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

Becoming Western: the story legitimising neoliberalism, violence and dispossession in Central and Eastern European cities

This article is part of the multilingual ELMO series CEE housing movements resisting neoliberal urban transformations. The smart city, the civilised city, the city for the respectable tax-paying citizens – in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), what all of these urban imaginaries have in common is that they cater to a performative, aspirational desire of becoming […]

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

Central-Eastern European housing movements resisting neoliberal urban transformations

The Eastern European Left Media Outlet – ELMO will be launching a multilingual and inedit thematic article series, consisting of 4 parts and this introduction, in which we seek answers to the question: How are housing and urban movements resisting the post-socialist imperative of transforming Central-Eastern European cities into extensions, copies and satellites of neoliberal […]

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All posts FeminEasts

There are words: violence against women, femicide. And there is the question: where is our responsibility? 

The death of Beáta Molnár, the 30-year-old woman murdered by her partner in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, brings the discussion of gender violence back into the public eye. Her dead body was found wrapped in trash bags, abandoned by the murderer near a gas station in the neighboring Bihor. And it raises the question: what can the […]

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The Gig Economy’s Corporate Crime Problem

Platform work companies are not only dodging their legal responsibilities as employers by not recognising their workers as employees. Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Glovo are thriving in the gig economy also by effectively outsourcing risks onto couriers and encouraging them to break the law. Falling asleep at the car’s wheel after 12 hours of work […]

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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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All posts FeminEasts Protests

The Anti-Capitalist Basis and Potential of the Slogan: “We Want Social Housing, Not Militarization”

Note from LeftEast editors: This article originally appeared in Romanian in The Political Art Gazette and we publish it as part of the collaboration in the ELMO – Eastern European Left Media Outlet network. On March 8th, 2022, responding to the invitation of Meduza Kolektiv and Rhythms of Resistance Cluj, the radical housing justice movement […]

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All posts Protests

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 […]

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The Politics of Avoidable Covid-19 Deaths in Romania

Note from LeftEast editors: We reprint this article, which appeared in the Black Box East section of the Berliner Gazette in German on November 23, 2021. Since the beginning of November, Romania’s infection rates dropped significantly compared to the previous month. The number of people in ICUs and the death rate remain however, high. Its medical […]

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All posts Solidarity Call

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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There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth: Experiences of people on the move on a new (iteration of the) Balkan route through Romania

With the increasing militarization of the Croatian-Bosnian border and in an overall hostile environment towards migrants, the Balkan route has been shifting in recent months towards Romania. Since October 2020, there has been a sharp increase in the number of people crossing the border in Serbia and ending up in or around Timişoara, the largest […]