Squatting with Andrew

Summary

Podcast Summary: It Could Happen Here

Episode: Squatting with Andrew
Date: October 20, 2025
Host: Andrew Sage
Guest: James Stout
Podcast Network: Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles the theme of land ownership, squatting, and resistance, both historically and in the present. Andrew Sage and James Stout explore how concentrated property rights, enforced by violence and policy, underpin the housing crisis and social inequality. Through the lens of squatting—directly inhabiting unused buildings and land—they examine grassroots efforts to reclaim autonomy, dignity, and community in the face of legal and economic exclusion.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Modern Housing Crisis & Its Roots

• Generational Impact: Today, millennials and Gen Z face unprecedented hurdles in housing security compared to previous generations, as homeownership becomes an increasingly distant prospect.
  • "People are pretty familiar with the lack of affordability of housing, the way that housing has been speculated upon… and more and more people are finding it difficult to get something as simple as shelter." (Andrew, 03:02)
• The Erosion of Public Spaces: Noted is the decline in communal areas for gathering and solidarity, further isolating and disenfranchising ordinary people.
• Land Concentration: Property is increasingly monopolized by elites, corporations, and even remnants of aristocracy.

2. Historical Context of Land Ownership

• Origin in Violence: Private property is described as the product of conquest—colonialism, slavery, and state-backed force.
  • "What we call ownership today is just violence legitimized by law. And it follows a very similar structure… It starts with violence, it becomes officialized, and then rent is extracted." (Andrew, 06:30)
• Parallel Extraction by State & Landlords:
  • Quote from Anders Koh: "Where a landowner builds a fence, the government erects a boundary. Where a landowner charges rent, a government levies taxes… a government wages war against a population." (Andrew, 08:26)
• Enduring Exploitation, Post-Serfdom and Slavery: Abolition did not end exploitation; it simply changed its form—from slavery to prisons, from serfdom to debt.

3. Environmental and Social Impacts

• Ecological Interconnectedness: The idea that cutting land into property ignores the biosphere’s interconnectedness and leads to degradation.
  • "All of the land and water on the earth is connected… The damage done in one place will have an impact on another place…" (James, 16:31 & 16:44)
• Rent Extraction & Speculation: The use of land as an asset leads to idle, underused property while real needs go unmet—directly linking property speculation to poverty and hunger.
• Profit vs. Stewardship: Owners have little incentive to care for land’s inherent qualities; profit trumps ecosystem and communal health.

4. Squatting as Resistance: A British Case Study

• Post-WWII Squatting: Veterans and families squatted en masse after the war, with the state unable to evict so many without public backlash. (Andrew, 20:02–21:18)
  • "Direct action solved an issue that their bureaucracy couldn't solve." (Andrew, 21:18)
• Bangladeshi and Queer Communities in the 1970s–80s: Bangladeshi immigrants squatted to escape a council housing catch-22, while queer and Black radicals created havens and community centers (e.g., Brixton’s Railton Road).
  • "Organisers like Terry Fitzpatrick... opened up derelict blocks to Bengali families. Pelham House... was transformed into homes for 300 people by 1976." (Andrew, 23:33)
  • Intersectionality: Brixton’s squats became sites for both queer and Black resistance.
  • "These squats allowed people to survive. They became places where people could experiment with alternative living." (Andrew, 24:49)
• Decline of Squatting Movement: Gentrification, legal changes, and council sell-offs eroded squatting’s golden age (1990s–2000s).

5. Neoliberal Turn and Its Effects

• Council House Sell-offs & Austerity: Thatcher-era and later New Labour policies gutted the working class’s ability to access housing, solidifying landlord and corporate dominance.
  • "Britain led the charge in like this kind of particularly cruel and callous neoliberalism right. From the 90s to today, like with absolutely no concern for the well-being of its people..." (James, 32:45)

6. International and Current Movements

• Continued Squatting in Europe: Other cities (Berlin, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Athens) have stronger squatting/co-op cultures, but the UK lags behind after aggressive crackdowns.
• Modern Mutual Aid and Occupations: Post-COVID, there has been some resurgence of solidarity projects, though life remains precarious for squatting communities.
• Ethics and Vision:
  • "Squatting represents both a struggle for necessity, but also an example of where our imagination can take us." (Andrew, 34:33)
  • Squatting is seen as direct action that meets needs and challenges the ideology of property; it’s both survival and a vision for a post-property world.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Property as Violence:
  "What we call ownership today is just violence legitimized by law."
  — Andrew Sage, 06:30

• On Extraction and Dispossession:
  "Ownership is enforced through eviction. Families are thrown out of homes, squatters beaten back by police, villages razed to expand mining operations…"
  — Andrew Sage (citing Anders Koh), 14:18

• On Direct Action’s Power: "Direct action solved an issue that their bureaucracy couldn't solve."
  — Andrew Sage, 21:18
  "Railton Road was also home to black radicalism… squats allowed people to survive, experiment with alternative living."
  — Andrew Sage, 24:49

• On Modern Absurdities:
  "You can maintain exclusive lordship, literal landlordship, over a couple acres of property and just do whatever you want with it because it's under your name. Right?"
  — Andrew Sage, 16:56

• On the Dignity of Direct Action:
  "That's a really beautiful project. It's envisioning another world, literally in the ruins of the old world."
  — James Stout, 35:42

• On Hope and the Future:
  "The tactic of squatting is one small, unfinished, but necessary step towards a future where we reject property, where land is shared, where domination is abolished…"
  — Andrew Sage, 39:30

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Housing crisis & generational experience: 03:02–04:31
• Property as violence; historical roots: 06:30–09:01
• State and landowners as parallel structures: 08:26–09:40
• Enclosure, industrialization, and ongoing deprivation: 14:18–17:21
• Absurdity of land as commodity / environmental impact: 16:24–18:32
• Squatting in postwar England: 20:02–21:33
• Bengali and queer squatting movements: 23:33–24:49
• Neoliberal turn, gentrification, decline of squatting: 25:46–28:31
• Present-day resistance, mutual aid, and visioning: 32:06–36:13
• Squatting as dignity and future possibility: 35:42–39:30

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Tone & Style

The episode blends radical critique, historical analysis, and grassroots inspiration. Andrew and James speak with a sense of urgency and empathy, criticizing the powers that be with clarity but also highlighting the hope and creativity found in collective resistance.

The atmosphere is both confrontational and constructive, aiming to demystify land struggles and empower listeners to imagine—and participate in—alternatives.

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Conclusion

“Squatting with Andrew” provides a sweeping, incisive look at the underlying issues propelling the housing crisis: the violent origins and perpetuation of property, the possibility of reclaiming autonomy through squatting, and the prospects for more just and cooperative approaches to land. While recognizing the hardships entailed, the hosts argue squatting offers both practical relief and a radical vision for organizing society beyond property and domination.

All power to all the people.

Transcript

[Andrew Sage]

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[Ed Helms]

Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he steals from the.

[Andrew Sage]

Rich and gives to the poor. I'm not that generous.

[Johnny Knoxville]

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[Ed Helms]

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[Andrew Sage]

So we're sitting like, oh God, what do we do? What do we do?

[James Stout]

That was dumb.

[Ed Helms]

People, do not follow my example.

[Johnny Knoxville]

Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Andrew Sage]

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[James Stout]

Cool Zone Media.

[Andrew Sage]

Hey, what's up and welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Andrew Sage. I'm Andrew on YouTube and I'm joined by James.

[James Stout]

It's me.

[Andrew Sage]

It's nice to be back with you, Andrew, once again. Yeah, indeed, indeed. In a time of poly crisis, unfortunately. Yeah, the housing crisis. People are Pretty familiar with the lack of affordability of housing, the way that housing has been speculated upon, you know, the way that more and more people are finding it difficult to get something as simple as shelter.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

And it's particularly generational, right?

[James Stout]

Yeah, yeah. Like, I don't generally love generational discourse, but it is a marked difference for our generation compared to the previous generation in terms of.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Housing security.

[Andrew Sage]

The data bears it out in terms of the age at which people of previous generations were able to get housing versus, you know, what millennials and now Gen Z are dealing with where housing is concerned.

[James Stout]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Andrew Sage]

And then on top of that, we also lack, in a lot of public spaces, places to gather, places to reflect, to socialize, to game, to explore, to interact, to discuss. Land and housing and social spaces are really what are at the heart of human survival. You know, we speak of the hearth as in that space where, you know, humans would gather in.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

But unfortunately, that ownership of that space has been concentrated in the hands of a few people, you know, rich elites and corporations, the state, and in some cases still literal aristocracies.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

I'm sure you're. You're very much familiar with that.

[James Stout]

Oh, yeah. Like, just thinking about, like, the land I grew up on, for people who were not privy to Andrew and I talking before the show, I just spent some time with the Gwich in people, like, in the very north of Alaska there, just in the subarctic, and someone was asking me, like, about, like, how I related to my ancestral land. I was thinking about it like, the village I grew up in was entirely owned by one family. They owned our house and every other house, and my dad worked for them, and so did almost everyone else who lived there. Like an extremely feudal relationship.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. That's, unfortunately, the experience of a lot of people through human history. The experience of landlessness. Yeah. Or homelessness. Well, homelessness is relatively recent.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

All things considered, but. Or paying extortionate rents, which a lot of people, unfortunately, would have experienced throughout that feudal period into capitalism.

[James Stout]

Yeah, definitely.

[Andrew Sage]

But the thing is, for as long as humans have been humans, long before the states existed and long after the states existed, people are going to stay where they want to stay. They're going to be where they want to be. Right. And although the state could come up with all these laws and restrictions and property rights and all these things and criminalize a very natural human inclination, people are still gonna do it. Right. And that thing that people do is now known as squatting.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

Right. But it wasn't always so Chastised and criminalized with that terminology. Before, it was just, you know, you find a piece of land, nobody else is living, there you go, and you use that piece of land to survive.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

So today we'll be talking about issues with land ownership, looking into its history as a resistance practice in England.

[James Stout]

Nice.

[Andrew Sage]

And seeing where a politicized approach to squatting could take us in the future.

[James Stout]

Oh, cool.

[Andrew Sage]

Crimethink's article on squatting was really helpful for this, so I'll link it in the show. Notes. Land ownership and governance are inextricably linked. Private property in land didn't emerge out of peaceful agreements, but violence. Wars of conquest, colonialism, slavery and state repression have been the true foundation of these now considered noble and official property titles. What we call ownership today is just violence legitimized by law. And it follows a very similar structure. Whether you're talking about feudalism, an empire, land inclusion, colonization. It starts with violence, it becomes officialized, and then rent is extracted. This is not something that people took lying down, of course, people have long resisted it, you know, but this is why the government responds with the police and the armies to protect the landlords. And the people have criticized and have called out these practices. Thinkers like Ricardo Flores Magon and Alexander Berkman, Peter Kropotkin, Bakunin, all of these hammered home the point of the absurdity at the heart of land ownership. The idea that somebody could just pull up somewhere, claim an area of land as theirs, and back it by soldiers and pieces of people. Now, anarchists are not in the business of fixating on just one system of domination or the other, because they're very connected. You know, landlords and governments and all the other authorities contribute to the system of domination that we all live under. As Anders Koh writes in Anarchist Squatting and Land Use in the west, land ownership and government use, exploitation and manipulation. In a similar manner, where a landowner builds a fence, the government erects a boundary. Where a landowner charges rent, a government levies taxes. Where a landowner advertises a vacant house so as not to waste it as an income producing property, a government encourages migration to those of its territories which are not producing adequate revenue. Where a landowner evicts a tenant, a government wages war against a population. Right now in the United States, as we can see, the government is waging war not only against its indigenous population and its black population, but also its migrant population and a few other populations. The list unfortunately goes on.

[James Stout]

Yeah, like the two are so tied, right? That like in many parts of the United Kingdom, like as it was moving towards, like before, we had a universal franchise. Right. Where people could vote if they were citizens. And over a certain age they had a property owner franchise. Right. Like if you owned land you could vote and if you didn't, then you couldn't landed voting.

[Andrew Sage]

Yes.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

And in a sense that is still reflected in the way that the government operates today. You know, the landowners, the capitalists, they still have far outsized influence over anyone else, considering the laws and the policies that our governments carry out.

[James Stout]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Andrew Sage]

And this is really getting to the heart of it because, you know, we may have had the abolition of slavery and the abolition of serfdom, but in no way did the formal abolition of those things end exploitation at all. It just continued in new and old forms. You know, without the police and armies and laws propping them up, private property would collapse. But those things still exist. And it is through those things that the power to exclude, extract and dominate continues throughout our society and continues to uphold violence throughout our society. You know, slavery may have been formally abolished, but we still find it in the prison system. Serfdom may have been formally abolished, but we still find it in slightly different forms with debt and the way that people are tied down by debt. And as long as that principle of extraction and exploitation and rent is not dealt with, we will continue to see new forms and old form springing up.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

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[James Stout]

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[James Stout]

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[Ed Helms]

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[James Stout]

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[Andrew Sage]

Yeah.

[Ed Helms]

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[Andrew Sage]

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[James Stout]

Yes.

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[James Stout]

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[Andrew Sage]

So let's. Let's.

[Ed Helms]

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[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

There's a vile sickness in Abbas Town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out.

[Andrew Sage]

The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed.

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You know how waking up from a dream, a familiar place can look completely alien.

[James Stout]

Get back, everyone. He's got knacks.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him, burn his body, and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town.

[Aaron Manke]

As a warning from iHeart podcasts and grim and mild from Aaron Manke, this is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater audio universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Andrew Sage]

The devil walks in Abbott's Town. I'm gonna play the devil's advocate for a moment, right, and say that maybe, you know, the problem is just the violence of its origins, the problem of land ownership and property. If it just came from violent origins and no other violence continued, maybe it could be excused. Maybe we could say, okay, well, that's in the past, and we can do stuff about that, but we could leave the system as it is. Yeah, but the violence didn't stop with the way that the system originated. The violence Continues. As Anders Koh notes, ownership is enforced through eviction. Families are thrown out of homes, squatters beaten back by police, villages razed to expand mining operations, etc. And then there's economic theft and cultural destruction involved as well, because communities are uprooted, indigenous traditions are severed, neighbourhood cultures get erased by gentrification, and then all this dispossession drives unemployment, because without access to land, people are forced into wage labor on the terms of capitalists. This is really how that rapid period of industrialization got started, you know, with the enclosure of the commons.

[James Stout]

Yeah, I was just thinking about that with the folks I was with right there. Their lifestyle is to hunt caribou. That is how they've lived for 20,000 years. They also fish for salmon, but there are still salmon. There are fewer salmon due to climate change and the downstream effects of that.

[Andrew Sage]

Right.

[James Stout]

But like, they have their own land, a large portion of of land. But like, it's the fact that someone, in this case the Trump administration, could lease oil rights in other land, which would directly impact their land, because in, in this case, the caribou can't carve if there are oil wells where they want to have their calves. Right?

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

And so, like, it's not just that them having some land of their own does not provide a solution to the issue, which is that people can, under our current system, own, exploit and destroy a resource that should be common.

[Andrew Sage]

I mean, it really highlights the absurd notion that you can just cut up land.

[James Stout]

Right? Yeah, exactly.

[Andrew Sage]

That you can separate it by boundaries and that it's self contained. In that way, all of the land and water on the earth is connected.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

Through all the cycles and systems, it's one big biosphere. Right.

[James Stout]

The damage done in one place will have an impact on another place. And I mean, that's so very obvious to most of us now, but our system of land ownership ignores that or pretends it doesn't happen.

[Andrew Sage]

Right, yeah, yeah. Instead we're upholding this ridiculous notion that you can maintain exclusive lordship, literal landlordship, over a couple acres of property and just do whatever you want with it because it's under your name. Right?

[James Stout]

Yeah. And that's your problem, because it's your land. It's ludicrous, it's completely ridiculous to make that claim.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. And on top of all of these consequences, we're also dealing with poverty and hunger because while people are producing lots of food, rent and mortgages continue to keep people in a permanent state of peeing just to exist. And then this concentrated ownership of land and of property produces inefficient production and environmental degradation because property ends up sitting idle. Was used to speculate, even though millions of people are in need of that land, are starving as a result of lack of access to that land.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

Also because so much land gets traded around as assets, as property, rather than it being what it is, which is our commonwealth, there's no need for the owner at the point in time to really care about the quality of the soil, the impact on its ecosystems. They don't have to. All their concern is their only need is to concern themselves with profit.

[James Stout]

Right. It's an asset to be traded, not a thing that has inherent value and should be protected, not just because of its economic value, but because it's all that we can leave for future generations.

[Andrew Sage]

Right, exactly. And I mean, with all these issues with land in mind, I think we can talk now about how people have resisted, particularly in England.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

Which is really why I want to talk to you in particular with this episode.

[James Stout]

Yeah. Okay. I'm excited to hear which particular movement you want to talk about.

[Andrew Sage]

I mean, the story can begin in the first century.

[James Stout]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

Right. With the British tribes resisting the expansion of the Roman Empire.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

We could also speak about the diggers of the 17th century in England being massacred for trying to reclaim common land.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

England has a very long history of land struggles.

[James Stout]

Yeah, definitely. And it's completely. Oh, it's not lost to us now. People have reclaimed, especially at the diggers. Right. But there are still commons to an extent, but they're nothing like what they were. Right. Like, you couldn't go out to Clapham Common and just graze your sheep if you wanted to. And it's really sad that we've lost that. We've completely, as a nation, like, accepted that land is the thing that people can own. It shouldn't just be for everyone.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. But I mean, I kind of see how that would get to the extent that it did, because, you know, it was the capital of the British Empire, and in many ways, the British Isles was the laboratory where that sort of experimentation with the control of people and land got started and was then able to expand elsewhere.

[James Stout]

Yeah, very much so. Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

So, I mean, there's a long timeline that we could go through. But I really want to focus on the. All the ways that people have been squatting in England over the 20th century. You know, after the Second World War, it's no surprise to anyone that Britain was going through it. Right. Whole neighborhoods were flattened, housing stock was in ruins. And for the six years while the bombs were falling, not a single new home was built. So people took matters into their own hands. You know, across the country, families and veterans began to squat because they came home from the war and they had nowhere to live. In Brighton, a group of ex servicemen calling themselves Vigilantes, led by the legendary Harry Cowley, started cracking houses for families. The spirit of it eventually spread like wildfire. Yeah, and abandoned army camps, which were once meant for demolition, soon became makeshift neighborhoods. By 1946, over 45,000 people were squatted in more than a thousand locations. And, I mean, the government was concerned this could only lead to anarchy. But faced with tens of thousands of people who had cell free housed, the state didn't really have any choice but to step back.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Andrew Sage]

You know, direct action solved an issue that their bureaucracy couldn't solve. And the PR of kicking out a bunch of veterans from homes was not a line they seemed willing to cross at that point in time, because times change.

[James Stout]

But, yeah, they wouldn't have any fear of doing that.

[Andrew Sage]

Now it is only the English that were squatting in the uk. You know, you also had Bangladeshi immigrants that end up coming into the UK, particularly around the 1970s, and the issue was that single men couldn't get council housing unless they had a family, but they couldn't bring their families over into the UK without housing. So it's like a catch 22, you know, you had all these rows of council flats sitting empty, rotten, and young men who wanted to bring their families over can't bring their families over, can't get housing. What are they going to do? They end up squatting, right? Organisers like Terry Fitzpatrick, working with groups like Race Today and later the Bengali Housing Action Group, opened up derelict blocks to Bengali families. Pelham House, for instance, which was slated for demolition, was transformed into homes for 300 people by the end of 1976. Over a thousand Bangladeshis ended up living in East End squats during that period. And eventually through that, taking that first step of direct action, they won. By the early 1980s, the council caved, rehoused the squatters locally, and they ended up getting to live right where they wanted to live. But unfortunately, as you might expect, this came with racist violence. In 1978, Al Tub Ali was stabbed to death by three skinheads in Whitechapel. And there's now a park that was renamed in his memory, where the history of his people can be remembered and live on. Beyond the English and the Bangladeshi immigrants, you also had another marginalised group that took on the tactic of squatting in Brixton, the Gay Liberation Front took over houses along Railton Road and Mile Road, creating a network of communal homes with shared gardens. And as you can imagine, in the 70s, 80s and 90s, you know, this was really a refuge, you know, for queer people dealing with isolation and hostility from their families, from their communities. These squats ended up becoming places where they can find love and solidarity and theatre and radical politics. Railton Road was also home to black radicalism and black radicals squatting in that territory. Olive Morris and Liz Obi squatted there in the 1970s and resisted multiple eviction attempts. And their space evolved into Sabah Bookshop and later the Anarchist 121 Centre, which lasted until 1999. This intersection of black, queer and anarchist squatting created Brixton's reputation as a frontline of resistance. Police harassment, racist violence and neglect would boil over into days of rioting. In Brixton in 1981. And amidst that chaos, the gay squats of Railton threw open their doors, even dragging tables and chairs into the streets for a kind of riot party, A mix of drag and defiance. And through all this, these squats allowed people to survive. They became places where people could experiment with alternative living. Even had some people declaring independence. There was a space in West London called Frestonia, which issued its own stamps and had a two year old as Minister of Education. Yeah, and then you had other squats ending up becoming seeds for future cooperatives and social centers and even some businesses. But this golden age of squatting kinda came into a decline by the 90s and 2000s. Gentrification and new laws had to tighten the screws. You know, streets like Bonnington Square or St. Agnes Place, which were once thriving squattered communities, were cleared up. You know, the law was changed to make adverse possession harder, so long term, squatters could no longer as easily claim ownership. And then certain councils like Lambeth Council, began selling off properties that it had ignored for decades, evicting people who had been living there for decades, raising families.

[James Stout]

Yeah, I guess post Thatcher, like when they could sell off the council houses, that massively contributed to the decline of working class communities. Right? And then Britain went through this extreme neoliberal turn in the late 90s with New Labor. And Labour's entire thing came to be punching down on young people and the working class. So it lines up with our general political. Like, that was, that was. I was a teenager at that time, right. I remember how bleak it felt to be like, all the time getting this, like, oh, Cool Britannia, you know, like Britain is having its like renaissance as this like, like, like outside of empire. Right. Like as a cultural capital or whatever. Meanwhile people are struggling to get by and people are, yeah. Finding it hard to put food on that table. And it was just such a, I mean looking back it was the way things were going to be for the rest of my life. At least up till now I guess. But at I remember it being such a jarring experience.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, that's quite an interesting quote unquote end of history. Right?

[James Stout]

Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's just the end of caring. It was just such a. Yeah. To be told that we'd like perfected human existence. Meanwhile racialized violence was on the increase. Right. Like people were struggling. We had become more connected and aware of each other's struggles. We could see people around the world, not just in the UK struggling. Right. We saw the communities that like my parents grew up in just gutted by the withdrawal or the failure of the industries that were there before. The whole towns with no reason for existing anymore. And then to come on top of that and have like oh yeah, but it will cost you more just to exist in this town which is shit now and there's nothing to do but we're going to use all the power of the state to try and extract every penny that you have.

[Andrew Sage]

Let's just squeeze everything out of you.

[James Stout]

Ye just a bleak vision going home now I just see the continuation of that decline of like some of those towns, you know where there's no particular reason people to live there other than it's where they're from and it's where their community is. But it's getting harder and harder for them to live there and you know the industries that used to at least give people a chance to like have a dignified life there are now gone. Yet the, the ability of the, of landlords to extract, you know, mega landlords now. Right. These giant corporations building these generic homes all over the uk it's still very much there and like the state has doubled down on supporting them and completely refused to support its own people.

[Andrew Sage]

Yep.

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80% water?

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Hey, it's Ed Helms. And welcome back to Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new Snafu Every single episode.

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32 lost nuclear weapons.

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You're like, wait, stop.

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Yeah.

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Yes.

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Soft launch into the show?

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[Andrew Sage]

Nick Kroll.

[Ed Helms]

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[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

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[Andrew Sage]

The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed.

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Get back, everyone.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

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[Andrew Sage]

The Devil Walks in Abbostown In London, as in elsewhere, the state and capitalist market have worked hand in hand to really erase our autonomy, our independence, our ability to live and survive.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

You know, even as places like Berlin and Amsterdam and Copenhagen had some leaps forward where squatting was concerned, you know, legalized housing cooperatives and that sort of thing, particularly in London, that was the opposite of the case. You know, things got harder.

[James Stout]

Yeah. Like Britain led the charge in like this kind of particularly cruel and callous neoliberalism right. From the, from the 90s to today, like with absolutely no concern for the well being of its people even. Yeah, you would see it going to, to continental Europe. You know, compared to living in Barcelona, which I did later, like squat still existed. People, economically, things were equally dire. Right. If not worse. Spain had a really rough time, especially after 2008, but like the communities hadn't been quite so destroyed by the state as they were in many areas of the uk.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I don't want to paint a completely dark picture of London. Right. Because there is still anarchist struggle, there's still radical social centers, there's still. Yeah, yeah, squatting. I mean, some squats end up being temporary, you know, short lived social spaces and centers, spaces to help organize or to protest or to, you know, create counterculture.

[James Stout]

But yeah, like it's not. Yeah. I mean, I've made London sound like some kind of like Blade Runner thing, which is not by any means. I have not spent a great deal of my life in London. London, it's too much city for me.

[Andrew Sage]

That's fair.

[James Stout]

But I do like, I, I enjoy visiting friends and their projects there and that kind of thing. And I think even post Covid there's been some resurgence. It's difficult. I don't want to suggest that things are not still extremely difficult for people trying to make ends meet, because they are. But like people are aware of the concept of mutual aid who may not have been before, and that has been good. Yet there still are squads, there still is struggle, there are still people fighting very hard to like live a dignified life and secure that for other people as well.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, yeah. And that's really what I want to highlight, you know, that what squatting represents really is, you know, you know, both a struggle for necessity, but also an Example of where our imagination can take us. You know, our resistance does not have to take on the same old forms of protesting into the void, per se. Right. There are things that we can to as ordinary people, whether we're black, whether we're gay, whether we're a Bangladeshi immigrant, a veteran, just an ordinary person. You could. You can also, you know, take on direct action to create homes, resist racism, build communities, and fight the state.

[James Stout]

Yeah. Like, I think about a lot in Greece, right, where anarchists have squatted places that were built for, like, the era when people could come from Northern Europe to Southern Europe to spend their money and then avoid the winter. And since, you know, general economic decline, that doesn't happen as much. And now people have squatted those hotels to allow migrants a dignified place to live. Right.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

That's a really beautiful project. It's envisioning another world, literally in the ruins of the old world.

[Andrew Sage]

Exactly.

[James Stout]

I think it's a really beautiful thing that people do to. To, you know, take that action to address, not just to protest something, but to say, like, the system which deprives people of even a safe place to live, even the dignity of being able to sleep in it under a roof at night. Like, we are going to take action that strikes at the roots of that, to ensure that we give others the dignity that they deserve. And that's really special.

[Andrew Sage]

Agreed. Agreed. And I mean, I don't want to romanticize squatting as, you know, just an easy way of life. It certainly is not. But to quote crime think the lesson of history is that in times of housing deprivation, people squat the empties. The fact that this has been made illegal does not blind people to the empty buildings or to the use of squatting as a tactic. The crack speaker in Amsterdam east promotes the slogan what neat Mag Khan nogsteets. What is not allowed is still possible. Forgive my terrible Dutch.

[James Stout]

Yeah, mine's not much better. Yeah, I like that slogan a lot. Like, I think the issue of homelessness in the United States in particular is something that, like, I think about a lot because I travel a lot. I remember sitting in a cafe in Kurdistan, and I'd just been. I was outside of just walking around, and some people invited me to join their domino's game. So I was playing dominoes and, you know, like, practicing my terrible Kurdish. And these guys were asking me, like, is it true that that, like, people. And, like, they were especially interested in, like, the veterans who had been U.S. soldiers, like, sleep on the street in America? And I was like, yeah, this is a thing like. And they were like, why? What's the deal with that? And the answer is that we have enough houses for everyone, but we've just treated them as a commodity to exchange. Right. We've been told that people can't live there even though there's space for them to live and even though it's actively hurting them living on the street. Right. It's such a condemnation of the situation we're in as a society.

[Andrew Sage]

Indeed it is. What does the future look like? You know, none of us can really know.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

But maybe we can sketch some outlines of how we can approach land use differently. We could look to the past and common traditions of the past as inspiration for what might return. And we could look to our own imagination of what the future can look like as we refuse domination. You know, we can squat, of course, to show the cracks in this concept of property. You know, we can collectivize and collectively organize spaces for farming or production. You know, we can really. We really could do any number of things. I think the guiding thread though has to be equity.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

You know, it has to be recognition that nobody has a right to land they don't use. That absentee landlordism is something utterly absurd and can be rejected outright. I think we can also consider the non human in our approach to land in the future, considering the rights and responsibilities we have toward animals and plants that live in spaces that should have their own existence beyond human utility. There will always be conflicts about how we can use these spaces and also how we might resolve these disputes. But I think it is clear that wherever there is somebody who attempts to monopolize land by force, we can respond adequately. I think the tactic of squatting is one small, unfinished, but necessary step towards a future where we reject property, where land is shared, where domination is abolished, where we as a human community and as a living community can free decide together how we live on this earth. We'll just have to see. That's it from me. All power to all the people this has been. It Could Happen Here. I'm Andrew Sage, that is James Stout and Peace.

[Cool Zone Media Announcer]

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

[Andrew Sage]

Every now and then I rinse it.

[James Stout]

Out and I need tell me rinse.

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Tonight and I need it more My.

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Kid wears a bed and the smell never leaves.

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I don't know what to do I'm always in the dark the sweatin dead short smells like a dark dark I'm downy rinsing tonight.

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Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he steals from the.

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Rich and gives to the poor. I'm not that generous.

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It's a damn near inspiring true story from for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon, then just totally muffed up the landing.

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They stole $17 million and had not bought a ticket to help him escape.

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So we're sitting like, oh God, what do we do? What do we do?

[James Stout]

That was dumb.

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People, do not follow my example.

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Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

There's a vile sickness in Amber's Town. You must excise it, dig into the deep earth and cut it out.

[Aaron Manke]

From iheart Podcasts and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. This is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio universe starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Andrew Sage]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

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[Andrew Sage]

This is an iHeart podcast.