Freiburg im Breisgau: October 18-29, 2019. Do-It-Together: squatters convention, festival and other resistances
We would like to invite you to extend the summer in Freiburg and participate in the squatting days, to celebrate the birthdays of the KTS and the InfoShop and to come together for a libertarian outlook.
Freiburg is a small town in the southern part of the black forest, where official maps draw the borders between Switzerland, Germany and France. It is a friendly region between the Rhine nuclear power plants, major economic logistic points and the armament industry of the black forest and which lends itself well to various subversive activities. Moreover, winter does not arrive as quickly as in the rest of the republic. Our squatting days want to focus on housing and gentrification issues, but we find ourselves in times where struggles and resistance can only be effective through an intersectional approach and squats represent only a part of the necessary anti-fascist, feminist and anti-capitalist struggles.
For quite some time now, the same developments have been taking place everywhere: the presence of cops and surveillance is increasing, the freed spaces are reduced or expelled. In the past months, the «die WG» (Create Living Spaces) campaign has managed to make a lot of noise around these issues of the neoliberal city and social exclusion. We want to continue this fight during the days of action.
The KTS, the local autonomous centre, is the last big self-managed space in southern Germany. Creating new spaces is becoming more and more difficult, especially in view of the current political situation. The two squatted houses in Gartenstrasse 19 (since the spring of 2010) are currently threatened with eviction, seven openings since December 2018 have been quickly evicted. Since Kommando Rhino and Sand-im-Getriebe were cleared, there are still no new «Wagenplatz» (see note below) despite a growing need. In addition, the contract for the Schattenparker ‘Wagenplatz’ ends in September. For us, the struggle for more self-contained places in the city is far from over. We want to put these issues forward during the days of action and fight for new living spaces!
We want to be active and develop solidarity practices and to support the squatting actions of the last months. We want to encourage each other and strengthen our bonds. Threatened projects like Liebig 34 or Rozbrat and many others need support – practical support. In recent years dozens of squats and social centres have been evicted all over Europe. The resistance against these evictions was very localized and often far too silent. It is time to to bring the question of organisation to the forefront again!
more info: kts-freiburg.org | diewg.noblogs.org | radar.squat.net
¹ In Germany and Switzerland common housing project, where people live in self-managed caravans and mobile homes.