[kraken] bakkerblokken ontruiming

Auteur: <january@squat.net>
Datum: 30 mrt 2007 10:45 uur

van indymedia geplukt:

3 women and the military police
The renter, the shop owner and the yuppie
A real news story from the Bakker Blokken Eviction

I am writing this story from a personal perspective, as a participant and
a witness. I am writing it as you would hear it from your friend. I'm
bored of trying to summarise events in ways that make us all feel far away
from what happened. I am bored of lifeless stories of real events. All
stories have stories inside them. This isn't an opinion this is what
happened.

I came to support the squatters who were making a final stand in a 3 year
struggle. I came just in time to see the military police arrive. After
being driven back by buses and vans and men and a couple of women trained
to be violent dogs, with their guns and their clubs and what ever other
weapons they had on them at the time, I found myself outside the door of
the primary school on Karel Du Jardin Straat. Close by, the military
police (MEers) swarmed a house, and couple of squatters replied by pelting
them, their vans, their weapons, and their machinery with paint bombs. The
Military Police were using water cannons. The school doors opened up, it
was home time.

I went into slow motion then. I couldn't help it. The emotions of the
children and their mothers , and their fathers struck me like a wave.
People were terrified. At the sight of the police little girls froze and
started weeping, some mothers were shaking and red faced, a man holding
his child in his arms tries to retrieve his bicycle which seconds before
had been in front of police lines not behind. He is threatened by MEers,
physically. Another man is prevented, by police, from reaching his
daughter who is standing in the doorway of the school, crying out for him
frantically. No one has come for one child, she hides behind the legs of
her teacher, eyes wide and starring. One MEer stands with a gun of some
sort behind his shield I notice. Emotions are high.

A woman, known here as the renter, comes up behind me, (through the course
of the day we become friends, we embrace each other and tell our stories),
but now she is screaming at me. 'I am a victim of war,' the renter yells,
'Why are YOU doing this?' (She tells me later that she had a flashback of
war just before she spoke to me, she was terribly afraid). Now we enter a
verbal struggle. I am speaking dutch. She tells me everything must be non
violent, it must be done through politics and law. I explain that what she
is witnessing is the end of a 3 year political and legal battle. That this
is our last means of resistance. I point out that the violence is the
state's I point to the rows of men and women trained to do violence to
other men and women and their weaponry. I say we did not create this, I
was upset. I said how can you stand for it, how can people allow these
beasts to wander free in their cities, they are by definition without
empathy, inhuman. I was sickened by their effect on the children and the
crowd, how we were forced to cower and obey under threat of violence.

I am yelled at by another woman on the corner, I have become a target it
seems. She is the shop owner. Some people can not see the forest for the
trees. The building she has her little shop in is going to be changed by
the new owner into something she could never afford to have her little
shop in. She is furious because she could not do business today. She is
screaming at me to shut up, and cursing squatters. Again I speak in dutch,
I say, 'don't you have any social conscience?' Don't you know what's going
to happen to these buildings? What has already happened to the people who
had a right to live here?'' She becomes less angry, she mumbles to
herself. I go over to her and tell her I/we don't have anything against
her, that it is not our wish that she should have to stop doing business,
I touch her arm she calms down. And then she is off again, But the police
are for us!, she says, they are just doing their job.' Yes they are
working, I say, but they do not think about what they are doing. The
police aren't protecting any of us here, they are protecting
the housing company who will turn social housing and into luxury
apartments for rich people.

But cries the yuppie who is standing beside me now, why can't rich people
live here too. Only 20% of houses in Amsterdam are koopwoning (houses to
be bought and sold on the open market). There is too much social housing!'
But I said you don't realise what you are saying, even people with high
middle incomes can not afford to buy a house in Amsterdam, without
generous government subsidy. Don't you realise that the social housing
system in the Netherlands that is now being destroyed is a social and
historical world treasure?. I said do you know your history? Do you know
this is a 150 year struggle between socialisation and privatisation?
Repeatedly the government has tried to privatise the housing sector and
always with disastrous effects, always meaning a huge bail out of the
private sector and millions if not billions to right the housing
inequities that arise, for the vast majority of people? I said why are you
so keen to buy? Do you really have so much money that you can buy a house
outright in Amsterdam? Won't you just be paying rent to a bank instead of
a housing corporation, what makes you think you will be safer? She was a
yuppie but she didn't look rich enough and she blushed at the truth. But I
want to live here she said! I want a house here! I said you can have a
house here, just put your name on the list and wait like everyone else who
has to live here. A couple of local people next to me applaud. She spits
her words at me 'there are too many foreigners in Amsterdam'. At this you
just have to laugh, Amsterdam has always been a place with a close to
majority population of foreigners. ( I'm not going to say what I told her
but just to let you know I'm writing here in English because of her
comment).

Later on I sit for a coffee, the police have been evicting now for a few
hours. Dozens of children in the playground yell squatters slogans at the
police, the mood is jovial. The police are tense but there is some peace
for the moment while they cut their way through the barricades. The renter
from before appears and approaches me. She says she realises everyone had
been hard on the squatters when the squatters were just trying to protect
them. She says she is on our side, she says she was stressed earlier
because of her war experiences and because it felt like war to her, she
says that she is sorry. She says she just fought a campaign against
minister Dekker, to keep her home, it is her safe place on earth she says.
We talk for ages.

The renter tells me the story of her mother's return to Amsterdam from a
concentration camp. When her mother tried to come and reclaim her home
other people had taken it. She was offered a cup of tea by one of her
neighbours when she returned as consolation , the neighbour served her tea
in her own old china ware. The renter's mother was stunned she looked
around the house of her neighbour and realised with horror that her
carpets were on the ground, and her furniture filled the room. They had
taken all her belongings and would not return it to her. This story
reminded me of the yuppie, who wants to live where other people are
living, who does not care where they end up, and will not recognise their
right to housing if they ever return to claim it.

The renter ends with telling me about her mother's conviction, her mother
would always say I will never be a refugee again, I will never let it
happen, we have to stand up, we have to fight. 'You won't give up will
you?'

--------------------------------------------------------------
 http://www.krakenpost.nl/kraken-post-2006.tar.bz2 (1.9MB)
 Afmelden, e-mail: kraken-post-unsubscribe@dvxs.nl
 Opnieuw aanmelden: kraken-post-subscribe@dvxs.nl
 Online Archief: http://www.krakenpost.nl/archief
 [30 Mar 10:00u]: 259 abonnees + 413 niet-abonnees
--------------------------------------------------------------
 
ontvangsttijd Fri Mar 30 08:46:08 2007