During the summer 2007 squatting activity has spread all across
Finland. In Helsinki there has been six different occupations. In west
coast in Turku two houses were occupied, but both of them are now
evicted. In Tampere one social center was occupied and is still
working and active but faces eviction the first of October. The
occupations started in Helsinki in May, when a house was occupied for
a social center in the Katajanokka district in the center of Helsinki.
After the Karku Social Center was evicted, we occupied an abandoned
restaurant in Hakaniemi for two different parties. A few weeks later a
now-bankrupt corpotation's old dock yard in Punavuori district was
occupied for use as a social center. The place was evicted after two
weeks in a massive (and most probably, very expensive) police
operation involving a Border Guard helicopter.

In the end of July there was also a temporary occupation for a party,
and on August 2 we occupied again a house for a social center in the
Vallila district. This social center is still working actively.
Several gigs, discussions, Pirate Cinema events and lots of other
activities have been organised.

Due to the ongoing occupations, the authorities have expressed their
fatigue and their will to arrange a space for a social center but the
negotiations have not led to any solution. The bureaucrats have
defended previous evictions by saying the occupied houses would have
been too expensive for the city to rent to the squatters. At the same
time the city is spending enormous amounts of money to support
projects, which serve only private economic interests. After the third
social center occupation, the city eventually seems to be willing to
let us keep the building. Once again we have seen that the need for a
free urban space can't be suppressed by violence.

In the first years of the millennium, there was a lot of squatting
activity in Finland, which resulted in creating an autonomous social
center Siperia in Herttoniemi. After a few silent years, especially
after Siperia burned down in June 2006, a new squatting movement has
risen. The enthusiasm created by the example of Ungdomshuset in
Copenhagen and other social centers in different European countries,
and the rage about their repression, has been an important factor for
the birth of this movement. The struggle about the control of urban
space has in the last years been limited to fighting against police
and private security guards' repression of graffiti artists, without
ability to create positive alternatives to the privatization and
capitalist capturing of the urban space. Now thanks to the occupations
and the new social center, a possibility to create and to protect
autonomous and free zones for co-operation and culture has emerged.

The new squatting movement involves perhaps more people and is more
active than any of the previous squatting "seasons". And even if the
authorities would try to evict the new social centre also this time,
the occupations will continue. The urban space does not have any worth
without the people living there, and this is why people should not
have to pay for their presence in the city.