homelessness – Cardiff Squatters Network

Cardiff Homeless Action event with Cardiff Squatters workshop and meeting

cardiff — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 13:55:33 +0000

The Cardiff Squatters Network are running a workshop at the World Homeless Day event in Cardiff this Saturday at Cathays Community Centre.
The event is aiming to raise awareness and to get people involved in taking further action together with people who are homeless.

It’s an all day event, starting at 3pm with workshops, free-shop, information stalls, activities for kids, art, music and free vegan food from Food Not Bombs.

There will be a workshop at the event at 4:30pm with a legal update on squatting as well as a question and answer session. We also propose to make the second half of this workshop the next meeting of the Cardiff Squatters Network.

There are other workshops on the day on substance abuse, creative writing for mental health, anti-bedroom tax campaigns, migrant destitution and dumpster diving (skipping).

For more about the event see: http://cardiffhomelessaction.org

Newport Rises to Action – Statement from new squatted Social Centre

cardiff — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 09:50:12 +0000

Inspired by the recent Week of Action against the NATO Summit in Newport, a group of local activists took control of an abandoned office block on Lower Dock Street, secured the building and now announce their intention to launch a new social centre and creative space for the Newport community.

The Newport Action Centre will host a weekly free vegan café, info-talks, various workshops, skill-shares, an art space and regular events to raise money for local causes, as well as being a home for some of us to run the space from.

We chose to do all this in a building that has a long history of providing a focal point for local communities and will use consensus and solidarity to prolong that role.

The building – which is directly opposite the passport office – had stood empty for around six months, gathering dust like so many other buildings in Newport while the cost of living continues to rise and forces more and more people towards poverty.

We chose to reclaim it for community use at a time when 9,500 police had besieged Newport, turning parts of South Wales into open-air prisons and openly flaunting their publicly-funded killing-machines on our streets. We went under the nose of the local police – whose headquarters stands just some meters away – entering the building without causing any damage or disruption and with the intention of liberating a space in increasingly oppressive, suffocating surroundings.

During the week of the NATO Summit we all got a taste of the power the state has over our lives. They used our money to control our movements with barriers and road closures, filled the skies with helicopters to watch us, and harassed and intimidated those who chose to resist the circus of warmongering that was the summit.

It is likely that many of the surveillance measures known to have been taught to Gwent Police – and that we’ve seen imposed upon us – will remain in place long after the Summit is gone, with a recent report from the ‘Newport Business Development Taskforce’ recommending that Newport be turned into a ‘living lab’ for such technologies. The report was written by Simon Gibson, an associate of Terry Matthews, businessmen who have made huge fortunes working closely with arms companies. The recommended strategy will personally benefit both of them enormously. Despite being a city known for the arts, the old Arts College is now a block of luxury flats – part of a process which is forcing house prices up in Newport – and recently many of the arts courses at the local university have been axed, with talk of specialising in software courses instead. The University building at Caerleon is now also about to be sold, with Terry Matthews probably the first in line to use it to get his hands into more arms and surveillance companies.

We intend to create an alternative to these surroundings – a space where people can gather to discuss ideas without fear of being tracked and monitored, be creative without being constrained by social norms, learn outside of a narrowing education system, which fosters competition, and live without being restricted by unnecessary barriers and borders.

We have already had our first event, where we discussed the impact of the Scottish referendum result, and we plan to open on Sunday September 28th for our first weekly café day.

We hope you can join us, we invite people to help make this space live up to its potential and be a resource for the community to share in the struggle for justice.

Newport Action Centre crew.

newportactioncentre@riseup.net

Statement from Squat50 – new Cardiff squat

cardiff — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 10:40:47 +0000

We are currently occupying the Sixth Form College Building on Newport Road, and transforming it into a space for the community to use. We have been working towards an open day to show people the work we have done and explain what we are about.

We are doing all this on a tiny budget and learning as we are going. Our lives aren’t perfect and our project might not be perfect but we’re building together, putting aside our differences, like we hope everyone can, and creating something beautiful, unique and community based.

We have already cleaned up the building and the surrounding area, risking our own safety in the process to pick up used syringes, which have been around this building since long before we arrived, and disposing of them properly. To continue making this a safe space for the community, we are twice daily checking for and disposing properly of any more that we find.

As far as we know this building has been empty for two years, a situation all too common in Cardiff, when the population of people homeless is growing.
There are plans to build 40 flats here, which would be a massive unneeded disruption in this part of our community. We have already collected over 100 signatures from people living in the local area, in less than two days, opposing these plans and supporting our projects and vision with a passion.

We are planning to continue to keep the land next to us as a community car park, benefitting people in an area which has seen commuters parking outside people’s houses. Parking problems will get worse if the out-of-character development goes ahead. We are staying to stop this happening.

We have been careful to keep noise to a minimum, due to elderly neighbours in our community, and we believe a building site will be a stressful environment for all, but particularly the elderly and those attempting to learn in the nearby school.

One of our projects is to use the space to help to restart Cardiff People’s University; providing a range of unaccredited, but good quality, courses “by people, for people” and all free of charge.

The majority of us in this building have been through the housing list and realised how little help there is and how stressful it can be. We aim to offer unbiased and wide-ranging advice, information and support for, without judgement, or patronising, anyone in a similar position. This will include courses run by ourselves and information on where anyone struggling financially, or who finds themselves homeless, can get the best help, e.g food, clothes, shelter. We will also have a ‘free-shop’ of donated goods, open for anyone, where everything will be free.

We invite everyone who is positive minded and open-hearted to help us or take advantage of the advice we are offering and the projects we are aiming to make happen.

Everyone needs a little bit of help, even us, and we are extremely grateful to our local neighbours, many of whom have already been kind enough to donate us goods, furniture, gardening equipment and flowers, which we are in the process of planting for a community garden.

From
The Squat 50 Collective