Squatting the Grey City

2018·30.1 MB·English

by  E.T.C. Dee

squatting the
grey city
e.t.c. dee
cobble books
Squatting the Grey City
(Starring Bruce Willis and Isabelle Huppert)
ISBN = 9780244385804
Edition 3 - 2018
Cover - L’usine d’ourson
First page - Lost Communication
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0
International License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Photographic rights remain with the photographers,
please let me know if I have not credited you right
and I will fix it as soon as possible
Regarding the use of amazon and other corporate
behemoths to spread this book, no we don’t like this
situation either but the aim is for people to read the book
not for it to sit proud and alone in an activist ghetto
somewhere. Please bear in mind that you can also find
versions of the print pdf and the epub online for free.
https://archive.org/details/squatting-grey-city
Thanks to everyone who helped with this book -
you know who you are :)
Cobble Books
A radical publisher and distort (thanks spellczech)
Contact via [email protected]
ACAB / YOLO / ZAD PARTOUT
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication
Introduction 1
1 Beginnings 9
2 Housing Activism 27
3 Quirky Stories 65
4 Social Centres & Venues 81
5 Fietsenfabriek 107
6 Poortgebouw 121
7 2000s 149
8 Snellinckstraat 161
9 Groene Voltage 173
10 KSU 197
11 Zines 213
12 Post-criminalisation 223
13 Housing Corporation Scandal 237
14 The Future is Unwritten 249
15 Appendix - Film 259
16 Appendix - Useful Links 265
dedication
This book is dedicated to all squatters putting space to
good use - a category that does not include zionist
settlers or neo-nazis. Squatting is just a tactic, but it
can be used in amazing ways. I’ve met some of my best
friends at squat actions, free parties and teknivals -
although not many of you will read this, you are forever
in my heart.
>Insert pretentious comment about font here<
introduction
A CZECH SQUATTER KNOWS THE SCORE
Squatting, the occupation of land or buildings without
the permission of someone who has the rights on paper
to the property, is something people do for a variety of
reasons, all over the world. Primarily people take space
so as to have somewhere to live, but squatting also
provides land and freedom for an unimaginable variety of
activities. And for better or for worse, the number of
squatters worldwide is ever-increasing... Robert
Neuwirth, who wrote the brilliant book ‘Shadow Cities’
has a quotation I liked so much that I added to the
introduction to the wikipedia page on squatting (and
subsequently once heard repeated verbatim on Aljazeera
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TV news). Now it's truncated on wikipedia thanks to the
efforts of other editors, but here it is in full:
Estimates are that there are about a billion squatters in the
world today - one of every six humans on the planet. And the
density is on the rise. Every day, close to two hundred
thousand people leave their ancestral homes in the rural
regions and move to the cities. Almost a million and a half
people a week, seventy million a year. Within 25 years, the
number of squatters is expected to double. The best guess is
that by 2030, there will be two billion squatters, one in four
people on earth.
Currently in academic circles it is fashionable to compare
and contrast squatting in Western and Eastern Europe,
in the standard postcolonial step of the oppressed
becoming the “oppressor.” This annoys me since it is
not the case that we get to read very much about what
has happened or is happening in Birmingham, Groningen
or Venice. To be honest, I would rather compare and
contrast squatting as it occurs all over the globe. Whilst
living in England, I was honoured to host for a few days
an activist from the South African Shack Dwellers
organisation Abahali baseMondjolo, who then wrote an
article for the Guardian in which he observed that
“underlying the UK housing situation is the same
assumption held by policy makers in my own country:
where you live should be determined by how much
money you have.” It’s the same shit everywhere.
I have always made zines and moved into academic work
when I was trying to stop squatting getting outlawed in
the UK, having already watched in horror as the Dutch
state criminalised squatting in 2010. This book is
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offered as a small contribution to the growing field of
activist and academic writings on squatting and I choose
to focus on Rotterdam, the city where I am currently
squatting. It is defiantly not an academic work since I
want people to read it, not to bury it in a library.
Further, I hope it is read by squatters, since despite the
Dutch squatters movement having a strong heritage and
memory, in Rotterdam no-one really seems to know
what happened in the past. I hope recounting some of
my adventures in the archives will inspire future actions.
I have been happy to feedback my researches at places
like Post Office, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Poortgebouw and
WORM in Rotterdam and have definitely benefitted from
hearing people’s reactions.
The history of squatting in Rotterdam is secret and
hidden, yet nonetheless it has been a hugely influential
local phenomenon which began in its current form in the
late 1960s and still exists today. I was squatting in
Rotterdam between 2005 and 2008, now I am squatting
here again (2015-2018). I squat(ted) for multiple
reasons: it's pointless to pay rent and then have to work
to get enough money to pay the rent; my privilege as a
white university-educated male gives me the social
power to be able to hold down a squat; the more squats
there are, the more autonomous spaces; it’s fun to
explore empty buildings. Also I blame my friends for
leading me astray…
I was and am squatting for a roof over my head but also
from anarchist principles, squatting is direct action
against a fundamentally oppressive aspect of this
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society, namely private property rights, which give the
owner of land or buildings the absolute power to leave
them to rot. It's simply ludicrous that buildings are left
empty for long periods of time, for example the building
I live in now was empty for eight years! Squatting
provides a successful tool for people to liberate property
and house themselves. As someone wrote in a Brighton
squatter newspaper in 1975:
Of course squatting is an attack on private property: it should
be. Not an attack on the houses themselves or a destruction
of walls, windows or floors, but a principled attack on the iron
law of property which rules our society, making it lawful for
some people to have two, three or twenty houses and others
to have none at all. It may be the law but it is not justice.
Squatting is one way of bringing a little bit of justice into this
ruthless society. MORE PEOPLE SHOULD SQUAT.
Why should buildings stand empty when other people
could put them to good use? In Rotterdam, I was
involved in a projects helping local residents resist
gentrification (Snellinckstraat – the residents won their
demands to not be decanted .. and as a result of our
success we got evicted ourselves, hohum, see Chapter 8
for the whole story), supporting homeless people to
keep their daycare centre in the middle of the city
(Delftsepoort - a total success this one! more about it in
Chapter 7) and running an anarchist social centre (the
Groene Voltage - read Chapter 9 to gauge the success
or otherwise of this project for yourself); I've lived with
artists, musicians, tekno sound systems, students,
graphic designers, pet rats, cats and dogs; I used my
time making zines, DJing, editing wikipedia, learning
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