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An anarchist analysis of the squatting movement in Barcelona
Monday Feb 15, 7PM @ Red Emma's
Most of us have heard stories about (or experienced firsthand) the squatting movement in Spain. But we frequently fail to stop and think about the effect that this network of squatted & autonomous spaces has on the social activist movement in Europe, generally, and Barcelona, specifically. How does the prevalence of squatted spaces affect the activist/anarchist world in ways that are structurally different from the activist/manachist world in the United States? What do we stand to learn from each other?
Red Emma's is thrilled to welcome back author and activist Peter Gelderloos, perhaps best-known for his phenomenal South End Press book, How Non-Violence Protects the State, for a discussion on the squatting movement in Barcelona. Gelderloos made headlines in 2007, when he was arrested in conjunction with a squatters protest in Barcelona; Spanish comrades helped Peter raise the 30,000 euro bail, but the Spanish government refused to allow him to leave Spain for more than two years while he was awaiting trial. Join us on February 15 as we welcome Peter home, as a part of his first US tour since his arrest in 2007, and hear about the squatting movement in Barcelona from am anarchist perspective!
About the talk:
The squatting movement as part of an anarchist struggle in Barcelona: an analysis of how the Barcelona squatting movement furthers the local anarchist struggle and how it hinders it
Squatting is something of a break with Catalunya's anarcho-syndicalist past, and it's a tradition that illegalist or insurrectionary anarchists tended to adopt wholesale or uncritically, and that they are now criticizing heavily. In some ways a squatting movement helps to create a political ghetto and to recuperate an anarchist struggle in a simulation of social conflict. At the same time, a well developed network of autonomous spaces leads to some impressive strengths in the movement that anarchists in Barcelona usually can't appreciate if they haven't spent time in a country like the US where autonomous spaces are rare.
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