Last Friday February 3rd 2017, PAH participated at the panel Eviction and resistance, Anti-displacement Fights in the post-2008 economic crisis, at the Basel Congress Reclaim Democracy
The workshop brought together activists, scholars, collectives, and platforms from different cities in Southern Europe to engage collectively in an exploration of the potential and limits of anti-gentrification discourses and practices in facing the regimes of expulsion that characterize Southern European cities in the current period of austerity.The workshop was organized by Institute for citizenship studies at the University of Genève
At the panel we presented PAH’s 8 years trajectory stopping evictions and changing laws in Spain. We talked about our international campaign against Blackstone (#BlackstoneEvicts) and the direct link between gentrification and evictions. We also shared some best practices to Stop Evictions and to make visible resistance campaigns.
At a second part of the panel we also covered how PAH has influenced the birth of new political parties in Spain, especially in Madrid and Barcelona (where the actual Major, Ada Colau, was the spoken person of PAH). We reviewed the changes and challenges that both cities face.
A member of Abitanti San Siro – CS Cantiere talking also in the name of the European Action Coalition, for the Right to Housing and to the City (PAH is also a member of this European Coalition) presented the study Resisting Evictions across Europe. A key study analyzing the housing situation in different European countries and the organizations fighting to for the right to housing. They also talked about informal, silent and invisible practices of resistance.
