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.)

The Banlieues Are Burning
The Banlieues Are Burning On 27 October, 2005, two teenagers of North African descent died while trying to escape from the police in a neighborhood outside Paris. A group of them coming home from playing football ran from a police patrol to avoid yet another of the lengthy interrogations to which police in the neighborhood frequently subjected youth of color. Several of them climbed over a wall to hide in a power substation, and two of them, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, were electrocuted to death. It was just another police action in the banlieue — the ghetto suburb that exists on the outskirts of many French cities; impoverished, crowded with second generation immigrants who are alternately exploited and excluded in the inform... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Lucia Sanchez Saornil
Lucia Sanchez Saornil One day I became disillusioned and upset when I found out that members of a squat I respected had denied the request of an anarcha-feminist group to host their self-defense class at that squat. The squatters said that because the group was for women only, it was sexist. One of them even said feminists hated men and just wanted power for themselves. I was shocked to hear from the mouths of anarchists arguments that in the US I had associated exclusively with right wing radio hacks, but with my poor Spanish I couldn’t express myself strongly enough. It didn’t help that one of the squatters kept interrupting me, though in this case it was hard to say if his behavior was typically masculine or typically Mediter... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Noorderhaven Canal
Noorderhaven Canal Sunset over Noorderhaven canal. Orange fire fights to find gaps in the algae-green carpet lying atop the water. Weather-worn houseboats moored on both sides have been there since before the first photograph, some of these same boats since before the first television commercial, and they will be there still after we’ve torn all the advertisements down, or they’ll be turned into floating billboards by some wallflower of a man regarded as a genius in his field. (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Of War and Mountains
Of War and Mountains Τεταρτη14 Μαρτιου The people on the television here in Athena are saying it’s a war, which most everyone I’m talking to has met with giggles. And the weather, first it was too gloriously warm and balmy for there really to be a war, and now it’s too cold and gray. Still, there’s a strange feeling in the city — the riot cops standing in large squads on random corners, police with submachine guns guarding all the government buildings... It’s been just a few weeks but such a great distance in getting here. On Sunday night, 18 February, I left Kyiv. My dear bicycle I entrusted to my younger brother, and we said our goo... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Domela Nieuwenhuis and Appelscha
Domela Nieuwenhuis and Appelscha In Friesland, a northern province with its own language, there is a small village outside the city of Drachten called Ureterp. L told me how way back in the day there was an anarchist group in tiny little Ureterp, and between them all they managed to get a pistol, which they took turns religiously guarding and cleaning. One day, while a member of the group was cleaning the gun he shot himself and died, after which the whole group was discovered. We wanted to visit the cemetery where he was buried in a sort of pilgrimage to tragicomedy, but couldn’t find his name. A more famous anarchist in Friesland was Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, a contemporary of Pyotr Kropotkin and Emma Goldman. Instead of going t... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)