Status Updates From City Is Ours: Squatting and...

I hadn't really thought of squatting as a way to take back the city into a common space but it totally makes sense. I like the Berlin chapter as a contrast to the others.

Interesting, the author of the Berlin chapter argues that squatting there was about changing a space as a form of protest, since so many buildings in Berlin were dilapidated with rampant hiding speculation.

Robin Hood characters were real in the 1980s in Barcelona! Stealing from banks and redistributing the money.

I didn't know much of Greece's political history, but it makes sense in context. And I see some similarities with the US's currently political struggles.

"Resistance during eviction waves is the most publicized and mediagenic form of conflict between squatters and their opponents. Squatters refer to this resistance as 'a show,' openly treating these events as performative rituals to communicate opposition with the police, the state, and the imagined mainstream."

I hadn't really thought of squatting being so carefully planned and meticulously carried out. In my head squatting was impromptu and an act of desperation, but I'm learning about the political activism side of squatting which is the opposite.

"The eviction waves serve squatters because with sufficient calculation, squatters can reside in a house for at least three to four months; that is, if one squats a house immediately after an eviction wave, one can expect to remain until the next wave four months later."

I'm learning a lot. I didn't know much about any of these movements and I like that the information is accessible.

"... There were more political opportunities for new social movements such as the squatter movement in Northwestern Europe than in Southern Europe, because labor and capital had been pacified in the North through a corporatist economic system."