UPDATE 7.30 With great perseverance we keep resisting on the roof, while the picket of the supporters managed to outflank the blockade of the oppressors in uniform: children, families and occupiers have warm nourishment for dinner on the roof as well! It is a day featuring joy and resistance! Thanks to Eat the Rich and Campi Aperti, thanks to who resists on the roofs, on the vehicles and in the streets, thanks to who builds everyday a beautiful and solidal Bologna!
UPDATE 6.30pm Resistance continues thanks to the social dinner which was cooked by the Eat the Rich collective, with the ingredients being provided by the Campi Aperti grassroots farmer network, while the police shamelessly prevents the delivery of warm nourishment to underage and occupiers on the roof! This is the dignified and solidal Bologna, opposed to the shame of institutions that go as far as eliminating the meaniest trace of human rights, starving homeless people!

A video account of the day of struggle

UPDATE 5pm The police hits the supporters that block the firemen’s vehicles, but no one backs off! On with the struggle! The firemen move some meter on in order to separate the comrades up there by the supporters but there is little to do, the picket is determined to resist! A second attempt to climb the vehicle by others was repulsed with truncheons by the police, now surrounding the vehicle – while a ring of demonstrators blocks its movements inviting who is above to resist. The situation is tense, with a nervous police that seems willing to charge with even greater strength at any time.
UPDATE 4.30pm The eviction operations continue, the families are thrown out without mercy with hits and intimidations as well, the social workers feign to bring solutions but actually endorse the work of the agents, that continue to replenish their ranks and provoke the supportive picket outside the building.
UPDATE 2.30pm Police enters the occupation and, in order to clear its way, charges the supporters’ picket outside! A journalist, too, gets hurt in the charge, while political police DIGOS agents and antiriot police enter the building, where we remind that dozens of children are present. We know which will be the answers of the municipality social workers to them: inadequate solutions, with the only goal to sweep the problem under the carpet. There are 3 evictions per day in Bologna, this is the political solution which is being proposed! Live updates on the Social Log page.
UPDATE 2pm The police is outside the building, the firemen just arrived while other carabinieri and police wagon are rushing to the occupation. Inside the former postal service buildings, which have been abandoned for years, the resistance of hundreds of people continues – those who decided today to stop bowing their heads and reclaim a fundamental right!
UPDATE 1.15pm A police wagon belonging to the antiriot police squad was immediately stationed close to the occupation, willing to carry out an immediate eviction. The occupiers and their supporters resist on the roof, crying out loud the withdrawal of the police’s helmets, shields and truncheons in order to discuss how to find a real political solution to an actual humanitarian emergency like the housing one. More info and pictures on the Social Log collective webpage.
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A new housing occupation was born today in Bologna. 68 family units – a total of 207 people among which 74 underage – reclaimed a huge vacant building in via Agucchi 173, formerly a postal service headquarters. After the Ex-Telecom days of struggle, after the eviction and the great supportive march some days later, the housing struggle movement in Bologna come backs to speak directly. While celebrations of sumptuous Jubilees start, those squatting houses with Social Log with this occupation scream loud and clear to open up the doors of the right to housing! [T.N. A reference to the opening of the Holy Door starting the Jubilee this year]
The occupation, down in the Bolognese periphery, can be reached with the 11b bus, at the Varanini stop: we call everyone to rally there in order to express solidarity to those which, once again, put themselves on the line in order to get a real solution for a fundamental right!
Updates will follow…