ellipsis
5th March 2012, 02:50
I submitted this upon request to the occupied times of london, but it wasn't selected so I am publishing it it here. It hasn't really been edited so forgive any typos etc.
As cities across the United States and the world continues to violently evict #occupy camps, there has been much talk about the second phase of the movement and its potential to involve the occupation of vacant building and squatting. There have been notable attempts at this in Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Amsterdam and Raleigh, North Carolina, while none have so. When #occupySF was beginning to gain momentum, which now seems so long ago, the joke within local squatter syndicate Homes not Jails was Homes not Jails occupies San Francisco everyday! However, it is a mistake to conflate squatting with the most recent manifestation of occupation. The two should be delineated and evaluated separately.
Squatting is simply using a building or land but not having the legal right to do so. People squat for a number of reasons; some for survival, for want of access to legal housing/farm land/etc.; some for political reasons. From the favelas and shantytowns of the Global South to Dale Farm, Schijnheilig and the social centres of Europe, each is a manifestation of the massive disparity between the landed and the landless which is as old as civilization itself. From my perspective, squatting and other acts of freeganism allow individuals to spend less time and energy on paid-work and more on political projects.
Occupation is by design an overt tactic, the re-purposing a physical space in order to create a social and political space. With its roots in the Situationalism, to occupy is to, in part create a public spectacle, a continuous act of propaganda. In the space created, conversations are had and knowledge shared; friends, comrades and lovers are made; people are fed and healed by their neighbors.
In the Global North, because of its illegal nature, squats are most often covert endeavors; personal property rights are one the most dearly held legal rights in the Western legal tradition (life, liberty and property) and as such vacant properties are vehemently defended against use by non-legal entities. The new, long-term, overt occupation of a large building, especially by an social/political movement such as #occupy is, at this point in time, a pipe dream. The state and the 1% will do anything in there power to squash any attempt to establish permanent liberated zones by the occupy movement. I have not yet found or read about any way to hold a building in the long term using non-violent tactics; the state has incredibly powerful methods of breaching buildings, from armored vehicles to pneumatic devices to explosives and no amount of feasible fortification will delay this from happening.
Discussion over strategies, tactics and methodologies should be and is being had on a movement wide basis. I do not pretend to know the definite path of the #occupy movement needs to take, but under current conditions, I see the long-term occupation of buildings to be a tactic which has a very low probability of success, while still remaining a viable option for short-term public occupation. Repeated attempts at seizing buildings may eventually prove successful.
As cities across the United States and the world continues to violently evict #occupy camps, there has been much talk about the second phase of the movement and its potential to involve the occupation of vacant building and squatting. There have been notable attempts at this in Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Amsterdam and Raleigh, North Carolina, while none have so. When #occupySF was beginning to gain momentum, which now seems so long ago, the joke within local squatter syndicate Homes not Jails was Homes not Jails occupies San Francisco everyday! However, it is a mistake to conflate squatting with the most recent manifestation of occupation. The two should be delineated and evaluated separately.
Squatting is simply using a building or land but not having the legal right to do so. People squat for a number of reasons; some for survival, for want of access to legal housing/farm land/etc.; some for political reasons. From the favelas and shantytowns of the Global South to Dale Farm, Schijnheilig and the social centres of Europe, each is a manifestation of the massive disparity between the landed and the landless which is as old as civilization itself. From my perspective, squatting and other acts of freeganism allow individuals to spend less time and energy on paid-work and more on political projects.
Occupation is by design an overt tactic, the re-purposing a physical space in order to create a social and political space. With its roots in the Situationalism, to occupy is to, in part create a public spectacle, a continuous act of propaganda. In the space created, conversations are had and knowledge shared; friends, comrades and lovers are made; people are fed and healed by their neighbors.
In the Global North, because of its illegal nature, squats are most often covert endeavors; personal property rights are one the most dearly held legal rights in the Western legal tradition (life, liberty and property) and as such vacant properties are vehemently defended against use by non-legal entities. The new, long-term, overt occupation of a large building, especially by an social/political movement such as #occupy is, at this point in time, a pipe dream. The state and the 1% will do anything in there power to squash any attempt to establish permanent liberated zones by the occupy movement. I have not yet found or read about any way to hold a building in the long term using non-violent tactics; the state has incredibly powerful methods of breaching buildings, from armored vehicles to pneumatic devices to explosives and no amount of feasible fortification will delay this from happening.
Discussion over strategies, tactics and methodologies should be and is being had on a movement wide basis. I do not pretend to know the definite path of the #occupy movement needs to take, but under current conditions, I see the long-term occupation of buildings to be a tactic which has a very low probability of success, while still remaining a viable option for short-term public occupation. Repeated attempts at seizing buildings may eventually prove successful.