Making Their Own History: Squatters on Manhattan's Lower East Side

Benjamin H. Shepard — 2017-12-19T06:00:00Z

During the 1970s, when Manhattan's Lower East Side was full of derelict real estate, activists laid claim to left-behind buildings and vacant lots. Over time, the squatters' challenge to conventional forms of property ownership endured, though in greatly modified forms. Benjamin Shepard reviews Amy Starecheski's oral history.
Amy Starecheski's Ours to Lose is a compelling oral history of the squatting movement in the Lower East Side of New York City in the years that it moved from conflict to

- Reviews / squat, New York, right to the city, vacant lots, property rights, squatters, Lower East Side, property ownership, community gardens

Barcelona: local mobilisation or global desperation?

Charlotte Vorms & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-02-08T06:00:00Z

What is the history behind today's protest movements involving the occupation of urban public spaces? In the film Squat. La ville est à nous, Charlotte Vorms finds a secular anarchist heritage combined with a tradition of Spanish urban struggles of the type that have fuelled the 15-M Movement in Barcelona.
Close-up on the young people, harnessed, scaling the facade of a building and entering by a window: this is the opening sequence to Squat. La ville est à nous. (“Squat. The City is Ours.”).

- Reviews / democracy, urban renewal, squat, social movement, Spain, Barcelona

Metropolitics

Making Their Own History: Squatters on Manhattan's Lower East Side

Barcelona: local mobilisation or global desperation?