Speaker 1: Also media, Hey, what's up and welcome to it could
Speaker 1: happen here. I'm Andrew Sage. I'm andrews I on YouTube
Speaker 1: and I'm joined by James.
Speaker 2: It's me. It's nice to be back with you, Andrew
Speaker 2: once again. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Indeed, indeed, in a time of poly crisis, unfortunately, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the housing crisis. People are pretty familiar with the lack
Speaker 1: of affordability of housing, the way that housing has been
Speaker 1: speculated upon, you know, the way that more and more
Speaker 1: people are finding it difficult to get something as simple
Speaker 1: as shelter. Yeah, and it's particularly generational, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I don't generally love generational discourse, but it
Speaker 2: is a marked difference for our generation compared to the
Speaker 2: previous generation in terms of, yeah, housing security.
Speaker 1: The data bears it out in terms of the age
Speaker 1: at which people have previous generations were able to get
Speaker 1: house in versus you know what millennials and our gen
Speaker 1: z are dealing with where housing is concerned.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, we're also lacking a
Speaker 1: lot of public spaces, places to gather, places to reflect,
Speaker 1: to socialized game to explore, to interact, to discuss land
Speaker 1: and housing and social spaces are really what at the
Speaker 1: heart of human survival. You know, we speak of the
Speaker 1: hearth as in that space where you know, humans were gathering.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately that that ownership of that space has been
Speaker 1: concentrated in the hands of a few people, you know,
Speaker 1: ritually's and corporations, the state, and some cases still literal aristocracies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're you're very much familiar with that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, just thinking about the land I grew up
Speaker 2: on for people who were not privy to Andrew and
Speaker 2: I talking before the show. I just spent some time
Speaker 2: with the gwitch In people in the very north of
Speaker 2: Alaska there, just in the sub Arctic, and someone was
Speaker 2: asking me about like how I related to my ancestral land.
Speaker 2: I was thinking about it, like the village I grew
Speaker 2: up in was entirely owned by one family. They owned
Speaker 2: our house in every other house, and my dad worked
Speaker 2: for them, and so did almost everyone else who lived there,
Speaker 2: like an extremely feudal relationship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's unfortunately the experience of a lot of people
Speaker 1: through human history, or the experience of landlessness or homelessness.
Speaker 3: Well, homelessness is.
Speaker 1: Relatively recent all things considered, but or being extortion and rents,
Speaker 1: which a lot of people unfortunately would have experienced throughout
Speaker 1: that feudal period into a capitalism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, for as long as humans have
Speaker 1: been humans, long before the states existed, and long after
Speaker 1: the states existed, people are going to stay where they
Speaker 1: want to stay. They're going to be where they want
Speaker 1: to be. Right all those take a coup with all
Speaker 1: these laws and restrictions and property rights, all these things
Speaker 1: and criminalize a very natural human inclination, people are still
Speaker 1: going to do it right. And that thing that people
Speaker 1: do is now known as squatting, right, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: always so chastised and criminalized with that terminology before. It
Speaker 1: was just you know, I find a piece of land,
Speaker 1: nobody else is living there. You going to use that
Speaker 1: piece of land to survive. So today we'll be talking
Speaker 1: about issues with land ownership, looking into its history as
Speaker 1: a resistance practice in England, and seeing where politicized approach
Speaker 1: to squatron could take us in the future. Oh cool,
Speaker 1: Crime thinks article on squating was really helpful for this,
Speaker 1: so I'll link it.
Speaker 3: In the show notes.
Speaker 1: Land ownership and governance are inextricably linked. Private property and
Speaker 1: land didn't emerge out of peaceful agreements, but violence was
Speaker 1: of conquest. Colonialism, slavery, and steel repression have been the
Speaker 1: true foundation of these now considered noble and official property titles.
Speaker 1: What we call ownership today is just violence legitimized by law,
Speaker 1: and it follows a very similar structure whether you're talking
Speaker 1: about feudalism and empire, land inclosure, colonization. Your start of
Speaker 1: the violence, it becomes officialized, and then rent is extracted.
Speaker 1: This is not something that people took lining down.
Speaker 3: Of course.
Speaker 1: People have long resisted it, you know, but this is
Speaker 1: why the government responds with the police and the armies
Speaker 1: to protect the landlords. And the people have criticized and
Speaker 1: have called out these practices. Thinkers like Ricardo Flores Margon
Speaker 1: and Alexander Berkmann, peterko Potkin Qunan, all of these hammered
Speaker 1: home the point of the absurdity at the heart of
Speaker 1: land ownership, the idea that tod they could just pull
Speaker 1: up somewhere, claim an area of land as theirs, and
Speaker 1: back it by soldiers and pieces of paper. Now, anarchists
Speaker 1: not in the business of fixating on just one system
Speaker 1: of domination or the other, because they're very connected. You know,
Speaker 1: landlords and governments and all the other authorities contribute to
Speaker 1: the system of domination that we all live under as
Speaker 1: and its core rights.
Speaker 3: In anarchists squat in and land use.
Speaker 1: In the West, land ownership and government use exploitation and
Speaker 1: manipulation in a similar manner. Where a landowner builds a fence,
Speaker 1: the government erects a boundary. Where landowner charges rent, a
Speaker 1: government levies taxes. Where a landowner advertises a vacant house
Speaker 1: so as not to waste it as an income producing property,
Speaker 1: a government encourages migration to those of its territories which
Speaker 1: are not producing adequate revenue. Where landowner evicts a tenant,
Speaker 1: a government wages war against the population.
Speaker 3: Right now, in the United States, as.
Speaker 1: We can see, the government issueesian war not only against
Speaker 1: its indigenous population, its black population, but also it's migrant
Speaker 1: population and a few other populations.
Speaker 3: The list unfortunately goes on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the two are so tied, right that, Like
Speaker 2: in many parts of the United Kingdom, like as it
Speaker 2: was moving towards like before, we have a universal franchise
Speaker 2: right where people could vote if it were citizens and
Speaker 2: over a certain age they had a property owner franchise, right,
Speaker 2: Like if you owned land, you could vote, and if
Speaker 2: you didn't then you couldn't landed voting.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and in a sense that is still reflected
Speaker 1: in the way that the government operates today. You know,
Speaker 1: the land owners, the capitalist they still have far outsized
Speaker 1: influence with anyone else, considering the laws and the policies
Speaker 1: that our governments carry out.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And this is really.
Speaker 1: Get into the heart of it, because you know, I
Speaker 1: have had the abolition of slavery and the abolition of selfdom,
Speaker 1: but in no way that the formal abolition of those
Speaker 1: things end exploitation at all. It has continued in new
Speaker 1: and old forms. You know, without the police and armies
Speaker 1: and laws propping them up, private property would collapse. But
Speaker 1: those things still exist, and it is through those things
Speaker 1: that the power to exclude, extract, and dominate continues throughout
Speaker 1: our society and continues to uphold violence throughout her society.
Speaker 1: You know, slavery may have been formally abolished, but we
Speaker 1: still find it in the prison system safe They may
Speaker 1: have been formally abolished, but we still find it in
Speaker 1: slightly different forms. With debt and the way that people
Speaker 1: are tied on by debt, and as long as that
Speaker 1: principle of extraction and expectation and rent is not dealt with,
Speaker 1: we will continue to see new forms and old forms
Speaker 1: bringing up Yeah, I want to play the devil's advocate
Speaker 1: for a moment, right and say that maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: the problem is just the violence of its origins, the
Speaker 1: problem with land ownership and property. If it just came
Speaker 1: from violent origins and no other violence continued, maybe it
Speaker 1: could be excused. Maybe we could say, okay, well that's
Speaker 1: in the past and we can do stuff about that.
Speaker 1: But we could leave the system as it is. But
Speaker 1: the violence didn't stop with the way that the system originated.
Speaker 1: The violence continues, you know, and as Core notes, quote,
Speaker 1: ownership is enforced through eviction, you know, families are thrown
Speaker 1: out of homes, squatters beaten back by police, villages raised
Speaker 1: to expand mining operations, et cetera. Yeah, and then these
Speaker 1: economic theft and cultural destruction involved as well, you know,
Speaker 1: because communities are uprooted, Indigenous traditions are severed, neighborhood cultures
Speaker 1: getting raised by gentrification. And then all this dispossession drives
Speaker 1: unemployments because without access to land, people are forced into
Speaker 1: wage labor on the terms of capitalists. This is really
Speaker 1: how that rapid period of industrialization got started, you know,
Speaker 1: with the enclosure of the commons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just thinking about that. With the folks
Speaker 2: are with with right there. Their lifestyle is to hunt caribou.
Speaker 2: That is how they've lived for twenty thousand years. They
Speaker 2: also fish for salmon, but there are still salmon. There
Speaker 2: are fewer salmon due to climate change and the downstream
Speaker 2: effects of that. Right, But like they have their own land,
Speaker 2: a large portion of land. But like it's the fact
Speaker 2: that someone in this case a drump administration, could lease
Speaker 2: oil rights in other land, which would directly impact their land,
Speaker 2: because in this case, the caribou can't carve if there
Speaker 2: are oil wells where they want to have their carves,
Speaker 2: right yeah, And so like it's not just that them
Speaker 2: having some land of their own does not provide a
Speaker 2: solution to the issue, which is that people can under
Speaker 2: our current system own exploit and destroy a resource. It
Speaker 2: should be common.
Speaker 3: I mean, it really highlights the absurd notion that you
Speaker 3: can just cut up.
Speaker 1: Land, right yeah, exactly, which you can separate it by
Speaker 1: by boundaries, and that its self contained in that way,
Speaker 1: all the land and wars on the earth is connected. Yeah,
Speaker 1: through all the cycles and systems is one big biosphere.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The damage done in one place will have an impact
Speaker 2: on another place. And I mean that's so very obvious
Speaker 2: to most of us now, but that our system of
Speaker 2: land ownership ignores that. Our pretend it doesn't happen.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah. Yeah, Instead, we're upholing this ridiculous notion that
Speaker 3: you can maintain exclusive lordship, literal land lordship over a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks of property and just do whatever you
Speaker 3: want with it because it's under your.
Speaker 2: Name, right, Yeah, And that's that's your problem, because it's
Speaker 2: your landrease. It's completely ridiculous to make that claim.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And on top of all of these consequences, you know,
Speaker 1: were also dealing with poverty and hunger because when people
Speaker 1: are producing lots of food, rent and mortgages continue to
Speaker 1: keep people in a permanent state of paying just to exist, right,
Speaker 1: And then this concentrated ownership of land and of property
Speaker 1: produces inefficient production and environmental degradation because property ends upsitting
Speaker 1: Idle was used to speculate even though millions of people
Speaker 1: are in need of that land are starving as a result.
Speaker 1: Of lack of access to that land.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also because so much land gets traded around as assets,
Speaker 1: as property, rather than you know, it being what it is,
Speaker 1: which is our commonwealth. There's no need for the owner
Speaker 1: at the point in time to really care about, you know,
Speaker 1: the quality of the soil, the impact on its ecosystems.
Speaker 1: They don't have to. All they're concerning is their only
Speaker 1: need is to concern themselves with profit.
Speaker 2: Right, Like, it's an asset to be traded, not a
Speaker 2: thing that has inherent value and should be protected, not
Speaker 2: just because of its economic value, but because it's all
Speaker 2: that we can leave future generations, right exactly.
Speaker 1: And I mean with all these issues of the land
Speaker 1: in mind, I think we can talk now about how
Speaker 1: people have resisted, particularly in England.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is really why I want to talk to
Speaker 3: you in particular with this episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I'm excited to hear which which particular moveing
Speaker 2: you want to talk about.
Speaker 3: I mean, the story can begin in the first century, yeah, right,
Speaker 3: with the British tribes resisting the expansion of the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: We could also speak about the diggers of the seventeenth
Speaker 1: century in England, in massacred for trying to reclaim common land. Yeah,
Speaker 1: England has a very long history of land struggles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, and it's completely or it's not lost to
Speaker 2: us now. People have reclaimed, especially at the Diggers, right,
Speaker 2: but there are still commons to an extent, but they're
Speaker 2: nothing like what they were, right, Like, you can you
Speaker 2: can go out to Clapham Common and just get grads
Speaker 2: a sheep if you wanted to. And it's really sad
Speaker 2: that we've lost that. We've completely as a nation like
Speaker 2: accepted that land is the thing that people can only
Speaker 2: shouldn't just be for everyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I kind of see how that would
Speaker 1: get to the extent that it did, because you know,
Speaker 1: it was the capital of the British Empire, and in
Speaker 1: many ways the British Isles was the laboratory where that
Speaker 1: sort of experimentation with the control of people and land
Speaker 1: got started and was then able to expand elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very much, sir.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, I mean there's a long timeline that we
Speaker 1: could go through, but I really want to focus on
Speaker 1: the all the ways the people have been squatting in
Speaker 1: England over the twentieth century. You know, after the Second
Speaker 1: World War, it's no surprise anyone that Britain was going
Speaker 1: through it. Whole neighborhoods were flattened, housing stock was in ruins,
Speaker 1: and for the six years while the bombs were fallen,
Speaker 1: not a single new home was built. So people took
Speaker 1: matters into their own hands.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Across the country, families and veterans began to squat because
Speaker 1: they came home from the war and they had nowhere
Speaker 1: to live. In Brighton, a group of ex servicemen calling
Speaker 1: themselves Virgilantes, led by the legendary Harry Cowley, started cracking
Speaker 1: houses for families. The spirit of it eventually spread like wildfire,
Speaker 1: and abandoned army camps which were once mean for demolition,
Speaker 1: soon became makeshift neighborhoods. By nineteen forty six, over forty
Speaker 1: five thousand people were squatted in more than a thousand locations,
Speaker 1: and I mean the government was concerned this could only
Speaker 1: lead to anarchy, but faced with tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: people who had self freehoused, the state didn't really have
Speaker 1: any choice but to step back, right, you know, direct
Speaker 1: actions solved an issue that their bureaucracy.
Speaker 3: Couldn't solve, and the pr of kicking out a.
Speaker 1: Bunch of veterans from homes was not a line they
Speaker 1: seemed willing to cross at that point in time because
Speaker 1: times changed.
Speaker 2: But yeah, they wouldn't have any fear of doing that.
Speaker 1: Now there's only English that were squatting in the UK.
Speaker 1: You know, you also had Bangladeshi immigrants that end up
Speaker 1: coming into the UK, particularly around the nineteen seventies, and
Speaker 1: the issue was that single men couldn't get council housing
Speaker 1: unless they had a family, but they couldn't bring their
Speaker 1: families over into the UK without housing, So it's like
Speaker 1: a cash twenty two. They had all these rows of
Speaker 1: council flats sitting empty, rotten, and young men who wanted
Speaker 1: to bring their families over can't bring their families over,
Speaker 1: can't get housing, What are they going to do?
Speaker 3: They end up squatting. Organizers like Terry.
Speaker 1: Fitzpatrick, working with groups like Race Today and later the
Speaker 1: Bengali House and Action Group opened up derelict blocks to
Speaker 1: Bengali families. Pelham House, for instance, which was slated for demolition,
Speaker 1: was transformed into homes for three hundred people. By the
Speaker 1: end of nineteen seventy six, Over one thousand Bangladeshis ended
Speaker 1: up living in East End squads during that period, and eventually,
Speaker 1: through that taking that full step of direct action, they won.
Speaker 1: By the early nineteen eighties, the Council caved rehoused the
Speaker 1: squat as locally and they ended up getting to live
Speaker 1: right where they wanted to live. But unfortunately, as you
Speaker 1: might expect, this came with racist violence. In nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: altub Ali was stabbed to death by three skinheads in
Speaker 1: Whitechapel and there's now a park that was renamed in
Speaker 1: his memory where the history of his people can be
Speaker 1: remembered and live on. Beyond the English Shandi Bangladeshi immigrants,
Speaker 1: you also had another marginalized group that took on the
Speaker 1: tactic of squatted in Brixton. The Gay Liberation Front took
Speaker 1: over houses along Relton Road and Mile Road, creating a
Speaker 1: network of communal homes which shared gardens and as you
Speaker 1: can imagine, in the seventies, eighties and nineties, you know,
Speaker 1: this was really a refuge, you know, for queer people
Speaker 1: dealing with isolation and hostility from their families, from their communities.
Speaker 1: These squats ended up becoming places where they can find
Speaker 1: love and solidarity and theater and radical politics. Railton Road
Speaker 1: was also home to black radicalism and black radicals squat
Speaker 1: in in that territory. Olive Morris and Liz Obi squatted
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies and resisted multiple eviction attempts, and
Speaker 1: their space evolved into Sabah Bookshop and later the anarchist
Speaker 1: one two one Center, which lasted until nineteen ninety nine. Now,
Speaker 1: this intersection of black queer and anarchist squatron created Brixton's
Speaker 1: reputation as a frontline of resistance. Police harassment, racist violence
Speaker 1: and neglect would boil over into days of rioting in
Speaker 1: Brixton in nineteen eighty one, and amidst that chaos, the
Speaker 1: gay squads of Realton threw open their doors, even dragon
Speaker 1: tables and chairs into the streets for a kind of
Speaker 1: riot party, a mix of drag and defiance. And through
Speaker 1: all this these squats allow people to survive. They became
Speaker 1: places where people can experiment with alternative living, even had
Speaker 1: some people declare on independence. There's a space in West
Speaker 1: London called Frestonia, which issued its own stamps and had
Speaker 1: a two year old as Minister of Education.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then you had other squats.
Speaker 1: Ending up becoming seeds for future cooperatives and social centers
Speaker 1: and even some businesses.
Speaker 3: But this goal and age of squat and.
Speaker 1: Kind of came into a decline by the nineties and
Speaker 1: two thousand sons gentrification and new laws.
Speaker 3: To tighten the screws.
Speaker 1: You know, streets like Barrington Square or Saint Agnus's Police,
Speaker 1: which were once thriving squatted communities.
Speaker 3: Were cleared up.
Speaker 1: You know, the law was changed to make couldn't quote
Speaker 1: adverse possession harder, so long term squatters could no longer
Speaker 1: as easily clean ownership. And then sitt councils like Lambeth
Speaker 1: Council began selling off properties that it had ignored for decades,
Speaker 1: evicting people who have been living there for decades or
Speaker 1: reason families.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess post thatcher like when they could sell
Speaker 2: off the council houses like that massively contributed to the
Speaker 2: decline of working class communities, right. And then Britain went
Speaker 2: through this extreme manoliberal turn in the late nineties with
Speaker 2: like New Labor, and Labour's entire thing came to be
Speaker 2: punting down on the young people and the working class.
Speaker 2: So like it lines up with our general political like
Speaker 2: that was that I was a teenager at that time, Right,
Speaker 2: I remember how belie it felt to be like all
Speaker 2: the time getting this like oh cool Britanni, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, like Britain is having its like renaissance as this,
Speaker 2: like like like outside of empire, like as a cultural
Speaker 2: capital or whatever. Meanwhile people are struggling to get by
Speaker 2: and people that finding it hard to put food on
Speaker 2: the table. It was just such a I mean, looking back,
Speaker 2: it was the way things were going to be for
Speaker 2: the rest of my life, at least up to now,
Speaker 2: I guess. But at the time I remember it being
Speaker 2: such a jarring experience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's quite an interesting quote unquote end of history, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, yeah, it's just the end of caring. Like
Speaker 2: it was just such a yeah to be to be
Speaker 2: told that we'd like perfected human existence. Meanwhile, racialized violence
Speaker 2: was on the increase, right, Like people were struggling. We
Speaker 2: like had become more connected and aware of each other struggles.
Speaker 2: Like we could see people around the world, not just
Speaker 2: in the UK struggling, right, or the communities that like
Speaker 2: my parents grew up in, just gut it by the
Speaker 2: withdrawal of the failure of the industries that were there
Speaker 2: before the whole towns with like no reason for existing anymore,
Speaker 2: and then to come on top of that and have like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, but it will cost you more just to
Speaker 2: exist in this town which is shit now and there's
Speaker 2: nothing to do, but we're going to use all the
Speaker 2: power of the state to try and extract every penny
Speaker 2: that you have.
Speaker 3: To squeeze everything out of you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a bleak vision going home now. I just
Speaker 2: see the continuation of that decline of like some of
Speaker 2: those towns you know, where there's no particular reason people
Speaker 2: to live there and it's where they're from and it's
Speaker 2: where their community is, but it's getting harder and harder
Speaker 2: for them to live there. And you know, the industries
Speaker 2: that used to at least give people a chance to
Speaker 2: like have a dignified life there are now gone. Yet
Speaker 2: the ability of landlords to extract you know, get landlords
Speaker 2: now right, These giant corporations building these generic homes, although
Speaker 2: for the UK it's still very much there and the
Speaker 2: state has doubled down on supporting them and completely refused
Speaker 2: to support its own people.
Speaker 1: Yep, in London, as and elsewhere, the state and the
Speaker 1: capitalist market of hand in hand to relea erase our autonomy,
Speaker 1: our independence, our ability to live and survive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, ivan as places like.
Speaker 1: Berlin and Amsterdam and Copenhagen had some leaps forward where
Speaker 1: squadron was concerned, you know, legalized housing cooperatives and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Particularly in London, that was the opposite
Speaker 1: of the case. You know, things got harder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like Britain led the charge in like this kind
Speaker 2: of particularly cruel and callous neoliberalism right from the nineties
Speaker 2: to today, like with absolutely no concern for the well
Speaker 2: being of its people. Even Yeah, you would see it
Speaker 2: going to continental Europe, you know, compared to living in Barcelona,
Speaker 2: which I did later, Like, squads still existed, people economically,
Speaker 2: things were equally dire, right, if not worse. Spain had
Speaker 2: a really rough time as fifty of two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: but like the communities hadn't been quite so destroyed by
Speaker 2: the state as they were in many areas of the UK.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I mean I don't want to paint
Speaker 1: a completely dark picture of London, right because there is
Speaker 1: still anarchy, struggle, there's still radical social centers, there's still yeah, yeah, squats,
Speaker 1: and I mean some squads end up being temporary you know,
Speaker 1: short lived social spaces and centers species to help organize
Speaker 1: sorts of protest or to you know, create comment culture.
Speaker 2: But yeah, like it's not. Yeah, I mean I've made
Speaker 2: London sound like some kind of like blade renal thing,
Speaker 2: which is not by any mean that I've not spent
Speaker 2: a great deal of my life in London. It's too
Speaker 2: much city for me.
Speaker 3: That's fair.
Speaker 2: But I do, like I enjoy visiting friends and their
Speaker 2: projects there and that kind of thing. And I think
Speaker 2: even post COVID there's been some resurgence. It's difficult. I
Speaker 2: don't want to suggest that things are not still extremely
Speaker 2: difficult for people trying to make ends meet, because they are.
Speaker 2: But like people are aware of the concept of mutual
Speaker 2: aids who may not have been before, and that's been good. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're still our squad So is struggle. There is still
Speaker 2: people fighting very hard to like live a dignified life
Speaker 2: and secure that for other people as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's that's really what I want to highlight.
Speaker 1: You know that what Squadron represents really is, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, both a struggle for necessity but also an
Speaker 1: example of where I imagination can take us. You know,
Speaker 1: our resistance does not have to take on the same
Speaker 1: old forms of protesters and to devoid we see, right,
Speaker 1: there are things that we can do as ordinary people,
Speaker 1: whether we're black, whether we're gay, whether we're a Bangadasha, immigrants,
Speaker 1: a veteran, as an ordinary boos Son. You can also
Speaker 1: you know, take on direct action to create homes, resist racism,
Speaker 1: build communities, and fight the state.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like I think about a lot in Greece, right
Speaker 2: where anarchists have squatted places that were built for like
Speaker 2: the era when people could come from northern Europe to
Speaker 2: southern Europe to spend their money and then avoid the winter.
Speaker 2: And since you know, general economic decline, that doesn't happen
Speaker 2: as much, and now people have squatted those hotels to
Speaker 2: allow migrants to dignified place to live, right. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: it's really beautiful project. It's envisioning another world literally in
Speaker 2: the ruins of the old world exactly. I think it's
Speaker 2: a really beautiful thing that people do to to you know,
Speaker 2: take that action to address not just to protest something,
Speaker 2: but to say, like the system which deprives people of
Speaker 2: even a safe place to live, even the dignity of
Speaker 2: being able to sleep in it under a roof at night,
Speaker 2: Like we are going to take action that strikes the
Speaker 2: roots of that to ensure that we give others that
Speaker 2: the dignity that they deserve, and that's really special.
Speaker 3: Agreed, Agreed, And I mean I don't want to.
Speaker 1: Romanticize squat in as you know, just a easy way
Speaker 1: of life.
Speaker 3: It certainly is not. But it's a quote crime.
Speaker 1: Think the lesson of history is that in times of
Speaker 1: how it is in deprivation, people squat the empty is
Speaker 1: the fact that this has been made illegal.
Speaker 3: There's not blind.
Speaker 1: People to the empty buildings or to the use of
Speaker 1: squat And as a tactic, the crack speak in Amsterdam
Speaker 1: East promotes the slogan what neat Marg Khan knog steats,
Speaker 1: what is not allowed is still possible?
Speaker 3: Forgive my terrible Dutch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, mine's not much better. Yeah, I like that's a lot.
Speaker 2: Like I think the issue of homelessness in the United
Speaker 2: States in particular is something that like I think about
Speaker 2: a lot because I travel a lot. I remember sitting
Speaker 2: in a cafe in Kurdistan and I'd just been I
Speaker 2: was outside of just walking around and some people invite
Speaker 2: me to join their dominoes game. So I was playing
Speaker 2: dominoes and you know, like practicing my terrible Kurdish and
Speaker 2: these guys were asking me like, is it true that
Speaker 2: like people, and like they were especially interested in, like
Speaker 2: the veterans who had been US soldiers, like sleep on
Speaker 2: the street in America. And I was like, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: the thing, like, and they were like, why, what's the
Speaker 2: deal with that? And the answer is that we have
Speaker 2: enough houses for everyone, but we've just treated them as
Speaker 2: a commodity to exchange. Right, We've been told that people
Speaker 2: can't live there, even though there's space for them to live,
Speaker 2: and even though it's actively hurting them living on the street. Right,
Speaker 2: it's such a condemnation of the situation we're in as
Speaker 2: a society in need.
Speaker 3: It is what does the future look like? You know?
Speaker 1: None of us can really know, Yeah, but maybe we
Speaker 1: can sketch some outlines of how we can approach lanus differently.
Speaker 1: We could look to the past and a commonstrations of
Speaker 1: the past as inspiration for what might return, and we
Speaker 1: could look to our own imagination of what the future
Speaker 1: can look like as we refuse domination.
Speaker 3: You know, we can.
Speaker 1: Squat, of course, to show the cracks in this concept
Speaker 1: of property. You know, we can collective eze and collectively
Speaker 1: organize spaces for farming or production. You know, we can really,
Speaker 1: really could do any number of things. I think the
Speaker 1: guidance thread though, has to be equity. You know, it
Speaker 1: has to be recognition that nobody has a right to land.
Speaker 1: They don't use that absence. See landlord is some something
Speaker 1: utterly absurd and can be rejected out right. I think
Speaker 1: we can also consider the non human in our approach
Speaker 1: to land in the future, you know, considering the rights
Speaker 1: and responsibilities we have toward animals and plants that live
Speaker 1: in spaces that you know, should have their own existence
Speaker 1: beyond human utility. There will always be conflicts about how
Speaker 1: we can use these spaces and also how we might
Speaker 1: resolve these disputes. But I think it is clear that
Speaker 1: whereever there's somebody who attempts to monopolize land by force,
Speaker 1: we can respond adequately. I think the tactic of squat
Speaker 1: in is one small, unfinished but necessary step towards a
Speaker 1: future where we reject property, where land is shared, where
Speaker 1: domination is abolished, where we as a human community and
Speaker 1: as a living community, can free decide together how we
Speaker 1: live on this earth. We'll just have to see that's
Speaker 1: it for me or power to all the people this
Speaker 1: has been It could Happen Here.
Speaker 3: I'm Andrew Sage. That is James Stout and peace. It
Speaker 3: could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 3: cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 3: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 3: You can now find sources for it could Happen Here
Speaker 3: listened directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.