u.s. activists 'discover' european squatting

I always had the impression that squatting space played a less dominant role in U.S. radical left politics than in Western Europe, but the Occupy Movement has recently opened up a widespread debate in the U.S. about the agora and reinvigorating public space for democratic citizenship. The discussion has extended to claiming not only public but private space as well, as a number of local Occupy movements have supported people squatting their own foreclosed homes. Occupying one's own former property is probably the most palatable form of squatting for Americans, who are notoriously overzealous about the sanctity of private property and home ownership. (Hmm, and what about the Swiss?) It doesn't seem to be a coincidence that Amnesty International started its "Housing: it's a wonderful right" campaign around Christmastime last year, giving new gas to an idea that's relatively unpopular in the U.S. : that housing is a human right.

We might ask ourselves what the predominance of squatting in European radical scenes and its smaller significance in the U.S. has to do with differing geographies, and more specifically, histories of urban spaces -- race and place, above all in the States. So perhaps its not a surprise, but still sweetly nerdy that the Squatting Europe Collective met this past weekend as part of the Association of Amerian Geographers' annual convention.

Why has contact with European squatters come so late?

Firstly, I find the language of "freiräume" and German demands for space for alternative living difficult to translate into English. While "infoshops" and bike workshops are a mainstay of the small anarchist scenes in the States, community organizing has always focused on setting up shop in working-class, immigrant, or people of color neighborhoods. Insofar as some community organizers as well as anarchist activists struggle with their own race & class privileges and the difficulties of working in communities they themselves don't belong to, there is great sensitivity towards how demanding space for a particular political lilfestyle within such working class, people of color neighborhoods can reiterate colonialist tendencies. Occupy movements were heavily criticized by indigenous and anti-racist activists for not recognizing the oppressive connotations of the term "occupation" and called upon to "decolonize" themselves.

Secondly, the radicals and self-identified anarchists that I know in the States orient themselves mostly towards Latin America, drawing inspiration from Zapatistas and "21st century Socialism." There seemed to be little contact with European social movements, until the recent involvement of Spanish and Greek activists in the creation of Occupy Wall Street. Perhaps this is a fetish of the white, middle class youth who predominate in anarchist circles in the States, idealizing poor people of color as the "true avant garde". Maybe we could draw a parallel to the German anti-fascist's fetish of Greek street fighters in gas masks, or the general tendency of privileged activists to seek out solidarity first with the leftist movements in the countries their own country has fucked over for profit.