Portugal: Voices from an okupation. The assembleia de occupação de Lisboa

Ongoing reflections on an okupation in Lisbon (continuing a discussion) …

The essay below, which we share in translation, is by Tiago F. Duarte, a member of the Assembleia de occupação de Lisboa, a collective responsible for the recent occupation of a residential building in Lisbon’s centre. We share the essay not because we agree with everything that is stated therein – for example, its overly marxist reading of history, of the opposition of the city and the countryside, of class conflict, and its reduction of occupation to a means or tactic of anti-capitalism when it is as much an end and a strategy (that is, these distinctions are in the end not only meaningless, but problematic) – but because of its insistence in reading “okupation” as a radical politics. [Read More]

Lisbon: Building occupied by ALOX collective

September 15:

Number 69 of Marques da Silva Street is occupied. The action is born of an initiative by a group of people, without any institutional affiliation, united by the desire to give life to an abandoned building.

Over the last years, the right to inhabit the city of Lisbon has been the target of numerous attacks. In a scenario of economic-financial crisis and austerity, a change in the rental law by the previous government created new business opportunities for investment funds and other speculating entities. At the same time, the image of the city as sunny, picturesque and peaceful, promoted by the tourist industries, contributed to an increase in the number of people interested in visiting and living in Lisbon. The market, as well as prices, are on a high. Neighbourhoods in which formerly rents were minimally accessible have their values rise brutally. The destructive re-composition of ways of life in the city, now reserved for those who can pay the most, is illustrated by the repeated examples of evictions.
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