doubled as a music venue and pool hall. I spent the next month at a squatted four-story Georgian townhouse in Dublin, which proved to be a beautiful display of what a dozen committed and creative people can do when they have a mind to. While there, I met other squatters from around Europe. They seemed otherworldly, as if they came from a different planet than mine, which I had only known to consist of dorm rooms, overpriced rentals, and my parents’ house. But these people were from places like Can Masdeu, an abandoned leper hospital in the countryside of Barcelona, where thirty people live cooperatively and where community functions accommodate hundreds. In 2002, these squatters fought eviction by sitting on chairs fastened several stories up on the outside of the building for three days. They balanced on “death planks”—one squatter sat on each end of the plank, which passed through two windows, and if an officer tried to climb out onto either end of the plank to remove the squatter, they would both surely fall to their deaths. Eventually a court ordered the police to call off the eviction.
To Europeans, this sort of dramatic, high-risk squat defense seemed a normal reaction, with much precedent dating back at least four decades. In Amsterdam in 1980, riot police evicted squatters from Vondelstraat. Agreeing that this was unacceptable, the squatters created a diversion at city hall and reclaimed the squat while police were distracted. When the police realized that they had been duped, they were angrier than before and returned to Vondelstraat to repeat the eviction. Archived footage shows hundreds of demonstrators and police engaged in a no-holds-barred riot.
“Riot police trucks drove across the junction,” Pietje, one of the squatters, said of the experience, in the documentary De Stad Was Van Ons. “A guy was hit by a truck and the radio broadcast an emotional report. We saw him dragged along by the bus. I was stunned. We were standing there on the balcony with Theo. I said, ‘I’m going out with some of the others.’ Theo tried to stop me but I went anyway. I jumped off the balcony onto a lighting mast, then down onto the road. I grabbed a stick, fence posts, and in five minutes we chased the police away.”[4]
Having developed an adversarial relationship with police on the one hand and a strongly supported front of squatters on the other, clashes only intensified as the decade went on. It became a form of guerilla warfare, with chaotic, violent tendencies on both sides. Police went from trampling squatters with horses to driving unstoppable tanks through large crowds. Fires ignited throughout the streets, and cinders burned high into the night sky.
Between 2006 and 2007, in response to the eviction of Ungdomshuset (“Youth House”), Copenhagen saw some of the most destructive and virulent squat-defense riots since the ones in Amsterdam. The historic building, constructed in 1897 by the Danish labor movement, was granted to the squatters by the city council in 1982, and had functioned as a social center since. In 2000, however, the city withdrew the grant and sold the building to a right-wing Christian organization called Faderhuset (“Father’s House”), which intended to tear it down. After years in court, and many offers to buy the building on behalf of the squatters, a judge finally declared Faderhuset the legal owner in August 2006, and squatters braced themselves for a tumultuous eviction.
Supporters barricaded and fortified the structure so heavily that musician David Rovics described it in December 2006 as looking like a medieval castle. “In past assaults,” he wrote, “the police have gone onto the roof or, using cranes, through the second-floor windows, rather than attempting to ram through the formidable barricades on the ground floor. There are too many windows to turn the entire building into the kind of fortress the ground floor has become, but no effort is being spared to do just that. The upper-story windows from which you could once look out at the neighborhood are now completely barricaded, and the only light that shines within Ungdomshuset now is artificial.”[5] This was quite a contrast to the former Ungdomshuset, which was known for its infoshop, cinema, bar, community kitchen, workshops, performance and rehearsal spaces, and famous annual K-Town Festival, which drew an international audience.
After a tense and emotional seven months of waiting for the final eviction, in the early morning hours of March 1, 2007, police invaded Ungdomshuset in an ostentatious and reckless display of authority, employing a military helicopter and two cranes. Roughly 3,000 people rioted over the next four days, 643 protesters were allegedly arrested (including 140 foreigners), and at least 25 were hospitalized. In solidarity, protests were held all over Europe, but on March 5, Ungdomshuset was demolished.[6]
Serendipitously, in June 2008, the city council gifted the squatters two buildings at Dortheavej 61 (together the same square footage as Ungdomshuset) for use as a new social center in place of the old one. This new Youth House boasts a venue and bar, a book café, a large kitchen, a film-screening room, a yoga and dance studio, a concert hall with balcony, a dozen creative workshops (such as screen-printing, sewing, and photography), offices, meeting facilities, and a studio for bands to practice and record music. All in all, it wasn’t a terrible trade, though no one would discount the sacrifice made for it.[7]
“This whole notion of revolutionary romanticism,” said Ungdomshuset activist Mads Lodahl prior to the riots, “it only serves as an outlet for people’s anger and frustration, and so they fight with the police. In reality, it’s counter-revolutionary because you direct all your anger at the police but they’re not the ones you’re angry with.… [However,] my friends and I have realized that we can’t talk our way out of this, because the other side doesn’t want to talk to us. So like it or not, we are getting ready to fight.”[8]
While I wasn’t seeking the violence of squat defense per se, this kind of high-octane, über-romantic alternative to mainstream existence nonetheless enchanted me. Back at home, I wondered, Could these sorts of places exist in the United States? Could we develop the sort of tight-knit communities that could stand together in a crisis, if we had to? And in the meantime, is it possible to live in a clean, organized, and equitable squat, steeped in adventure and passion?
My life at the Power Machine replicated this European idea of squatting as liberated social center more than most other American squats I have visited—the worst of which resemble clandestine hovels or short-lived dumb luck based on someone else’s real-estate folly. The Power Machine was an enormous space, and we did what we wanted with little interference. At one point, we had a dozen residents (with an endless stream of guests), each constantly contributing shared food to the cupboards and amenities to the household. We had many bikes, a collection of games, a growing library, accumulated art supplies, and continually more furniture (including the velvet chaise longue scored from the side of Ashby Avenue). We were so brazen about our use of the space that we would throw huge, very loud parties—and since we were located under a bridge and next to the railroad tracks, nobody ever seemed to hear us. At one point we even found a big-screen TV in the trash and set up a game of “Dance Dance Revolution” in the living room. Afterward, we would help ourselves to the outdoor hot tub at the hotel across the street (affectionately called the “Squat Tub”). The only thing missing from this extraordinary arrangement was the Euro-style police standoff—though in Emeryville we didn’t need one. We were on good terms with the property owner, who viewed us as a positive element for “keeping the riff-raff out.” And he, in turn, had some kind of special understanding with the police sergeant. Because of this, my only interaction with Emeryville PD in two years of living there went like this:
Rookie Cop (From across the train tracks to me in the second-story window): Hey! Get down from there!
Hannah: Me?
Rookie Cop: Yeah, you’re not supposed to be up there!
(Hannah leaves the window, goes down the stairs, outside, and across the train tracks to where two cops are standing.)
Hannah: Hi. I think there’s some confusion. We work in this building. We have keys. (Shows them the key.)
Police Sergeant: Oh, yeah? Who are you working for? (This is a test, since the police sergeant is an acquaintance of the owner.)
Hannah:
