Squatter’s Legal Defense Fund Voku

Thursday May 28th 2020, Squatter’s Legal Defense Fund Voku, Vegan Takeaway Voku. Pick up food from 7pm till 8:30pm. See you on the Steve Bikoplein.

Squatter’s Legal Defence Fund Voku

Tonight’s voku (People’s Kitchen) is to raise money for the squatter’s legal defense fund. The fund provides money to people who incur legal costs while squatting buildings in Amsterdam. Typically, this money is used to pay for court cases brought against squatters by owners or the state, but it can also be used to pay fines for people who are charged with squatting or other related charges. These costs can run into the thousands, so every little helps.

Recent Developments in Amsterdam

Over the last few weeks, the city has evicted several squats, despite the precautionary measures introduced by the government to stem the spread of the corona virus (apparently we are not ‘all’ in it together!). What is more, the evictions seem to have happened in spite of the city’s much touted ‘no evictions for emptiness’ policy.

Earlier this month, squatters residing in a building next to Sarphatipark were evicted even though the owner could not demonstrate that they had any concrete plans for the building during the court case. This is something we have seen time and time again over the last couple of years and raises, once again, the question of whether the ‘no evictions for emptiness’ policy is really still in effect. Owned by the van Zijl family, Sarphatipark 87 in de Pijp was squatted on March 8th 2020 and is again left vacant. A poster from an anti-squat company is hanging behind a window.

Another group was evicted from the Eerste Helmersstraat 80 in Oud-Weston on Sunday May 24th after only two days inside a building. When the inhabitants were arrested, the owner Stadgenoot hadn’t file a complain yet. The police, the city took their own initiative to evict a squat and the inhabitants had no a chance to defend themselves in court, and were charged with squatting. These charges will be fought and to do this the individuals involved will need the financial support that the legal defense fund can provide in order to pay for lawyers and court costs.

You can also keep up to date with squatting in Amsterdam on the Joe’s website: https://joesgarage.nl/

Thank you for supporting the legal defense fund.

Benefit for No Border Kitchen Lesvos

Thursday May 21st 2020, No Border Kitchen Lesvos Benefit, Volkseten Vegazulu, Take Away People’s kitchen, vegan food, no reservation necessary (or possible!). Falafel with salad n’ sides! Pick up food from 7pm till 8:30pm. See you on the Steve Bikoplein.

Today’s meal is a benefit for No Border Kitchen Lesvos. This is what they do:
A message from Lesvos to Amsterdam.
Lesvos, Greece. A beautiful Island. The Biggest Prison in Europe.
No Border Kitchen is a horizontal and self-organised collective with and for the people on the move on the Greek Island of Lesvos. Since 2015, we have been providing basic needs to the people that are left behind at the walls of Fortress Europe. We provide support mainly in two ways. We provide cooked food every day to about 300 people in the Mytillni area. This is mostly aimed at people that are either forced to stay in the streets or are living in squats, rented houses or somewhere slightly outside of the city. Then there is the food-boxes. A food-box contains dry food, oil and fresh vegetables and is meant to support people that are living in Mytillini and pay rent but get no state support. We want to provide these things to make it more accessible for people to live outside of the refugee camp, Moria. With the donations we have been receiving recently we have been able to upgrade the food-boxes with hygiene items and some other things that were to expansive before, like coffee, spices and better quality vegetables.
A silent war is being waged in the Aegean and the Central Med. A new cold war, with migrants as the nuclear weapons of the 21st century. Since November of last year, with the announcement of amendments to the Greek migration & asylum laws, we have been bracing for the start of 2020.

And so far, it has been not been great. Starting from February there has been an increase in xenophobic groups attacking migrants, activists and volunteers. After a period of increased threats and violence, the Covid-19 measures started. This put a temporary stop to the violence but made continuing our day to day activities rather difficult. However, we were able to find a way to continue our work. With the implementation of the amendment to the Greek migration & asylum laws we are entering a new era of racism and oppression against people on the move. They aim to deport a greater group of people with maximum efficiency. Already on the sea border the amount of illegal acts has also increased. Under cover of night, boats that try to reach Greece via sea have their engines disabled and are being set adrift towards Turkish waters by the Hellenic Coast Guard.
This will send a message to all the people that want to try to get to Europe.
The message is: “If you try to get here, you will be held in a camp isolated from the rest of the world with nothing and if you are not recognised as a ‘legitimate’ refugee we will send you right back where you came from”.
The idea that migrants are so radically different from us is false. National identities are made up. And they are made so that it appears as though we have more in common with millionaires or career politicians than with people who risk everything seeking the same thing most of the people in the world want: Safety.
No Border Kitchen Lesvos https://noborderkitchenlesvos.noblogs.org/

Benefit voku for Apatris, Greek anarchist newspaper

Monday December 23rd 2019, Benefit voku for Apatris, Greek anarchist newspaper. Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm.

The street newspaper APATRIS (https://apatris.info/) began in 2009 from Heraklion (Crete) and for a year was distributed only locally. In 2010, comrades from other places in Crete began to collaborate with the project. Since then, Apatris has been issued as a Pancreatan anarchist newspaper. You can find it everywhere around Greece and further in various social centres around Europe, Joe’s Garage included!

Joe’s Garage is always looking for cooks. Any help is welcome in the kitchen. Experience not required. If you want to know which days are still available in the schedule, mail us and book yourself the night. You can, of course, also participate by rolling up your sleeves and doing the dishes.

Amsterdam Street Medics Fundraiser

Thursday December 19th 2019, Amsterdam Street Medics Fundraiser. Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm.

Join the Amsterdam Street Medics for a Voku at Joe’s Garage. We will be serving something delicious and vegan. Amsterdam Street Medics: https://squ.at/r/6pjs

Joe’s Garage is always looking for cooks. Any help is welcome in the kitchen. Experience not required. If you want to know which days are still available in the schedule, mail us and book yourself the night. You can, of course, also participate by rolling up your sleeves and doing the dishes.

Benefit for legal fund for squatters

Monday December 16th 2019, Benefit for legal fund for squatters. Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm.

We are a cooking group called krakenkeuken. We are a group of people in the city cooking vegan food , trying to uphold a zero waste policy. We cook for support for the legal fund for squatters.

Joe’s Garage is always looking for cooks. Any help is welcome in the kitchen. Experience not required. If you want to know which days are still available in the schedule, mail us and book yourself the night. You can, of course, also participate by rolling up your sleeves and doing the dishes.

Stop EU complicity in migrant deaths at external borders – Benefit All Included

Thursday December 12th 2019, Stop EU complicity in migrant deaths at external borders – Benefit All Included, Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm.

All Included is an Amsterdam based migrant support organisation for freedom of movement and right to stay for all. We believe in an open society on the basis of exchange and solidarity. We believe in migrant rights and opportunities.
We will not allow the European Union, its member states, Frontex and other institutions to continue to be complicit in the deaths of thousands of people with impunity – both in the Mediterranean and on Europe’s external borders. This also applies to all politicians who consciously or unconciously promote or accept this murderous policy. Migrants are forced to choose most deadly routes through desert and Mediterranian while legal routes stay locked.

That is why we will take the initiative – together with others – to set up a European civil society monitoring body to safeguard human rights. All the more so as the bordering countries are more and more imposed to safeguard European interests through the Emergency Trust Fund. And as the EU recently decided to expand Frontex border patrol force up to 10,000 troops.

We want to create a European documentation centre which will link all the organisations and individuals working in the Mediterranean and at the external borders collecting and analysing their knowledge and experiences. Mutual exchange and networking could be stimulated by all actors with specific background: academic, migrant, NGO’s, human right activist. Many independant researches have recently brought more evidence and insight on a structural EU-abuse of human rights at the borders. By enlarging the visibility of migrant reality, support initiatives and their criminalisation by EU and memeber states we hope to motivate civil actions.

A central task will be to provide the European media with the information obtained.

In a second step, the findings gained in the course of the investigations should lead to those responsible being called to account before a tribunal of civil society to be set up specifically for this purpose.
By building up such a well equipped structure a group of ‘experts’ from diverse background and practice will analyse EU-legislation and testimonies of human right abuse by migrants and support-NGO’s. This tribunal will bring together all actors and come to a verdict in Brussels in 2021.

All Included is een initiatief dat strijdt voor vrijheid van mobiliteit en recht op verblijf voor migranten. In een tijd waarin globalisering een feit is moet migratie erkend worden als een deel van een package deal. All included dus. Dit betekent: geen illegaliteit, geen vreemdelingendetentie en geen gedwongen uitzettingen.
Met het verdwijnen van de nationale grenzen verdwijnt de nationale identiteit. Iedereen wordt wereldburger en ongeacht afkomst verdient eenieder gelijke rechten en gelijke kansen. Daarom ook voor migranten gelijkwaardige ‘all included’ rechten en plichten.
All Included strijdt voor een open samenleving middels buitenparlementaire acties die ingrijpen in het politiek klimaat van assimilatie, geslotenheid en angst. Middels directe hulp aan uitgeprocedeerde asielzoekers en andere mensen zonder verblijfsvergunning worden aanklachten tegen de wantoestanden van de huidige politiek uitgedragen. Wij willen een bijdrage leveren aan het publieke debat met alternatieve visies op migratie en globalisering die uitgaat van open grenzen, solidariteit en eigen initiatief.
All Included is actief in Afrique-Europe Interact (AEI), een netwerk van Afrikaanse en Europese zelf-organisaties. AEI werkt enerzijds aan gezamenlijke projecten en acties en anderzijds aan onderlinge ondersteuning.

Joe’s Garage is always looking for cooks. Any help is welcome in the kitchen. Experience not required. If you want to know which days are still available in the schedule, mail us and book yourself the night. You can, of course, also participate by rolling up your sleeves and doing the dishes.

Benefit for Syrian families

Monday December 9th 2019, Benefit for Syrian families, Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm.

Today we are cooking in benefit of a group of Syrian families that are currently on the run for the war situation in their country. The money will go directly to them.

Joe’s Garage is always looking for cooks. Any help is welcome in the kitchen. Experience not required. If you want to know which days are still available in the schedule, mail us and book yourself the night. You can, of course, also participate by rolling up your sleeves and doing the dishes.

Benefit voku for renovations costs of squatted villa Ivicke in Wassenaar

Monday December 2nd 2019, Benefit voku for renovations costs of squatted villa Ivicke in Wassenaar, Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm.

This time we invite you to enjoy a lovely vegan dinner at Joe’s Garage to help us raise money for the costs of renovating the squatted monumental villa in Wassenaar, which we squatted in July 2018.As renovation also includes plumbing service you can also read this plumber’s reviews before getting renovation services.

Up till now, we have funded all of the work we have done to the building ourselves or through donations raised during events at Ivicke. But this was not enough to cover the big job we did in September to winter-proof the house.

We fixed the gutters and roof leaks, which was necessary to prevent further, likely irreversible damage to the house. For this, we had to hire two scaffolds, which cost us over 800 euros alone. On top of this, we also had to buy the necessary materials.

This came at a time when our ability to raise funds through events has been limited by restrictions placed on us by the municipality following the attention we received by hosting the No Border Camp, which is why we are asking for your donations.

Since the very beginning we have done an immense amount of work to fix and maintain the building for living and hosting a variety of social events. Yet we are constantly under the threat of eviction from the municipality and the owner – a well-known speculant Ronnie van de Putte.

Thanks to your donations we can continue our work and put on other events, and counter the agenda of politicians, media and the owner to have us evicted!

more about ivicke; https://radar.squat.net/en/wassenaar/huize-ivicke

Joe’s Garage is always looking for cooks. Any help is welcome in the kitchen. Experience not required. If you want to know which days are still available in the schedule, mail us and book yourself the night. You can, of course, also participate by rolling up your sleeves and doing the dishes.