International Campaign for Housing and Landrights 2007/8

[Mark]

Taken from: http://campaignblog.habitants.de/join-us/

RECLAIMING OUR LAND, CITIES AND RIGHTS

By diverse international meetings and networks is was proposed to launch an international, decentralized campaign for housing and land rights, against exclusion and evictions, against privatisation and speculation from October 2007. We, a small initiative of locally rooted but internationally orientated activists in Europe, committed ourselves to the task to promote the campaign idea, look for the enlargement of supporters in Europe and assistance with building of tools for internal and external communication.

We like to encourage all groups, movements, networks which are active for housing, city and land rights to plan action and join forces for a strong decentralized but interrelated campaign from the 1st October 2007 (World Habitat Day) via 27th January 2008 (World Social Forma action days) & March 2008 (international real estate fair MIPIM in Cannes/France).

In solidarity local groups and organizations are asked to:

» Organize an action, a meeting, a conference in your city, region or
neighborhood according to your local priorities!
» Tell your allies around the world about your plans, your action,
it's reasons, goals and targets.
» Get in contact for exchanging ideas and sharing plans!
Inspire others and let you be inspired by examples and experiences around the world!
» Help to communicate the forms and contents of decentralized action to the global levels. Make our parallel action more visible!
» Build an open international group for the promotion, communication and reflection of our action!
» Promote the idea of the campaign!

Reasons to act:
Evictions, privatisations, unaffordable rents, speculation, urban
cleansing, criminalisation of the homeless, pro-speculative policies,
pollution, repression against organizers. There are so many issues,
so many reasons to act - local, regional, global; Let's get in exchange to map them, to express them, to share them and to
internationalise them. This way we will produce one or many political
calls for action

Ways to act:
There are even many ways to act and any group must decide on it's
own. There can be: STREET ACTION against the destruction of local vendors as planned for India. TESTIMONIES which the Ruhr tenants organizations plan to organize with victims of privatisation. CONFERENCES: The German relief organization misereor will organize a conference on strategies against forced evictions. PRESS CONFERENCES which should take place at various places, best if they even communicate action in others countries. ART ACTION, an idea for instance in Zurich. VIDEO SHOWS with films about violations of rights and resistance. TARGET ACTION: Why not organize an action directly at the offices of companies and state departments which are directly responsible for housing rights violations in your country or
others? INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY ACTION: Our campaigning will not become really international as long as we do not reach or accuse the responsible international institutions. At low intensity you could just publicly hand over a petition to a bank which is profiting from housing speculation or unsocial foreign investments. Good if you could combine international solidarity with action for your own demands..

Our suggestions for timing
It is hoped to concentrate parallel, decentralized mass action, street
action, direct action and direct linkages to globalisation in the first week of October 2007, best at Oct 1, which coincides with the so called world habitat day.
Between October and January various local or thematic interventions maybe communicated globally.
January 27: Join your forces with others within the global world social forum movement.
March 2008: Optional central events / protests at the MIPIM in Cannes.


Join the communication and promotion team
We urgently call for more supporters in the communication and promotion team. We understand our tasks as facilitators of a social and political process. This mainly means that we have to guarantee a minimum of communication at diverse levels. For that reasons we seek for activists which are rooted in movements in more countries and cities. We need persons who help translating and editing. We need reporters from all actions.
In addition we may have to produce some impulses and material and later edit and disseminate results. As soon as possible we even would like to build a body which can reflect on experiences and propose measurements for next steps.

European Promoters for United International Housing and Landrights
Campaign 07-08
Initial members: Join us!
Knut Unger (Witten Tenants Association and Habitat Net, Germany)
Massimo A. Allamandola (London, INURA)
Sebastian Müller (International Network for Urban Research and Action INURA)
Vesna Tomse (Urban Lab, Zurich)
..

Contacts: (more contact points required)

ENGLAND
Rampart Creative & Social Centre
15/17 Rampart Street
London E1 2LA

GERMANY
MieterInnenverein Witten / Habitat Netz
Schillerstr. 13 – D-58452 Witten
Tel. ++49-(0)2302-392888
Fax. ++49-(0)2302-27302

To contact the communication and promotion team write an Email to:
contact at reclaiming.habitants.de
Join us!

If you are interested to help an support us in the preparation of this
campaign please join our dedicated list server :

https://listi.jpberlin.de/mailman/listinfo/campaign07-08

Some people who have joined the email list have been sending introductions about themselves onto the list. Here was mine, in which at the end I pasted the email recently sent to the Diggers list by inti ananda:
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Introduction from a member of UK landrights campaign
From:    "Mark" <mark at tlio.org.uk>
Date:    Thu, August 23, 2007 3:52 pm
To:      Campaign07-08 at listi.jpberlin.de
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Introduction to the International Housing Campaign email list

Hello

My name is Mark Brown (otherwise known as markibrown) and I'm involved
with a campaign called The Land is Ours, a campaign which seeks to put
land rights centre-stage in solving social and environmental problems.
TLIO have traditionally defined themselves as essentially a landrights
campaign for Britain. This strapline has continued to be a subject of
ongoing debate amongst those still involved with the campaign. It set
itself upon this strapline when the campaign was first founded in 1995, not to be nationalistic, but so as to be geographically specific about the confines of the campaign's agenda.  TLIO's website is: www.tlio.org.uk

In particular, I refer you to the magazine edited and chiefly coordinated by Simon Fairlie, called "The Land" (Ref:
http://www.tlio.org.uk/TheLand/index.html  ).  Chapter-7 is the planning arm of TLIO, which campaigns for environmentally sound planning, lobbying the UK planning system to give recognition to low-impact development and to better enable rural livelihoods in the countryside. Ref: http://www.tlio.org.uk/chapter7/index.html

Simon is the author of a book entitled "Low Impact Development".

I could go on to talk about myself abit more to further introduce myself on this new list. I don't consider this important, but to be brief, I have been involved in the UK social centre network in London over the past few years; I was previously involved in a project called the Inter-Continental Caravan in 1999, a project which involved 500 Indian village representatives and farmers touring Europe, including members of the Karnataka Raiya Ryota Sanghe (Farmers' Union). They were campaigning against the WTO, the patenting of their traditional seed varieties and against the spread of GM.

What I will say is that I am totally focused now on spreading interest in landrights. In the UK, a few of us believe that housing and it's affordability is the final straw that is breaking the camel's back in terms of peoples' awareness of the underlying issues of access to land and a sustainable future for their children. The Climate Camp - organised by a refreshingly newly rejuvenated UK direct-action scene (the next generation) - was based very near Heathrow Airport and culminated in a day of direct-action on Sunday/Monday. It was a huge success, getting alot of positive media coverage, and has put the most pressing issue of climate change centre-stage in the public's mind.

I would say that all these issues - sustainability, land and housing - are interelated. In my mind the interrelating factor is actually land!

 We need an international perspective, and this is the substance of what someone recently said in en email which they have just posted to our email list, which I have pasted below.

All the very best, and solidarity with those academics recently detained in Germany.
Mark
ps: I moderate an email list focussing on international issues - the
LegacyofColonialism Forum (linked off tlio website).

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: [diggers350] Flood plain protest same issues as the Climate
Camp?
From:    "inti ananda" <intiananda at yahoo.co.uk>
Date:    Wed, August 22, 2007 10:50 pm
To:      diggers350 at yahoogroups.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello Tony and all here,

  In many ways its true what Tony says and after some time on this list I
have understood that it concentrates on TLIO campaigns which I respect
although my original reason for joining was because I have long been
interested in the Diggers in a broader sense because Gerrard Winstanley said many things that could be seen as prophetic about the times we find ourselves in and its a short step from the stealing of land from the peoples of the world as the rich classes and Zionists, US Imperilaists and aristocracies etc have done, to also becoming owners of the sea, the air and all the resources on the planet.

  I am an exiled Englishman, I left the UK because for my part I feel that the chances of a real change and the kind of new society we need on this planet are more likely to take root elsewhere.. I chose South America where I live in a spiritual and socialist community not unlike the ideas of the diggers... Is there room to talk about wider themes related here or has it got to be so strict on campaigns etc???

  I saw that TLIO was doing good things 10 or so years back when they
occupied Guiness land but are you not limiting yourselves and becoming a single issue minority... Do you not think we need a bigger and wider campaign for change in Britain and the world????

  I agree that the whole thing of private property is CENTRAL to many of the worlds problems but the means of changing that is not only by
squatting....
  Taking Winstanley as a starting point he pointed out many things about the psychological and spiritual roots of this selfish imagination that rules the world but a big part of the problem for the people that are against the system that dominates the world is that they are divided into so many small groups without a solid concensus of what we are going to do.

  In todays society it is every man for himself is it not?

  We don't only need social, political or land rights campaigners in order to turn things round.

  We also need to unite all those forces into one very big spiritual
force.. Me thinks that that might be the hard bit.

  But anyway for my part, good luck to all those that are trying to
actively do something its better than doing as most do which is bury yer head in the sand.

  Best Wishes.

  Inti





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