Among all the shit that happens daily in the world, we as 270beat have to choose to which particular repressive situations we want to use  the money we make with the parties. Of course there are personal, political and even emotional reasons for our choice; anyway, right now these are the places and people we are trying to help with our parties:

Repression against anarchists and other rebels in Italy.

In the last 10-15 years there has been a long tradition of build-ups and hard repression against anarchists in Italy. The situation has gotten particularly hard in the last 2 years, when the usual repression levels have increased and have met with other factors (such as the resurgence of neofascist attacks) to create a heavy climate. One of the last repressive campaigns against italy has been called (by the police) "Operazione Cervantes", and lately 3 people have been condemned to 9, 6 and 3 years, with different accusations from "outrage with terrorist purposes" to the damaging of a McDonalds. They need of course money for legal expenses, and for paying an "expert" to demonstrate how the proofs used against them where crafted by the police.

There is a nice brochure on the latest repressive campaign against anarchists in italy (including the 'operation cervantes') which has been published by ABC-berlin. You can find it here (and there's a printable version here).

Repressive situation in Barcelona. 

Currently the repressive situation in Barcelona is very complex, with dozens of evictions per month and an increasing level of violence and impunity by the cops. There are however 2 particular situations to which we are mainly targeting our support, and we can call them for brevity the '4th of february' and the '9th of february' (after the dates in 2006 on which each of the repressive operations took place).

The 4th of february.

In the night between the 3rd and 4th of february, 2006, the municipality police of Barcelona (Guardia Urbana) came to block the entrance to a party that was going on in a squat of the center town. This squat, the so-called Anarcopenya, which has been afterwards evicted, was run by people who have nothing to do with the political squatting scene and have always demonstrated their selfishness and their greed, raising money for their own profit. When a group of people arrived to the entrance, they were brutally charged by the municipality police in conjunction with the autonomic police (Mossos d'esquadra). During this one of the cops was hit by an object thrown from the Anarcopenya, whose doors where vigilated by the police. The cop is currently still in coma.

Following that, 9 people who were on the street and who couldn't even had entered the squat were arrested, beaten and tortured for 3 days; currently 3 of them remain in prison, 2 of them accused of attempted murder and 1 of them accused of aggression. The police have carefully changed their own version of the facts after 48 hours, stating that their colleague was hit by a stone thrown from the street level, in order to provide credibility to the random arrests they had made.

There is more information about this case (castellan language) on our website (here) as well as here.

The 9th of february.

In the morning of the 9th of february three libertarians of the barcelona scene were arrested by the special corp of the catalan autonomic police (Mossos d'esquadra). One of them was released the same day, while the other 2 are still in preventive prison, accused of various sabotage actions including the fire set on a warehouse run by the CIRE, a public enterprise which exploits the work of prisoners in Catalunya. As always, there have been many irregularities in their detention and after, and the "clues" for which they are kept in prison are vague. They need economic support to pay their lawyers and to pay "indipendent" technicians, who can prove that the clues keeping them in jail are false.

There is information about this case in castellano on this page, as well as an english PDF explaining the whole story here.