Tuesday 17 May 2016

Squats, A Starting Point.


               Squats; seeds, dreams, hopes, a doorway, a pathway, a factory for the imagination.
           More on squats from 325 by CCF, (Conspiracy of Cells Of Fire) 

      Some thoughts on the invitation sent by the comrades of Papamichelaki Squat, of Teflon Library, of Radiofragmata and of Continuous Deconstruction, about the Squatting issue.
        The following text corresponds to snapshots and features that we can find in the current squats in Greece.
I) Property is theft.
       “Property is theft” says one of the oldest anarchist slogans. It is the theft of collective life, it is the abolition of community, it is the refuge of taking distance from the commons, of fear.
         Property and its twin sister power, gives birth to the distinction of people based on titles, positions and privileges… Just like the sky has no borders, the land should not be owned.
A human from a collective being becomes an owner. An owner not of their life but of walls, windows and furniture…
Squats have begun as a form of denial of property, and of self-organised expression. The course of the squat movement has many shades… Some of them are more militant, others are more harmless… There are anarchist squats and alternative squats, squats which are cores of lawlessness and squats which are dehydrated cultural centers.
         Today in Greece there are much more squats than in the past, not only in Athens but also in many cities.
       Every squat begins with an act of war. It annuls property (cornerstone of state power) and releases the ground from contracts, taxes, accounts, legality…         But the bet is exactly starting from that moment on… Squatting and the self-management of a place is a sharp tool, that can either stab the world of property or just become a souvenir and rust… Certainly, a squat is changing our own small-world, but as long as our world is bordered with the world of state power, if it doesn’t arm itself in order to attack, it will become a vision of an oasis surrounded by the desert of the existent.
II) The House of Anarchy.
        State power, in order to maintain its throne produces destruction. It separates people through laws, rules, racism, insecurity, locks, showcases, screens…          State power manufactures the loneliness of the crowd… “Each one alone … each one for himself.” The absolute principle of “Divide and Conquer…”          A Squat can become a meeting point without separations, an open chance to rediscover our collective self, to create communities again.
Read the full article HERE:
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