social media industry has made us accustomed to the presence of cameras at events, in marches and in our daily lives (in workplaces, schools, etc.), so that our resistance to them is diminishing. It seems as if there is no other way and this leaves us no room to breathe.

The state is installing cameras to protect its infrastructure, to record demonstrations and to monitor its citizens. On the other hand, the petty bourgeoisie use them to protect their sacred property while their visual material is always available to the cops and is used as incriminating evidence in court cases. Under the pretext that this system of surveillance and control will create greater security, it shields the system of domination.

Cameras have never prevented any “crime”, nor have they ever “protected” anyone. The goal of surveillance is to create a sense of constant monitoring of our every step, every social media post is recorded and creates profiles with data that can be used against us.

Then we start to think twice, where we go, what we say, who we talk to and what we do. This superstitious obedience is part of repression and self-censorship. When we are not anonymous we do not act and speak as we would like, but according to what is socially acceptable.

Gentrification is also related to the expansion of surveillance. Continue reading “Exarcheia: THIS IS NOT A MUSEUM, THIS IS WHERE WE LIVE!” →

Athens, Greece: A brief review of the events of the last days in Exarcheia

Posted on 2022/01/19 - 2022/01/19 by darknights

We raise this update as we have noticed that in the mainstream media and the wider media, the events of the last few days, as well as the solidarity march for the Biologio steki, completely silence the fact that Exarcheia was, is and will be a neighbourhood that fights against gentrification and repression. We want to make it clear that these events are mass actions spontaneously flanked by people and prove that no matter how much Mitsotakis and his whole family want to, Exarcheia will not submit to their vices.

Wednesday 12/01/22

Since this morning, bulldozers and contractor crews arrive in Messolonghiou and proceed to excavate the pavement in order to electrify the new building where a luxury apartment block is being erected. After the work is temporarily halted due to complaints from residents, police forces arrive at the site. In the evening of the same day, a banner is displayed against the gentrification of Exarchia and people cover the holes that the bulldozers have made in the pedestrian street with earth. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: A brief review of the events of the last days in Exarcheia” →

Athens, Greece: Tearing up Messolonghiou for luxury apartments + Gathering & Intervention against the destruction of Messolonghiou

Posted on 2022/01/19 - 2022/01/19 by darknights

This morning a bulldozer was tearing up the pedestrian street of Messolonghiou for the electrification of a building of luxury apartments.

Some people from the neighborhood approached the workers and asked them the reason for the works. The contractor said it was ΔΕΗ (electric company) works to supply electricity to the building intended for luxury apartments. When asked for the contractor’s documents, he refused them as he also denied the connection of the works with the building, while at the same time they were going in and out of the building.

The individuals managed to stop the works and the contractor left, but Messolonghi remains a wreck. 15 minutes later 6 DRASI and DELTA motorcycles arrived at the site and searched for the people.

Exarcheia is a neighbourhood under threat of gentrification. Residents are being displaced, squats are being vacated, rents are going up. This building in Messolonghiou, intended for luxury housing for the rich and tourists, is another example of the march of capital. Every day we see the neighbourhood being changed and transformed into a playground for big investors. At the same time the square and the turnpike are under constant threat. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Tearing up Messolonghiou for luxury apartments + Gathering & Intervention against the destruction of Messolonghiou” →

Berlin, Germany: Attacking gentrification – DEFEND KØPI

Posted on 2021/10/12 by darknights

Attacking gentrification – DEFEND KØPI

On Sunday night we visited the Google office on the corner of Adelbert and Engeldamm and smashed its windows. Only a stone’s throw from Køpiplatz, it is, as a stakeholder in gentrification, co-responsible for the upcoming eviction attempt.

Solidarity greetings to all people who will defend the Køpi with us on 15.10!

Source: de.indymedia

Minneapolis, USA: Roseville Office Attacked In Solidarity With Atlanta Forest

Posted on 2021/08/25 by darknights

Responding to the call from comrades in Atlanta for an 8/18 day of action in solidarity with the struggle to defend the Atlanta forest; vandals broke into the office complex housing Corporation Service Company’s (CSC) regional office in Roseville, a suburb of Minneapolis. After smashing the office door and throwing cans of paint inside, a message was left sprayed across the front: HANDS OFF THE ATLANTA FOREST.

Demands are being made for CSC to drop their client, Blackhall Studios. Blackhall Studios would like to level the South Atlanta Forest to build the country’s largest soundstage and an airport, creating unprecedented levels of gentrification in the city.

Atlanta police plan to level 300 acres and create a sprawling tactical training compound featuring a mock city, with which they’ll develop the ability of police departments around the country to brutalize those practicing resistance.

Rebels in Minneapolis know what it means to inhabit a rapidly gentrifying city, and know what it means to have cutting edge police repression deployed against us. We also know what it means to fight back. Atlanta, we love you.

In solidarity,

Minneapolis

Source: AMW

France, Paris, Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis): Smoke signals of solidarity

Posted on 2021/08/24 - 2021/09/14 by darknights

August 22

Last night we wanted to send a message of solidarity to Boris, a fellow anarchist who is in a coma because of a fire in his cell in the Nancy-Maxèville prison.

In Montreuil, gentrification is advancing by leaps and bounds with new buildings for a more affluent population attracted by the extension of the metro. We are not admirers of the poor slums and the neighborhoods eaten up by traffic, a simple form of capitalism, albeit illegal. But the labyrinth of alleys between the small self-built houses have their charm and allow other relationships between the people who live there, less dictated by money. Another relationship with the State too. The winding alleys make the video surveillance less efficient, which is also advancing in Montreuil (as everywhere in Paname*).

In this context, publicity is an important vector to convey the capitalist and authoritarian values of this society. These values are: property, consumption, work, “success”, conformism. These ideas have colonized the imagination of most of the world, including the poorest and most marginal social strata. This conformism of thought prevents us from imagining something else, another life. How can we talk about revolution to people who only dream of wealth, family, and futile gadgets that fill up their lives?

So we thought that a JC Decaux van would make a good target. The one that was parked on Ernest Savart street went up in smoke. Same thing for an Enedis van (no need to introduce it, in the most nuclearized country in the world) a little further down, rue Victor Beausse

Courage Boris!
The head high, the heart burning!
Long live anarchy!

Source: Attaque

*French Slang to mean Paris & its suburbs.

Berlin: Vonovia car set on fire

Posted on 2021/07/07 - 2021/07/07 by darknights

Even if the smoke after the Rigaer 94 walk-through has cleared a bit in the meantime, this does not mean that the struggles for affordable and decent housing in Berlin and elsewhere have ceased. Many other tenants fear every year anew for their apartment and thus for their center of life. The prospects of finding a halfway affordable apartment in this city tend toward zero for most people with average salaries.

That this fear also has deadly consequences is shown by the death of Peter Hollinger on May 31, 2021. After a three-year, unsuccessful court case against an eviction action due to personal needs, the 67-year-old musician and long-established Kreuzberger killed himself.
This is not the first death in connection with evictions. It is also worth remembering the death of Rosemarie F. , who died two days after her eviction in a Berlin homeless shelter.
In both cases it was clear in the run-up to the eviction which immense pressure and psychological stress the persons concerned had been exposed to and in both cases it was urgently advised against an eviction from a medical point of view. The fatal consequence was accepted in favor of a property issue.

When with the beginning of the 2020 pandemic the voices became louder that landlords should please react “accommodatingly” to possible corona-related payment difficulties and that evictions should please be suspended, we had no illusions about what was actually going to happen.
The eviction of the Mutiny, the Liebig 34 and the Syndicate, as well as the upcoming evictions of the bookstore Kisch&Co, the Köpi and the Potse speak a clear language. What is transfigured in the media as the struggle of autonomists against the city is in reality the logic of a real estate market whose victims are selected not according to political identity but according to economic usability.
The fact that housing has become a commodity and an object of speculation for listed asset managers leaves all those in permanent fear for their existence who are financially unable to pay the constantly rising rents.

That’s why we torched a Vonovia car last night on Einsteinufer in the Tiergarten district.

The pandemic has hardly hurt the housing business. Companies like Vonovia in particular continued to raise rents on a regular basis. The average rent of Vonovia apartments in 2021 is already 3.5 percent higher than a year ago.
We don’t care what lip service companies like Vonovia use to try to gloss over their profit-oriented and anti-human housing policies.
As long as private, listed and thus profit-oriented real estate companies, with a short line to politics, determine our housing and thus our lives, we will attack them.

All humans have own need at dwelling!
Against the city of the rich!
In memory of all who have lost their lives because of this anti-human profit logic!

From: Kontrapolis

Die Rigaer lebt – an address to our friends and comrades

Posted on 2021/06/24 - 2021/06/25 by darknights

Thanks to every support that was developed during the last weeks and especially the last two days of preparation and collective fight against our common enemies, we managed to develop the most intensive fighting days that we could have imagined. Days which turned every plan from the state and capital into a catastrophy. A great reminder to ourselves, our collective and its supporters, how important the movement’s networks, infrastructures of solidarity and self-organisation are.

Starting with the defence of the neighbourhood against the establishment of the red zone we drew the right concequence out of the aggressions of the state and the real estate market, against the people living in the city. The announcement of dangerzones and red zones, where people get easy targets for the police in order to create an atmosphere of isolation and fear, has become normality in this city of the rich. We saw in the last years many occassions where we as those who are targeted by the states attacks had to stand in almost silent protest at the fences, guarded by a militarized police force. Let’s name the eviction of the Ohlauer School in Kreuzberg, the eviction of the Kiezladen Friedel54 and all the other projects as Syndikat, Meuterei and our neighboors Liebig34. This fact can not be tolerated anymore – the people have to rise up!

Therefore, as a result,for more than 48 hours, we managed all together, locally and decentrally to take the offensive into the streets and defend our structures and ideas through militant means and put pressure before the enemies had even started their repressive-operations. We decided not to wait for the lackeys of the state to create another zone where they can easily target autonomous structures and rebellious neighborhoods. That’s why an autonomous zone was build up around the Rigaer94 at an hour the cops did not expect. Streets got closed together with many people and a long-lasting defence of barricades happened, with the means of the autonomous movement . Until the deployment of heavy technical equipment as an eviction tank and two watercanons the police was not able to enter our street. Let’s understand these events as a proposal to the people in the metropolitan field and outside of it, to answer the upcoming attacks. Not only against Rigaer94, also against Köpi and all the other threatened projects and our ideas, as well as any attack of the state and its merely presence.

But the state and capital war is not over yet. They will not only attempt to attack Rigaer94 again but also attack and target every single structure and individual who fights against this suphocated society on a daily basis. We should continue getting organised and expand our networks of solidarity broader. We call for more intensive fighting not only around Nordkiez to reinforce the continuity of this rebellious neighborhood, but also decentrally, in every corner of the city.

Let’s continue fighting all together against the city of the rich. Until every initial plan from the state and capital are ashes!

Friends and comrades of Rigaer94

For more informations:https://rigaer94.squat.net/

Athens: Banner in solidarity with Rigaer94 [ENG/GR]

Posted on 2021/06/24 - 2021/06/24 by darknights

[ENG]

For many years, Rigaer94 has been a hub of revolutionary anarchism andresistance against state & capital, gentrification and development in Berlin. Our comrades at Rigaer94 are currently facing an intense wave of state repression. As a minimum sign of solidarity, we have hung a banner from the squatted social center of Zizania.

Long Live Revolutionary Anarchism

Victory in the Resistance of Rigaer94

From Athens to Berlin, Fight for Occupied Spaces Everywhere

Assembly of the Squatted Social Center Zizania

[GR]

Για πολλά χρόνια, η Rigaer94 έχει υπάρξει κέντρο επαναστατικούαναρχισμού και αντίδρασης ενάντια στο κράτος, το κεφάλαιο, τονεξευγενισμό και την ανάπτυξη στο Βερολίνο. Τ@ σύντροφ@ μας στη Rigaer94 αντιμετωπίζουν αυτήν τη στιγμή ένα έντονοκύμα κρατικής καταστολής. Ως ελάχιστη ένδειξη αλληλεγγύης κρεμάσαμε έναπανό στο κατειλημμένο κοινωνικό κέντρο Ζιζάνια.

Ζήτω η Επαναστατική Αναρχία

Νίκη στην αντίσταση της Rigaer94

Από την Αθήνα ως το Βερολίνο, Αγώνας για Κατειλημμένους Χώρους Παντού

Συνέλευση του Κατειλημμένου Κοινωνικού Κέντρου Ζιζάνια

From: Athens IMC