Dikmen Valley in Ankara, Turkey was originally Dikmen Village. The village goes back to the 1950s, but it wasn't settled in the form of a squatter [gecekondu in Turkish] neighborhood till around 1968. The valley has five etapes. The first and second etapes were settled the earliest while the fourth and fifth etapes were first settled in the late 1970s. Before that, the area was used by the villagers for agriculture and grazing.

During the same period, an intense wave of migration from the rural parts of inner Anatolia to big cities took place. Housing was a serious problem for these rural-to-urban migrants. A handful of early migrants to Ankara were involved in leftist political and revolutionary activities. According to the spokesperson of the resistance to "urban transformation," these migrants came together to discuss what could be done to solve their housing problems. After some research they discovered Dikmen Village and decided that this might be a solution. The valley belonged to the state, and when the migrants saw that the villagers were using the land to their liking, they decided to settle there. After having done so, they began redistributing the land to other rural migrants, especially those who, in the words of the resistance's spokesperson, were "cheap labor, who had come to the city in search of work but who had the consciousness to participate in the struggle against capital and who were at least social-democrats." Migrants to Ankara in general and Dikmen Valley in particular came from all parts of Turkey, creating a mosaic of different ethnic cultures and religious beliefs.

Call for Solidarity

At the Press Conference hosted jointly by SACCAWU and COSATU to give an update on the dispute and explain the reasons for the call of a consumer boycott of Woolworths a background document was circulated on the nature and history of the dispute. Below is a summary the document.

Briefing on the background to the current Woolworths strike

More than five thousand Union members are in the third week of a protected strike arising out of an organisational rights dispute between SACCAWU and Woolworths.

Employment Profile of the Company

At the time when dispute with Woolworthsfirst arose in 1999 with the unilateral derecognition of the Union, the company already had extremely high levels of atypical forms of employment and this has worsened since. At the time Woolworths claimed a staff compliment of 12 407 with more than 70% casual employees. By 2007 the staff compliment grew with to 17 838 with the percentage of full time staff shrinking in real terms, while the flexible employee compliment grew to 12 546. If the management are removed from these company figures the percentages will even be higher. In this same period the company's turnover grew by more than 110% from R8.8 billion to R18.6 billion over the same period. While operating profits for the same period grew by more than 300%.

SAVE SOPUDEP SCHOOL in HAITI!!

Urgent Action Requested

SOPUDEP is a private non-profit school in Haiti that has served the poorest and most vulnerable children of the community of Petion-Ville since 2001. The children who attend SOPUDEP school would never have a chance at an education save for this wonderful project. Most of them also receive their only hot meal every school day through the school's Hot Lunch Program. Given the latest rise in food prices and the hardship this has caused Haitian families, the Hot Lunch Program is an indispensable component SOPUDEP's work in the community.

JOE SLOVO SHACKDWELLERS TASK TEAM PRESS STATEMENT

8:30am

Monday 10th September 2007

Joe Slovo Shackdwellers Statement on N2 Highway Blockade

LANGA, CAPE TOWN - More than one thousand residents from Joe Slovo informal settlement on the N2 highway near the Cape Town airport, have blockaded the highway since 4:30am this morning.

The residents are protesting their imminent forced removal to the wasteland of Delft, over 30kms away. They have held the highway for almost 5 hours and are refusing to move.

"We are angry. We want RDP house in Joe Slovo. We want the Department of Housing to stop moving our people to Delft. We refuse to be moved there. It is far from our workplaces and also from places where we look for work. Those of us who are not getting paid undecent salaries are spending every day looking for work. We can't and won't move. The government took this decision without consulting us and now they must change it," said Mzwanele from the Joe Slovo Task Team.

http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=6179

On Tuesday morning, 14th of August, over 1000 community members from Sebokeng's "informal settlement" attempted to blockade the Golden Highway between Sebokeng and Johannesburg in protest at the ANC government's inadequate service delivery since its election in 1994.

The police arrived in numbers and fired randomly at the community members, allegedly with live ammunition, seriously injuring 6 people and injuring others, including small children.

Thirty-five people were then arrested and taken to the Sebokeng police station, and are being charged with public violence and illegal gathering. When leaders of the Anti-Privatisation Forum and Coalition Against Water Privatisation, under whose banner the protest was held, arrived at the police station to enquire about the situation and try and have their comrades released nine of them were also arrested, for addressing a community gathering.

The Camberwell Squatted Centre Has Been Evicted 30-08-07

Photograph of a panel from a photo exhibition on the Motala struggle at the Camberwell Squatted Centre. The Centre also held two screenings of and discussions on the Abahlali film Breyani & the Councillor

Text from UK IndyMedia

Just to let you know that the Camberwell Squatted Centre was evicted unexpectedly this morning by a van load of High Court bailiffs and 2 van loads of police, who climbed in to the building at 4.30am and surprised the occupants. Helped by the Southwark Council scaffolding which gave them a leg up into the place.

The following document is extracted from this file, a study by a group based in Oxford on the illegality of slum clearances in Zimbabwe.

ARE THE ACTIVITIES CONDUCTED DURING OPERATION
MURAMBATSVINA CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY WITHIN THE
MEANING OF ARTICLE 7 OF THE ROME STATUTE?

International Law Opinion

Oxford Pro Bono Publico Group

University of Oxford, November 2005

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY........................................................................................................2