Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, a
Speaker 1: podcast about Ian our audio producer. I'm your host, Bargot Hills, right,
Speaker 1: and each week I say the exact same thing by
Speaker 1: way of introduction, based with the Sissifian task of doing
Speaker 1: my rather easy job. This week's guest is Alex Fields. Alex,
Speaker 1: how are you doing? I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good.
Speaker 1: I've cooled down since last time. Yeah, it's totally a
Speaker 1: different day. Oh yes, I've been wearing a wetsuit full
Speaker 1: of ice cubes. It's great, excellent. Yeah, I don't know that.
Speaker 1: That's a weird Dutch thing, I guess y yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh that's how you prepare for surfing in the North Sea.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's probably true. Okay. Uh, Sophie is here playing
Speaker 1: the part of the Voice of God. Sophie, how are
Speaker 1: you am I the voice to God? Or is the
Speaker 1: zoom lady that makes the service announcement that we're recording
Speaker 1: the Voice of God? Okay, well you're the one who
Speaker 1: um makes that happen, so you're sort of more like
Speaker 1: the Pope podcast Pope. I'll take it. Okay, we'll get
Speaker 1: you ahead into a gnosticism. Then the zoom Lady would
Speaker 1: be Metatron and Sophie is the real deity behind it.
Speaker 1: I think that that is actually what's happening. Um. Also
Speaker 1: is the third time that narcissism has come up in
Speaker 1: the past like three days for me, so clearly, clearly
Speaker 1: something something's happening. Yeah, I never talked about it, so
Speaker 1: the fact that I bring it up now is definitely okay.
Speaker 1: And Ian as our editor on women, made our theme music,
Speaker 1: and you the listener, responsible for the end of all
Speaker 1: human society because you didn't recycle. It's too late now
Speaker 1: and we are talking about how cool it is to
Speaker 1: break into empty buildings and live in them. In the
Speaker 1: first part, we learned about the squatters in the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: and in the second part we're gonna keep learning about
Speaker 1: the squatters in the Netherlands. What a fun word squatter?
Speaker 1: You want to say that, Sophie, squatter? See, isn't it fun?
Speaker 1: Or if you're from your squatter now, if I did
Speaker 1: a bad job, I tried, okay, But within Baltimore, b
Speaker 1: squitter squitter Yeah, Yeah, there's parts of Maryland like squatter.
Speaker 1: That's all. It's squatter. Yeah, I can make fun of
Speaker 1: l A now. That I don't live there, or we
Speaker 1: can say Kraken there you go, yes, which is even
Speaker 1: spelled like the sea beast, which is extra cool. So
Speaker 1: where we last left our heroes, all of whom are anonymous.
Speaker 1: There's very few names in this story, which is kind
Speaker 1: of cool. It's all just like groups of people who
Speaker 1: wanted houses rather than like movement leaders and ship. I've
Speaker 1: actually never studied a movement with fewer like named leaders,
Speaker 1: especially a movement that got so much done. Anyway, they
Speaker 1: are organizing demonstrations against the coronation of Beatrix, who does
Speaker 1: get a name. Um, she's not anonymous, she's fairly known
Speaker 1: to history. The police attacked really hard on Coronation Day
Speaker 1: ten Thou police attacked two different demonstrations with water cannons
Speaker 1: and horses and and all that ship. Over six d
Speaker 1: people were injured. The police were driven back though in
Speaker 1: both places, and the riots are possibly the largest in
Speaker 1: Dutch history. I that that might that might well be.
Speaker 1: That might well be. So it's it's interesting, like I
Speaker 1: haven't really studied this history, but like as uh, someone
Speaker 1: active in the Netherlands, you just through osmos as you
Speaker 1: get bits and pieces of it. And this hane wowning
Speaker 1: think crowning. Ah Uh. These riots, Um, they like you get,
Speaker 1: you get these bits and bobs of it, like what
Speaker 1: you what you say, like the police being driven back
Speaker 1: in two places, like one of them being the amstel
Speaker 1: Bruck in front of what is now the new municipal headquarters. Um.
Speaker 1: And this whole thing like a like armored vehicles and
Speaker 1: the sheer amount of violence and the amount of the
Speaker 1: police being there on the day. Yeah. No, I And
Speaker 1: it's interesting because there's not that much available in English
Speaker 1: about it. Um. Even the like the book I'm reading
Speaker 1: on the squatter movement was like and then the like
Speaker 1: biggest riots in our history anyway. So then back to
Speaker 1: the squatting and I'm like, huh, but I kind of
Speaker 1: want to know about this thing that you know. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and and once again the squatters and the
Speaker 1: in this movie, in this case, these demonstrations were larger
Speaker 1: than just the squatter movement. Although they performed, they created
Speaker 1: like a lot of the organizational core of it as
Speaker 1: far as I understand, UM. And they very consciously we're like,
Speaker 1: we're not afraid of violence, but we will stop short
Speaker 1: of the molotov and we will stop short of the pistol,
Speaker 1: not unless the police and police initiate lethal force first. Um,
Speaker 1: they had molotovs and pistols, but they were they were
Speaker 1: not on the scene. Um at least again the best
Speaker 1: I can tell from what I'm reading. And I have
Speaker 1: one story about a named squatter that I like. The
Speaker 1: radio equipment in the Great Kaiser where they had the
Speaker 1: free you know, free radio Kaiser or whatever, UM was
Speaker 1: put to a new use during these riots. Carol Facade.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to pronounce his last name. I
Speaker 1: should have looked it up. He was yeah, yeah, okay, Carol.
Speaker 1: He was a He was a squatter out of necessity.
Speaker 1: He had been born into a working class family. He
Speaker 1: was living on the streets at eighteen, so he became
Speaker 1: a squatter and he cut his his riot radio teeth
Speaker 1: listening to police radio during squatter riots. And this is
Speaker 1: part of the whole counterinformation stuff that squatters have going
Speaker 1: on really well. By the time of the coronation, he
Speaker 1: brought a different set of radio equipment into the squad
Speaker 1: into the Great Kaiser and into a barricaded room on
Speaker 1: the top floor where everyone could escape out of hatch
Speaker 1: if they needed to. And the roof as was stocked
Speaker 1: with refrigerators and buckets of motor oil in case they
Speaker 1: needed to drop refrigerators and or buckets of motor oil
Speaker 1: onto anybody from from their roof. The pantry was stocked
Speaker 1: with fireworks. And these four radio operators who are on
Speaker 1: the top floor, they have two groups. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote Caddle directly. You could interfere by putting a
Speaker 1: carrier wave on the police signal and transmitting at the
Speaker 1: same moment the police did. We made sure that the
Speaker 1: police speakers would make a screeching sound or a low hum.
Speaker 1: All those noises really grated on the police officers nerves.
Speaker 1: We could hear commanders swear and get frustrated. This created
Speaker 1: even more chaos on the streets. Wow, they were just
Speaker 1: like effectively like blocking and frustrating the police their own
Speaker 1: communications at this moment. Yeah, just just jamming it, just
Speaker 1: flooding it with more ship And so two of them
Speaker 1: were doing that, and two of them were monitoring what
Speaker 1: police communications they could and basically coordinating together. And then
Speaker 1: at the end of the day they unloaded all the equipment,
Speaker 1: packed it into their cars and drove away. And you know,
Speaker 1: I guess it had been long enough ago that this
Speaker 1: guy was willing to give an interview about this, like
Speaker 1: forty years later or whatever. That's that's fascinating. So I
Speaker 1: never never knew this, Like maybe people were like deeper
Speaker 1: into like squatting itself. Um, I might might know more
Speaker 1: of this, But I thought you were going to say,
Speaker 1: like the radio equipment was for the coordination among squatters
Speaker 1: an activists that day, but that's completely separate. Still, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know whether you know. I kind of presume
Speaker 1: since these people are all really good at radio and
Speaker 1: had all this equipment, they probably were doing communication, you know,
Speaker 1: coordinating or whatever, especially since they drove back like ten
Speaker 1: thousand cops, um, which coordination is a useful component of helps.
Speaker 1: But and then also during the coordination or maybe during
Speaker 1: the month leading up to it fifty but I think
Speaker 1: possibly on the day of fifty two, luxury apartments were
Speaker 1: squatted h and people moved into very nice apartments. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: one person who moved into a various apartment was the
Speaker 1: queen who got the queen and the coronation worked and um,
Speaker 1: but some people got to watch police retreat and other
Speaker 1: people got houses for a while so sometimes that's the
Speaker 1: best you can kind of hope for, you know, compared
Speaker 1: to a lot of demonstrations, it's a lot, you know, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: And so squats at this point are popping off everywhere
Speaker 1: around the country, big and small. One in the city
Speaker 1: of the Hague with squad in nineteen eighty It has
Speaker 1: two people. It held a cinema and a venue and
Speaker 1: a restaurant and a pirate radio station and published a
Speaker 1: magazine in the whole Squad last for twenty three years
Speaker 1: and likes. Something that I think is like kind of
Speaker 1: almost hard to wrap our heads around, um, is the
Speaker 1: scale of squatting. You know. Um, I I was not
Speaker 1: able to find a solid number of squads that existed
Speaker 1: in the early eighties. I saw it estimated and then
Speaker 1: like low tens of thousands, but I'm not I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: But that's huge. Yeah, And you know, it's everything from
Speaker 1: like here's an a meant that a couple of people
Speaker 1: live in to these giant complexes that have movie theaters
Speaker 1: and ship you know, um, and it just it, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's really impressive. You know, it's it's impressive
Speaker 1: because if you if you don't know, then you don't,
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily expect it, and you say, like, god,
Speaker 1: they're they're squatting, they're taking this unoccupied area. Maybe they
Speaker 1: have a nice shed somewhere or something. But no. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like even now with like much of the squatting movement, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, really really much smaller than before. Um, in Amsterdam,
Speaker 1: there is there is like, ah, a movie theater that
Speaker 1: you that is from the squatting movement that is like
Speaker 1: really close to the movement still, and there are like
Speaker 1: legalized squatted house groups that have like multiple front doors
Speaker 1: that in in the back kind of connect even if
Speaker 1: they necessarily didn't before, and like tens of people still
Speaker 1: live there. Yeah, And it also disseminated more into like
Speaker 1: small smaller towns and stuff. So if people are like
Speaker 1: in their thirties or forties, usually like often they they'll
Speaker 1: be able to name like a squat in a in
Speaker 1: like a nearby town or city, like not just like
Speaker 1: Amsterdam or like the like connected big cities like, but
Speaker 1: also like smaller places like Drowning In which was like
Speaker 1: a provincial provincial city and name they had like big
Speaker 1: squatting movements and cloning. It was supposedly very heavy and
Speaker 1: at some point name had like an anarchist based UH
Speaker 1: school area that was like a school based on their
Speaker 1: principles that lasted like for a while, based from like
Speaker 1: the squatting movement, they were building up a lot of stuff. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and so so one of those squads that I was
Speaker 1: able to find more information about one of these earlier
Speaker 1: squads that a lot of action happened around here. Actually, well,
Speaker 1: just some neat stories. I mean. One of the things
Speaker 1: that's so interesting about this is just like tons and
Speaker 1: tons of like neat stories from all of this time.
Speaker 1: Like I remember at one point being on top of
Speaker 1: a a squatted apartment complex that had like a courtyard
Speaker 1: in the middle, and you know, I think dozens of
Speaker 1: apartments and and the top is built in a way
Speaker 1: that to me reads like a castle because you have
Speaker 1: a roof and then you have a wall, and then
Speaker 1: you have the street on the other side. And people
Speaker 1: are like, oh yeah. In the early eighties, when cops
Speaker 1: would come down the street, we would use a catapult
Speaker 1: and thro paint bombs that are the size of paint
Speaker 1: cans at the cop cars, and then the cop cars
Speaker 1: would crash. I'm like, this is this has not mapped
Speaker 1: my experience of the world. Um. And so there's a
Speaker 1: squat in on harng rocked in and those two attached
Speaker 1: buildings and with fifty squatters broken another group of uh okay.
Speaker 1: So the book that I'm mostly reading from in this case,
Speaker 1: a lot of this is from a book called Cracking
Speaker 1: the Movement, which is not incredibly well translated and as
Speaker 1: full of firsthand accounts. And it says, quote, some musicians
Speaker 1: happened to be walking down the street in riot police
Speaker 1: unit forms and they came to play as music. So
Speaker 1: the squatters are just dressed up like riot coups at
Speaker 1: the opening of the squad um with instruments and just
Speaker 1: came and played. And maybe it was to cover the
Speaker 1: sound of like the alarms or I don't I have
Speaker 1: no fucking clue. I wish I knew why did they
Speaker 1: do this? I don't know? Um the same. So there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff like that that that's like
Speaker 1: why why did they do this? How did they get
Speaker 1: away with this? Is this? Is this the Netherlands? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like like they were like back in um and that
Speaker 1: I can't exactly place this, but they were like really
Speaker 1: sympathetic judges in the Netherlands, like where they said like,
Speaker 1: well there was there was this confrontation and there was
Speaker 1: the police, and now people get get sued for violence
Speaker 1: against the police because of bricks were thrown, et cetera allegedly,
Speaker 1: and then the and then like there were some some
Speaker 1: quit cases where the judge would go, well but I
Speaker 1: mean like, uh, they're they're wearing helmets, right, I mean
Speaker 1: the police were wearing Hell, that's no problem. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: completely like ha, how how does that happen? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember when I first showed up, I had just
Speaker 1: missed the eviction of a squad called UM the punk
Speaker 1: rock in Unbroken and and it had been this like
Speaker 1: huge elaborate eviction UM and I don't know and like
Speaker 1: someone like went to jail for I think what happened
Speaker 1: was they got accused of throwing a molotov at a
Speaker 1: cop and convicted of it and then like sentenced to
Speaker 1: like nine months in jail versus what at the time,
Speaker 1: there was a us UM, a U S anarchist who
Speaker 1: was in jail for seven years were throwing a rocket
Speaker 1: a cop and like so it the scale of everything,
Speaker 1: it's I don't know, whatever I'm not trying to make
Speaker 1: too big of a difference of the cultural differences, because
Speaker 1: I do think still like the core idea of the
Speaker 1: way that the Dutch squad movement like built agency and
Speaker 1: took power, I think it's still really beautiful. Okay, so
Speaker 1: the same, But also I think like these kinds of things,
Speaker 1: they stretch what is possible. Also okay, so this isn't
Speaker 1: the normal, well so especially not now, but like, um, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know the exact history of it, but I
Speaker 1: think the case can be made that actions like this
Speaker 1: um set they also set a precedent where in under
Speaker 1: certain circumstances, becomes possible to do more militant stuff because
Speaker 1: there's more of a history and more of a practice
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah. No, that's that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: And some of the stuff that we'll talk about about. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So the same squad and herong rocked. There was a
Speaker 1: phone in the elevator and the cops call it after
Speaker 1: a few days, and the squatter's answer and the cops
Speaker 1: are like, okay, we have established at the place was vacant,
Speaker 1: so you aren't facing immediate eviction. The cops like called
Speaker 1: to tell them that and the squatters are like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. Um. Also, what's the phone number here? Because
Speaker 1: they want to use the phone, and the cops are like,
Speaker 1: we're not telling any of the fucking phone number, and
Speaker 1: they like hang up and then the phone is disconnected
Speaker 1: a couple of days later. But even though ostensibly the
Speaker 1: squatters are allowed to remain until their court cases are resolved,
Speaker 1: the owners found a loophole in that law. And that
Speaker 1: loophole is the same loophole that cuts through most politics.
Speaker 1: Violence correct, violence that is completely extra legal. It's not
Speaker 1: actually a loophole in the law. It's just that owners
Speaker 1: figured out you could just beat the ship out of
Speaker 1: people and get what you need. Yeah, yeah, Um. Since
Speaker 1: cops wouldn't always evicted squads, owners would just hire construction
Speaker 1: workers and shipped to break in and beat up squatters. Um.
Speaker 1: And the Dutch word for construction workers like oh you
Speaker 1: should say instead of me um is this Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I see, I see where you're going for because there's
Speaker 1: a joke you can make. Yeah, it sounds like ball
Speaker 1: fucker to me. Okay, yeah, yeah, I got the funk
Speaker 1: out the fucker one. Yeah. These are completely different words,
Speaker 1: of course, but yeah, no absolute language. This is why
Speaker 1: actually no one was friends with me in the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: as I kept thinking Dutch words were funny. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: like and so so construction workers or just like thugs
Speaker 1: basically basically like owners hire people and are like, hey,
Speaker 1: go beat up these like, you know, scrawny squatter punks
Speaker 1: or whatever. And I don't know, and so it's just
Speaker 1: like sometimes like while I was there, even you know,
Speaker 1: he goes, everyone has to go sleep at the squad
Speaker 1: for a night or two in case the ball bockers
Speaker 1: show up to fight. And I'm glad I never had
Speaker 1: to fight them personally. But squatters would fight them off,
Speaker 1: and they would fight them off by standing on the
Speaker 1: roof and throwing bricks, adam and ship and as owners
Speaker 1: would hire people to beat up the squatters, the squatters
Speaker 1: retaliated and they would go directly to the owner's homes
Speaker 1: because the squatters are very good at finding information about
Speaker 1: who owns what buildings and things, and they would like
Speaker 1: break out windows and throw smoke bombs into owners houses
Speaker 1: and and retaliate to them being you know, thrown out
Speaker 1: onto the street or illegally evicted and all this ship
Speaker 1: and so rooftops ended up getting barricaded with like barbed
Speaker 1: wire and searchlights in case gangs try and break in
Speaker 1: over the rooftops, and and everyone went so hard, right,
Speaker 1: but for a couple of different reasons. First, being a
Speaker 1: squatter beats being homeless. And second I would say the
Speaker 1: Dutch squad scene is where I learned what solidarity looks
Speaker 1: like um and what collective responsibility really can look like.
Speaker 1: If you make it really hard for people to funk
Speaker 1: with you, you make people a lot less likely to
Speaker 1: funk with the next person, and you know, so that
Speaker 1: they became this attitude of like we always fight evictions
Speaker 1: because that is how we keep this whole thing going.
Speaker 1: And this is hard to set up, Like I've heard
Speaker 1: people speaking like frustrations, like how do you mean, how
Speaker 1: do you maintain this this mode? Or how do you
Speaker 1: keep getting the people to to show up? And it's
Speaker 1: like with certain houses, if you if you squat there
Speaker 1: with certain groups, and especially the more politicized ones, like
Speaker 1: I've heard people say like we had the rule like
Speaker 1: if you live in this house, you go to the
Speaker 1: squatting action and if you weren't there, you need a
Speaker 1: good excuse. But although because otherwise we will talk to
Speaker 1: you because you're supposed to be in solidarity with the rest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it it's interesting how it cuts across like who
Speaker 1: you like, you know, like people show up with squad
Speaker 1: actions or people that they can't stand UM at least
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that I saw or heard about,
Speaker 1: you know, And yeah, this this expectation. If you are
Speaker 1: a squatter, you go to squad actions whether you want
Speaker 1: to or not. UM, which is interesting, right because you're
Speaker 1: creating this social pressure. But it is like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's that's the movement that is providing your
Speaker 1: housing for free. It makes sense to keep some skin
Speaker 1: in the game. And with like there would be exceptions,
Speaker 1: right like if someone was undocumented and you know, or
Speaker 1: had overstayed their visa or whatever, like you know, if
Speaker 1: people like couldn't risk arrest. I think that people weren't
Speaker 1: asking them to come. But as you as you said,
Speaker 1: like you know, you need to need an excuse or
Speaker 1: otherwise you're you're going. Yeah. But also it's not also
Speaker 1: not like UM like standards. So there's this The solarity
Speaker 1: is really really good and really strong, and they were
Speaker 1: able to maintain it with a lot of the people participating,
Speaker 1: but also there were like situations where like people were
Speaker 1: helped to a squatted building and then like organized crime
Speaker 1: showed up, and then people came to defend the squad
Speaker 1: while like some of the people living in or like
Speaker 1: a lot of them in some cases inside were like
Speaker 1: almost like oblivious to what was happening. There's just an
Speaker 1: easy place to just move in and they and maybe
Speaker 1: they weren't like ah, that connected yet, or they didn't
Speaker 1: know or they were new. But but you have this
Speaker 1: situation like sometimes this is sort of like frustrating, kind
Speaker 1: of disconnecting. Like the people you're like, this is an
Speaker 1: important thing, this is a political action, and also we're
Speaker 1: fighting to maintain this while like people inside are like
Speaker 1: I don't even know, Yeah, like I just wanted a
Speaker 1: free place to sleep. Um, speaking of organized I'm we
Speaker 1: live under a system by which people force us to
Speaker 1: participate in capitalism, which feels like organized crime. And we
Speaker 1: also are sponsored by capitalism. No, we're supposed to only
Speaker 1: be sponsored by good things. Um, it's almost like there's
Speaker 1: a contradiction that I face by by trying to do this. Sophie,
Speaker 1: you seem like the things that are legal are the worst, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, organized legal crime the okay whatever, here's some
Speaker 1: advertisers and we are back and we are talking about Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that's actually one of the things that I wanted
Speaker 1: to know more about, because you know, I keep reading
Speaker 1: about like thugs showing up or construction workers showing up,
Speaker 1: but I'm also aware of organized crime as being participated
Speaker 1: in this. The squad I lived the longest in in
Speaker 1: the Netherlands. Um was mafia leader, had gone to prison
Speaker 1: for being a mafia leader. So people moved into his
Speaker 1: mansion and that's where I lived. I think I know
Speaker 1: where this is going. And it ruled h and you know,
Speaker 1: and that every now and then, like mafia guys would
Speaker 1: show up at the front door being like we think
Speaker 1: you should leave, and like people were like, no, we
Speaker 1: have very good barricades and we're good, and then they
Speaker 1: would leave. Um. I don't know, I like, like I said,
Speaker 1: I don't really have like a structured knowledge knowledge of it.
Speaker 1: But you hear like a lot of weird stories come
Speaker 1: by like this kind of steam like oh, it's our
Speaker 1: building and we want it. Um, and then there's just
Speaker 1: like often organized crime is quite conservative and uh so there.
Speaker 1: I've heard stories and not trust who they are of
Speaker 1: like Hell's Angels, gangs joining the police to fight squatters
Speaker 1: for instance. Yeah, but I've also stories of like, um,
Speaker 1: places being squatted where the owner has a problem with
Speaker 1: organized crime and then some very friendly thugs keep coming back. Hey, hello,
Speaker 1: Well I love what you've done with the place. Love
Speaker 1: it nice. So here's my phone number. Hey, if this
Speaker 1: guy who owns this place comes by, would you be
Speaker 1: a dog give us a ring? And that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the three way fight thing, right, that is the
Speaker 1: like you know, um, yeah, that's a very nice situation
Speaker 1: to have. But also like where other situations like um,
Speaker 1: so this is a story I've heard where people would
Speaker 1: have had squatted a house hm um, and some some
Speaker 1: mafia people came over and they were like some kind
Speaker 1: of a shady folk and then they'll come by and
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, that's better, better get out. We wanna
Speaker 1: we need with just get out and uh and there
Speaker 1: was like no, no, we're fine. And then at night
Speaker 1: they get broken into and like beating the ship out
Speaker 1: of and then they find that in the morning when
Speaker 1: they're still there because they're not like taken out of
Speaker 1: it like the building was then left arelic but then
Speaker 1: they find that in some part of the building there
Speaker 1: was a safe that was now empty. Oh shit, like
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff would happen also, yeah, no, that
Speaker 1: makes sense. And then there's some people like more recently,
Speaker 1: let's say, like you know, squatting film the mafia is
Speaker 1: nice because they don't call the cops. So just if
Speaker 1: you if you have enough friends that they don't want
Speaker 1: to bother it, whither with it, then it's fine because
Speaker 1: you know they're Yeah, so it's it's easier than dealing
Speaker 1: with the bureaucracy. And I think that's where where I lived.
Speaker 1: I think that was the reason it lasted for a
Speaker 1: while was because well, the owners in jail, like I
Speaker 1: don't know, he wasn't starting the corporate sidings against us.
Speaker 1: But one thing you said, okay, like to one of
Speaker 1: the things that he said, oh well, I like what
Speaker 1: you've done with the place. One of the things that
Speaker 1: really comes up when you start talking people about squatting,
Speaker 1: there's this conception of like basically like people coming in
Speaker 1: and trashing places, um, and that absolutely happens sometimes, right,
Speaker 1: But one of the things that I was really struck
Speaker 1: by was that overall, people are incredibly industrious at turning
Speaker 1: places into living places and like beautifying it, not necessarily
Speaker 1: in ways that owners would like, but certainly ways that
Speaker 1: squatters would like. I mean, I remember going into a
Speaker 1: place that was a you know, it's like four stories
Speaker 1: and there were no floors. When people moved in, it
Speaker 1: was a shell of a house, and they literally built
Speaker 1: the floors kind of in the middle as like kind
Speaker 1: of almost like it looked like a like a jungle gym.
Speaker 1: You know. They just like put construction polls up and
Speaker 1: then built floors, and then there's just like you know,
Speaker 1: if you're on the top floor, you could fall forty
Speaker 1: feet if you were drunk. But fortunately no one was
Speaker 1: ever drunk. No, people are drunk all the time, probably
Speaker 1: for the best. But they entered into a relaxed state.
Speaker 1: You know. That helped me. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But this
Speaker 1: is this is interesting. So um, there's like a lot
Speaker 1: of because you say like that the bow puckers were
Speaker 1: like the like often called in as thugs. Um, but
Speaker 1: there's like a lot of like construction people or people
Speaker 1: who have learned to love or do construction within within squatting.
Speaker 1: Because of all this like d I y building stuff
Speaker 1: they do, and it's it's also something that has won
Speaker 1: over like at least in the day, like a lot
Speaker 1: of also like liberals and centrist when it's like, well
Speaker 1: but if they're fixing the place up, then it's good
Speaker 1: and you can show like, oh look how nice it is.
Speaker 1: Look how looks to the point that you get now
Speaker 1: you get like gentrifying private spaces that use like sort
Speaker 1: of like the alternative squatter aesthetic as a as a
Speaker 1: as a marker of style. So they will make a
Speaker 1: very professional ballet based furniture, for instance. And this is
Speaker 1: like like if you have like a new hip like
Speaker 1: yuppy place intending to gent are fine area, chances are
Speaker 1: you're going to see like pellet based furniture here or
Speaker 1: there because they because they from that style and from
Speaker 1: this supposed alternative. Oh it's your own choice. You're here
Speaker 1: as an individual because you're not in the mainstream. You
Speaker 1: know that that kind of hipster what you're doing. I
Speaker 1: wish that surprised me in any way. But okay, so
Speaker 1: back to one more thing. Okay, one more thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: do you remember from the previous episode when I say,
Speaker 1: like sometimes judges would be quite well willing towards squatters occasionally,
Speaker 1: not in general, but sometimes so um. I heard stories
Speaker 1: of one judge where like squatters were quite happy if
Speaker 1: they got this one judge because he was he was
Speaker 1: a very common sense kind of areas like, okay, what
Speaker 1: were they really doing something with the building? No, well, no,
Speaker 1: people should live there. Fine. Yeah. And this person was
Speaker 1: also known for occasionally being like, you know what, let's uh,
Speaker 1: let's have a recess. We'll meet there at the squad
Speaker 1: in uh, fifteen minutes. It's a little bit of walk,
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee, let's go see the place. And
Speaker 1: the judge would just walk into the house. You're like, okay,
Speaker 1: let me in. Let's see. How's it look. Oh, you
Speaker 1: kept it nice and clean. Oh it's that that part
Speaker 1: doesn't look so great. What's going on there? And and
Speaker 1: then if the if the place looked nice, then he
Speaker 1: would be more willing to say like that's funny. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that squatters were doing past
Speaker 1: the rule of law and kind of almost how they started,
Speaker 1: I think, actually really built their power is they would
Speaker 1: also re squad buildings and re squading buildings was kind
Speaker 1: of the most extreme statement, because you're you're driving out
Speaker 1: the owner's thugs or you're driving out cops. You're taking
Speaker 1: the building by force. And usually at this point I
Speaker 1: have no more legal protection. You've lost your court cases,
Speaker 1: but you don't care. It's your house you want back
Speaker 1: in Um. And so some of these re squads became
Speaker 1: the most potent symbols during a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of the larger riots and stuff during or so focus
Speaker 1: around these and during the summer. A few months after
Speaker 1: Coronation Day, on July third, folks re squatted a building
Speaker 1: called the vogel Strouss Vogels choice Um. It was held
Speaker 1: by thugs who who threw rocks. They also threw a
Speaker 1: sewer pipe, They threw a chair, They threw everything that
Speaker 1: they could find to keep the squatters back. Because the
Speaker 1: squatters had stockpiled all that stuff ahead of time. So
Speaker 1: the squatters built a siege in a siege shield. They
Speaker 1: took a wooden door. They attached legs to it, like
Speaker 1: tall legs, I think so, kind of like a very
Speaker 1: tall table so they could set it down. I think
Speaker 1: that's the best I can understand. And then they put
Speaker 1: a box spring mattress on top so that as rocks came,
Speaker 1: they would like bounce off, and they walked it towards
Speaker 1: the door to protect them from the rocks. And they
Speaker 1: while in the meantime other squatters ripped up cobble stones
Speaker 1: broke them with a hammer into manageable chunks to throw
Speaker 1: at the thugs inside the building. They get to a
Speaker 1: window and they rammed open with beams and traffic signs
Speaker 1: and they get into the ground floor. But since they
Speaker 1: were attacking a building that they had built the defenses for,
Speaker 1: it was very well defended. The trap door up to
Speaker 1: the second floor um was had a lot of like
Speaker 1: refrigerators and handy heavy things like next to it to
Speaker 1: be put onto the trap door. So they use a
Speaker 1: circular saw they cut through their own trap door. They
Speaker 1: make it up to the next floor and then the floor.
Speaker 1: After that, some Italian squatters showed up with the translation
Speaker 1: calls them iron catapults, and they launched lead weights up
Speaker 1: the next stairwell to drive back the thugs. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I have no idea iron catapults. Yeah no, I I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know whether this is like a
Speaker 1: three person sling shot or whether it was actual catapults.
Speaker 1: I have no fucking clue. Um, they drive back the
Speaker 1: thugs by throwing lead weights at them. Uh, and then
Speaker 1: they um they the thugs flee out the roof and
Speaker 1: get away. And so once they've re squatted the building,
Speaker 1: they turn around and start barricading immediately the shield door
Speaker 1: was nailed over a window, and riot cops show up
Speaker 1: like right away, and a crowd shows up outside. Hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty RYOT cops break into a two long charge,
Speaker 1: and the thirty and forty folks inside they don't run away,
Speaker 1: because you don't abandon your fronts. Outside the crowd fights back,
Speaker 1: and there's like a scene like one squatter with an
Speaker 1: iron bar like I think like a ten foot bar
Speaker 1: is just like holding to twelve cops at Bay by
Speaker 1: like swinging this bar around. Both sides are throwing rocks
Speaker 1: at each other. At this point, the cops are are
Speaker 1: throwing rocks back. Uh. The cops fire CN gas even
Speaker 1: though it had been just illegalized m or just banned
Speaker 1: in favor of the slightly less toxic cs gas, and
Speaker 1: squatters start throwing up in the canal. This whole melee Maelstrom.
Speaker 1: Eventually the cops make it into the building. Um Or.
Speaker 1: They make it to the building and the squatters inside
Speaker 1: are listening to Free Kaiser the radio station, the pirate
Speaker 1: radio station, and it's playing street fighting. It's all very
Speaker 1: cinematic the way it's all described. It's playing street fighting
Speaker 1: Man by the Rolling Stones and Anarchy in the UK
Speaker 1: by the sex Pistols. And the account that I read
Speaker 1: was like, instead of the songs inspiring morale, the squatters
Speaker 1: were like, could they just fucking play something different? Why
Speaker 1: do they keep playing these fucking songs? Um And then
Speaker 1: they're throwing everything left right, the half of it just
Speaker 1: got thrown at them. They turn around and they throw
Speaker 1: bed springs, heaters, chairs, tables, everything at the cops. They
Speaker 1: run out of stuff to throw um. Tear gas is
Speaker 1: pouring into the house, so eventually they flee out over
Speaker 1: the roof, except two people who stay behind to get arrested.
Speaker 1: Some get out the ground floor and they like jump
Speaker 1: into the canal to get away. Others make it out
Speaker 1: over the roof and jump across like a one meter
Speaker 1: or so gap to the next building and then like
Speaker 1: break into the next building. Um Or, they find an
Speaker 1: open window and they crawl through and they leave a
Speaker 1: sorry note, like an apology note, and some money on
Speaker 1: the table of the person whose apartment that they just
Speaker 1: broke too. Some of the people who live there are
Speaker 1: really upset about this, and some of the people who
Speaker 1: live there are super sympathetic. Like at least one woman's
Speaker 1: squatter gets basically like hidden in an apartment I think
Speaker 1: under a bed um in order to keep the cops away.
Speaker 1: But another person is like, they're in here, you know
Speaker 1: which whatever you broke into their house, I don't know whatever.
Speaker 1: UM cops come in arrest some of them drag them
Speaker 1: out by their hair. It's like super brutal arrest. Some
Speaker 1: of them are beaten, bloody, unconscious, and the riot like
Speaker 1: kind of moves into the streets and starts moving around
Speaker 1: the city and it largely keeps the police at bay
Speaker 1: and the squatters. They lose the house, right, but they
Speaker 1: declared the day of victory and they had won because
Speaker 1: this is the first like, this is the most intense
Speaker 1: confrontation they've had so far, I think, besides the not
Speaker 1: squat related Queen's Day riots. UM, and they wont because
Speaker 1: they've proven that they were willing to stake their lives
Speaker 1: defending having places to sleep. Um, and they basically were like,
Speaker 1: nothing's going to be the same after this, and there's
Speaker 1: this big sea change movement. UM. A ton of squatters
Speaker 1: were like, fuck this, this is too serious now and
Speaker 1: started backing out of the movement. I think around this
Speaker 1: time some entire neighborhood groups were like, you know, we
Speaker 1: kind of got our houses, We're gonna kind of back
Speaker 1: off now. Um. But the public perception changed to squatters
Speaker 1: will fight tooth and fucking nail for roof of their
Speaker 1: heads and you can't funk with them. And the real
Speaker 1: estate prospectors who had hired the thugs at that particular
Speaker 1: squad fled the country and moved to Germany for a
Speaker 1: while because they were afraid for their lives. They do.
Speaker 1: They did come back and then got their like car
Speaker 1: pushed into the canal and ship, but um, for a
Speaker 1: while they flee the country. Sixteen people arrested for defending
Speaker 1: this house, six of whom are charged in jail. They
Speaker 1: refused to give their names. They make nuisances of themselves.
Speaker 1: Squatters gather outside the jail loud as hell in what's
Speaker 1: called a noise demo. UM, where you know one that
Speaker 1: I've been on people bring like a hand crank air
Speaker 1: raid siren and just like make a ton of noise.
Speaker 1: The pirate radio station starts sending messages into the jail.
Speaker 1: Care packages show up every hour for the rstes. All
Speaker 1: the old hippie radical lawyers step up and are like,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll defend you. Um So this this whole
Speaker 1: big fucking thing, And this is the second time that
Speaker 1: this gag has happened in real life on this show.
Speaker 1: One of the squatters, he's in jail, and the jailer
Speaker 1: is like, someone made you a cake. I'm going to
Speaker 1: give you the cake, but you can't have the pan.
Speaker 1: I'm not allowed to have the pan, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: pull that. He pulls the cake out of the pan.
Speaker 1: Somehow it comes up out in one piece. He hands
Speaker 1: it to the squatter leaves, and the squatter starts breaking
Speaker 1: off pieces of the cake to eat. And there's a
Speaker 1: fucking file baked into the cake. Really yeah yeah, And
Speaker 1: and the squatter doesn't use it right, He like hides
Speaker 1: it in his sweater, and then later he gets moved
Speaker 1: to a different jail and they like find the file
Speaker 1: in his sweater and confiscate it. I know, It's like,
Speaker 1: this could have gone really epic jail break, like the
Speaker 1: last time this exact same fucking any tune ship happened
Speaker 1: in real life of this show. And they spent six
Speaker 1: weeks in jail, and this is the longest the squatters
Speaker 1: had spent in jail up to that point. And I
Speaker 1: don't know whenever, I've never spent that long in jail.
Speaker 1: But it's okay. So they go to trial and they
Speaker 1: decide they're going to make a mockery of the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And they're like, if the judge is an asshole, we
Speaker 1: should all have like good jokes lined up to make
Speaker 1: fun of the judge. To quote one of the arrestees,
Speaker 1: they considered puking, shifting, standing on your head, fainting, or
Speaker 1: pointing out a ZiT on the judge's face. That's like
Speaker 1: they're like, what should we do? You know? And one
Speaker 1: of them said that to me is the essence of
Speaker 1: a political trial, not so much the testimony you give,
Speaker 1: but that you see it as a fight who's determining
Speaker 1: the order here? Which I think it's at the the
Speaker 1: basic idea behind the Dutch Squatter success. You just deciding
Speaker 1: that you are in charge whether or not the other
Speaker 1: people think that that's true. Um, you determine the means
Speaker 1: of engagement. You you act as though your cause is
Speaker 1: legitimate and you are a legit at force. You're not
Speaker 1: asking for housing, you're fucking taking it and defending it.
Speaker 1: So later they're at least released on their own recognance
Speaker 1: and they just don't show up to their next trial date. Instead,
Speaker 1: they set up a squatters court. They've made they pronounced
Speaker 1: judgment on the speculators, the city, the police, the law,
Speaker 1: and have a big demonstration afterwards, and squatters have meetings
Speaker 1: all over the city to plan the next step, and
Speaker 1: they decide that their best move is to make it
Speaker 1: really fucking financially expensive for the city to evict their
Speaker 1: squads Um, which they do in two ways. One, they
Speaker 1: make their houses really well defended, so it takes a
Speaker 1: ton of cops and equipment to evict them. I know
Speaker 1: that this eventually culminates like twenty years later, at least
Speaker 1: in Um. You have eviction waves right where you know,
Speaker 1: the cops in Amsterdam are not enough to evict the
Speaker 1: squads in Amsterdam, or the same in other cities, I believe,
Speaker 1: And so it's like once every couple of months, all
Speaker 1: the cops from the country like get together to evict
Speaker 1: all the squads as many as they can in one day. Um,
Speaker 1: in which case your job then becomes make it take
Speaker 1: a really long time so fewer squads end up evicted. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's the first way defend the hell out of the
Speaker 1: squads and to the riots. Need to do as much
Speaker 1: damage as possible to banks and real estate agents and
Speaker 1: other such targets. Um. And that's the riots need to
Speaker 1: spread throughout the city. Basically, if you have victed house,
Speaker 1: there isn't just gonna be a riot at that house.
Speaker 1: There will be targeted rioting everywhere. You can't drag us
Speaker 1: out of our homes. And the new strategy was soon
Speaker 1: put to a test. The first time, it succeeded really well.
Speaker 1: In the second time, it kind of failed. Um. The
Speaker 1: first time, it took two thousand fucking cops with armored cars, bulldozers,
Speaker 1: construction equipment, three hydraulic cranes too, water cannons and snipers
Speaker 1: with rifles on rooftops and military police. Um. The squatters
Speaker 1: fought them off until the last minute, then snuck out
Speaker 1: through a hole in the wall into the church next door.
Speaker 1: Which just fucking rules. Um. The second time, I think
Speaker 1: this is what happened is very whatever. A single squatter
Speaker 1: inside and reads out a statement on a megaphone to
Speaker 1: the police, we will keep our struggle in our own
Speaker 1: hands and determine ourselves how and when it will take place. Basically,
Speaker 1: they're like, you thought we were really going to defend
Speaker 1: this one, but we're not. Fuck you. He wasted all
Speaker 1: this fucking effort. Um. But the police then went wild
Speaker 1: on the crowd outside, which was actually mostly like bystanders
Speaker 1: and tourists, um, and the cops were kind of brutaled people.
Speaker 1: So it was like not seen as a success. Whoa
Speaker 1: they actually there's like so they found the house empty
Speaker 1: because they were like, we're we're not going to fight
Speaker 1: for this one because we choose the thing. And then
Speaker 1: the police were so angry they just lash out at
Speaker 1: I think. So it seems like they maybe kind of
Speaker 1: mistook the crowd outside for being more squatters or whatever.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it seems like they were like, maybe there
Speaker 1: were some squatters outside, but they just like when you know,
Speaker 1: as a police riot basically. Um. And so the six
Speaker 1: arrestees from before their their court date that they actually
Speaker 1: go to Is on September eight, and the night before
Speaker 1: the Volgo, strauss Is squatted again for the third time,
Speaker 1: because it's at this point as symbol, and also it's
Speaker 1: a cool way to be like, well, you all, are
Speaker 1: you arrested us for doing this in the trials tomorrow?
Speaker 1: We're going to squat it again. Um. And this time
Speaker 1: they did it quietly at night. They brought thirty squatters
Speaker 1: with ladders and there were three of the owner's thugs
Speaker 1: inside who they just escorted outside and kicked out. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know how long that re squad lasted. M hm.
Speaker 1: So the name is it? Yeah, please Strauss is that
Speaker 1: it's not strat, No, it's it's stru y s Okay,
Speaker 1: how do you actually say it vocal strauss? So I
Speaker 1: was close, okay, close. Yeah. So it's the sound that's
Speaker 1: the same for the word onion, but it's the fancy
Speaker 1: spelling of it. So normally an Ostrich in Dutchess and
Speaker 1: Strauss voel okay. Now, so they it did and they
Speaker 1: wrote it with a y, which is kind of the
Speaker 1: kind of the fancy or faux fancy way to do it.
Speaker 1: So I wonder what that's about. There's a small chance
Speaker 1: it's a transcription error on my part, but I don't know. No,
Speaker 1: they do that, Okay, Okay, yeah, I'm not sure. Um okay.
Speaker 1: So the trial it starts, it lasts like two years,
Speaker 1: and throughout it, the defendants they just keep fucking with it,
Speaker 1: like basically everyone who's on trial in this podcast, which
Speaker 1: I don't even specifically recommend anyone who's listening, I'm like,
Speaker 1: sometimes you just gotta like put your head down and
Speaker 1: take your time, you know. Um, But it's also really
Speaker 1: cool if you do this kind of ship. One of
Speaker 1: the defendants named b. A. S. Boss. Um. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: just sat there knitting, very colorful knitting. Um. At one
Speaker 1: point someone was like, oh, he's the only one who
Speaker 1: actually got anything done during it was a waste of
Speaker 1: time for everyone but Boss. At one point, Boss also
Speaker 1: stole the judge's gabble. Um. They turned the whole thing
Speaker 1: into a circus every chance they get their tearing up
Speaker 1: law books and throwing them at people. One of their
Speaker 1: supporters like vomits on purpose in the audience. Um. And
Speaker 1: in the end, some of them got off and some
Speaker 1: of them got like two to four months in prison. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, it's not very long, um for how
Speaker 1: much effort was put into all of this. Uh. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: squats are happening in evictions are happening. Riots are happening,
Speaker 1: and when they demonstrate, apparently a lot of them. The
Speaker 1: demonstrations are silent, but for one chant right to live.
Speaker 1: And they go to real estate prospectors homes. They smash
Speaker 1: out windows, they throw in smoke bombs, h Fancy cars
Speaker 1: with the real estate prospectors are pushed into canals. They
Speaker 1: loot fancy storefronts and build barricades of stolen mannekins. At
Speaker 1: one point they lured motorcycle cops into a trap. They
Speaker 1: were like being chased by motorcycle cops. So they like
Speaker 1: I think, like ran around the corner where they had
Speaker 1: set up a bunch of um dumpsters barricades, and all
Speaker 1: the motorcycle cops crash into the dumpsters. Um, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. And then other dumpsters are dragged into the
Speaker 1: street and set on fire. Um. But you know what
Speaker 1: else is on fire are these savings from the love it. Um.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this word from potatoes and
Speaker 1: wait and deep fried things. And we are back, and
Speaker 1: we are talking about rioting in a way as a
Speaker 1: way to defend tens of thousands of people getting to
Speaker 1: sleep inside instead of outside. That's like the thing that
Speaker 1: I think like often like gets lost is like I
Speaker 1: think when I was young, it would just be like
Speaker 1: riots are cool, right, but you could really easily have
Speaker 1: the other side where you're like, oh, this just sounds
Speaker 1: like meaningless destruction, right. But it's the context that is
Speaker 1: so interesting to me, because you know, there's like riots
Speaker 1: that are really bad all the time to write like,
Speaker 1: but the context of like we are exerting political force
Speaker 1: in as directly as possible so that we all get
Speaker 1: to keep sleeping inside, you know, is the I feel
Speaker 1: like it's like too easy to get like just caught
Speaker 1: up in the like Looney Tunes trick the cops into
Speaker 1: driving into barricades thing. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: like if you if you take if you take it further,
Speaker 1: even if you're not keeping tens of thousands of people
Speaker 1: off the street, like um, part of the the thing
Speaker 1: you get with squatting is freedom of your time, because yeah,
Speaker 1: instead of paying rent, you do not, so you get
Speaker 1: you get those hours of the day back, which means
Speaker 1: it can help you organized, get other stuff done or
Speaker 1: do work in the community and set up just like
Speaker 1: projects of like mutual aid and services that others don't
Speaker 1: provide them to live more the way you want to
Speaker 1: and to give an example of how the world could be.
Speaker 1: And this is also at stake like um, part of
Speaker 1: the importance of of evicting these things, besides protecting the
Speaker 1: money value for the for the investors, is also to
Speaker 1: prevent exactly the kind of organizing that they tried to do.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know if you intend to talk about
Speaker 1: the via fizza plant, no, tell me about that. But
Speaker 1: the for this was initiated from the from the squadding
Speaker 1: movement as a way to say, like, um, we want
Speaker 1: to provide things like outside of capitalism and for them
Speaker 1: to be free. So what they did, um, is they
Speaker 1: they fixed like a lot of bikes, like they bought
Speaker 1: them or built them or painted them. And they were white, white,
Speaker 1: the fat blonde white. Yeah. And so the idea was
Speaker 1: you get these, you get these bikes everywhere and they're
Speaker 1: marked so you know, this is a bike you can
Speaker 1: just use and people just cycle these bikes around and
Speaker 1: get them. Um. And that worked pretty well. Um. And
Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing you can do when
Speaker 1: you have these this resource and the time for yourself
Speaker 1: that you don't need to spend um working for a landlord. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that is that is a really good point. Um. And
Speaker 1: also I like the directness of saying working for a
Speaker 1: landlord because that is what you do when you pay rent,
Speaker 1: You go out and you make money to give to
Speaker 1: your landlord. Yeah. Um yeah, more than a house, more
Speaker 1: than just a roof over your head. Like if you're
Speaker 1: not if you're not homeless, then squatting is you get back,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, fifteen to twenty hours of your
Speaker 1: best hours in the week that you don't pay your landlord.
Speaker 1: Yeah and so okay, so and I was it goes
Speaker 1: very well with what was next in the script. In
Speaker 1: addition to squatting for housing, people are squatting for social
Speaker 1: space as well, and you have squat bars up all
Speaker 1: over the city and and also other social centers that
Speaker 1: are not just revolving around drinking, but some of the
Speaker 1: squat bars would provide bounties. Basically, it's like if you
Speaker 1: take out the surveillance camera, you can drink for free
Speaker 1: at the squad bar for the night. Um. Years later,
Speaker 1: I went out on a bounty hunt for I Amsterdam banners,
Speaker 1: which is like this gentrification campaign for the city. Um.
Speaker 1: And it was a really bad idea because it was
Speaker 1: just me and my drunk friend climbing flag poles over
Speaker 1: canals in the middle of the night. But it got
Speaker 1: us free beer, Okay, So anyway, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: still this kind of thing happens still at times. Is
Speaker 1: this is like smaller scale, but it's not it's not gone. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's looking awesome, um. And what you're talking about, like,
Speaker 1: you know, and like the first time I was in
Speaker 1: a really good giveaway shop. Right in the US, we
Speaker 1: usually them free stores, and I remember them being the
Speaker 1: giveaway shops and things like where you just you can
Speaker 1: walk in and they're like when we're not paying rent
Speaker 1: and all this ship is stuff we pull out of
Speaker 1: the trash, so like it's just free and people can
Speaker 1: just come in and take what they need, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's really fucking nice. Um. So eventually in nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: in October nineteen eighty, a year after the Great Kaiser
Speaker 1: was supposed to be evicted, but they held onto it
Speaker 1: for an extra year, the city bought Great Kaiser, and
Speaker 1: after negotiations with the squatters, multiple housing cooperatives decided to
Speaker 1: move into the building. And this was contentious someone It
Speaker 1: was seen by some in the squatter movement as like
Speaker 1: basically the squader movement going bourgeois. Others took it as
Speaker 1: a victory. I think this is one of the earlier
Speaker 1: examples of legalized squads, but I'm not actually entirely certain.
Speaker 1: I had a hard time finding the timeline of legalized squads.
Speaker 1: Um And at one point before this all happened, before
Speaker 1: it all happened, some faction of squatters broke back in
Speaker 1: before and got drunk in trash the place and covered
Speaker 1: in slogans basically being like fun bougeoisseholes or whatever. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then others went in to clean it up. And
Speaker 1: so I think that that gets as some of the
Speaker 1: tensions that are starting to happen in the movement at
Speaker 1: this point. Um And there starts also being more tension
Speaker 1: between neighborhoods and the citywide council as well. Theoretically, the
Speaker 1: citywide council can only act as a coordinating body, and
Speaker 1: no one, no neighborhood or click was in charge any
Speaker 1: neighborhood could call for a citywide meeting, but in practice
Speaker 1: some portion of the squadter movement was ending up kind
Speaker 1: of directing other portions of the squadter movement. An entire
Speaker 1: neighborhoods end up feeling disenfranchised, especially the less radical ones,
Speaker 1: I believe, And a lot of the kind of conversation
Speaker 1: around then is like, when is it a scene, when
Speaker 1: is it a movement? And so so. Most of the
Speaker 1: largest riots were in those first few years, but the
Speaker 1: squadding movement continued afterwards. And one of the biggest things,
Speaker 1: one of the sort of sea change moments that happened
Speaker 1: in this twenty three year old Dutch squatter named howns
Speaker 1: Cock died in a police cell after being severely beaten
Speaker 1: during his arrest in a re squad action, and the
Speaker 1: movement gathered to discuss. Basically they're like, well, fuck it
Speaker 1: if they're just going to beat us to death anyway,
Speaker 1: And in that kind of crisis moment, fear lifted and
Speaker 1: the molotops came out and cop cars started burning. There
Speaker 1: were forty different lightning strike actions taken in revenge for
Speaker 1: his death or arson's at cops stations. A tour boat,
Speaker 1: City Hall, the city records office. Other cities set up
Speaker 1: burning barricades and broke out government windows. And the arsons
Speaker 1: were probably committed only by a limited group of people,
Speaker 1: but thousands of people showed up the next day at
Speaker 1: a demonstration, and previous divisions that have been splintering the
Speaker 1: scene started to fall apart that the cops declared the
Speaker 1: death and overdose, though, and the squatters had a new demand.
Speaker 1: They were like, all right, we want an independent autopsy,
Speaker 1: and the media agreed. They were like, we want to
Speaker 1: see the real reports. And basically, through that combination of pressure,
Speaker 1: the autopsy happened, and the truth in the end was complicated.
Speaker 1: To quote that book Cracking the Movement, hans Cock died
Speaker 1: because the police let him die, but he died also
Speaker 1: because he, in any case, to a certain extent, wanted to.
Speaker 1: During his arrest, he swallowed a bottle of methadone tablets,
Speaker 1: and he knew what kind of consequences that might have.
Speaker 1: Hans Cock had said to his parents he wouldn't live
Speaker 1: to see thirty. So a year later, at his memorial,
Speaker 1: the squatters marched the police station and smashed out the windows,
Speaker 1: and then they laid wreaths and flowers against the wall,
Speaker 1: and most of the crowd moved on, but some of
Speaker 1: the squatters and Hans Cock's father linked arms and surrounded
Speaker 1: the wreaths and they decided for that part of the
Speaker 1: action they were going to not use violence. Right, this
Speaker 1: is now a symbolic in a different way. And so
Speaker 1: the media shows up just as the cops crash into
Speaker 1: the the crash into people with batons and beat Hans's
Speaker 1: father and trample the flowers and you know, destroy this memorial.
Speaker 1: And everything I've read about the squad movement in the
Speaker 1: Netherlands talked about how peaked in nineteen eighty and declined. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: as if the movement only happened from one and that
Speaker 1: as you are a testament to I believe, um isn't true. Um, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: And it seems likely that there were fewer squad actions
Speaker 1: after that, Like I mean, probably the majority of squad
Speaker 1: actions happened after that, right, But the biggest riots were
Speaker 1: in for sure. Right. But squatting is about living, is
Speaker 1: about being housed, It's about taking back our time. And
Speaker 1: squads continued and people have lived decades and squads and
Speaker 1: the squad movement has refined its methods. Um squatters used
Speaker 1: their access to space to be active participants in worldwide
Speaker 1: political struggle. The Meager squad bars which served up cheap
Speaker 1: beer which half the time was stolen from supermarkets anyway,
Speaker 1: raised money to send to revolutionaries in Latin America. They
Speaker 1: ran giveaway shops, They held political movie nights and discussions.
Speaker 1: They housed refugees and migrants. They hit fugitives. They also
Speaker 1: formed the cornerstone of the Dutch anti fascist movement, which
Speaker 1: is its own beautiful story that I don't have time
Speaker 1: to go into, but directly stopped fascist organ within the
Speaker 1: city of Amsterdam at one point in the eight is
Speaker 1: and sent a growing far right movement at least in
Speaker 1: that part of the Netherlands into decline for a while. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And as far as I understand, is one of the
Speaker 1: kind of cornerstones of what we now kind of understand
Speaker 1: is the anti fascist movement or like anti fire or
Speaker 1: whatever coming out of a lot of this ship that happened.
Speaker 1: Not as like the soul. Yeah, I would absolutely absolutely agree.
Speaker 1: In many ways it's the cornerstone and where much of
Speaker 1: like movement infrastructure is now based. UM I was a
Speaker 1: bit quiet because I recently got told or retold, like
Speaker 1: the story of like the initial actions around the Hans Cook.
Speaker 1: So when you when you told that that story, Um, um,
Speaker 1: it's it's got it's quite heavy because of course Unco
Speaker 1: was arrested like heavily heavily beaten in a in a
Speaker 1: re squad situation and where gunshots were fired my police, etcetera. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And so to hear like this thing about the memorial
Speaker 1: that kind of continues that that story. Um, but I
Speaker 1: would have absolutely agree, like the people people pretend like, oh,
Speaker 1: squatting is is over in the early eighties, where like, um,
Speaker 1: there's there's there's been a decline and it's been like
Speaker 1: progressive with not a linear progression either. Um. But it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not gone and it's and it's much more like
Speaker 1: it's been bigger for like quite for quite recent like
Speaker 1: the squatting ban is now twelve twelve years old. Um.
Speaker 1: And that that was a big blow, especially to like
Speaker 1: the squatting movement in smaller towns. Um. Because in bigger cities,
Speaker 1: when there's more of a squatting movement there, they can
Speaker 1: take a blow also better. So the bigger, the bigger populations,
Speaker 1: they can manage the blow better. But but squatting is
Speaker 1: still is still relevant, and it's still being done also
Speaker 1: in in new ways, and there are new groups also
Speaker 1: innovating and working on this. And um So the fact
Speaker 1: that I've heard so much about squatting, even though I
Speaker 1: myself I'm not directly very involved with the squatting itself.
Speaker 1: Um it's also a testament of it of its influence.
Speaker 1: UM I have like been like around and doing things
Speaker 1: with with squatting, but I wouldn't call myself a squatter.
Speaker 1: But it's such a pervasive part of like the radicalism
Speaker 1: and leftism in the Netherlands that you you it's it's
Speaker 1: always there because it's it's where infrastructures, where experience is. UM.
Speaker 1: If you're looking now at recent actions where things like
Speaker 1: there's this confrontation with police, you instantly see the difference.
Speaker 1: Like if there's a group of people with some experienced
Speaker 1: squatters among them, especially older ones, then suddenly useful techniques
Speaker 1: against the police are disseminated among the crowd. Very recently
Speaker 1: last year, uh there was a housing wave of demos
Speaker 1: around housing and the first one of that was in
Speaker 1: Amsterdam and it was started by um well, it was
Speaker 1: headed by a huge block of squatters in an anarchist
Speaker 1: it look like a few minutes to pass by or
Speaker 1: And then afterwards was the rest of the housing demonstration
Speaker 1: and towards the city center the dumb they're there came
Speaker 1: a confrontation because there was a squatting action attempted at
Speaker 1: the end of this demonstration, and police showed up with horses,
Speaker 1: and when they were trying to drive off these people,
Speaker 1: there are some parts where there were people who knew
Speaker 1: some of these techniques about how to deal with horses,
Speaker 1: and where they were the experienced squatters, like everybody, you
Speaker 1: have to jump up and down because horses they don't
Speaker 1: like that. It's scarcely. You have to anticipate when they're
Speaker 1: gonna come, and you jump up and down so that
Speaker 1: the horses won't come by. And if enough people do it,
Speaker 1: they take the horses away because the horses can't handle that.
Speaker 1: And that worked, and a lot of those people they
Speaker 1: were there for the first time. But because there was
Speaker 1: this living tradition of squatting and this living memory of
Speaker 1: earlier struggle that helps inform and introduce new people. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's a part of our of our strength, um.
Speaker 1: And it's it's still very very relevant. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: and there's like all that inherited infrastructure, right, like you know,
Speaker 1: there's like all of these legalized squads, and and that's
Speaker 1: something that we didn't really talk about, um that one
Speaker 1: of the things that happened that you know, complicated within
Speaker 1: the squatting movement was that a lot of these squads
Speaker 1: legalized and then essentially entered, you know, are now owned
Speaker 1: by the squatters. Yeah. And then so in the city,
Speaker 1: you know, cave to capitalists, not the countries, sorry, not
Speaker 1: the city of the country, cave to capitalist pressure outlawed
Speaker 1: squatting um. And it became a crime worth a year
Speaker 1: in prison to occupy an unoccupied building. And as you
Speaker 1: pointed out, people continue to do it. Right. It seems
Speaker 1: to have massively negatively impacted the number of squads and things,
Speaker 1: but a lot of a lot of the core has
Speaker 1: still survived and some of the modern squatting stuff that
Speaker 1: I've run across, And I'm curious if you know more
Speaker 1: and have more information with these two. One is a
Speaker 1: group that's called We Are Here, and it's a collective
Speaker 1: of migrants and asylum speaker seekers, mostly from Africa, who
Speaker 1: refused to use the homeless shelters that are you know,
Speaker 1: you have to show up only at ninetya, have to
Speaker 1: get out first thing in the morning, or just all
Speaker 1: the usual absolute garbage of UM the shelter system and
Speaker 1: instead squat buildings in Amsterdam. And then there's another group
Speaker 1: in an arca feminist group with the name an arca
Speaker 1: feminist group that recently squatted a building. Oh okay, I
Speaker 1: got sorry, yeah a f g A. Also I was
Speaker 1: going if you if you weren't, wouldn't mention them, I
Speaker 1: would have a yeah. Yeah. And so they recently squatted
Speaker 1: a building in the red Light district and protests of
Speaker 1: the gentrification of the red light district. Is that a
Speaker 1: reasonable summary as they they they they squad a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they do, like super energetic and also very like in
Speaker 1: their own in their own style, taking from tradition, bills,
Speaker 1: conventing new things, were just finding out for themselves new
Speaker 1: ways to do UM. And they yeah that's cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're really interesting group. You als will follow them on Instagram?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, no, I yeah, I like them, okay. And
Speaker 1: so then there's like other some of the other legacy
Speaker 1: stuff I found. Obviously, there's all that infrastructure we've talked about.
Speaker 1: There's an entire generation, as you talked about, people who
Speaker 1: know how to take an exercise power collectively, um, which
Speaker 1: is so cool because you can say that in a
Speaker 1: very abstract way. You're like, oh, there's a whole generation
Speaker 1: of people who know to take power collectively and like
Speaker 1: sometimes that means knowing to jump up and down on
Speaker 1: the cops, you know. Um. And there's thousands of buildings
Speaker 1: that have been saved from demolition. The physical character of Amsterdam,
Speaker 1: which is so loved by tourists and all that ship
Speaker 1: like kind of seems like it exists because of fucking squatters.
Speaker 1: There's this idea, it was there was one time they
Speaker 1: wanted to run like the highway, like straight through the
Speaker 1: city center where it's like in the there's a there's
Speaker 1: a tunnel that goes through the a which separates the
Speaker 1: city center from the north. In the north highway just
Speaker 1: goes straight through the middle into the water, into the tunnel,
Speaker 1: and one on the other side it comes up on
Speaker 1: a much smaller road where it has to split out
Speaker 1: into the city because there's no big highway cutting through
Speaker 1: the city center of Amsterdam, where there were plans to
Speaker 1: make that highway, but they were aborted by a militant
Speaker 1: group of like squatters and squatter affiliated or just friendly
Speaker 1: protesters stopping this. Um. Which is why that's that big highway,
Speaker 1: isn't there? Now? That that fucking rules? Um? And I
Speaker 1: feel like it's like something that people need to kind
Speaker 1: of remember. Like, Um, a lot of the things that
Speaker 1: I cover on the show, people don't win in the end,
Speaker 1: or like what they won was like the friends they
Speaker 1: met along the way, or like some good last words,
Speaker 1: they get hanged or whatever, you know. But it's like,
Speaker 1: sometimes we can, like even if we don't necessarily win
Speaker 1: our like full absolute goals, right, Um, we can sometimes
Speaker 1: win a fucking lot along the way. Um. And apparently
Speaker 1: the neighborhood and please correct my pronunciation, Jordan's Jordan's Um,
Speaker 1: Jordan like was going to have been leveled essentially and
Speaker 1: basically the squatters in the eighties like are the reason
Speaker 1: it exists. Um. And there's one final most important legacy
Speaker 1: of the squatter movement. It is because of the squatter
Speaker 1: movement of the Netherlands that I met my friend Shard,
Speaker 1: who got me back into playing Dungeons and Dragons awesome.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if short listens to this show,
Speaker 1: but if he does, thanks for getting me back into
Speaker 1: plane Dungeons and Dragons and also for going so hard
Speaker 1: against Nazis for all those years. That's my wonderful Alex.
Speaker 1: Do you have anything you'd like to plug at the end? UM?
Speaker 1: I would? I would, of course you can follow me
Speaker 1: and my my Dutch language podcast, my Dutch language uh
Speaker 1: not so very active solio social media almost from almost
Speaker 1: from burnt red, which is Dutch for like save, but
Speaker 1: it's a Spanish u r L, but in Dutch it
Speaker 1: means like almost drown saves because together we can make it.
Speaker 1: And but otherwise I would. I would like to plug
Speaker 1: a new radical crowdfund platform called uh fire Starter, which
Speaker 1: is a crowd fund platform that it's based in the Netherlands.
Speaker 1: It's launching soon and it's meant to do crowdfunding specifically
Speaker 1: for radical and leftist projects because if you stick them
Speaker 1: to other they can strengthen each other. And if the
Speaker 1: platform is on our side, it can use what it
Speaker 1: can do, like the strength of a platform to further
Speaker 1: develop our own movements and our power. UM and you
Speaker 1: can find them on Firestarter fund dot n l and
Speaker 1: that links also to a number of socials great and uh.
Speaker 1: You can pre order Margaret Kildoy's new book We Won't
Speaker 1: Be Here Tomorrow from a K Press that comes out
Speaker 1: on September. I get that right, crushed it and you
Speaker 1: can get a nice little print if you pre order
Speaker 1: of the cover. I'm really I don't know if I
Speaker 1: got the art part right, but there is art. I
Speaker 1: know there's art. Yeah, I think you got it right,
Speaker 1: crushed it. Follow you. You can follow me at at
Speaker 1: Sophie at what is my Name? On Twitter, at why
Speaker 1: Underscore Sophie Underscore why on Twitter for all the things,
Speaker 1: and at close on media everywhere. That's it. We'll be
Speaker 1: back mon day with another story of Cool People Who
Speaker 1: Did fool Stuff? Right market y yay, bye bye bye
Speaker 1: bye everyone. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a
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