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Increased Risk of Eviction in Pata Rât of Cluj, Romania – Solidarity Call

89 organizations, collectives and groups, as well as 257 individuals from Romania and other countries demand to stop the eviction process of several Roma families from the modular houses built by Cluj-Napoca City Hall near the landfills in Pata Rât in 2010. Today, 6th of July 2021, we sent our Appeal together with the signatures […]

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The suspension of Human rights during COVID-19: For Roma in Pata Rât they have been suspended for a very long time

A State of Emergency Decree was issued in Romania on the 16th of March and prolonged for one month on the 16th of April as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Decree suspended a series of human rights and activated the country’s derogation from the European Convention of Human Rights. Part I. People living […]

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PATA RÂT ROMA SOCIO-TERRITORIAL SEGREGATION AND GHETTOIZATION

RAMPA DE GUNOI (THE LANDFILL) People looking for sources of income and cheep living conditions settled down right near the landfill starting with the end of 1960s and carried on informal labour (waste selection) since then. Today approximately 250 persons are living within this neglected and life threatening territory in 50 improvised barracks. They were […]

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The Roma struggle from protests to political liberation

Note from LeftEast editors: In marking the Roma Holocaust Memorial Day in Europe on August 2, we reprint this article on anti-Roma racism in Europe and the struggles for the collective unification and liberation of Roma. The article first appeared on Roarmag.Org, and is shared here with permission. We also link a recent podcast with […]

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Out in the Cold: Romania and Bulgaria look away from transborder collaboration

This article first appeared in Serbo-Croatian on the web journal Bilten. East-Central Europe and the Balkans experienced a period of exceptionally cold and snowy weather in January 2017. Flights and shipping services were suspended in some areas, there was major disruption to power supplies and other essential infrastructure, and there were a number of deaths due […]

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VIDEO: “We are equal, not illegal!” Housing rights commemoration in Cluj-Napoca, December 2015

The commemorative action “We are equal, not illegal!” took place in Cluj-Napoca, Romania on 17/12/2015. It involved people from the marginalized ‘residential’ space of the city (called Pata Rat) and from other areas with precarious and insecure housing conditions, as well as local activists for housing justice. This public event was a moment of joint […]

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BOYCOTT UBB’S “ACTIVISM” CONFERENCE

The conference “Activism” is organized by the Centre for Comparative Migration Studies, the Centre for the Study of Democracy and the Department of Political Science of Babeș-Bolyai University and will take place on 4 and 5 May 2023. A call for contributions for presentations and panels was circulated in March. The signatories here organized ourselves […]

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All posts ELMO series: CEE housing movements resisting neoliberal urban transformations

Countering housing dispossession in Cluj, the Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe

This article is part of the multilingual ELMO series CEE housing movements resisting neoliberal urban transformations. The pursuit of international recognition of its urban policies turned into a major source of legitimacy for the Romanian municipality of Cluj-Napoca. The city has been designated the 2015 European Capital of Youth. Next year it made it into the […]

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“Missing social housing” – Activist city tour in Cluj-Napoca

On 28th March 2022 the housing justice movement Căși Sociale ACUM! – Social Housing NOW! organized a Housing Action Day event in Cluj-Napoca, a European-wide day of action for housing justice, coordinated by the member groups of the European Action Coalition for the Right to  Housing and to the City (EAC). On 28th March, between […]

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To whom does the smart city belong, if…?

Note from LeftEast editors: We are publishing the press release of the Romanian Social Housing NOW! (Căşi sociale ACUM!) radical housing justice movement based in Cluj-Napoca. They organized a hybrid, online and physical, action day on 17th December, commemorating the eviction of 350 Roma people that happened on the same day 11 years ago. The […]