A few dozen police officers in full riot gear, 15 armored vehicles, a crowd of bystanders -- and all of this just around the corner from our house this afternoon! Never a dull moment in Amsterdam Oost...

The action was centered around the clearing out of a squat-house on the Steve Bikoplein. I never knew much about squatting before I moved to Amsterdam (I suppose I still really don't know that much about it), but it's an interesting phenomenon to consider and observe. According to Wikipedia, "squatting is the act of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use." In the Netherlands, the societal treatment of the squatting movement is somewhat schizophrenic. On the one hand, it's basically illegal behavior; but on the other hand squatters are offered a number of legal protections. On the one hand, squatters are viewed as dangerous, anarchist revolutionaries; but on the other hand, they hold a certain degree of public support and admiration for their cause. Again, quoting Wikipedia, "In the Netherlands, if a building is not in use for twelve months and the owner has no pressing need to use it (such as a rental contract starting in the next month), then it can be legally squatted. The only illegal aspect would be forcing an entry, if that was necessary. When a building is squatted it is normal to send the owner a letter and to invite the police to inspect the squat. The police check whether the place is indeed lived in by the squatter -- in legal terms this means there must be a bed, a chair, a table and a working lock in the door which the squatter can open and close."

Interesting, huh?

I used to think that squatters were just counter-cultural for the sake of being counter-cultural. I thought they simply didn't want to go to the trouble of paying rent or maintaining their own place -- so they squat someone else's building. If I'm being perfectly honest with myself, I guess I thought they were a lawless crowd just looking for an excuse to not work and just sit around using drugs all day. But as I've gotten to know some squatters personally, and as I've learned more about their subculture (and there is indeed a very defined and highly refined subculture among squatters -- it's not merely a reactionary counter-culture), I've seen that many squatters are highly principled idealists. They are political activists. They see themselves as social engineers. They are philosophically motivated by Marxist ideologies to make the world a better place -- a place where everyone is valued, where everyone is granted access to the basic elements of life, where society is not motivated by unadulterated materialism.

I don't know if I could ever see myself "joining" the squatting movement for myself. But I have come to respect the philosophy behind squatting. They actually embody a number of Christian principles to an extent that many Christians do not. Of all the people with whom I've interacted in our neighborhood, the squatters have been some of the most neighborly.

Today, though, the police came to clear out one of the neighborhood squat houses. Apparently, the owner of the building in which a colony of squatters had taken up residence decided that he wanted to use the space again, and he jumped through the many hoops needed to circumnavigate the government's red tape so that the ontruiming (clearing out) was legally sanctioned and supported by the city police force. And they seriously supported the ontruiming. It was incredible. They had water canons mounted on trucks (which you can see in the photographs above and below). They had a small remote-controlled helicopter, about the diamter of a hula hoop, with a camera hovering around the scene (which you can see in the picture above), presumably gathering information on the whereabouts of the squatters within the house. There were perhaps 50 or 60 police officers in riot gear formed the perimeter (with their backs to the action), supposedly watching out for any raiding bands of sympathetic squatters from other colonies in the city. Another two-dozen motorcycle cops watched from outside the circle. Another dozen or so formed the crew that actually stormed the building. It was quite the effort.

No wonder the event generated a crowd from the neighborhood.

In the end, the ontruiming ended up being somewhat anticlimactic. After the police force stormed the squat house, it was only a minute or two before they came out with perhaps 10 to 15 squatters chanting protest slogans as they were escorted to the paddy wagons that would take them away.

Even so, it was an interesting afternoon in Amsterdam Oost.