How yall doing stackers?

It's been a while since I posted the first and very popular series about my squatting history in Amsterdam. This morning I was reminiscing some more about my early adult years in this counter culture movement and would just like to expand the series with some smaller anecdotes.

One guy, who occupies my mind frequently, was the chief of KSU Oost headquarters, the squatting unit that was based in the East of Amsterdam. As you might recall the city was broken up into multiple headquarters each governing/securing/helping the squats in their part of town. When I got my introduction course in squatting the main guy from Oost at the Pretoriusstraat told me all about how it was the done.

His name was Momo. He was originaly from Germany but spoke Dutch very well. He was a kind of hacker type who was also involved with running the squat.net servers. In spirit he felt like Morpheus from the Matrix. A mentor figure who teaches you how to hack the system. He was tall, scrawny, and wore glasses. He was a charismatic guy who often would speak at the local city council to inform the authorities on the housing situation and how the maffia was involved in it (and how the group squatted against it).

I remember one night at a squatting attempt in Oost he was spokesman. This person would lead the squat attempt, inform all the participants of the house and speak to the police when they had to confirm the break-in.

This particular break in was in a neighborhood that had partially guarded itself against squats through so-called anti-squats. Anti-squats was a legal/commercial setup in the Netherlands in which renters are recruited for temporary homes in order for them not to get squatted. You'd pay about $300/month to rent such a place. It could be really lucrative. You might get a big place in the center for a couple of years, but usually it wouldn't be such prime locations and also the stay would short.

You might say, well, if this anti-squat is so great, why not do that instead of the real squatting. The problem is you basically squander all your rental rights if you agree to the anti-squat contracts. They can throw you out with only a month notice and there's no 'huisvrede' (house peace). Huisvrede is the law that governs you, as a renter, to have the right to allow/deny whoever wants to enter your home. This means with anti-squat you frequently get visitations by the anti-squat company to inspect your place, which is really bothersome. The inspectors are usually bastards and make all kinds of notes and recommendations for the way you're living. This is not the case with squatting. With squatting you do have huisvrede and, including any eviction pending, you usually have a couple of months to find your next squat.

Anyway, so that night we squatted below some anti-squats. When the upstairs anti-squats got alarmed of the noise we made as we broke into the lower floors, they hurried to their balconies in panic to check what all the ruckus was about. When they started asking what was going on, Momo got into the conversation, and after explaining himself he said with a German accent:

"Guys, what are you doing up there? You are on the wrong side of the barricade."

I remember that so vividly. He was trying to recruit the apparent enemy even during a squatting action. Man, I love that guy. He was very special and smart. I don't know what happened to him. Some folks said he moved to London after the squatting ban got enacted. Maybe I'll meet him again someday. I miss him.

Now think what you may about the squatting scene in Amsterdam back in the day, and I for one have never subscribed to all of its aspects, and mainly for you (and me) this is a historic account. But there's also a point of view you can take that they weren't squatting against capitalism but against the symptoms of fiatism. Much of what I encountered in the squatting movement is in similar rebellious spirit of the Bitcoin community.

We were all hacking against the (downstream) evils of fiat.

Hope you enjoyed this. Have a good day.