Part Two: Dutch Squatters Accidentally Save The Country From Ruin

of ice cubes. It's great, excellent. Yeah, I don't know that. That's a weird Dutch thing, I guess y yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh that's how you prepare for surfing in the North Sea. Yeah that's probably true. Okay. Uh, Sophie is here playing the part of the Voice of God. Sophie, how are you am I the voice to God? Or is the zoom lady that makes the service announcement that we're recording the Voice of God? Okay, well you're the one who um makes that happen, so you're sort of more like

the Pope podcast Pope. I'll take it. Okay, we'll get you ahead into a gnosticism. Then the zoom Lady would be Metatron and Sophie is the real deity behind it. I think that that is actually what's happening. Um. Also is the third time that narcissism has come up in the past like three days for me, so clearly, clearly something something's happening. Yeah, I never talked about it, so the fact that I bring it up now is definitely okay.

And Ian as our editor on women, made our theme music, and you the listener, responsible for the end of all human society because you didn't recycle. It's too late now and we are talking about how cool it is to break into empty buildings and live in them. In the first part, we learned about the squatters in the Netherlands, and in the second part we're gonna keep learning about the squatters in the Netherlands. What a fun word squatter? You want to say that, Sophie, squatter? See, isn't it fun?

Or if you're from your squatter now, if I did a bad job, I tried, okay, But within Baltimore, b squitter squitter Yeah, Yeah, there's parts of Maryland like squatter. That's all. It's squatter. Yeah, I can make fun of l A now. That I don't live there, or we can say Kraken there you go, yes, which is even spelled like the sea beast, which is extra cool. So where we last left our heroes, all of whom are anonymous. There's very few names in this story, which is kind

of cool. It's all just like groups of people who wanted houses rather than like movement leaders and ship. I've actually never studied a movement with fewer like named leaders, especially a movement that got so much done. Anyway, they are organizing demonstrations against the coronation of Beatrix, who does get a name. Um, she's not anonymous, she's fairly known to history. The police attacked really hard on Coronation Day ten Thou police attacked two different demonstrations with water cannons

and horses and and all that ship. Over six d people were injured. The police were driven back though in both places, and the riots are possibly the largest in Dutch history. I that that might that might well be. That might well be. So it's it's interesting, like I haven't really studied this history, but like as uh, someone active in the Netherlands, you just through osmos as you get bits and pieces of it. And this hane wowning

think crowning. Ah Uh. These riots, Um, they like you get, you get these bits and bobs of it, like what you what you say, like the police being driven back in two places, like one of them being the amstel Bruck in front of what is now the new municipal headquarters. Um. And this whole thing like a like armored vehicles and the sheer amount of violence and the amount of the police being there on the day. Yeah. No, I And it's interesting because there's not that much available in English

about it. Um. Even the like the book I'm reading on the squatter movement was like and then the like biggest riots in our history anyway. So then back to the squatting and I'm like, huh, but I kind of want to know about this thing that you know. Um. But yeah, and and once again the squatters and the in this movie, in this case, these demonstrations were larger than just the squatter movement. Although they performed, they created like a lot of the organizational core of it as

far as I understand, UM. And they very consciously we're like, we're not afraid of violence, but we will stop short of the molotov and we will stop short of the pistol, not unless the police and police initiate lethal force first. Um, they had molotovs and pistols, but they were they were not on the scene. Um at least again the best I can tell from what I'm reading. And I have

one story about a named squatter that I like. The radio equipment in the Great Kaiser where they had the free you know, free radio Kaiser or whatever, UM was put to a new use during these riots. Carol Facade. I don't know how to pronounce his last name. I should have looked it up. He was yeah, yeah, okay, Carol. He was a He was a squatter out of necessity.

He had been born into a working class family. He was living on the streets at eighteen, so he became a squatter and he cut his his riot radio teeth listening to police radio during squatter riots. And this is part of the whole counterinformation stuff that squatters have going on really well. By the time of the coronation, he brought a different set of radio equipment into the squad into the Great Kaiser and into a barricaded room on the top floor where everyone could escape out of hatch

if they needed to. And the roof as was stocked with refrigerators and buckets of motor oil in case they needed to drop refrigerators and or buckets of motor oil onto anybody from from their roof. The pantry was stocked with fireworks. And these four radio operators who are on the top floor, they have two groups. And I'm going to quote Caddle directly. You could interfere by putting a carrier wave on the police signal and transmitting at the

same moment the police did. We made sure that the police speakers would make a screeching sound or a low hum. All those noises really grated on the police officers nerves. We could hear commanders swear and get frustrated. This created even more chaos on the streets. Wow, they were just like effectively like blocking and frustrating the police their own

communications at this moment. Yeah, just just jamming it, just flooding it with more ship And so two of them were doing that, and two of them were monitoring what police communications they could and basically coordinating together. And then at the end of the day they unloaded all the equipment, packed it into their cars and drove away. And you know, I guess it had been long enough ago that this guy was willing to give an interview about this, like

forty years later or whatever. That's that's fascinating. So I never never knew this, Like maybe people were like deeper into like squatting itself. Um, I might might know more of this, But I thought you were going to say, like the radio equipment was for the coordination among squatters an activists that day, but that's completely separate. Still, yeah, yeah,

I don't know whether you know. I kind of presume since these people are all really good at radio and had all this equipment, they probably were doing communication, you know, coordinating or whatever, especially since they drove back like ten thousand cops, um, which coordination is a useful component of helps. But and then also during the coordination or maybe during the month leading up to it fifty but I think possibly on the day of fifty two, luxury apartments were

squatted h and people moved into very nice apartments. Unfortunately, one person who moved into a various apartment was the queen who got the queen and the coronation worked and um, but some people got to watch police retreat and other people got houses for a while so sometimes that's the best you can kind of hope for, you know, compared to a lot of demonstrations, it's a lot, you know, yeah, totally. And so squats at this point are popping off everywhere

around the country, big and small. One in the city of the Hague with squad in nineteen eighty It has two people. It held a cinema and a venue and a restaurant and a pirate radio station and published a magazine in the whole Squad last for twenty three years and likes. Something that I think is like kind of almost hard to wrap our heads around, um, is the scale of squatting. You know. Um, I I was not able to find a solid number of squads that existed

in the early eighties. I saw it estimated and then like low tens of thousands, but I'm not I'm not sure. But that's huge. Yeah, And you know, it's everything from like here's an a meant that a couple of people live in to these giant complexes that have movie theaters and ship you know, um, and it just it, I don't know, it's really impressive. You know, it's it's impressive because if you if you don't know, then you don't, you don't necessarily expect it, and you say, like, god,

they're they're squatting, they're taking this unoccupied area. Maybe they have a nice shed somewhere or something. But no. Yeah, like even now with like much of the squatting movement, uh,

you know, really really much smaller than before. Um, in Amsterdam, there is there is like, ah, a movie theater that you that is from the squatting movement that is like really close to the movement still, and there are like legalized squatted house groups that have like multiple front doors that in in the back kind of connect even if they necessarily didn't before, and like tens of people still live there. Yeah, And it also disseminated more into like

small smaller towns and stuff. So if people are like in their thirties or forties, usually like often they they'll be able to name like a squat in a in like a nearby town or city, like not just like Amsterdam or like the like connected big cities like, but also like smaller places like Drowning In which was like a provincial provincial city and name they had like big

squatting movements and cloning. It was supposedly very heavy and at some point name had like an anarchist based UH school area that was like a school based on their principles that lasted like for a while, based from like the squatting movement, they were building up a lot of stuff. Yeah, okay, and so so one of those squads that I was able to find more information about one of these earlier squads that a lot of action happened around here. Actually, well,

just some neat stories. I mean. One of the things that's so interesting about this is just like tons and tons of like neat stories from all of this time. Like I remember at one point being on top of a a squatted apartment complex that had like a courtyard in the middle, and you know, I think dozens of apartments and and the top is built in a way that to me reads like a castle because you have a roof and then you have a wall, and then you have the street on the other side. And people

are like, oh yeah. In the early eighties, when cops would come down the street, we would use a catapult and thro paint bombs that are the size of paint cans at the cop cars, and then the cop cars would crash. I'm like, this is this has not mapped my experience of the world. Um. And so there's a squat in on harng rocked in and those two attached buildings and with fifty squatters broken another group of uh okay.

So the book that I'm mostly reading from in this case, a lot of this is from a book called Cracking the Movement, which is not incredibly well translated and as full of firsthand accounts. And it says, quote, some musicians happened to be walking down the street in riot police unit forms and they came to play as music. So the squatters are just dressed up like riot coups at the opening of the squad um with instruments and just

came and played. And maybe it was to cover the sound of like the alarms or I don't I have no fucking clue. I wish I knew why did they do this? I don't know? Um the same. So there's there's a lot of stuff like that that that's like why why did they do this? How did they get

away with this? Is this? Is this the Netherlands? Yeah, like like they were like back in um and that I can't exactly place this, but they were like really sympathetic judges in the Netherlands, like where they said like, well there was there was this confrontation and there was the police, and now people get get sued for violence against the police because of bricks were thrown, et cetera allegedly, and then the and then like there were some some quit cases where the judge would go, well but I

mean like, uh, they're they're wearing helmets, right, I mean the police were wearing Hell, that's no problem. Yeah, it's

completely like ha, how how does that happen? Yeah? Yeah, I remember when I first showed up, I had just missed the eviction of a squad called UM the punk rock in Unbroken and and it had been this like huge elaborate eviction UM and I don't know and like someone like went to jail for I think what happened was they got accused of throwing a molotov at a cop and convicted of it and then like sentenced to like nine months in jail versus what at the time, there was a us UM, a U S anarchist who

was in jail for seven years were throwing a rocket a cop and like so it the scale of everything, it's I don't know, whatever I'm not trying to make too big of a difference of the cultural differences, because I do think still like the core idea of the way that the Dutch squad movement like built agency and took power, I think it's still really beautiful. Okay, so the same, But also I think like these kinds of things,

they stretch what is possible. Also okay, so this isn't the normal, well so especially not now, but like, um, like, I don't know the exact history of it, but I think the case can be made that actions like this um set they also set a precedent where in under certain circumstances, becomes possible to do more militant stuff because there's more of a history and more of a practice of it. Yeah. No, that's that's a really good point. And some of the stuff that we'll talk about about. Yeah, okay,

So the same squad and herong rocked. There was a phone in the elevator and the cops call it after a few days, and the squatter's answer and the cops are like, okay, we have established at the place was vacant, so you aren't facing immediate eviction. The cops like called to tell them that and the squatters are like, oh,

that's amazing. Um. Also, what's the phone number here? Because they want to use the phone, and the cops are like, we're not telling any of the fucking phone number, and they like hang up and then the phone is disconnected a couple of days later. But even though ostensibly the squatters are allowed to remain until their court cases are resolved, the owners found a loophole in that law. And that loophole is the same loophole that cuts through most politics.

Violence correct, violence that is completely extra legal. It's not actually a loophole in the law. It's just that owners figured out you could just beat the ship out of people and get what you need. Yeah, yeah, Um. Since cops wouldn't always evicted squads, owners would just hire construction

workers and shipped to break in and beat up squatters. Um. And the Dutch word for construction workers like oh you should say instead of me um is this Oh yeah, I see, I see where you're going for because there's a joke you can make. Yeah, it sounds like ball fucker to me. Okay, yeah, yeah, I got the funk out the fucker one. Yeah. These are completely different words, of course, but yeah, no absolute language. This is why actually no one was friends with me in the Netherlands,

as I kept thinking Dutch words were funny. Um, but yeah, like and so so construction workers or just like thugs basically basically like owners hire people and are like, hey, go beat up these like, you know, scrawny squatter punks or whatever. And I don't know, and so it's just like sometimes like while I was there, even you know, he goes, everyone has to go sleep at the squad for a night or two in case the ball bockers show up to fight. And I'm glad I never had

to fight them personally. But squatters would fight them off, and they would fight them off by standing on the roof and throwing bricks, adam and ship and as owners would hire people to beat up the squatters, the squatters retaliated and they would go directly to the owner's homes because the squatters are very good at finding information about who owns what buildings and things, and they would like break out windows and throw smoke bombs into owners houses

and and retaliate to them being you know, thrown out onto the street or illegally evicted and all this ship and so rooftops ended up getting barricaded with like barbed wire and searchlights in case gangs try and break in over the rooftops, and and everyone went so hard, right, but for a couple of different reasons. First, being a

squatter beats being homeless. And second I would say the Dutch squad scene is where I learned what solidarity looks like um and what collective responsibility really can look like. If you make it really hard for people to funk with you, you make people a lot less likely to funk with the next person, and you know, so that they became this attitude of like we always fight evictions because that is how we keep this whole thing going.

And this is hard to set up, Like I've heard people speaking like frustrations, like how do you mean, how do you maintain this this mode? Or how do you keep getting the people to to show up? And it's like with certain houses, if you if you squat there with certain groups, and especially the more politicized ones, like I've heard people say like we had the rule like if you live in this house, you go to the squatting action and if you weren't there, you need a

good excuse. But although because otherwise we will talk to you because you're supposed to be in solidarity with the rest. Yeah, and it it's interesting how it cuts across like who you like, you know, like people show up with squad actions or people that they can't stand UM at least some of the stuff that I saw or heard about, you know, And yeah, this this expectation. If you are a squatter, you go to squad actions whether you want to or not. UM, which is interesting, right because you're

creating this social pressure. But it is like, well, I don't know, it's that's the movement that is providing your housing for free. It makes sense to keep some skin in the game. And with like there would be exceptions, right like if someone was undocumented and you know, or had overstayed their visa or whatever, like you know, if people like couldn't risk arrest. I think that people weren't asking them to come. But as you as you said, like you know, you need to need an excuse or

otherwise you're you're going. Yeah. But also it's not also not like UM like standards. So there's this The solarity is really really good and really strong, and they were able to maintain it with a lot of the people participating, but also there were like situations where like people were helped to a squatted building and then like organized crime showed up, and then people came to defend the squad while like some of the people living in or like a lot of them in some cases inside were like

almost like oblivious to what was happening. There's just an easy place to just move in and they and maybe they weren't like ah, that connected yet, or they didn't know or they were new. But but you have this situation like sometimes this is sort of like frustrating, kind of disconnecting. Like the people you're like, this is an important thing, this is a political action, and also we're fighting to maintain this while like people inside are like I don't even know, Yeah, like I just wanted a

free place to sleep. Um, speaking of organized I'm we live under a system by which people force us to participate in capitalism, which feels like organized crime. And we also are sponsored by capitalism. No, we're supposed to only be sponsored by good things. Um, it's almost like there's

a contradiction that I face by by trying to do this. Sophie, you seem like the things that are legal are the worst, right, Yeah, that's true, organized legal crime the okay whatever, here's some advertisers and we are back and we are talking about Yeah, like that's actually one of the things that I wanted to know more about, because you know, I keep reading about like thugs showing up or construction workers showing up, but I'm also aware of organized crime as being participated

in this. The squad I lived the longest in in the Netherlands. Um was mafia leader, had gone to prison for being a mafia leader. So people moved into his mansion and that's where I lived. I think I know where this is going. And it ruled h and you know, and that every now and then, like mafia guys would show up at the front door being like we think you should leave, and like people were like, no, we have very good barricades and we're good, and then they

would leave. Um. I don't know, I like, like I said, I don't really have like a structured knowledge knowledge of it. But you hear like a lot of weird stories come by like this kind of steam like oh, it's our building and we want it. Um, and then there's just like often organized crime is quite conservative and uh so there. I've heard stories and not trust who they are of like Hell's Angels, gangs joining the police to fight squatters

for instance. Yeah, but I've also stories of like, um, places being squatted where the owner has a problem with organized crime and then some very friendly thugs keep coming back. Hey, hello, Well I love what you've done with the place. Love it nice. So here's my phone number. Hey, if this guy who owns this place comes by, would you be a dog give us a ring? And that's I mean, that's the three way fight thing, right, that is the like you know, um, yeah, that's a very nice situation

to have. But also like where other situations like um, so this is a story I've heard where people would have had squatted a house hm um, and some some mafia people came over and they were like some kind of a shady folk and then they'll come by and they're like, hey, that's better, better get out. We wanna we need with just get out and uh and there

was like no, no, we're fine. And then at night they get broken into and like beating the ship out of and then they find that in the morning when they're still there because they're not like taken out of it like the building was then left arelic but then they find that in some part of the building there was a safe that was now empty. Oh shit, like this kind of stuff would happen also, yeah, no, that

makes sense. And then there's some people like more recently, let's say, like you know, squatting film the mafia is nice because they don't call the cops. So just if you if you have enough friends that they don't want to bother it, whither with it, then it's fine because you know they're Yeah, so it's it's easier than dealing with the bureaucracy. And I think that's where where I lived.

I think that was the reason it lasted for a while was because well, the owners in jail, like I don't know, he wasn't starting the corporate sidings against us. But one thing you said, okay, like to one of the things that he said, oh well, I like what

you've done with the place. One of the things that really comes up when you start talking people about squatting, there's this conception of like basically like people coming in and trashing places, um, and that absolutely happens sometimes, right, But one of the things that I was really struck by was that overall, people are incredibly industrious at turning places into living places and like beautifying it, not necessarily in ways that owners would like, but certainly ways that

squatters would like. I mean, I remember going into a place that was a you know, it's like four stories and there were no floors. When people moved in, it was a shell of a house, and they literally built the floors kind of in the middle as like kind of almost like it looked like a like a jungle gym. You know. They just like put construction polls up and then built floors, and then there's just like you know, if you're on the top floor, you could fall forty

feet if you were drunk. But fortunately no one was ever drunk. No, people are drunk all the time, probably for the best. But they entered into a relaxed state. You know. That helped me. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But this is this is interesting. So um, there's like a lot of because you say like that the bow puckers were like the like often called in as thugs. Um, but there's like a lot of like construction people or people who have learned to love or do construction within within squatting.

Because of all this like d I y building stuff they do, and it's it's also something that has won over like at least in the day, like a lot of also like liberals and centrist when it's like, well but if they're fixing the place up, then it's good and you can show like, oh look how nice it is. Look how looks to the point that you get now you get like gentrifying private spaces that use like sort of like the alternative squatter aesthetic as a as a as a marker of style. So they will make a

very professional ballet based furniture, for instance. And this is like like if you have like a new hip like yuppy place intending to gent are fine area, chances are you're going to see like pellet based furniture here or there because they because they from that style and from this supposed alternative. Oh it's your own choice. You're here as an individual because you're not in the mainstream. You know that that kind of hipster what you're doing. I

wish that surprised me in any way. But okay, so back to one more thing. Okay, one more thing. Okay, do you remember from the previous episode when I say, like sometimes judges would be quite well willing towards squatters occasionally, not in general, but sometimes so um. I heard stories of one judge where like squatters were quite happy if they got this one judge because he was he was a very common sense kind of areas like, okay, what

were they really doing something with the building? No, well, no, people should live there. Fine. Yeah. And this person was also known for occasionally being like, you know what, let's uh, let's have a recess. We'll meet there at the squad in uh, fifteen minutes. It's a little bit of walk, a cup of coffee, let's go see the place. And the judge would just walk into the house. You're like, okay, let me in. Let's see. How's it look. Oh, you kept it nice and clean. Oh it's that that part

doesn't look so great. What's going on there? And and then if the if the place looked nice, then he would be more willing to say like that's funny. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the things that squatters were doing past the rule of law and kind of almost how they started, I think, actually really built their power is they would also re squad buildings and re squading buildings was kind of the most extreme statement, because you're you're driving out

the owner's thugs or you're driving out cops. You're taking the building by force. And usually at this point I have no more legal protection. You've lost your court cases, but you don't care. It's your house you want back in Um. And so some of these re squads became the most potent symbols during a lot of a lot of the larger riots and stuff during or so focus around these and during the summer. A few months after Coronation Day, on July third, folks re squatted a building

called the vogel Strouss Vogels choice Um. It was held by thugs who who threw rocks. They also threw a sewer pipe, They threw a chair, They threw everything that they could find to keep the squatters back. Because the squatters had stockpiled all that stuff ahead of time. So the squatters built a siege in a siege shield. They took a wooden door. They attached legs to it, like tall legs, I think so, kind of like a very tall table so they could set it down. I think

that's the best I can understand. And then they put a box spring mattress on top so that as rocks came, they would like bounce off, and they walked it towards the door to protect them from the rocks. And they while in the meantime other squatters ripped up cobble stones broke them with a hammer into manageable chunks to throw at the thugs inside the building. They get to a window and they rammed open with beams and traffic signs

and they get into the ground floor. But since they were attacking a building that they had built the defenses for, it was very well defended. The trap door up to the second floor um was had a lot of like refrigerators and handy heavy things like next to it to be put onto the trap door. So they use a circular saw they cut through their own trap door. They make it up to the next floor and then the floor.

After that, some Italian squatters showed up with the translation calls them iron catapults, and they launched lead weights up the next stairwell to drive back the thugs. I don't know, I have no idea iron catapults. Yeah no, I I don't know. I don't know whether this is like a three person sling shot or whether it was actual catapults. I have no fucking clue. Um, they drive back the thugs by throwing lead weights at them. Uh, and then they um they the thugs flee out the roof and

get away. And so once they've re squatted the building, they turn around and start barricading immediately the shield door was nailed over a window, and riot cops show up like right away, and a crowd shows up outside. Hundred and twenty RYOT cops break into a two long charge, and the thirty and forty folks inside they don't run away,

because you don't abandon your fronts. Outside the crowd fights back, and there's like a scene like one squatter with an iron bar like I think like a ten foot bar is just like holding to twelve cops at Bay by like swinging this bar around. Both sides are throwing rocks at each other. At this point, the cops are are throwing rocks back. Uh. The cops fire CN gas even though it had been just illegalized m or just banned in favor of the slightly less toxic cs gas, and

squatters start throwing up in the canal. This whole melee Maelstrom. Eventually the cops make it into the building. Um Or. They make it to the building and the squatters inside are listening to Free Kaiser the radio station, the pirate radio station, and it's playing street fighting. It's all very cinematic the way it's all described. It's playing street fighting Man by the Rolling Stones and Anarchy in the UK

by the sex Pistols. And the account that I read was like, instead of the songs inspiring morale, the squatters were like, could they just fucking play something different? Why do they keep playing these fucking songs? Um And then they're throwing everything left right, the half of it just got thrown at them. They turn around and they throw bed springs, heaters, chairs, tables, everything at the cops. They

run out of stuff to throw um. Tear gas is pouring into the house, so eventually they flee out over the roof, except two people who stay behind to get arrested. Some get out the ground floor and they like jump into the canal to get away. Others make it out over the roof and jump across like a one meter or so gap to the next building and then like

break into the next building. Um Or, they find an open window and they crawl through and they leave a sorry note, like an apology note, and some money on the table of the person whose apartment that they just broke too. Some of the people who live there are really upset about this, and some of the people who live there are super sympathetic. Like at least one woman's squatter gets basically like hidden in an apartment I think under a bed um in order to keep the cops away.

But another person is like, they're in here, you know which whatever you broke into their house, I don't know whatever. UM cops come in arrest some of them drag them out by their hair. It's like super brutal arrest. Some of them are beaten, bloody, unconscious, and the riot like kind of moves into the streets and starts moving around the city and it largely keeps the police at bay

and the squatters. They lose the house, right, but they declared the day of victory and they had won because this is the first like, this is the most intense confrontation they've had so far, I think, besides the not squat related Queen's Day riots. UM, and they wont because they've proven that they were willing to stake their lives defending having places to sleep. Um, and they basically were like, nothing's going to be the same after this, and there's

this big sea change movement. UM. A ton of squatters were like, fuck this, this is too serious now and started backing out of the movement. I think around this time some entire neighborhood groups were like, you know, we kind of got our houses, We're gonna kind of back off now. Um. But the public perception changed to squatters will fight tooth and fucking nail for roof of their

heads and you can't funk with them. And the real estate prospectors who had hired the thugs at that particular squad fled the country and moved to Germany for a while because they were afraid for their lives. They do. They did come back and then got their like car pushed into the canal and ship, but um, for a while they flee the country. Sixteen people arrested for defending this house, six of whom are charged in jail. They refused to give their names. They make nuisances of themselves.

Squatters gather outside the jail loud as hell in what's called a noise demo. UM, where you know one that I've been on people bring like a hand crank air raid siren and just like make a ton of noise. The pirate radio station starts sending messages into the jail. Care packages show up every hour for the rstes. All the old hippie radical lawyers step up and are like,

all right, we'll defend you. Um So this this whole big fucking thing, And this is the second time that this gag has happened in real life on this show. One of the squatters, he's in jail, and the jailer is like, someone made you a cake. I'm going to give you the cake, but you can't have the pan. I'm not allowed to have the pan, so I'm gonna pull that. He pulls the cake out of the pan. Somehow it comes up out in one piece. He hands it to the squatter leaves, and the squatter starts breaking

off pieces of the cake to eat. And there's a fucking file baked into the cake. Really yeah yeah, And and the squatter doesn't use it right, He like hides it in his sweater, and then later he gets moved to a different jail and they like find the file in his sweater and confiscate it. I know, It's like, this could have gone really epic jail break, like the last time this exact same fucking any tune ship happened

in real life of this show. And they spent six weeks in jail, and this is the longest the squatters had spent in jail up to that point. And I don't know whenever, I've never spent that long in jail. But it's okay. So they go to trial and they decide they're going to make a mockery of the whole thing. And they're like, if the judge is an asshole, we should all have like good jokes lined up to make

fun of the judge. To quote one of the arrestees, they considered puking, shifting, standing on your head, fainting, or pointing out a ZiT on the judge's face. That's like they're like, what should we do? You know? And one of them said that to me is the essence of a political trial, not so much the testimony you give, but that you see it as a fight who's determining the order here? Which I think it's at the the

basic idea behind the Dutch Squatter success. You just deciding that you are in charge whether or not the other people think that that's true. Um, you determine the means of engagement. You you act as though your cause is legitimate and you are a legit at force. You're not asking for housing, you're fucking taking it and defending it. So later they're at least released on their own recognance and they just don't show up to their next trial date. Instead,

they set up a squatters court. They've made they pronounced judgment on the speculators, the city, the police, the law, and have a big demonstration afterwards, and squatters have meetings all over the city to plan the next step, and they decide that their best move is to make it really fucking financially expensive for the city to evict their squads Um, which they do in two ways. One, they make their houses really well defended, so it takes a

ton of cops and equipment to evict them. I know that this eventually culminates like twenty years later, at least in Um. You have eviction waves right where you know, the cops in Amsterdam are not enough to evict the squads in Amsterdam, or the same in other cities, I believe, And so it's like once every couple of months, all the cops from the country like get together to evict all the squads as many as they can in one day. Um, in which case your job then becomes make it take

a really long time so fewer squads end up evicted. Uh. That's the first way defend the hell out of the squads and to the riots. Need to do as much damage as possible to banks and real estate agents and other such targets. Um. And that's the riots need to spread throughout the city. Basically, if you have victed house, there isn't just gonna be a riot at that house. There will be targeted rioting everywhere. You can't drag us out of our homes. And the new strategy was soon

put to a test. The first time, it succeeded really well. In the second time, it kind of failed. Um. The first time, it took two thousand fucking cops with armored cars, bulldozers, construction equipment, three hydraulic cranes too, water cannons and snipers with rifles on rooftops and military police. Um. The squatters fought them off until the last minute, then snuck out through a hole in the wall into the church next door. Which just fucking rules. Um. The second time, I think

this is what happened is very whatever. A single squatter inside and reads out a statement on a megaphone to the police, we will keep our struggle in our own hands and determine ourselves how and when it will take place. Basically, they're like, you thought we were really going to defend this one, but we're not. Fuck you. He wasted all

this fucking effort. Um. But the police then went wild on the crowd outside, which was actually mostly like bystanders and tourists, um, and the cops were kind of brutaled people. So it was like not seen as a success. Whoa they actually there's like so they found the house empty because they were like, we're we're not going to fight for this one because we choose the thing. And then the police were so angry they just lash out at

I think. So it seems like they maybe kind of mistook the crowd outside for being more squatters or whatever. But yeah, it seems like they were like, maybe there were some squatters outside, but they just like when you know,

as a police riot basically. Um. And so the six arrestees from before their their court date that they actually go to Is on September eight, and the night before the Volgo, strauss Is squatted again for the third time, because it's at this point as symbol, and also it's a cool way to be like, well, you all, are you arrested us for doing this in the trials tomorrow? We're going to squat it again. Um. And this time

they did it quietly at night. They brought thirty squatters with ladders and there were three of the owner's thugs inside who they just escorted outside and kicked out. Um. I don't know how long that re squad lasted. M hm. So the name is it? Yeah, please Strauss is that it's not strat, No, it's it's stru y s Okay, how do you actually say it vocal strauss? So I was close, okay, close. Yeah. So it's the sound that's the same for the word onion, but it's the fancy

spelling of it. So normally an Ostrich in Dutchess and Strauss voel okay. Now, so they it did and they wrote it with a y, which is kind of the kind of the fancy or faux fancy way to do it. So I wonder what that's about. There's a small chance it's a transcription error on my part, but I don't know. No, they do that, Okay, Okay, yeah, I'm not sure. Um okay.

So the trial it starts, it lasts like two years, and throughout it, the defendants they just keep fucking with it, like basically everyone who's on trial in this podcast, which I don't even specifically recommend anyone who's listening, I'm like, sometimes you just gotta like put your head down and take your time, you know. Um, But it's also really cool if you do this kind of ship. One of the defendants named b. A. S. Boss. Um. Yeah, he

just sat there knitting, very colorful knitting. Um. At one point someone was like, oh, he's the only one who actually got anything done during it was a waste of time for everyone but Boss. At one point, Boss also stole the judge's gabble. Um. They turned the whole thing into a circus every chance they get their tearing up law books and throwing them at people. One of their supporters like vomits on purpose in the audience. Um. And in the end, some of them got off and some

of them got like two to four months in prison. Um. And yeah, yeah, it's not very long, um for how much effort was put into all of this. Uh. And meanwhile, squats are happening in evictions are happening. Riots are happening, and when they demonstrate, apparently a lot of them. The demonstrations are silent, but for one chant right to live. And they go to real estate prospectors homes. They smash out windows, they throw in smoke bombs, h Fancy cars

with the real estate prospectors are pushed into canals. They loot fancy storefronts and build barricades of stolen mannekins. At one point they lured motorcycle cops into a trap. They were like being chased by motorcycle cops. So they like I think, like ran around the corner where they had set up a bunch of um dumpsters barricades, and all the motorcycle cops crash into the dumpsters. Um, which is pretty cool. And then other dumpsters are dragged into the

street and set on fire. Um. But you know what else is on fire are these savings from the love it. Um. We'll be right back after this word from potatoes and wait and deep fried things. And we are back, and we are talking about rioting in a way as a way to defend tens of thousands of people getting to

sleep inside instead of outside. That's like the thing that I think like often like gets lost is like I think when I was young, it would just be like riots are cool, right, but you could really easily have the other side where you're like, oh, this just sounds

like meaningless destruction, right. But it's the context that is so interesting to me, because you know, there's like riots that are really bad all the time to write like, but the context of like we are exerting political force in as directly as possible so that we all get to keep sleeping inside, you know, is the I feel like it's like too easy to get like just caught up in the like Looney Tunes trick the cops into

driving into barricades thing. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, And it's like if you if you take if you take it further, even if you're not keeping tens of thousands of people off the street, like um, part of the the thing you get with squatting is freedom of your time, because yeah, instead of paying rent, you do not, so you get you get those hours of the day back, which means it can help you organized, get other stuff done or do work in the community and set up just like

projects of like mutual aid and services that others don't provide them to live more the way you want to and to give an example of how the world could be. And this is also at stake like um, part of the importance of of evicting these things, besides protecting the money value for the for the investors, is also to prevent exactly the kind of organizing that they tried to do. Like I don't know if you intend to talk about

the via fizza plant, no, tell me about that. But the for this was initiated from the from the squadding movement as a way to say, like, um, we want to provide things like outside of capitalism and for them to be free. So what they did, um, is they they fixed like a lot of bikes, like they bought them or built them or painted them. And they were white, white,

the fat blonde white. Yeah. And so the idea was you get these, you get these bikes everywhere and they're marked so you know, this is a bike you can just use and people just cycle these bikes around and get them. Um. And that worked pretty well. Um. And this is the kind of thing you can do when you have these this resource and the time for yourself that you don't need to spend um working for a landlord. Yeah, no,

that is that is a really good point. Um. And also I like the directness of saying working for a landlord because that is what you do when you pay rent, You go out and you make money to give to your landlord. Yeah. Um yeah, more than a house, more than just a roof over your head. Like if you're not if you're not homeless, then squatting is you get back, like I don't know, fifteen to twenty hours of your best hours in the week that you don't pay your landlord.

Yeah and so okay, so and I was it goes very well with what was next in the script. In addition to squatting for housing, people are squatting for social space as well, and you have squat bars up all over the city and and also other social centers that are not just revolving around drinking, but some of the squat bars would provide bounties. Basically, it's like if you take out the surveillance camera, you can drink for free

at the squad bar for the night. Um. Years later, I went out on a bounty hunt for I Amsterdam banners, which is like this gentrification campaign for the city. Um. And it was a really bad idea because it was just me and my drunk friend climbing flag poles over canals in the middle of the night. But it got us free beer, Okay, So anyway, I don't know. Yeah, still this kind of thing happens still at times. Is this is like smaller scale, but it's not it's not gone. Yeah, no,

it's looking awesome, um. And what you're talking about, like, you know, and like the first time I was in a really good giveaway shop. Right in the US, we usually them free stores, and I remember them being the giveaway shops and things like where you just you can walk in and they're like when we're not paying rent and all this ship is stuff we pull out of the trash, so like it's just free and people can just come in and take what they need, you know. Um,

and it's really fucking nice. Um. So eventually in nineteen eighty, in October nineteen eighty, a year after the Great Kaiser was supposed to be evicted, but they held onto it for an extra year, the city bought Great Kaiser, and after negotiations with the squatters, multiple housing cooperatives decided to move into the building. And this was contentious someone It was seen by some in the squatter movement as like basically the squader movement going bourgeois. Others took it as

a victory. I think this is one of the earlier examples of legalized squads, but I'm not actually entirely certain. I had a hard time finding the timeline of legalized squads. Um And at one point before this all happened, before it all happened, some faction of squatters broke back in before and got drunk in trash the place and covered in slogans basically being like fun bougeoisseholes or whatever. Uh.

And then others went in to clean it up. And so I think that that gets as some of the tensions that are starting to happen in the movement at this point. Um And there starts also being more tension

between neighborhoods and the citywide council as well. Theoretically, the citywide council can only act as a coordinating body, and no one, no neighborhood or click was in charge any neighborhood could call for a citywide meeting, but in practice some portion of the squadter movement was ending up kind

of directing other portions of the squadter movement. An entire neighborhoods end up feeling disenfranchised, especially the less radical ones, I believe, And a lot of the kind of conversation around then is like, when is it a scene, when is it a movement? And so so. Most of the largest riots were in those first few years, but the

squadding movement continued afterwards. And one of the biggest things, one of the sort of sea change moments that happened in this twenty three year old Dutch squatter named howns Cock died in a police cell after being severely beaten during his arrest in a re squad action, and the movement gathered to discuss. Basically they're like, well, fuck it if they're just going to beat us to death anyway, And in that kind of crisis moment, fear lifted and

the molotops came out and cop cars started burning. There were forty different lightning strike actions taken in revenge for his death or arson's at cops stations. A tour boat, City Hall, the city records office. Other cities set up

burning barricades and broke out government windows. And the arsons were probably committed only by a limited group of people, but thousands of people showed up the next day at a demonstration, and previous divisions that have been splintering the scene started to fall apart that the cops declared the death and overdose, though, and the squatters had a new demand. They were like, all right, we want an independent autopsy, and the media agreed. They were like, we want to

see the real reports. And basically, through that combination of pressure, the autopsy happened, and the truth in the end was complicated. To quote that book Cracking the Movement, hans Cock died because the police let him die, but he died also because he, in any case, to a certain extent, wanted to. During his arrest, he swallowed a bottle of methadone tablets, and he knew what kind of consequences that might have. Hans Cock had said to his parents he wouldn't live

to see thirty. So a year later, at his memorial, the squatters marched the police station and smashed out the windows, and then they laid wreaths and flowers against the wall, and most of the crowd moved on, but some of the squatters and Hans Cock's father linked arms and surrounded the wreaths and they decided for that part of the action they were going to not use violence. Right, this

is now a symbolic in a different way. And so the media shows up just as the cops crash into the the crash into people with batons and beat Hans's father and trample the flowers and you know, destroy this memorial. And everything I've read about the squad movement in the Netherlands talked about how peaked in nineteen eighty and declined. Right, Um, as if the movement only happened from one and that

as you are a testament to I believe, um isn't true. Um, no, no, yeah, And it seems likely that there were fewer squad actions after that, Like I mean, probably the majority of squad actions happened after that, right, But the biggest riots were in for sure. Right. But squatting is about living, is about being housed, It's about taking back our time. And squads continued and people have lived decades and squads and

the squad movement has refined its methods. Um squatters used their access to space to be active participants in worldwide political struggle. The Meager squad bars which served up cheap beer which half the time was stolen from supermarkets anyway, raised money to send to revolutionaries in Latin America. They ran giveaway shops, They held political movie nights and discussions.

They housed refugees and migrants. They hit fugitives. They also formed the cornerstone of the Dutch anti fascist movement, which is its own beautiful story that I don't have time to go into, but directly stopped fascist organ within the city of Amsterdam at one point in the eight is and sent a growing far right movement at least in

that part of the Netherlands into decline for a while. Um. Yeah, And as far as I understand, is one of the kind of cornerstones of what we now kind of understand is the anti fascist movement or like anti fire or whatever coming out of a lot of this ship that happened. Not as like the soul. Yeah, I would absolutely absolutely agree. In many ways it's the cornerstone and where much of

like movement infrastructure is now based. UM I was a bit quiet because I recently got told or retold, like the story of like the initial actions around the Hans Cook. So when you when you told that that story, Um, um, it's it's got it's quite heavy because of course Unco was arrested like heavily heavily beaten in a in a re squad situation and where gunshots were fired my police, etcetera. Yeah. Um. And so to hear like this thing about the memorial

that kind of continues that that story. Um, but I would have absolutely agree, like the people people pretend like, oh, squatting is is over in the early eighties, where like, um, there's there's there's been a decline and it's been like progressive with not a linear progression either. Um. But it's not. It's not gone and it's and it's much more like it's been bigger for like quite for quite recent like

the squatting ban is now twelve twelve years old. Um. And that that was a big blow, especially to like the squatting movement in smaller towns. Um. Because in bigger cities, when there's more of a squatting movement there, they can take a blow also better. So the bigger, the bigger populations, they can manage the blow better. But but squatting is still is still relevant, and it's still being done also in in new ways, and there are new groups also

innovating and working on this. And um So the fact that I've heard so much about squatting, even though I myself I'm not directly very involved with the squatting itself. Um it's also a testament of it of its influence. UM I have like been like around and doing things with with squatting, but I wouldn't call myself a squatter. But it's such a pervasive part of like the radicalism and leftism in the Netherlands that you you it's it's

always there because it's it's where infrastructures, where experience is. UM. If you're looking now at recent actions where things like there's this confrontation with police, you instantly see the difference. Like if there's a group of people with some experienced squatters among them, especially older ones, then suddenly useful techniques

against the police are disseminated among the crowd. Very recently last year, uh there was a housing wave of demos around housing and the first one of that was in Amsterdam and it was started by um well, it was headed by a huge block of squatters in an anarchist it look like a few minutes to pass by or And then afterwards was the rest of the housing demonstration and towards the city center the dumb they're there came a confrontation because there was a squatting action attempted at

the end of this demonstration, and police showed up with horses, and when they were trying to drive off these people, there are some parts where there were people who knew some of these techniques about how to deal with horses, and where they were the experienced squatters, like everybody, you have to jump up and down because horses they don't like that. It's scarcely. You have to anticipate when they're gonna come, and you jump up and down so that

the horses won't come by. And if enough people do it, they take the horses away because the horses can't handle that. And that worked, and a lot of those people they were there for the first time. But because there was this living tradition of squatting and this living memory of earlier struggle that helps inform and introduce new people. Uh, it's it's a part of our of our strength, um.

And it's it's still very very relevant. Yeah. And then and there's like all that inherited infrastructure, right, like you know, there's like all of these legalized squads, and and that's something that we didn't really talk about, um that one of the things that happened that you know, complicated within the squatting movement was that a lot of these squads legalized and then essentially entered, you know, are now owned

by the squatters. Yeah. And then so in the city, you know, cave to capitalists, not the countries, sorry, not the city of the country, cave to capitalist pressure outlawed squatting um. And it became a crime worth a year in prison to occupy an unoccupied building. And as you

pointed out, people continue to do it. Right. It seems to have massively negatively impacted the number of squads and things, but a lot of a lot of the core has still survived and some of the modern squatting stuff that I've run across, And I'm curious if you know more

and have more information with these two. One is a group that's called We Are Here, and it's a collective of migrants and asylum speaker seekers, mostly from Africa, who refused to use the homeless shelters that are you know, you have to show up only at ninetya, have to get out first thing in the morning, or just all the usual absolute garbage of UM the shelter system and instead squat buildings in Amsterdam. And then there's another group in an arca feminist group with the name an arca

feminist group that recently squatted a building. Oh okay, I got sorry, yeah a f g A. Also I was going if you if you weren't, wouldn't mention them, I would have a yeah. Yeah. And so they recently squatted a building in the red Light district and protests of the gentrification of the red light district. Is that a

reasonable summary as they they they they squad a lot. Yeah, they do, like super energetic and also very like in their own in their own style, taking from tradition, bills, conventing new things, were just finding out for themselves new ways to do UM. And they yeah that's cool. Yeah, they're really interesting group. You als will follow them on Instagram? Yeah yeah, no, I yeah, I like them, okay. And so then there's like other some of the other legacy

stuff I found. Obviously, there's all that infrastructure we've talked about. There's an entire generation, as you talked about, people who know how to take an exercise power collectively, um, which is so cool because you can say that in a very abstract way. You're like, oh, there's a whole generation of people who know to take power collectively and like sometimes that means knowing to jump up and down on the cops, you know. Um. And there's thousands of buildings

that have been saved from demolition. The physical character of Amsterdam, which is so loved by tourists and all that ship like kind of seems like it exists because of fucking squatters. There's this idea, it was there was one time they wanted to run like the highway, like straight through the city center where it's like in the there's a there's a tunnel that goes through the a which separates the

city center from the north. In the north highway just goes straight through the middle into the water, into the tunnel, and one on the other side it comes up on a much smaller road where it has to split out into the city because there's no big highway cutting through the city center of Amsterdam, where there were plans to make that highway, but they were aborted by a militant group of like squatters and squatter affiliated or just friendly

protesters stopping this. Um. Which is why that's that big highway, isn't there? Now? That that fucking rules? Um? And I feel like it's like something that people need to kind of remember. Like, Um, a lot of the things that I cover on the show, people don't win in the end, or like what they won was like the friends they met along the way, or like some good last words,

they get hanged or whatever, you know. But it's like, sometimes we can, like even if we don't necessarily win our like full absolute goals, right, Um, we can sometimes win a fucking lot along the way. Um. And apparently the neighborhood and please correct my pronunciation, Jordan's Jordan's Um, Jordan like was going to have been leveled essentially and basically the squatters in the eighties like are the reason it exists. Um. And there's one final most important legacy

of the squatter movement. It is because of the squatter movement of the Netherlands that I met my friend Shard, who got me back into playing Dungeons and Dragons awesome. So I don't know if short listens to this show, but if he does, thanks for getting me back into plane Dungeons and Dragons and also for going so hard against Nazis for all those years. That's my wonderful Alex. Do you have anything you'd like to plug at the end? UM?

I would? I would, of course you can follow me and my my Dutch language podcast, my Dutch language uh not so very active solio social media almost from almost from burnt red, which is Dutch for like save, but it's a Spanish u r L, but in Dutch it means like almost drown saves because together we can make it. And but otherwise I would. I would like to plug a new radical crowdfund platform called uh fire Starter, which is a crowd fund platform that it's based in the Netherlands.

It's launching soon and it's meant to do crowdfunding specifically for radical and leftist projects because if you stick them to other they can strengthen each other. And if the platform is on our side, it can use what it can do, like the strength of a platform to further develop our own movements and our power. UM and you can find them on Firestarter fund dot n l and that links also to a number of socials great and uh.

You can pre order Margaret Kildoy's new book We Won't Be Here Tomorrow from a K Press that comes out on September. I get that right, crushed it and you can get a nice little print if you pre order of the cover. I'm really I don't know if I got the art part right, but there is art. I know there's art. Yeah, I think you got it right, crushed it. Follow you. You can follow me at at Sophie at what is my Name? On Twitter, at why Underscore Sophie Underscore why on Twitter for all the things,

and at close on media everywhere. That's it. We'll be back mon day with another story of Cool People Who Did fool Stuff? Right market y yay, bye bye bye bye everyone. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone Media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.