Call for solidarity! Helsinki squat threatened with eviction

from email, 22 October 2007:

- Call for solidarity!
- Helsinki squat threatened with eviction

After seven years of actions and a summer of non-stop squatting the radical movement in Helsinki managed for the first time to secure a social centre of it's own in August 2007. The old restaurant building that became our home has been perfect for hosting revolution – with peoples kitchens, gigs, discussions, knitting, movies and other activities taking place everyday.

The owner of the building, a private insurance company called Etera (www.etera.fi), has agreed on renting the house to the City of Helsinki who in turn would hand it over to the squatters. While some people within the administration of the city give us support the more bureaucratic middle-aged men at the health and construction agencies have come up with regulations that are totally self-serving, have no contact to reality and are a purely political assault against us.

These regulations have been enough to scare off the people that support us and the Youth Department has backed off from the project. If we don't convince the owners of the house that touching us is a very bad idea then eviction will only be a matter of time.

Another possible solution would be for the city to find us another house. But as we've seen the double crossings of politicians over and over again, we refuse to leave this house until we have another house to move into.

We have already during this summer witnessed the police showing up in the hundreds to evict us without hesitations to use brute force. No matter how the city chooses to solve this problem they need to realise eviction is not the solution.

We appeal to all of our friends across Europe to act in our support against the shit head politics that are being pushed through by the officials of the City of Helsinki. Find an embassy of Finland close to you, arrange a Thursday demo, send us solidarity, do what ever you please, but now is the moment we need your support.

The struggles for free spaces continue in all spaces!

With love and respect
Helsinki squatters
Social centre Elimäenkatu 15

http://valtaus.org

Background: Summer of squatting in Finland

During the summer 2007 squatting activity has spread all across Finland. In Helsinki there has been six different occupations. In west coast in Turku two houses were occupied, but both of them are now evicted. In Tampere one social center was occupied and is still working and active but faces eviction the first of October.

The occupations started in Helsinki in May, when a house was occupied for a social center in the Katajanokka district in the center of Helsinki. After the Karku Social Center was evicted, we occupied an abandoned restaurant in Hakaniemi for two different parties.

A few weeks later a now-bankrupt corpotation's old dock yard in Punavuori district was occupied for use as a social center. The place was evicted after two weeks in a massive (and most probably, very expensive) police operation involving a Border Guard helicopter.

In the end of July there was also a temporary occupation for a party, and on August 2 we occupied again a house for a social center in the Vallila district. This social center is still working actively. Several gigs, discussions, Pirate Cinema events and lots of other activities have been organised.

Due to the ongoing occupations, the authorities have expressed their fatigue and their will to arrange a space for a social center but the negotiations have not led to any solution. The bureaucrats have defended previous evictions by saying the occupied houses would have been too expensive for the city to rent to the squatters.

At the same time the city is spending enormous amounts of money to support projects, which serve only private economic interests. After the third social center occupation, the city eventually seems to be willing to let us keep the building. Once again we have seen that the need for a free urban space can't be suppressed by violence.

In the first years of the millennium, there was a lot of squatting activity in Finland, which resulted in creating an autonomous social center Siperia in Herttoniemi. After a few silent years, especially after Siperia burned down in June 2006, a new squatting movement has risen.

The enthusiasm created by the example of Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen and other social centers in different European countries, and the rage about their repression, has been an important factor for the birth of this movement.

The struggle about the control of urban space has in the last years been limited to fighting against police and private security guards' repression of graffiti artists, without ability to create positive alternatives to the privatization and capitalist capturing of the urban space. Now thanks to the occupations and the new social center, a possibility to create and to protect autonomous and free zones for co-operation and culture has emerged.

The new squatting movement involves perhaps more people and is more active than any of the previous squatting "seasons". And even if the authorities would try to evict the new social centre also this time, the occupations will continue. The urban space does not have any worth without the people living there, and this is why people should not have to pay for their presence in the city.

More information:
sosiaalikeskushki@gmail.com
http://valtaus.org

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