A Squatters Guide to Belfast

By: dolph-l - January 11th, 2015  Filed under: essay

“You can’t squat in Belfast. Why? Because you… well you just can’t.” – Les Enfant Sans Souci

Draconian laws. Psycho cops. Paramilitaries. Hoods with petrol bombs. Squatting in Northern Ireland presents us with its own unique set of challenges. The very existence of these challenges has been used (and is still used) by generations of hippies, anarchists, punks and autonomists (traditional overt squatters) as an excuse not to bother trying. Not that Northern Ireland is particularly bad in this regard; in every thriving squat scene in Europe, from Amsterdam to Barcelona to London, people report the hardest bit was overcoming the initial fear and pessimism. In Helsinki, Dublin and Belgrade people are just beginning to take part in overt political squatting again and are encountering much the same nihilist apathy, at least initially. [Read More]

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Spanish State – Operation Pandora: Democracy imprisons 7 more anarchists

By: dolph-l - December 27th, 2014  Filed under: essay

On December 16, Operation Pandora was unleashed. The State’s security forces burst into different houses and squats in Barcelona and Madrid, and eleven anarchist comrades were kidnapped.

This kidnapping—and it couldn’t have been done any other way—was coordinated with the media, who helped justify and legitimate it with heart and soul, spreading the news that the police had carried out an operation against international anarchist terrorism. This kidnapping of eleven comrades set off a multitude of rallies and demonstrations that same day in different cities—Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, and Zaragoza, for example—thousands of people coming out in solidarity with the kidnapped comrades and showing rage and hatred towards the State’s new repressive operation against the libertarian movement. [Read More]

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Pandora’s box and the hotchpotch of Spanish anti-terrorism – about the recent raids

By: dolph-l - December 25th, 2014  Filed under: essay

Text written a week ago about Pandora’s police operation in Spain against anarchists

The morning of Tuesday the 16th of December has surprised us with a wave of house raids and arrests. Surprised us? We are not going to lie. Let’s start again. The morning of the 16th of December has NOT surprised us. The autonomous Catalan police, the Mossos d’Esquadra, and the Guardia Civil and judiciary powers of the Audiencia Nacional stormed more than ten houses and a few anarchist spaces in Barcelona, Sabadell, Manresa and Madrid, with house raids, arrests, confiscation of propaganda material and information, to also use the occasion to enter and plunder, with the entire riot police team of the Mossos d’Esquadra, Kasa de la Muntanya, a squatted place that has existed for 25 years. [Read More]

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Berlin: Our Own Private Germany

By: sisulscz - November 23rd, 2014  Filed under: essay, Interviews

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a group of squatters from East and West set out to build their own unified Germany. And, despite endless parties, questionable hygiene, and neo-Nazi turf wars, they pulled it off.
[Read More]

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London: Frestonia Squatters Who Declared Independence from the UK in 1977

By: dolph-l - November 1st, 2014  Filed under: essay, Interviews

From Vice Magazine by Harry Sword

In 1977, squatters on Freston Road, Notting Hill, in London, declared independence from the British state. Facing eviction by the Greater London Council (GLC), the community figured the best way to evade the constraints imposed on them was to just free themselves of those constraints altogether. So they lobbied the UN and established a 1.8-acre microstate-“The Free and Independent Republic of Frestonia”-complete with its own postage stamps, visas, and passports. [Read More]

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London: Squatting, Media and the Liberal Myth

By: sisulscz - September 3rd, 2014  Filed under: essay

(No specific names or places have been used in this article. Much of the information is purposefully left vague for two reasons. Firstly to respect people’s anonymity and secondly so individuals and groups do not feel they are specifically under attack, which is not at all my intention. My intention is to put the squatting campaign in a wider political context, and examine some of the attitudes I have observed within this context)

As a prelude to the criminalisation on residential squatting in the UK in 2012, the right-wing media went on a hysterical smear campaign against those who self-house. All sorts of disparaging nonsense was thrown about. The media’s focus became the (in)conveniently timed squatting of a large house in a wealthy area of London. It was too tasty for the media to resist: a photogenic affluent professional couple. A baby due. And freeloading squatters invading their future family home. The hacks went mental.
[Read More]

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UK: Why #ACAB? One person’s experience of Political Policing

By: sisulscz - June 7th, 2014  Filed under: essay

Given all the media attention on Police malpractice recently, and the constant, repetitive wheeling out of the “few bad apples” analogy, it seemed timely to explain why Anticapitalists hate the Police so much. Rather than present some dry, academic thesis full of depressing facts and figures (there are plenty of those about at the moment!) we have decided to simply post one local Anticapitalist’s experience of dealing with the Police as a “Political Activist” and homeless person.
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Berlin: Squatting memories

By: sisulscz - June 6th, 2014  Filed under: essay

When, for a short time at the beginning of the nineties, the underground was in charge of East Berlin’s centre, activist and photographer Ben de Biel was there: at Kunsthaus Tacheles, at I.M. Eimer, and as the founder of MARIA Club. Today, de Biel has moved on from organizing events and now works as the press relations officer for the Piraten Partei. In this monologue, part of a series of artists and other key cultural figures speaking openly about their artistic experience in the city, de Biel told us about his own Berlin experiment.
[Read More]

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Barcelona: And on the seventh day fires subside

By: sisulscz - June 2nd, 2014  Filed under: essay, News

What happened in Barcelona this past week isn’t over. In the present circumstances it would not be a cliché to say that the fires that were set from the 26th to the 31st of May, and they numbered in the hundreds and several of them were as large as the wide avenues they built to prevent our revolts, live on in our hearts. Tens of thousands of people have won transformative experiences. When they see a cop, an intersection, a construction site, a dumpster, a bank, a surveillance camera, a journalist, new meanings and new possibilities appear unbidden before their eyes.

Though it isn’t over, the struggle here has entered another phase. If things kick off again in the next days, if streets are wrested away from the forces of order and columns of smoke pour skyward once more, it will be different people who have taken the initiative, and for different reasons.
[Read More]

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UK: Squatting, adverse possession and the LASPO s.144 debacle

By: sisulscz - May 26th, 2014  Filed under: essay

Ancient Roman law gives illegal squatter £400,000 home. Or so you would think from the coverage of builder Keith Best’s Land Registry claim to have 35 Church Road, Newbury Park, Ilford, registered in his name.

The importance of the case is (or will be when it goes through appeals) that it should clarify how far the criminalisation of squatting (LASPO S.144) impacts on the law of adverse possession.

[Read More]

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Squatting in England: Heritage & Prospects

By: sisulscz - May 20th, 2014  Filed under: essay

Over the past few years, there has been a push to criminalize squatting across Western Europe. But in a time of increasing economic instability, can governments succeed in suppressing squatting? What is at stake here?

This article reviews the background and contemporary context of squatting in England, beginning after the Second World War and comparing the current movement to its counterparts on mainland Europe. It touches on many stories: migrants squatting to build a life safe from fascist attacks, gay activists finding spaces in which to build up a scene, vibrant and insurgent squatted areas, single-issue campaigns occupying as a direct action tactic, and anti-capitalist groups setting up social centers. We hope this text will help those in present-day struggles to root themselves in the heritage of previous movements. [Read More]

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Amsterdam: The Rise and Death of the Just City of Amsterdam

By: fawda - May 12th, 2014  Filed under: essay
op_de_Valreep_Amsterdam_squat

The Story of Op de Valreep, A Squatted Social Centre in Amsterdam Oost

Urban planning was once – perhaps at its best, defined by Patsy Healey as “managing our coexistence in shared spaces.” Planning for co-existence first and foremost requires recognition of differences and antagonisms in the city. Different publics have different interests as well as different amounts of power in society and decision-making processes. The state apparatus, operating within a context of power and inequality, thus adopts persuasive, co-optative, and sometimes repressive measures to respond to all these different vectors of pressure.
[Read More]

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