an inurrectionary anarchist analysis
by Insurgent-S
December, 2002
A recent article on the Victoria Police in the Victoria Times Colonist newspaper asked its readers to think of cops as “social workers, but with guns.” Which begs the question; is the opposite true?
After 3 months, an eviction by hundreds of riot police, a raid and assault by police on the tent city outside the building, numerous demonstrations, and endless court battles, the tent city around the Woodwards building is finally gone.
Underhanded double-dealings between Jim Leyden - a non-squatter city employee, the Portland Hotel Society and the newly elected COPE civic party, led to the dismantling of the squat and a move to the Dominion and Ivanhoe Hotels for about 60 squatters. Some have said that sending in the social workers was even more insidious than sending in the cops. Many squatters are homeless again. Many squatters lost possessions during the dismantling.
A militant direct action struggle for housing, carried out by the most dispossessed citizens of Vancouver created a movement and an upsurge in activity that no one could have predicted before hand. The issue of homelessness and housing was forced into the public light and onto election platforms. Brutal police repression was unable to crush the determination and resistance of those who had nothing to lose. Support came from rank-and-file union workers, and donations poured in from all over British Columbia. Nationally, a squatters movement erupted, and buildings were occupied across the country.
And in the end the city government did what they knew they had to; partially concede to the squatters, and offer temporary housing. Their act was not one of good will, but an effort to contain an autonomous struggle of excluded people. The threat of future squats loomed on the horizon. Fury at a maniacal police force was at a peak. The only way to defuse the situation was to offer a concession. Politics is simply warfare by other means.
The squatters discovered their power; despite their exclusion from society and the basic means of existence. Many squatters were willing to fight until the end, and many were eager for a warm, clean place of their own in which to live. In the absence of much outside solidarity, a 3 month stay in a hotel was a sensible option. The professional activists retreated from the struggle, and the momentum was lost, because it was not acted on.
Often fear, inaction and restraint are more limiting than the institutions of oppression arrayed against us.
But the lessons learned, the invaluable experience of real class warfare, and the freedom of autonomous organizing will not be soon forgotten.
“Today the field is open to action, without weakness or retreat.”
- Emile Henry