Berlin was far from the only city in the late 20th century dealing with drastic economic change. In the series finale of SQUAT, Maya crosses an ocean and a continent to explore how people utilized empty space to resist neoliberalism in a city quite close to home: San Francisco. Beyond rising housing prices, what connected Berlin and the Bay Area, you might ask? Surprisingly, punk music! In this episode, Maya examines the way countercultural exchange fostered transnational connections in this moment of immense global transition.

Citations:

• https://koepi137.net/history.html
• https://www.last.fm/music/Lorena+&+The+Bobbits
• https://robinballiger.com/komotion/
• "Bolt Cutters and the Politics of Expropriation: Homes Not Jails, Urban Squatting, and Gentrification" in Cooking up a Revolution: Food Not Bombs, Homes Not Jails, and Resistance to Gentrification by Sean Parson (2018)
• “Transnational Justice, Counterpublic Spheres, and Alter-Globalization.” by Nikita Dhawan (article in Localities, 2012)
• “Anti-Globalization or Alter-Globalization? Mapping the Political Ideology of the Global Justice Movement” by Manfred Steger & Erin K. Wilson (article in International Studies Quarterly, 2012)

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After several decades of neglect, many buildings in Berlin needed a lot of work to be made livable — but where others saw blight, squatters saw possibility. In this episode, Maya explores the spatial practices of squatting and how squatters used imaginative DIY renovations to claim a right to the city. However, that right was frequently challenged by non-squatters and the state, in violent ways… this episode also covers the forced eviction that some consider the end of the squatters’ movement, what even short-lived squatting meant for the people who participated, and the future of communal housing in Germany.

Citations:

• Writings on Cities by Henri Lefebvre (1996)
• "Excavating Lefebvre: The Right to the City and Its Urban Politics of the Inhabitant" by Mark Purcell (article in GeoJournal, 2002)
• “The Right to the City” by David Harvey (2008) https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii53/articles/david-harvey-the-right-to-the-city
• “Precolonial Indigenous Education in the Western Hemisphere and Pacific” by Adrea Lawrence (article in The [Oxford] Handbook on the History of Education, 2019)
• "Infoshops in the Shadow of the State" by Chris Atton in Contesting Media Power: Alternative Media in a Networked World (2002)
• “Mehr als eine Heimwerker-Idylle” [More Than a DIY Paradise]. Retrieved from Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum Archives, 10 May 2023.
• "Living in Common Places: The Communal Apartment" from Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia by Svetlana Boym (1994)
• Metropolitan Preoccupations: The Spatial Politics of Squatting in Berlin by Alexander Vasudevan (2015)
• “Underground Heritage: Berlin Techno and the Changing City” by John Schofield and Luise Rellensmann (article in Heritage & Society, 2015)
• https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240322-berlin-techno-scene-gains-unesco-status
• https://metropolismag.com/projects/dont-call-it-a-commune-inside-berlin-radical-cohousing-project/
• https://grist.org/cities/i-want-to-live-in-a-baugruppe/
• https://www.freiburg.de/pb/1458899.html
• https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/07/germany-mietshauser-syndikat-property-housing

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What exactly was so radical about these squatters’ “radical communities”? In this episode, Maya offers a few frameworks to analyze the way life in Berlin’s squats diverged from the mainstream, in particular looking at the ways squatters thought about queer identity, anti-capitalist ideology, age, and art. She also examines the stories of the Black people that appeared in the margins of this historical narrative.

Citations:

• Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement by Tiffany Florvil (2020)
• Assorted images, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum Archives
• “The Public Sphere: an Encyclopedia Article” by Jürgen Habermas, Sara Lennox and Frank Lennox (article in
• New German Critique, 1974)
• “Tuntenhaus Forellenhof 1990: Gay Communism’s Short Summer” curated by Bastian Krondorfer, Schwules Museum (https://www.schwulesmuseum.de/ausstellung/tuntenhaus-forellenhof-1990-gay-communisms-short-summer/?lang=en)
• “Toward a Generic Concept of Counter-culture” by Keith A. Roberts (article in Sociological Focus, 1978)
• Metropolitan Preoccupations: The Spatial Politics of Squatting in Berlin by Alexander Vasudevan (2015)
• Publics and Counterpublics by Michael Warner (2002)

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