France, Alternative Libertaire AL #246 - Urban Folder:
Toulouse: The CREA, a grain of sand in the machine gentrify (fr,
it, pt) [machine translation]
For over three years now, the Campaign for Requisition, Mutual Aid and Self-management
occupies empty buildings to house people but also organize all sorts of activities.
Reappropriation of the city, establishing solidarity between con crete galériennes and
convicts... Back on this informative experience and perspectives. ---- Everything starts
April 26, 2011: workers and social workers organized in the GPS group (Group for social
work) requisition what will become the "House Goudouli" in old buildings AFPA. Originally,
they and they fight for better working conditions and improved emergency accommodation.
But this immense place, with several buildings, offers great potential. A group of
squatters and squatters will soon open a self-directed social center. In the process is
launched the Campaign for the requisition, mutual aid and self-management. CREA is born!
Cohabitation between the two class will last about a year and a half. Goudouli House, home
of the "most excluded older" is legalized early January 2012 by a free precarious
occupancy agreement, while the building of the CREA will be discharged six months later.
Never mind, a new building was requisitioned, even bigger than the previous one (still in
the former premises of AFPA). A hundred people will stay there for some time before a new
expulsion. CREA then changed strategy and decided to set up in Bonnefoy, behind the
Railway Station, a popular neighborhood that is the target of a vast urban renewal
project. The municipality wants to make a business district near the train station, in
connection with the construction of the TGV line Toulouse Bordeaux.
Bonnefoy against gentrification
But CREA is here! For several months, the streets of the Faubourg Bonnefoy saw several
requisitions: small houses and two large buildings: the Caillasserie (a former brickworks)
and CSA (Autonomous Social Center, a former car dealership). The Caillasserie and CSA are
inhabited, but are also open to free and political activities. Boxing classes it
dispenses, dance, languages, school support; meetings are held, but also political
meetings, comic, parties, etc.
71 total occupied building
After a few months of respite, the expulsions machine has this - during re-started and
gradually emptied Bonnefoy the warm and combative presence of CREA. However, each
deportation to a new requisition, the fight has shifted to other areas, always managing to
renew despite some slowdown phases.
In three years, the results are spectacular: 71 buildings were occupied by the CREA, and
at the height of the movement were about 180 people on housing. Among these buildings,
seven sites were used as self-managed social center, that is to say, places open to one
and all, to meet and do all sorts of activities.
All decisions of the CREA are taken at general meetings that take place twice a week,
while all that relates to the common life of practical issues decided in the AG
inhabitants. Thus, it is not necessary to live in a squat to participate in the movement,
in the same way as any and all people do not necessarily take part in the campaign.
This can sometimes maintain a gap between those who assume that lifestyle and those for
whom this is a last resort, though in all this is an economic necessity. What is important
is that this difference between activists and residents is not denied, prompting them to
be attentive, and to seek to reduce - by translating discussions AG, leaving the
inhabitants and residents the task of organizing the "Friday of Solidarity" (theme nights,
the benefits go to those who prepared the meal), etc.
Blue wave at the Rose Garden
A supported children is organized (vacations, activities Wednesday and Saturday...), which
enables large blow... and smaller to organize. And children, after meeting, for example,
have decided to organize their own "Friday of solidarity" that can UA say, according to
their announcement, "a big chug and food and dances that are too cool perhaps "collecting
money for supplying the" Fund for Children ".
Obviously Hall (PS and UMP) and the prefecture have seen it with suspicion. With the
arrival for mayor of Jean-Luc Moudenc in April, repression has escalated. He who was
committed to the fight against squats during his campaign, for example, phoned the owner
to expedite deportation. On April 21, it was still a blue wave in the neighborhood of the
Rose Garden to evict families barely requisitioned houses - lawsuits are pending against
peers and other people were injured during the intervention of cops , by tear gas,
grenades dispersive and especially tense shooting Flash-ball who disfigured a classmate.
The primary interest of a country such as CREA is to provide accommodation for many
people, families, single women, the poor workers or workers, students and students.
Moreover, sometimes the sweet 115 directs people to the permanence of the CREA, as
emergency accommodation places are lacking!
But the goal is not to overcome the shortcomings of the state and manage misery. In
addition to a survival strategy for housing, CREA also allows to "organize all kinds of
activities, workshops, free, free and available to neighborhoods. This housing allows us
to empower us to take time to think about other forms of life, organization etc. "[1].
This is to resume her life and no longer suffer.
Elsa (AL Toulouse)
[1] From the blurb "CREA what is it?»
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Toulouse-La-CREA-un-grain-de-sable
