A silhoutted figure leaned casually on his bike as we met our No Borders contact off the ferry in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
We rode through Calais lines of lights blinking to our home for the next three days with the Calais Migrant Solidarity group.
CMS actively fight for the rights of the migrant population in Calais and resist the brutal police raids and daily harassment.
We became involved in the work the group do on a daily basis; preventing the police morning raids on migrants’ homes, accompanying folk to the charity food distribution whilst hanging out and having fun with people in the communities.
PEDAL also put on a barber shop, bike workshop and a film and music night in the squatted Africa house; where Charlie Chaplin went down a storm!
The weather in Calais was beautiful but we had little time to sit and enjoy the sunshine. Each morning we got up at about 5:30 to intervene in the early morning police raids.
The police come into migrant homes at any given moment to arrest and intimidate people living there. During winter months blankets and sleeping bags are left with police pepper spray clinging to the fabric. Any infrastructure built in the homes- such as furniture, staircases- are smashed in the police raids.
No Borders stand in the space and entrances to the warehouse homes to block the police coming in, and blow whistles to alarm the migrants so they can get to the roofs. 15 seconds can make all the difference.
When arrested the migrants are taken to a police station an hour’s walk from town. The police often detain people even when they show legitimate papers. During our stay a no borders activist was arrested for having a pen knife.
These are regular occurrences on the streets of Calais- to the point where the general public walk on without taking any notice.
Mist settles as we wait for a police raid at Africa house
Not long after we had arrived on our first morning watch two police vans showed up with about eight or nine police. They marched up to the entrance of Africa house which was blocked by members of No Borders and PEDAL and after realising that there may be some resistance they went straight for pepper spray and gassed the group en mass.
To continue the distraction we moved around the space pulling the unit away from the stairways where the migrants ran up. A small fracas happened as one police felt it was right to kick one of us with a camera to the ground. They checked the buildings to find no one there before going back to the vans.
Police raid Africa house with pepper spray
Migrants get up on the roof of Africa house to escape arrest
Police leave Africa house without arrest
PEDAL’s Operation Storm Cloud then began: as some of us pursued the van on bicycles. The purpose of this was to raise the alarm at other squats as the police arrived in order to give the people extra vital seconds to escape. The next stop for the police was the Palestinian house. Here we managed to raise the alarm and the police again came out empty handed, back on the bikes then. We continued to pursue the police through the streets of Calais for about 4 kilometers.
As we tracked the vans in the main street in Calais at speed the police in front leaned out of the window of the van and launched a cloud of pepper spray behind them which caught myself and another rider in the face.
We came off the road and give up the chase as we were in pain and couldn’t see. The police got away soon after. No arrests were made during their tour of the squats. Later that morning, despite PEDAL riders buzzing around the roads between Africa house and the food depot, a group of migrants were stopped and arrested.
Graffiti at Africa House
The food distribution charity and police supposedly have an agreement that no one will get arrested on their way to and from getting meals- as we saw though the police regularly break this truce and it causes many to fear going for food three times a day.
The food depot was a good place for us to meet many of the migrants and from here we could chat and laugh and get to know each other, and find out how our time was best used during our stay.
Using some ideas from here and of our own we decided to put a day on at Africa house where we would play a film and some music, fix the bikes that they had but the police had destroyed, cook some dessert for after the meal from food distribution and run a barbershop.
PEDAL set up a barber shop where all kinds of haircuts were styled throughout the day
Sharing stories..
setting up the cinema for late night Charlie Chaplin
four bikes were fixed including a bent wheel with some DIY banging
We finished our time in Calais with a critical mass, or as the French say velorution! We toured some points that are active in the persecution of the migrants population; as we moved we took up a chant learnt with our new friends and the sounds of resistance bounced around the walls of Calais: ‘ so so solidarite, avec les sans papier’
