Prague: Action in Support of Autonous Spaces

april2008-cz@safe-mail.net

Days of support for squatting and autonomous communities - April 11-12, 2008

http://april2008.squat.net:8080/wiki/CeskyProhlaseni

The Fight for autonomous zones continues

After a series of repressions aimed at autonomous centres last year, the answer is coming - a European-wide action for the protection of independent spaces and the free communities which refuse to blindly follow the dictates of the establishment.

The idea of squatting is definitely older than the one of private property and even today represents a legitimate and appropriate reaction to a number of problematic mechanisms of contemporary society.

The efforts of the bureaucratized systems to brutally subdue this activity is growing stronger. Greedy developer corporations often directly connected to the local political elites are attacking free zones. In their effort to convert into cash the last inches of attractive land they don't hesitate to completely ignore the laws, which at other times they use to hypocritically shield themselves. They don't balk at even the intentional destruction of historically valuable and protected buildings. If the building or space still serves the public after being annexed and occupied, it's oriented to a wealthy clientele that the average wage earner can only envy. Often criminals directly take part in these property speculations, finding it more lucrative to let residential homes fall down and then build garages instead.

Autonomous spaces and communities are also an eyesore to the police apparatus, who see them as centres of unsettllng ideas and attitudes. Raids by antiterorrist commandos on German squats before last year's G8 summit confirmed that the hysteria of the state structures permit anything.

The Copenhagen house Ungdomshuset was a shocking example. The townhall didn't hesitate to ally with a fanatical christian sect to empty the house with their and the police's help and demolish the house immediatelly.

The power elites praise the current establishment as fully democratic, and swear by freedom and tolerance. But once they encounter groups which do not support them and share their ideas completely, all the pretty words vanish. The truth is that today's ruled societies are headed for ever stronger control and squats are one of the barriers, breaking their phantasmagoric dream of a perfect sterile order.

Despite these dangerous tendencies we remain optimisitic. We believe that a natural desire for a free life cannot ever be suppresed. Every pressure causes a counterpressure. The example of the Copenhagen resistance proves that even seemingly almighty structures can be forced to capitulate by determination and solidarity.

We fully realize the neccessity of freedom as a basic condition of existence and further development. We know that the power of creativity and experiment is connected inseparably with freedom. That's why we are going to fight hard against every attempt to limit it.

Squats and autonomous centres are one of the places where this fight is going to take place.

The action for the support of autonomous spaces is taking place on Saturday April 12, 2008 from 2pm, below the embankment at Palackeho Namesti, Prague 2.

Beginning of action from 2pm, march from 4pm and party afterwards.