Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » squatters

Visiting the Metropoliz Squatters in Rome

dine — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 16:29:05 +0000

Rome A great adventure and advantage of my work is getting to see parts of a city that even long time residents cannot imagine. I may not see all of the sites in the tourist guide books, but I see amazing things where people live and work behind the walls of most visitors.

On arriving in Rome Saturday afternoon, Senator Lucio D’Ubaldo gave me a ride into the city since he was landing at roughly the same time. He insisted before visiting over lunch that I see some of the massive fascist architectural projects around the EUR district that had been largely abandoned with the advent of WWII, but were still deeply planted as governmental facilities in this very upscale Roman neighborhood. Being largely ignorant of these Mussolini-era projects, it was both fascinating, education, and almost frightening in its symbolic scale and ideological power.

David Tozzo of ACORN Italy and I had a different reaction on Sunday afternoon as we spent several hours touring “Metropoliz,” a “squat” and cultural project in a massive, former pig slaughterhouse in the eastern part of Rome. We had been introduced to this project through connections made with some of the volunteers helping ACORN International who were part of the graduate design and architectural projects at University of the City of London, and had promised to check it out during my visit.

About 100 people, who had been evicted or were homeless, were living permanently in Metropoliz. Immediately I could recognize Peruvians from my many visits to ACORN Peru, and seeing one section painted Peru Piazza only confirmed what I already knew. Other permanent squatters had come from Senegal and other countries as they were evicted from place to place. In a adjoining building were another 100 Roma who were not part of Metropoliz, but in the same soup. Over the two years of this experience various artists, designers, and others had joined forces with the squatters in a way that was not clear to me, but had evolved into a documentary film called Space Metropoliz. There was a large, homemade telescope at the top of the plant tower. A friend explained that three “balls” from the plant were imagined as the base and that they were working with the squatters on a project of “imagination” to build a rocket to the moon on top of that construct. I had some trouble following all of this, but perhaps that was the point, since the designers and cultural workers were trying an experiment to see if diverse people at Metropoliz could come together on an “act of imagination.” The film would document that effort.

Asking what would happen after the film was finished, I was told that that was a good question, which didn’t comfort me much. It seems that the future is also “part of the experiment” to see what the squatters will make of it all later when the film is over. I suppose that once again the rocket may hit earth with a loud and resounding thud.

Who knows? The space was mammoth, and in Italy access to water and lights are allowed for humanitarian reasons by the public utilities (amen to that!), so people were fashioning reasonable living quarters in some of the areas. Others were jumbles of graffiti and mayhem. The former “classroom” was little more than rubble with books thrown on the floor. The most finished area was where the “rockets” were being painted by professional artists and some of the children.

As we were walked around on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon with a breeze in the air and the first hint of fall everywhere, we could tell by the steady stream of people who seemed to be going and coming that Metropoliz was something of a happening. The permanent squatters were sanguine about all of that and largely ignored the outsiders and their trooping around cameras in hand. This was not industrial tourism but a sort of “developmental tourism” almost similar to what we had seen in the recycling area of Cairo.

There seemed to be potential everywhere, but problems almost as large. According to our friends from UCL, this is one of a number of similar squats around Rome. It’s an interesting phenomena and worth a look. I’m skeptical about how all of this plays out, but was filled with good wishes and hope for all involved. Why not? Something good can happen here that wasn’t possible before hand.

Colors and Dawn on the Marcala Mountains

dine — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 16:02:23 +0000

Marcala In an afterthought I had thrown a small flashlight in my bag. You never know. As Tim sings, “there’s the cowboy in us all,” and with me there’s still a boy scout deep down riding alongside I guess. Good thing. We had driven up the mountains from Marcala in pitch dark to where our team was being housed for the night. Arriving we could see the large porch of the recently finished brick and concrete structure until the car lights went out, then nada but the half-moon and stars. One lone candle was lit in the middle of the room where we enjoyed sweet tea – organico, as they kept saying – after plopping our bags on the bare concrete floor. A little later when we were led down a rough path to a cabin, the absence of running water and electricity faded next to the joyful surprise at finding a nice bunk bed with clean sheets. Hey, it’s the little things that count. I slept like a baby in the pitch dark until the predawn when I woke with the campesinos to see the morning light come over the green dotted fog of the mountain sides.

We had started the day at eight in a makeshift meeting room in the hotel chapel with many of our union brothers as well as several new companeros from NGOs and the University. For hours one after another listed the issues in and around San Pedro Sula that needed attention and organizational activity: water, remittances, housing, public services. It was a long list delivered in lengthy and passionate speeches listened to respectfully by all interrupted only by the appearance of a Channel 39 TV reporter who had heard the discussion was going on and that I was in town. At noon we drove through some of the colonias including one fascinating development some of my union brothers showed me where the union had built the houses and the school. This was only minutes away from a new highrise condo development abutting one piece of a small creek in San Pedro Sula. Another sign down the road indicated the future would be filled with these luxury developments, the first in the city. Another five minutes away and we were looking at a squatters development along a larger riverbank where families had been forced after Hurricane Mitch’s devastation in Honduras, as still remained. Driving away we could see children swimming as their mothers washed their clothes in the calmer pools of the stream

Next stop was a quick lunch and visit with a woman and her family who had graciously invited us over for pico gallo in the Honduran style with red beans. The reason in the interconnected world of organizing: her sister had been a member of ACORN in the Queens. Anything she could do to help, just ask.

Though there seemed to be no hurry to the drive, and it was a good thing since construction and 18-wheelers had us parking for long stretches as we crossed the mountains on the good highway from San Pedro Sula to Tegucigalpa, we parked in Marcala in one of the barrios and followed the noise and music into a giant structure just in time for a young political theater company to begin their presentation. There were several hundred children and a score of adults in the crowd, as the moderator shouted, “Silencio!” over and over to gain attention. Suyapa explained to me that this was part of a celebration for the women in the community, but the theater company brought much more to it.

This was a well acted and rehearsed production by a half-dozen enthusiastic late teen or early 20′s actors. In the beginning a “generalito” – small general – with his lieutenant wanted everything to be gray, gray, gray, and the three citizens, two women and one man, lived in gray huts in fear. As the play developed to great humor and passion from the actors and increasingly the crowd as they warmed to the theme, the caricature soldiers in the face paint of Batman’s Joker gradually lost control. Singing and dancing would erupt and pull the people off of their knees to find that they could walk and be happy again. At the same time their huts turned from gray to white, pink, and green. A giant bride dressed in white appeared on stilts and danced along as well. A toy cannon exploded and led the soldier to defect to the people until the generalito was deflated with the air escaping from him like wind from a bag. More singing ensued. Children were pulled from the crowd. Marching and dancing. My summary doesn’t do the play or the skill and quality of the actors justice for this hour long presentation, but it was one of the few times where one had the feeling people were staying for the action and not the frijoles and tortillas passed out to all of us with plastic cups of weak coffee at the end of the show.

There may have been a fake election in Honduras to try to rightsize the military coup, but the scars will wear deep among these people. When the elected president announced on my first day in country that he was agreeing to go into exile in the Dominican Republic there was no celebration about his volunteering to take the first step to “reconciliation.” It seemed hollow, and this children’s play with its well practiced themes and smooth presentation was hardly designed for this one show, but was traveling around the country.

All of these things were on our minds as our eyes closed in the dark last night. We were staying at the unfinished compound organized as a project to support the campesinos in this area.

It was an honor and a gift to have lived this day!