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Susan from Ireland has  been involved in various squatting & social centre projects in the Netherlands over the last few years, & helped organise a fieldtrip for some folk from Amsterdam to help kick start squatting in Ireland in 2003.  When making  an 'educational film' for the folks back at home Susan seemed like a good start to de-mystify & give some overview of the Amsterdam scene.   

How did you came to Amsterdam & get involved in squatting etc?

Well I first came to Amsterdam about 5 years ago & intended to stay around 3 months & got kinda stuck. I regards to squatting I was staying on a campsite for a couple of weeks & someone invited me to come & stay in a squat so I kinda fell into it there by accident. We got evicted from that squat & then started our own ‘wild squat’ which is squatting without the help of an organisation you just get a couple of tools & a couple of friends & break into the house yourself. We ended up there for two and a half years & we’ve been squatting ever since.

Yeah I like squatting because it fits nicely into ‘reduce reuse recycle’, because your using old abandoned space & everything you use your furniture & everything you have in your flat comes from the street so it’s a kinda low impact lifestyle.

What kinda social activities are going on in the Squat scene in Amsterdam?

There are lots of varied social scenes & things that are going on. You could divide it into a few categories some squatting collectives are mainly involved in squatting & that are their life & their passion. & Then there’s stuff like Food Not Bombs & clothes swapping. Within the squatting movement in Amsterdam there’s a lot of activism on social housing. It’s the situation In Amsterdam where only about 2% of people have mortgages everybody rents & now we have the situation were the government tries to encourage people to buy & of course now there’s thousands of houses for sale – so we’ll just wait for a year until their empty & then we’ll go in – some people are involved in that & it’s actually paying off now as people have been doing squatting actions as a protest about the lack of social housing & now people in the city are coming on side for the squatters as they see them doing something positive for the community.

Further than that you have always have things like squat cafes, where people can eat for a few euros. There’s a lot of anti-fascism; that movements getting quite big loads of meetings the Basque question is big right now.

Can you explain the legal situation some squats are  ‘legalised’ & some not?

As regard the legal situation in Amsterdam the first pre-requisite is that the place has been empty for a year. On the day when you squat you have to have a chair table & mattress for each floor & if you don’t have that when the police come around then your squat will fail. The other thing is that you should have running water & electricity. It’s not always a problem some squats I’ve lived in didn’t have running water but it depends on the police who come round. Then the first couple of days can be pretty nerve wrecking because you may be barricaded in & you don’t know what the owner is going to do. If he’ll come around with a big bunch of heavies & try to get you out that way or go through the legal side of things. Normally people go through the legal side here.  Then when the legal process starts in Amsterdam there’s around 5 lawyers working solely around squatting issues. Often going through the legal thing is just buying time because normally at the end of the legal process you get kicked out – but some people do win their cases & people can end up in squats for * years 10 years.

Some squats like the Binnenpret has been legalised is celebrating its 20^th birthday soon. So often people think legalising your squat isn’t such a good idea because your dealing with the government & maybe trying to get grants & a lot of people feel that isn’t what anarchism is all about – to take money from the state. But still their social centres they providing a service to people often they have ‘squatting hours’ & they do good things out of it. I don’t think it’s so bad.

‘Wild squatting’, ‘squatting info hour’, ‘squat actions’ etc. Explain…

The squatting info hour in Amsterdam for each neighbourhood there’s a squatting information centre – we’re very organised – It’s mainly just groups of anarchists who get together & they’re based mainly in long term squats where maybe nobody lives but get used as cafes & meeting spaces so basically it’s a group who hold a walk I n information hour on a certain day of the week the y co-ordinate it  so as they don’t clash. The people in the information hour are very committed & have notes on lots of buildings & lots of things on file & are a wealth of information on the whole legal aspect it’s not just squatting initially they also provide back-up afterwards they’ll go through your lawyers papers & that kind of thing.

It’s a walking hour people come in & say they wanna squat here & normally the squatting hour have all the equipment they’re quite experienced at door breaking at fitting locks they can talk to the police sometimes people can stay with you for the first couple of hours & make sure there’s enough people for the first night.

The difference with people who are doing wild squatting is that they are just doing it themselves. Sometimes people who do it by themselves don’t have a great idea of the whole legal aspect they just kick a door in & hope for the best. On the other hand some squatters have become disillusioned with the squatting hour or maybe they’ve had a bad experience but they’ve got enough experience to do it by themselves. But normally they’ll make contact with the squatting hour after wards & let them know they’ve squatted.

So I can just go to the squatting hour & say I’m looking for somewhere to squat do you have some ideas or I’ve been looking at a place can you help me out?

If you walk into a squatting hour & say ‘help I need a squat’ they’d say go find one & they’d give you the information of the things you need to do it’s pretty well documented all the things you need to do step 1 through to 10 & contacts for organisations that can help you. For the first time people might say ‘oh that’s shit I really need a house & they have addresses & they’ll only tell them to their friends but of course its good to do it for yourself first. Then you’ll know how to do it which is always empowering for yourself.

If you go with an address or an idea about a couple of buildings maybe they’d know if there where anti-squatters in there. Anti-squatters are people but into buildings by owners to stop people squatting there & they have a contract so they’ll leave when they’re told to leave. But if it seems like a good place to go ahead with then they’ll help you squat.  

You were involved in helping getting squatting re-started in Ireland as part of the infamous Disco Disco squat action. Tell us a little about how you came to be involved in that.

The disco disco thing that was born out of drunken plans from 10 years ago which finally took fruition last July the 13^th Initially a couple of us where sitting in Ireland talking talking talking about squatting & then we thought enough lets just do it. I came back home to the Netherlands & I asked some of the people involved in a squatting hour if they’d be interested in helping start a squat in Ireland & they where very enthusiastic.

There where 7 of us that went over after 3 months of quite hard work & planning on either side of the canal. What I really liked about the squatting action in Ireland was that you had a really diverse crew in Ireland it wasn’t just black clad anarchists & punks it was people from across the activist range & I found these refreshing. There was around 10,000 meetings on both sides we did a little squatting workshop & some of the people who were gonna be living in the squat they came over did a door breaking session got to know all the tools & visited some of the squats here.

On the Irish side there was quite a committed group researching the legal side, what to expect from the police there was a group going around collecting materials all over the country – even the catholic church got involved some priest donated some barricades which was nice.

According to me I thought it was a very successful action even though we only had the squat for 25 hours. Everyone went through the process of gathering the information which I might add was 10 times harder than doing any squatting action here as here there’s 35 years of history behind us.

I think that’s the only difference between squatting here & squatting in Ireland is 35 years. Once the crew there get going there’ll be no stopping them now they have the experience & knowledge.

Have you any Words of wisdom for people starting squatting in Ireland?

Don’t leave anybody out.

If people are interested in doing it don’t exclude them the more people squatting the better.

Be inclusive. Don’t be afraid to do it take risks. Nothing is achieved without taking risks. After the first couple of squats are established go public start organising things have info-cafes on site. Only squat things owned by the government.

That would be about it just squat things everywhere, not to be centralised. It’s easy for people to think outside Dublin there’s nothing-just bog. But people in cork are ready to go for it. Go squatting in the countryside all these people that have gone to America or have died & left behind farms reclaim the streets reclaim the city. Just keep going.

In Ireland it’s quite exciting. Here it can be a bit everything is laid out for you can squat relatively easily. But in Ireland it’s just beginning now & it’s so exciting to be at the start of something.

In Ireland a problem is that the only social space are pubs & there’s a lot of problems associated with alcohol.  We’ve been visiting a lot of squat bars in Amsterdam. Any thoughts?

Squat bars are good in the sense that you can drink a beer for a euro & they’re not always bars other nights of the week they serve different functions. So there is a lot of what you might call alcoholism within the squat scene in Amsterdam & I think you’ll find this in every country. Some of the squatting bars there’s the whole smoking issue as well & some have smoke free nights.

I suppose you’ll never really get away from the whole pub scene so you might as well embrace it even if it is only one night of the week, but when there’s more social centres on the go there’s more choice of things to got to, maybe see a movie go to a discussion evening.

Also its nice to be a bar we don’t want to ban everything when you have a bar the space also get used for other things & things grow from that.

Are there a lot of women involved in social centres & squatting in Amsterdam? Do these spaces challenge any of the gender bias present in wider society?

If we’d like to compare the Irish model & the Dutch model; here its very much male dominated women are involved in the squatting movement. But tasks are more defined like the women are washing & the men are out hunting gathering. Like the women will talk to the police & the men will break the door.

As far as the Irish model goes it was really refreshing to turn up at the first meeting a couple of months before we did the action & discover that the majority of people were women. Of course there where men involved but interestingly enough out the the Dutch crew only 2 men came over out of the 7. Everybody who was deeply involved in the squat action in Ireland – I’m not saying the men didn’t do any work – but most of them were women & I just thought I’d point that out because I’m quite proud of that.

But within every scene I firmly believe that every scene is a microcosm of society no matter how radical or left wing gender roles are still defined within their narrow specifications, which are a shame, but there are some women now who are really trying to change this. But it’s also about the men listening.

I know that you’re a reiki practioner & other people teach yoga & there are somebody awareness classes in some of the squats are there a lot of activities different form the traditional squat activities of cafes gigs & political discussions?

This is the sad thing a lot of anarchist would call that ‘hippy shit’. But its something we try to change. In certain circles there is a movement towards that kind of stuff in mainstream society these things become more popular anyway.

In the anarchist/squatter scene whatever you like to call it a lot of people are illegal so they don’t have access to doctors healthcare or other things that people who are legal take for granted. In one of the squats here there’s a doctor who has a surgery every week that’s on thing that’s nice.

I find the best approach with tis kind of thing is to really take it on an individual basis rather than trying to change the whole of society try to slyly & slowly drag each person in.

There’s also the yoga, & the body awareness that you mentioned in some other squats some Brazilian people give caopeira lessons in the future in the next couple of weeks we’ll be offering self defence for women, & aikido & jujitsu classes as well so they’re getting more popular but there’s a big resistance to it as well as people don’t want to be seen as soft I suppose.

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