SWOMP - Amsterdam

SWOMP (in Dutch) stands for Slimme Woonwagenbewoners Op Mooie Plekjes, which roughly translates to Smart Wagon-people on Beautiful Places. It's a unique and creative expression of the strong squatting movement in Amsterdam, using small trailer homes on vacant lots instead of occupying a flat or whole building.

In at least some european countries squatting is legal under certain circumstances, and if its done properly (and with some luck) it can be very hard for the authorities to displace squatters. Squatter cafes, (often former flats) dot the city and act as social hubs for the network and bases for organizing. The Mollie (anarchist slang for mollitov cocktail) hosts nightly activities such as community dinners, peak-oil preparedness discussions, film screenings, and game nights. Every Monday is the planning meeting for the weekly squatting action.

The SWOMP site we visited is the 4th of its kind (the first three having already been shut down.) The vacant lot was actually not vacant when a squatting action was first planned. It was an abandoned school. The city had been deliberating for over a year what to do with the building. When the city got wind that a group was planning on squatting it, they decided to demolish it. The squatting action was planned for Sunday. The wrecking crew came on Friday. By Sunday all that was left was a lot of sand and some remnants of brick foundation. Little did the city know they were creating the perfect venue for a SWOMP action.

The SWOMPers brought in 4 trailers and erected a 'fortress' around them. They tapped into left over water and sewage piping, set up 3 solar panels, and planted gardens. There is also a complex lock-down system hidden in the most inaccessible part of the fortress, in case the police show up (the entire structure would have to be dismantled to remove the people inside.) One of our favorite aspects is an urban gardening innovation using a pallet stood on end, lined with cloth, and stuffed with dirt. Poke holes in the cloth, plant seeds, and you've got a vertical garden. I have fantasies of covering the whole outside wall of a building with these things. You could cover your house in food!

This site has been occupied now for 4 months. The city recently polled the neighbhors about the lot. They suggested various alternative plans (like a playground or park) and asked what the neighbors wanted. Most said that they actually liked the squatters there. The city will probably shut it down eventually. Fortunately, it could take the bureaucracy well over a year to do so. I wonder how long something like this would last in Washington DC. 24 hrs maybe? Generally, squatting in Europe happens on a level far beyond anywhere in the U.S. Why this level of tolerance, and even acceptance, in Europe?

Squatting still has something of a heroic and romantic quality to it, even for many mainstream Europeans. People seem to feel a sense of sympathy and appreciation for what squatting represents. Fundamentally, squatting is (in part) a protest against homelessness and the exploitation of people through the privitization of a basic human right. I've been reading Earth Democracy by Vandana Shiva. She talks a lot about the concept of the 'commons' and the history of how the commons in Europe and in India were privatized. In the US, holding common land is not a part of our historic consciousness. But it is still part of the European consciousness, and examples of it do still exist in places. I imagine that sympathy for squatting comes in part from a low-level subconscious resentment lingering in collective consciousness over the loss of the commons and the wide-spread institution of wage-slavery over the last few hundred years.

Sympathy for squatters isn't as good as a mass movement to reclaim the commons, but hopefully it's a step in that direction.

For more info:

http://www.earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21554

Their homepage is http://swomp.wordpress.com/ It's in Dutch, but if you do a google search for it there will be an option to translate it.

civilized countries

"There are civilized countries in the world, we just don't live in one," said Pax. "Why don't we move here?" I asked. "Because it's always raining or cold or both at the same time," replied Hawina.

This conversation was precipitated by my amazement at discovering the waste bin for the municipal compost pick-up outside Irene's door (Hawina's neice, who we're staying with right now). "Yeah?" said Hawina. "Of course. It's the Netherlands." The compost pick-up had been the last straw.

Immediately upon arrival in Heerlen I was blown away (again) by the layout of the city streets. Car lanes are probably 25% thinner than in the U.S., there is rarely more than one lane in each direction, and the average size of motor vehicles reflects the size of the lanes. Sidewalks are huge, and there are bike lanes everywhere - often specially designed lanes that separate them from both cars and pedestrians.

Last June, Kassia and I attended the keynote speech at the Towards Car-Free Cities Conference in Portland, OR. The speaker was the former commissioner for parks and recreation as well as transportation of Bogata Columbia. Portland had just been awarded Platinum status as a bicycle friendly city by the League of American Bicyclists. He was congratulatory, but also told the audience not to spend too much time patting themselves on the back.

Portland is good, he said, not great. And sometimes, he said, it's much harder to go from good to great than from bad to great. He showed pictures of how they'd transformed Bogota's nightmare of transportation infrastructure into a veritable paradise. They'd designed the bike and pedestrian path network so that it is possible to traverse the city without ever crossing a car lane, while intertwining them with the public parks. Simulataneously, they reneovated all the parks to include pavillions, stages, and other public gathering places, and began organizing concerts, festivals, and other social activities.

He showed pictures of bicycle friendly cities around the world. Recently in the C'ville weekly, the author of an article about bicycling in Charlottesville had the audacity to repeat the line that Portland is the Amsterdam of the U.S. Hardly. Even Heerlen, a medium sized city in the far south of the country (which folks in Amsterdam consider very backwards) blows Portland out of the water as a bicycle, pedestrian, and public transit friendly city.

The day after we arrived we visited Oma (Hawina's mom) in what could be considered the Heerlen suburbs. She lives in a fairly new andtasteless 12 story apartment building. Not much to speak of there. But when Willow and I went outside to find the nearby playground, I was again blown away. We walked around a neighborhood with clustered housing units, clustered (for the most part) parking areas, narrow two-lane thoroughfares, and even narrower one-lane bricked driveways connecting the parking areas to the roads. Pedestrian walk-ways link the housing clusters, lined with trees, bushes, and other facets of simple landscaping, and in the middle of the neighborhood was a large public green with a playground.

Minus the usual facet of a common building, I could easily have been walking through any number of co-housing communities in the U.S. When Willow and I got back to Oma's apartment I asked her who owns all that space? Who owns the houses? The answer was that the park, the landscaping, and the paths and roads are all city land, maintained by city employees who are often part of a special hiring program for disadvantaged and handicapped individuals. The housing units are generally owned by the people who live in them. It's like the whole city is a co-housing community.

It's amazing being in this place where all these aspects of radical environmentalism and social engineering are assumed, even taken for granted. When Hawina said, "yeah, of course," about the municipal compost pick-up I thought, what would it take to get something like that started in C'ville? You'd probably have to start it as a private business first to prove it was financially viable and then maybe the city would buy it or start their own.

Several days ago, I was reading a news piece on the failure of the first bailout package to make it through congress. There was some quote from some conservative having something to do with the slippery slope towards socialism. This is a common argument against significant increases of taxpayer dollars towards public lands and public services. Somehow people in the U.S. still seem to believe that this kind of government activity will hamper prosperity and liberty. What will it take to prove to them that this is untrue?

community and economy, sustainability and justice

I wrote this to a newly forming group called the Charlottesville Relocalization Community:

We need community. We need a powerful social network. We need relationships. We need each other. Effective organizing is usually based on strong relationships. If the relationships are solid then you can face whatever comes.

But community is not just about relationships, it's about culture. Community is about expressing values and teaching lessons through stories, through art, through music. It is where we learn about ourselves and each other, and our relationship to the world. It is where we learn to honor and to celebrate. We need venues to create a resilient social fabric of satisfying relationships and meaningful culture.

We need a system of economics: systems and structures for the creation, exchange, and distriubtion of goods and services. Much of our lifestyles are defined by the choices provided in the economic system we live in. Changing our lifestyles, our purchasing patterns and our use of material resources is a key element to addressing the ecological and economic crises we face.

More than that, we need to change our system of economics. We need an economic system that supports and encourages work that make healthy people and a healthy planet. We need an economic system that provides everyone with opportunities to contribute to that effort and that also guarantees that their basic needs will be met.

We need to see community and economy as intrinsically interlinked. We need a coherent vision of what a just and sustianable human society might look like, and we need to build the relationships and the plan of action that will get us there.

I offer this in the hopes that others will share their thoughts on the vision and mission of relocalizing charlottesville. I think Dawn's first stab is fantastic, and I imagine that a synthesis of the groups thoughts and dialog will make it even better.

the call - co-authored by kassia arbabi

There is a wide-spread sense that our current poltical, economic and cultural systems are failing us. Environmental degredation, economic injustice, social alienation, and political estrangement are pandemic. We are enmeshed in a level of consumerism that is environmentally destructive and unsustainable. Governments and corporations seem to lack the power and/or will to aid the masses of people negatively affected by these economic, environmental, and social conditions. Although they hold radically differing perspectives on the nature and cause of the problems, radical activists, Fundamentalist Christians, liberal and conservative commentators alike present rigorous critiques of the current state of our society. Regardless of our chosen cosmology or moral framework, if we recognize the suffering that exists in the world today and have the time and energy, we have no choice but to act.

But what is the right direction for our actions? There is an existing statement of the collective wisdom of human society which can serve as an entry point to this question. (It must be noted that this document was created by a small group of privileged people in a closed setting. It is not the voice of a broad or pluralistic demographic representation of race, class and gender.) The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted and proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1948 states the following:

"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control." Article 25. (1) The Assembly also stated that member nations of the UN should see to it that the Declaration "be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories." http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

Disseminating and displaying is one thing; implementing is another. So who is responsible for carrying this out? National governments, private corporations, and the free-market economic system have all failed to implement this radically sensible call to action. Our large-scale socio-economic and political systems, both public and private, have failed to provide for our collective human needs. If we continue to see ourselves as subjects in those systems rather than as empowered participants in providing for our own welfare, our needs will likely continue to go unmet. When it comes down to it, we are responsible for our own welfare: a responsibility we have been neglecting. Not the "boot-straps" kind of individualistic and selfishly motivated responsibility that ignores the inherently unjust and unsustainable nature of our economic systems. These systems are fundamentally flawed in that they propose exponential and ever expanding growth within the confines of a limited-resource system. No, our own welfare is fully intertwined with and dependent upon the welfare of those with whom we are economically and socially interconnected; our fellow planetary citizens. If we are to be truly self-interested, then the good we do for ourselves must also be for the good of all beings.

What if everyone, for no other reason than being alive, was guaranteed basic rights to "food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security..."? How would people live differently? Vast amounts of human energy and creativity would be released without the pressure and anxiety of making ends meet. What would it look like if groups of people began taking responsibility for making this a reality? With this question we begin to remember, rethink, and reenvision the concept of community.

What if our communities relied upon people investing their labor in concert with others and In the absence of economic pressure and anxiety. This community-invested labor feels meaningful, satisfying, and is an expression of love and appreciation. Groups of people can then begin to meet their basic needs outside of the failing socio-economic system, instead relying on internalized local systems of mutual support.

Models of such systems already exist; mostly in small, self-contained, rural communities. These communities have been and continue to be important centers of experimentation and learning. But given the current environmental, economic, and political state on the planet, this is no longer enough. An ever increasing percentage of the world's population live in urban or sub-urban environments (an estimated 75% by the year 2050), and are increasingly unable to provide for their basic needs under the current poltical/economic system.

Our political and economic systems are falling ever shorter of meeting the basic needs of the majority of the world's population. Bringing these principles of mutual aid and decentralized economic systems to networks of small groups in urban settings is a critical next step in our planetary evolution.

the cost of cars

Recently I did a big round of research into organizations and programs working towards sustainability, particularly urban sustainability. I signed up for various e-newsletters. One of them, Sustainlane, has been consistently infuriating me. Hardly better than "green washing" this notion that "green" consumerism will save the planet is at best ludicrous.

The last e-newsletter I got from Sustainlane asked the question , "Are hybrid cars really good for the environment?" I knew what my answer was, and I thought it a good sign that they were asking this question. The article went on from there like this:

"It depends on what you compare them to. Looking at the complete lifecycle of any product, let alone a car, from raw materials to eventual disposal or reuse is incredibly complicated. What's a poor information-starved enviro to do?"

Okay, this is looking good, I thought. For years I've been pointing out that if we're not also talking about the "complete lifecycle" of personal vehicles the question of how to fuel them is pointless. But as I read on, the article simply didn't go there. It was all about whether or not to drive small, fuel-efficient vehicles or hybrid, or whether or not Toyota's Prius or Honda's Hybrid Civic is better.

I couldn't take it. I wrote them the following letter.


Dear Editor:

I would like to see Sustainlane do an article on Are CARS really good for the environment? No matter what fuel source we're using, if we want to evaluate whether or not personal motorized vehicles are "sustainable" we have to consider several things.

We have to consider the energy and materials cost in extracting and processing materials used to produce them, as well as the energy cost in manufacturing. We also have to consider the energy and materials cost involved in creating and maintaining the roads and other infrastructure cars require. While we're at it we might want to consider the amount of human and animal deaths caused by cars and car accidents. And then there's the social cost of building human structures and settlements to accommodate car use.

Even fuel source must be considered. Electric or hydrogen are great ideas, but currently most of that energy is produced in nuclear or coal power plants. And there's no way we can produce enough biofuels to replace the amount of petroleum currently being consumed, unless we want to feed our cars at the expense of ourselves.

Studies and information detailing all of this is are out there. It is conveniently ignored by people who want to assuage their guilt by driving a hybrid or an old Nissan Sentra. Please don't enable this behavior. To actually reach sustainable levels of consumption and waste American's are going to have to make substantial changes to their lifestyles. Please, publish information that makes this reality evident and provides hope for the real solutions that exist.

in community,
Sky Blue
Portland, OR

earthly betrayal

Like a rebelious teenager, we have created an antagonistic relationship with our progenitors. We have betrayed they earth, and the earth, out of self-preservation, has broken from unconditional love and is betraying us. Our response is complex. How do to deal with it?

Kneel down, beat the earth with your fists, say,
"how could you!?"

Clutch the earth, grip it, dig your fingers into it, say,
"take me back!"

Leap from the earth, reach towards the sky, say,
"let me go!"

Lie on the earth, sprawl out in surrender, say,
"I accept this."

Stand up, face yourself, face others, face the world, say,
"I love you, I will better myself, I will better the world."

I heard an interesting concept last night. Corporate america has been increasingly co-opting the idea of being "green." "Green washing" has become popular, esp. among automobile and oil industries. Green consumerism is constantly gaining ground. Some of this is a sham, some of it is a step in the right direction. But generally, none of it is "sustainable."

Sustainable is the increasingly popular buzz word, the cutting edge of appropriate technology and socio-economic systems. But sustainable, in a sense, means neutral. It means not making things worse.

So, there's a next level: restorative. We don't really want to sustain things the way they are right now. We want to restore our natural and social environments to some previous state that is more balanced.

But there's a level beyond that: regenerative. And to me, regenerative implies an evolution beyond what has been to something new, something we are only beginning to imagine.

zeitgeist

"Portland is where the zeitgeist in America is," Thomas, another Twin Oaks refugee, said to me recently.
"The what?" I asked.
"It's a German word. It means 'spirit of the age.'"

Intuitively I understood what he meant. I also understood why I'm so attracted to Portland. I've always been attracted to the cutting edge, the newest, deepest understanding of, well, just about anything. And in particular, as I have begun to think more and more in terms of what I should do with my life to create the greatest possible good in the world, Portland's identity as the premier green city in the country is a big draw.

Identity isn't enough. There seems to be a reality backing it up. Brush at Tryon Life Community Farm said to me, "the city likes the attention and realizes that it's because of all these young radicals doing interesting things, but the city's not quite sure what to do with them. There are more and more coming, but there are also people who are attracted to Portland who are just going to live mainstream lifestyles. That's easier to plug in on. So we've got to give these radicals things to do that will also allow them to afford to live here."

I'm writing this piece in the dining room of the Emma Goldman Finishing School, an egalitarian, income-sharing, urban commune of (currently) 10 adults and 3 kids. Emma's and Ganas on Staten Island, NYC, are the only urban intentional communities doing this level of resource sharing that I'm aware of. Why is this important? Economic justice. Egalitarian economics. Creating a system of mutual support to escape, or at least create a buffer against the mainstream, capitalist economy. It's not just about creating a groovy, comfortable situation for your little group. The way Emma's sees it, "[w]e work to create this future in the here and now by building alternative economic, political, and cultural infrastructure designed to oppose and replace the dominant system. We aim to create a home that embodies our shared values, provides a fun and supportive environment in which to live, and helps forge a dense network of relations with people and institutions outside of our community... Our home is a place of self-education, experimentation, and radical democracy - a community where the means and ends are one." (Emma Goldman Finishing School, Community Values: Root Document)

The reason why I'm more attracted to urban settings right now is because I think we need to create these systems on ever-increasing scales in order to counter the environmentally and socially destructive (I would go as far as to say suicidal) effects of the mainstream socio-economic system. According to The Endless City, a project by The Urban Age, 10% of the world's population lived in cities in 1900. Today, it's 50%. In 2050 the number is estimated to reach 75%. The anti-civilizationist Derrick Jensen argues that cities are inherently unsustainable. Whether or not that's true they're not going away any time soon, and must be made more sustainable. And sustainability is not just about ecology. It's about economics, politics, and human relationships.

Raine Eisler in her book The Real Wealth of Nations proposes an economic system that is based on caring and caregiving. This sees social relationships as integral, as fundamental, whereas classical economics only considers individuals in their roles as employers, employees, and consumers. She points out that the household economy, the unpaid community economy, and the environmental economy, which are all given little or no value in the dominant economic paradigm, are the foundation. How can we have a healthy economy without healthy people? How can we have healthy people without healthy communities? How can we have healthy communities without a healthy environment? And how can we have any of these without economic policies and practices that take this reality into account?

The economist Bernard Lietaer also points out the fallacy of an economic system that does not take relationships into consideration. He says, "different currency systems create different kinds of relationships... If I want to cooperate with you then I'll create a currency that actually creates cooperation... The economy of the future is going to be one of relationships, the choice of relationships will determine the type of currency we should be using." <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjYDhuLWUnE>

Then there's social ecology. Social ecology "holds that present ecological problems are rooted in deep-seated social problems, particularly in dominatory hierarchical political and social systems. These have resulted in an uncritical acceptance of an overly competitive grow-or-die philosophy. It suggests that this cannot be resisted by individual action such as ethical consumerism but must be addressed by more nuanced ethical thinking and collective activity grounded in radical democratic ideals. The complexity of relationships between people and with nature is emphasised, along with the importance of establishing social structures that take account of this."

Annie Leonard, in her video The Story of Stuff points out that viable solutions are being developed for large scale systems: Green chemistry, zero waste, closed loop production, local living economies, ecopsychology, social ecology, deep ecology, permaculture, etc. Raine Eisler references her involvement with pioneers in chaos and complexity theory and how these theories provide scientific basis for this new brand of integrated-systems theories.

We now have what the counter-culture movement of the sixties lacked: a creditable and understandable base of academic and scientific work to support the practical application of our values and ideals. Mix this with a counter-culture that has been continuing to develop over the last several decades: aspects of eastern and new age philosophy as well as reclaimed christian and jewish philosophy, hip hop culture, anarchist-DIY culture, an explosion of underground music and art and the technology for independent mass-distribution, home gardening, community gardens, a steady increase in collective living situations...

But in my opinion the academic and scientific work has surpassed the practical application, which is dangerous. "The map is not the territory," as one of my teachers, Steven Young, says, and "practice and theory must go together," says, S. N. Goenka, another of my teachers. Theory without practice can become irrelevant, or simply useless.

Portland is where I see the most developed practical application of this body of theory. There's a strong, cohesive social culture supporting organizing and innovation, a solid coalition of NGO's with a mission of creating a "livable future" for all city residents, and a progressive, responsive city government. It's where the zeitgeist in America is.

It may be that I chose not to live there for more than a few months. But in that time I plan to learn as much as possible and be as deeply inspired as possible, so that where ever I go I will take this zeitgeist, the spirit of the age with me.