9/13-15: Caen, Bordeaux, Toulouse

In Caen I played on the boardwalk to an assembled group of punks, as well as passersby coming home from an outdoor music festival. After the show we hung out at a squat that was one of two on the same block and home to a vegetable garden and an anarchist library where someone gave me two copies of the English translation of Call. Apparently someone had left them a box of books in English that no one could read. Our host, Simon, explained that he’d hoped that the show would bring together the punk scene and the activist squatter scene, by subverting traditional punk show atmosphere – doing a free show outdoors with free food, open to passersby. Unfortunately there was a meeting scheduled at the squat, and so the chasm remained unbridged.

We spent a day in Bordeaux with Noam and Gilles’ friend Seb who they had met over the summer as co-volunteers at an Emauss recycling center. The project is a recycling center run by mostly ex-homeless people who take up a trade at the center and have a place to live and eat. They said there were aspects of autonomy and collectivism to the project – anyone could chose to join by free association, people went into their own trades by their own volition, there were volunteer positions for outside community involvement and meals and lodging were shared collectively – but that it was far from anarchistic, as there’s one director who has the final decision making power on who lives stays and who goes. Anyway, we had a delicious dinner, Seb and I learned to play “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World” and the next morning we visited a giant squat called Athenee Libertaire, the first of many we would seek out, only to find totally closed to the public.

In Toulouse I played a squat called Chaussas, one of several squats we were told about in Toulouse, but the only one we actually visited. There were two buildings, one residential and one for events and in between there was a park where people were having a meeting, a daycare center and a community garden. Apparently in the recent mayoral election, the leading candidate had promised to keep the Chaussas open and he ended up winning. This was the first of several “permitted” or “official” squats we’d end up visiting. The concept is a bit strange – when certain cities deem it appropriate, or when squatters win legal battles they are permitted to keep running their spaces autonomously and rent free, but the city owns the land. In some places they have to keep up with certain regulations to keep their permits. It’s interesting, because anyway you look at it, a free autonomous community resource is an awesome thing, but at the same time the blessing of the city in some ways neutralizes the political threat that squatting poses to capitalism. Or, using the terminology of Call, it no longer creates a space that’s “unmanagable” by capitalism. For example on the same block as Chaussas there were three condo developments under construction. That in no way negates the awesome work that the people there are doing, but I wonder what role permitted squats play in the gentrification of European cities.