Sunday – 02.26.12 – Two Events – Two Collectives – Squat, Strike, Occupy, and Write To Tell All
Comments Off on Sunday – 02.26.12 – Two Events – Two Collectives – Squat, Strike, Occupy, and Write To Tell AllSunday – 02.26.12 – Two Events – Two Collectives – Squat, Strike, Occupy, and Write To Tell All
Contents:
Event 1
1. Introduction to Sunday Afternoon
2. About SqEK (Squatting Europe Kollective)
Event 2
3. Introduction to Sunday Evening
4. About Occupied London Collective
5. A Call Out and An Invitation
6. Save the Greeks from their Saviors!
Material Notes
7. Note from House Magic
8. About Strike Anywhere
9. Related Texts
10. Related Links
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1. Introduction to Sunday Afternoon
What: Potluck / Brunch / Conversation with Squatting Europe Collective
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor
When: 12pm
Who: Free and open to all
In 2009, we organized an event at Left Forum called ‘How Occupation Works.’ It was a meeting with Occupiers from New School and NYU, East Village squatters, friends from Picture the Homeless, and other friends we believed could help consider the political prospects of increasing occupations. Our interest to bring individuals from the political squatting movement of the East Village into that conversation was to also understand what from these experiences could be put into play today.
Let this Sunday’s meetings be a kind of flash forward in time. Only today, this question appears far less abstract as we are in the midst of a global occupy movement. The efforts to resist unjust economic policies and puppet regimes have been met with different grades of militarized force. Here in New York, though a movement remains strong, the militarized police presence, reports of their shared surveillance facilities with the world’s largest banks, and their actions against occupiers reveal the impasses which remain ahead.
There is a global financial regime and a largely legal (even if criminal) machinery that is wreaking havoc on the world.
What can be the methods of resistance? What have we learned from what was tried in these last months? Where are the points of weakness? If the cracks of yesterday are chasms today, how to expose the weaknesses of these regimes?
In the Crisis of Everything retreat/seminar/intensive, we attempted to put these questions to task by looking back at 2011? And the question of these alliances across frontiers remains a critical point, as the international dimension to this crisis is what makes it impossible to address purely from a national perspective.
Relating to the Greek crisis, a group of notable intellectuals including Alain Badiou, Jacques Ranciere, Jean-Luc Nancy, Étienne Balibar, Avital Ronell have made a strong statement (see further below) condemning the imposition of neoliberal policies which result into a de facto warfare waged on people in the guise of economic policies, loan repayments plans, etc.
But Greece is just a prism of a global phenomenon and this global game of hide and seek, speculate and dump, buy low, sell high, new enclosures when the well has dried up … all of this is nothing new. Despite, what appears at times as a very strange exceptionalization and over-isolation of Greece in the letter, a weighty call is made to all who may identify as artists, thinkers, and political radicals to reassert and experiment with discovering a common front against this assault. An open question also remains about sitting too comfortably in ones ascribed role or function (as intellectual, or artist, or whatever) in such a moment or field of conflict.
And though Sunday’s two events will not overlap, they do relate and will touch on the different forms political struggle has taken and is taking in various European contexts. Moreover, they ask about the role of writing, thinking, research and discourse within the larger field of political struggle today. SqEK as an attempt to form a network of researchers who are themselves involved in the political squatting movements. Occupied London, as a collective that has attempted to generate and compile writings and analysis of the struggles against capital and austerity measures, particularly from the Greek context.
How do those involved in struggles and movements also conjoin and produce their own media, analysis, and critique? How does this research get shared? Does it have the potential to form a counter-force to the privileged sites of information distribution or knowledge production? Are there potentials for further links between different international initiatives taking on this kind of work of not separating action and thought?
The first meeting comes out of the work of a long time contributor to the space Alan Moore and the House Magic initiative he has been involved in.
This may be the first time ever, a group of activist researchers from the European squatting movement are gathering in New York City. They are making public appearances to speak about the decades-old movement of squatting and building occupations in their respective countries.
So at noon, we are inviting friends and those interested to bring some food and drinks, and join for a casual conversation and discussion with Squatting Europe Collective.
Please note, that this event is meant to build upon various other events the collective will have taken part in during the week. This includes a presentation of a large-scale library of books, pamphlets, periodicals, and posters produced by and focused on the squatting and autonomous social movements in Europe—beginning in the 1960s and carrying us up to today at the Interference Archive on Friday (http://interferencearchive.org). And a Saturday evening discussion at the Living Theater, trying to open up histories of squatting in Europe from different perspectives.
The tradition of political squatting is moving from the shadows into the light. With the world-wide rise of the Occupy movement, the deep reservoir of experience within the movements of political squatting have become suddenly significant.
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2. About SqEK
SqEK (Squatting Europe Kollective) is a transnational collective of academics and activists working on the phenomenon of squatting in a variety of fields, which include urban studies, sociology, political science, anthropology, geography and history.
The members of SQEK have a deep reservoir of knowledge about the decades-old movements of squatting and building occupations in their respective countries. Generations of activists have participated in occupations of vacant buildings in Europe, beginning in the 1970s. The best-known early success was the famous “free city” of Christiania in Copenhagen, but every major city in Europe has experienced some version of politicized squatting, most recently in the form of social centers. With the worldwide rise of the Occupy movement, the experience of the political squatting movements has become suddenly significant.
The SqEK manifesto is posted at: http://sqek.squat.net/?p=22
This text begins: “SQEK // January 2010 // The SQEK: Squatting Europe Research Agenda v. 1.0
“Squatting Europe is a research network focusing on the squatters’ movement. Our aim is to produce reliable and fine-grained knowledge about this movement not only as an end in itself, but also as a public resource, especially for squatters and activists. Critical engagement, transdisciplinarity and comparative approaches are the bases of our project. The group is an open transnational collective (Squatting Europe Kollective) whose members represent a diversity of disciplines and fields of interest seeking to understand the issues associated with squats and social centres across the European Union.”
SQEK maintains an open list-serve which you can send an email to join to: squattingeurope AT listas DOT nodo50 DOT org
The main activity of SQEK for some time has been meetings, where presentations, tours and exchanges of different kinds take place. SqEK has previously held conferences in: Madrid and Milan (2009); London (2010); Berlin, Amsterdam and Copenhagen (2011); and now in New York City.
Partial minutes from many of these meetings are at:
https://n-1.cc/pg/groups/91603/squatting-europe-kollective/
The full schedule of the group’s activities in New York can be found at their website:
http://sqek.squat.net/
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3. Introduction to Sunday Evening
What: Discussion
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor
When: 7pm
Who: Free and open to all
The evening’s discussion is also a follow up to our January skype conversation with Dimitris Dalakoglou of Occupied London during the Crisis of Everything Everywhere seminar. Members from the Occupied London collective are in the city again following up the collective’s visit last April during their book tour for Revolt and Crisis in Greece: Between a Present Yet to Pass and a Future Still to Come (AK Press, 2011).
The continuing imposition of austerity policies which benefit banks and the wealthiest minority, while impoverishing the inhabitants of the planet are nothing new. The question of a movement emerging that could challenge on an international level these integrated regimes of austerity has now seen its beginnings.
But as mentioned earlier, a lot of questions remain. Here in New York, a lot of planning and organization has begun around a General Strike and other forms of non-cooperation going into the Spring and May Day. Yet the work of building up the conversations, analysis, and solidarities across different sites of conflict and experience remains critical.
Following up on the afternoon conversation with SqEK, a few members of the Occupied London Collective will joint to give some update about the Greek situation and explore together possible pathways for counter-information and co-operation among the people resisting austerity across the globe.
During their visit to the US, the members of the collective want to try strengthen links with the antagonist movement in the city; to inform comrades of struggles in Greece in the past year and to explore the possibility of creating a new node of counter-information that would cover Europe and US-wide grassroots resistance to austerity.
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4. About Occupied London Collective
Occupied London is an anarchist collective writing on all things urban. Since 2007, the collective has worked together to publish an irregular journal, offering a platform for discussion within the global social antagonist movement. Since 2008, the collective has maintained a blog, “From the Greek Streets”, providing up-to-the-minute coverage of the urban revolt of December 2008 in Greece, and examining the impact and legacies of the revolt and the crisis that followed. The collective also published a book with AK Press, looking at the history of the current struggles, their prospect and future, Revolt and Crisis in Greece: Between a Present Yet to Pass and a Future Still to Come.
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5. A Call Out and An Invitation
The following text, though more specifically oriented to a European context, gives a sense of what the discussion may touch:
LIVE FROM THE STREETS OF EUROPE: A CALL OUT AND AN INVITATION
The world around us is changing beyond recognition. In the past few years, months, weeks and days, things we were once used to – from the quality of life we could expect, our interaction with others, our politics, just about everything – seem to vanish into thin air. This crisis has been a systemic one, to be sure, but the collapse of the certainties of capitalism has left so many of our own certainties naked.
At a time when action is more urgent than ever, at a historical turning point, change has been so sweeping that it paralysed many. Before, we were trying to learn how to create cracks and open new paths in the solid certainties of the neo-liberal frenzy. Now, cracks wide open, we want to pull out its insides and disentangle ourselves through a generalised and indefinite social strike1.
We are members of Occupied London, an anarchist project that started in London, UK in 2007, printing journals and writing texts on urban realities from an anarchist perspective. When the revolt of 2008 kicked off in Greece, some of us felt the need to return there to report on and translate into English what was happening in the country’s cities from the ground.
Nearly 1,000 blog-posts [link: occupiedlondon.org/blog] and one book [link: revoltcrisis.org] later, we are absolutely determined to keep on writing about what is happening on the streets and in people’s everyday lives as capital strikes its final blows in our daily lives preparing for its departure, leaving only the violence of the state behind to defend their pipelines of wealth.
We now see a need to grow, to become even more relevant, to move beyond the usual political subdivisions and beyond reacting to capital and state violence and grasp seriously this moment of rupture. Our contribution in this direction is this call to effectively share analysis and coordinate action across Europe.
Information coming from the mainstream media intends to divide us: it seeks to put the blame for the crisis first on the laziness of one People, then on the greed of another. In the mainstream media, people are seen as isolated victims or as a mass of protesters, but never as thinking, desiring and acting people who can take control of their own futures in common. This is a new battlefield where our conditions of living, producing and reproducing will be set for generations to come.
With this call-out we are seeking new comrades and friends. Whether you are an individual or group, get in touch. This is a project that aims to be as wide as possible; there is space for everyone feeling close to our wider social antagonist movement, but no space at all for sectarianism of any sort.
The way we envisage this network, each local information point will operate in a completely autonomous way, while a main node of information will gather all local material at one place, tagged in a way that makes the content as practically useful as possible. Dissemination of information and analysis across Europe and beyond, and coordination of action are our main aims.
This is very much a work at progress. So contact us at editorial@occupiedlondon.org and we will be more than happy to discuss any details.
Members of our collective are travelling to various places in Europe in the next few months to discuss the idea as far and wide as we can. If you want to host an event and get to discuss the project in person, get in touch.
With love,
The Occupied London collective
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6. Save the Greeks from their Saviors!
The following statement was made by some thinkers specifically addressing Greece. We include here within the email, as an interesting parallel call to reflect upon in preparation for the evening’s discussion.
February 22, 2012. Translation into English by Anastazia Golemi.
At a time when one Greek youth is unemployed. Where 25,000 homeless wander the streets of Athens. Where 30% of the population has fallen under the poverty line and where millions of families are forced to place their children in the care of someone else in order for them not to die of hunger or cold, where refugees and the new poor compete for trashcans at the public dump, the “saviors” of Greece, under the pretext that “Greece is not trying hard enough”, impose a new aid plan that doubles the lethal administered dose. A plan that abolishes the right to work and reduces the poor to the most extreme misery, at the same time as it makes the middle class disappear.
The goal is not about “saving” Greece. All economists worthy of this name agree on this point. It’s about gaining time in order to save the creditors at the same time it leads the country into deferred collapse. Above all it’s about making a laboratory of social change out of Greece that, in a second generation, will spread throughout all of Europe. The model experimented upon Greece is one where public social services, schools, hospitals, and dispensaries fall into ruin, where health becomes the privilege of the rich, and where vulnerable populations are doomed to a programmed elimination while those who work are condemned to the most extreme conditions of impoverishment and precarity.
But in order for this neo-liberalist offensive to achieve its ends, it is necessary to install a regime established an economy of the most basic democratic rights. Under the injunction of saviors, we see throughout Europe technocratic governments installing themselves with disregard for popular sovereignty. This is a turning point in the parliamentary system where we see the “representatives of the people” giving carte blanche to the experts and bankers, abdicating their supposed decisional power –A kind of parliamentary coup d’etat, which also uses an amplified arsenal against popular protest. Thus, when members have ratified the convention dictated by the troika (the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund), diametrically opposed to the mandate for which they had received power, without any democratic legitimacy, it will have committed to the future of the country for thirty or forty years.
Meanwhile the EU is preparing to establish an account which would be paid directly to aid Greece but only so that it is used for servicing the debt. The revenue of the country should be the “absolute priority” devoted to repay creditors, and, if necessary, paid directly to the account managed by the European Union. The agreement stipulates that any new bond issued under it shall be governed by English law, which involves material guarantees, so that disputes will be adjudicated by the courts of Luxembourg, having Greece waive in advance any rights to appeal against an entry determined by its creditors. To complete the picture, privatization is assigned to a fund managed by the troika, where the title deeds of public goods shall be placed. In short, it is the widespread looting, characteristic of financial capitalism which here offers itself a really beautiful institutional consecration. To the extent that sellers and buyers sit on the same side of the table, we have no doubt that this enterprise of privatization is a real treat for the buyers. But all the measures taken so far have only dug Greece into deeper sovereign debt. With the help of rescuers who lend at exorbitant rates, it has literally exploded into free fall in approaching 170% of GDP, while in 2009 it represented more than 120%. It is likely that this cohort of rescuers – whenever presented as “final” – had no other purpose than to weaken further still the position of Greece so that, deprived of any opportunity to propose itself the terms of a restructuring, is reduced to yield to all its creditors under the blackmail of “the disaster or austerity.”
The worsening of the artificial and coercive debt problem was used as a weapon to attack an entire society. It is proper that we speak here of terms related to the military: we are indeed dealing with a war conducted by means of finance, politics and law, a class war against society as a whole. And the spoils that the financial class wrestles away from the “enemy”, are the social benefits and democratic rights, but ultimately it is the very possibility of a human life that is taken. The lives of those who do or do not consume enough in terms of profit maximization strategies, should be no longer be preserved.
Thus, the weakness of a country caught between speculation and endless devastating bailouts, is the backdoor through which a new social model erupts conforming to the requirements of neoliberal fundamentalism. A model destined for all Europe and maybe elsewhere. This is the real issue and why defending the Greek people can not be reduced to a gesture of solidarity or abstract humanity: the future of democracy and the fate of European nations are in question. Everywhere the “pressing necessity” of “painful but salutary” austerity will be presented to us as the means to escape the fate of Greece, while it really leads us right into the middle of it.
Up against this attack against society, faced with the destruction of the last pockets of democracy, we call our fellow citizens, our French and European friends to speak loudly. Do not leave the monopoly on speaking to the experts and politicians. Can we remain indifferent to the fact the German and French leaders in particular have requested Greece to be banned from elections? Does the systematic stigmatization and bashing of a European people not deserve a response? Is it possible not to raise ones voice against the institutional assasination of the Greek people? And can we remain silent in front of the establishment of a forced march towards a system that outlaws the very idea of social solidarity?
We are at the point of no return. It is urgent to fight the battle of numbers and the war of words to counter ultra-liberal rhetoric of fear and misinformation. There is urgent need to deconstruct the moral lessons that obscure the actual process at work in society. It becomes more than urgent to demystify the racist insistence on the ” Greek specificity ” that allegedly is the supposed national character of a people (laziness and cunning at will) the root cause of a crisis in global reality. What matters today is not the specifics, wheher they are real or imaginary, but the common: the fate of a people that will affect all others.
Numerous technical solutions have been proposed to overcome the alternative of “either the destruction of the society or bankruptcy” (which we see today really means “and the destruction and bankruptcy” of the company). Everything must be brought to the table as food for thought for the construction of another Europe. But first you must report the crime, bring to light the situation in which the Greek people is because of “rescue packages” designed by and for speculators and creditors. When a movement of support is woven around the world, where Internet networks buzz with initiatives of solidarity, are French intellectuals the last to raise their voices for Greece? Without further delay, multiply articles, media appearances, debates, petitions, demonstrations. For any initiative is welcome, any initiative is urgent.
As for us, this is what we propose: quickly move towards the formation of a European community of intellectuals and artists in solidarity with the Greek people in resistance. If we can’t do this, then who will? If we don’t do this now, then when?
Vicky Skoumbi, Editor-in-Chief of the journal, “Alètheia”, Athens, Michel Surya, director of the journal «Lignes», Paris, Dimitris Vergetis, director of the journal, “Alètheia”, Athens. And : Daniel Alvara, Alain Badiou, Jean-Christophe Bailly, Etienne Balibar, Fernanda Bernardo, Barbara Cassin, Bruno Clément, Danielle Cohen- Levinas, Yannick Courtel, Claire Denis, Georges Didi-Huberman, Roberto Esposito, Francesca Isidori, Pierre-Philippe Jandin, Jérôme Lèbre, Jean-Clet Martin, Jean- Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière, Judith Revel, Elisabeth Rigal, Jacob Rogozinski, Hugo Santiago, Beppe Sebaste, Michèle Sinapi, Enzo Traverso.
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7. Note from House Magic
As editor of the “House Magic” project and SQEK NYC 2012 conference co-organizer, I have high hopes for our week here. I am especially pleased to be collaborating with the recently launched Interference Archive to present the “House Magic” project library together with SQEK members’ contributions for permanent consultation by people in the States. This assemblage, like the conference, is unique. The “House Magic” project continues my long-standing interest and engagment in political cultural production and collective practice. This moment, with Occupy Wall Street active throughout the USA, is especially propitious for the experiences of the European movements to be shared. Of course I am particularly interested in the cultural production of the political squatting and social center movements, and in seeing a closer alliance of politicized artists and occupiers. This movement is the front line of change culture today. I hope artists and cultural workers who are interested in these kinds of occupations will take this opportunity to chat informally about the conditions now and in the past within the European movements.
Potluck!
-AM
“House Magic: Bureau of Foreign Correspondence” – is the anti-disciplinary research project of Alan W. Moore, which began as an exhibition at ABC No Rio, NYC, in 2009. It has continued, primarily as a zine, following closely on the heels of the SQEK. Three
“House Magic” zines are online as PDFs at:
https://sites.google.com/site/housemagicbfc/ or search house+magic at zinelibrary.info
A 4th issue is in proof, with some copies at SQEK events here. The 5th issue will be collective, with an open call for pages to the SQEK list and others interested to submit.
The “House Magic” project blog is here:
http://occuprop.blogspot.com/
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8. About Strike Anywhere
We are New York City Anarchists, Anti-Capitalists and Autonomists; we are joining the call for global revolt. In the coming weeks local groups and collectives, along with regional and global allies will help develop and facilitate an open framework to organize, coordinate and propagate our activities. This will include local and regional organizing bodies, websites and information hubs, resource and skill sharing, and various actions, events, and outreach efforts in the lead up to the Global General Strike of May Day 2012.
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9. Related Texts
–“Is the institutionalization of urban movements inevitable? A comparison of the opportunities for sustained squatting in New York City and Amsterdam” – Hans Pruijt, 2003: http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/466/
–“Squatting in Europe” – Hans Pruijt, 2004: http://www.eur.nl/fsw/staff/homepages/pruijt/publications/sq_eur/
–“Squatting Europe Research Agenda v. 1.0” – SqEK, 2010: http://sqek.squat.net/?p=22
–“The Logic of Urban Squatting” – Hans Pruijt, 2011: http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/25656/
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10. Related Links
House Magic: http://occuprop.blogspot.com/
SqEK: http://sqek.squat.net
Occupied London: http://www.occupiedlondon.org/
From the Greek Streets: http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/
Strike Everywhere: http://strikeeverywhere.ne