To Get to the Other Side : A Journey through Europe and its Anarchist Movements

Notes
The Rote Flora is Hamburg’s main squatted social center and autonomous space. It is located in the Schanzen district of Hamburg, at 71 Schulterblatt St. The “Culture House” next door is four stories tall. The two largest newspapers in Hamburg, liberal and conservative, respectively, and the latter owned by Springer, the major German media baron. Later in the article the former is referred to ironically as the Mopo. A commercial project for the development of the plaza — or piazza — just next to Schulterblatt street. Hamburg’s urban development bureau, like HUD in the US. An institution for junkies to shoot up in a safe environment. An abandoned water tower in a park that was converted into a 4 star hotel. Asta is the official student union. A student-oriented movie theater. (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 51 : Homage to Barcelona
Homage to Barcelona Sometimes it seems like all Europe is heating up this summer. After Sarkozy won the elections in France, another tide of protests and riots swept across that country, at times uniting the youth in the banlieues who had rioted in 2005 with the anarchists, students, and workers who had rioted against the CPE, the labor deregulation, in 2006. There were more major riots in Denmark, with blockades erected once more in the streets of København, after authorities made moves to demolish an old building on the outskirts of Christiania, clearly a practice move in preparation for the real thing, their plan to evict the “free state” of Christiania itself. The Love Kills group from Craiova put on a feminist festival, and they and other anarchists from Romania organized a black bloc to attack the fascists who were protesting the Gay Pride parade in Bucureşti. A number of groups in Ukraina and Russia, including my friends in Kyiv,... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 50 : A Walk in the Graveyard
A Walk in the Graveyard Diumenge, 26 Agost L was back in Barcelona, this time to stay. Love, like all things in life, is harder with a prison sentence hanging over your head, but my days were so much richer when I could share them with her. Finally, we had more than just a week at a time to get to know each other. One Sunday we decided to further our tradition of geeky anarchist history tourism, and try to find Durruti’s grave up on Montjuic. It’s a long, hot walk up the mountain. There’s hundreds of tourists, most of them packed two high in busses, or riding the cable car. Seems we’re the only ones walking. Past the fortress of Montjuic, the traffic dies down and the tourists disappear. There’s only a few old men, along one bend of the road, who have parked their lawn chairs in the shade, to lounge the day away. The hideous Olympic stadium sprawls out below us. I wonder what used to be there, what got torn down so h... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 49 : Surviving
Surviving Lutxo lived in the room next to the computer where I did my writing. Out on the balcony, over which I always looked when thinking of what to say, thoughts trailing off into the deep blue sky... on this balcony he kept a modest plant in a pot. “De El Forat,” he told me. Lutxo used to live near that occupied community garden, and the plant had lived in it. This was a squatter plant; it had enjoyed a brief life in the free soil of El Forat, and Lutxo had rescued it just before the bulldozers came. Shallow roots but deep relationships I think we survive repression with the relationships we make — with the friends who help us endure our many evictions, our many transplantings, and the neighbors who shelter us. As I got to know the people of RuinAmalia better and found new friends, I realized I wouldn’t want to go back to the 23rd of April to change a few trivial choices that would have kept me out of the wa... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 48 : The Neighborhood Tour
The Neighborhood Tour Every neighborhood in Barcelona seemed to have at least one resident historian, an old militant who collected newspaper articles and stories, fliers and posters from protests, to add to old archival materials and the memoirs of earlier generations. The veterans of the revolution and the long resistance against Franco were dying off, the gentrification of the city left no reminders of past struggles even as the new urban architecture facilitated greater social control. The surveillance cameras, the wider streets, the buildings without balconies, the enclosed parks, the dumpsters without wheels — these were all direct responses to us anarchists and rebels and our history of riots and sabotage, yet each change erased both the memory and the possibility of fighting. In Spain the isolation of the present was even more marked than in other democracies, because for the government to have legitimacy everyone had to accept the alibi of a disconne... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

New Fascist Attack in St. Peterburg
New Fascist Attack in St. Peterburg 15-1-2007. A collective translation from an anonymous article in Russian put up on Indymedia. On the 14th of January in St. Peterburg, after the traditional action “Food Not Bombs” (FNB, serving a free meal for everybody who needs it), a group of 10 neonazis armed with knives attacked one of the activists. He was taken to the district hospital with 21 knife wounds. It should be noted that during the action there were already about 7 nazis watching from nearby. The victim is in critical condition. He lost much blood, and has taken damage to vital organs. He was operated on yesterday and today he needs a blood transfusion. Police instituted a criminal investigation under clauses 30 and 105 (murd... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Wrapped in Fog
Wrapped in Fog Voskrisenya, 17 Dekabr’ Uniformed Soviet-style, the woman behind the glass at the train station rolls her eyes when she hears I am a foreigner. No helpful hand gestures, no speaking slowly, no writing numbers down on paper. The people in line behind me start crowding, elbowing, edging in past me, even though the previous person negotiating three tickets to Almaty took twice as long. Outside, too, the city is aggro, a jackhammer heartbeat clashing with its candy coating, ostentatious and metallic as a cellphone ringtone playing “Ode to Joy.” The chatter of machines and mouths fills the air. Russian, Ukrainian, Surzhik — the local dialect combining the two. The languages are delicious in the mouth, plagu... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

My First Contact
My First Contact I arrived in Kyiv at the beginning of October, and started looking for local anarchists. I had few good ideas on where to start. The city was huge, and it wasn’t the place you’d expect to find a radical social center. Even the tradition of having social movements, however pathetic they may be, had been pretty well mauled by the Soviets. So, I opened up the magazine some stranger had pressed into my reluctant hands way back at the Köpi. Abolishing the Borders from Below, a magazine by and about the anarchist movements of Eastern Europe, written in admittedly bad English, and published in exile in Berlin. I found it to be a treasure trove of interesting articles, written in an earnest, non-dogmatic style. Mor... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Snowing Again
Snowing Again Вторник, 7 Ноябрь, Київ In Kyiv, it’s snowing again, just a week into November. I love it. But it’s easier to become house-bound in such cold. Read books, write, study Russian, compose a letter to a friend. Pet the cats. Nothing to draw me outside but more sightseeing. I’ve only met two anarchists in a month. This is the drawback of not having to rely on the generosity of strangers for housing: you don’t have to leave your bubble. But it’s just as well because my two new friends live with their parents and couldn’t put me up. Right now, they’re both traveling. Actually, one’s in ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Adrienne Gernhäuser
Adrienne Gernhäuser Perhaps because American society suffers from such a strong case of amnesia, I find histories of resistance so intriguing. The Red Scare destroyed anticapitalist movements in the US, erasing them to a degree unparalleled in Europe, and creating a disconnect between present and past resistance, a lack of continuity and perseverance. Furthermore, the social fabric is made of such thin stuff, the real estate itself so impermanent, that physical and social markers of past rebellions do not remain. Looking at the morass of shabby duplexes in the town where I was born reveals no hint of the fact that it was a hotbed of immigrant Italian anarchists a century earlier. The industrial farms draped over the rolling hills aroun... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)