Dear friends,
I like to inform you that we have started a new independent email-list for exchange and debates among activists, researchers and organizers in the spheres of housing, habitat and land.You are invited to join us.
The list “reclaiming-spaces” https://listi.jpberlin.de/mailman/listinfo/reclaiming-spaces
basically came into being by transforming a former list for the housing and land rights campaign 06/07 and inviting the members of the aged lists “hic-eu” and “hic-wg-globalization” which got closed.
The new list will care about the issues and purposes of all three lists, which were partly overlapping and have lost their functions as tools within HIC or the “campaign”.
“RECLAIMING-SPACES” is dedicated to struggles which react to the process of dispossession and expropriation of inhabitants from their land, housing, infrastructure and/or public spaces. Struggles in most cases start at local levels by organizing the social and/or political defence of commons and public goods against privatisation, financial speculation or corruption.
The list wants to offer an opportunity for exchanging some of these experiences with a focus on those factors which are transnational or global: global financial investors and markets in real estates, the international institutions and arrangements backing them etc.
We want to contribute to a better common understanding of global forces behind the transformation of the human habitats. We want to support the development of improved international networking and interventions. We are asking, if we can consider forms of appropriations, struggles, claims, methods and organizations which allow social actors to proceed from local defence struggles to trans-local pro-active offensives.
How can we reclaim our cities and land ?
THEMES
At the moment we are considering that the list may focus on struggles, interventions, claims and strategies which interfere with one or more of the following main themes:
– social movements defending housing and other social rights related to settlements and space against forced evictions, demolitions, real estate violence etc.
– the role of real estate investments in financial globalisation vs. the consequences of financial globalisation for land and housing;
– privatisation of housing, spaces, infrastructure, planning…
– mega events and large construction / development projects as well as urban transformation plans as a consequence of globally competing cities and territories;
– housing and territorial policies in the European Union;
– self-managed and other social alternatives.
We are even planning some blogs and other technologies for an improved documentation, specialisation and stimulation of our networking.
You may join us at
https://listi.jpberlin.de/mailman/listinfo/reclaiming-spaces
Best
Knut Unger
Witten Tenants Assoc. / Habitat Netz Germany