This post collects three articles:
“Anarchy in BC…” by Roger Farr
“The Struggle Continues – The Woodwards Squat in Vancouver,” by some anonymous anarchists
“Social Workers – Cops Without Guns,” by Insurgent-S
Anarchy in BC: Anti-Capitalist Struggle Outside the Union on Canada’s ‘Left Coast’ – Roger Farr (2007)
Originally published in Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, Vol. 11, #1, Fall 2007
Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerilla by Ann Hansen (Toronto, ON & Oakland, CA: Between the Lines / AK Press, 2001).
Reading the Riot Act: A Brief History of Riots in Vancouver by Michael Barnholden (Vancouver, BC: Anvil, 2005).
Woodsquat ed. by Aaron Vidaver (Burnaby, BC: West Coast Line 41, 2003/04).
INTRODUCTION
The history of resistance to capitalism in British Columbia has been told, for the most part, from the perspective of organized labour, at the expense of other, more radical perspectives and movements.(1)
The reasons for this elision are many, the most obvious being that BC does in fact have a rich and vibrant labour history. To this day – much to the chagrin of the current neo-liberal regime – BC is one of the most heavily unionized regions on the continent. This fact, combined with the glaring discrepancies between rich and poor (the province is home to the wealthiest and poorest postal codes in the country(2) means – or should mean – that “Spectacular BC” is also home to a higher-than-normal degree of labour unrest.
Indeed, as Paul Finch notes in an article on the failed general strike of 2004, “British Columbia has traditionally held one of the strongest labor movements in North America… Many US trade unions found their origins in the Pacific west above their borders, the Industrial Workers of the World established a stronghold prior to their suppression following the first world war, and the solidly resource-based economy has long been a bastion of unionism, in both the public and private sectors. Although these foundations have continually been eroded, their legacy still remains in the unique manifestations of the labor movement today.”(3)
While the history and tactics of BC’s labour movement are important and should continue to be recorded and analyzed, their prominence has placed them in position of authority which has overshadowed other forms of struggle that can not, or will not, be absorbed by formal labour organizations or their “politics of demand.”(4)
Recently, however, there has been something of a tide-change in the radical historiography of the region, as shown in the quiet publication of three books that can be read as attempts to redress this overlooked history: Ann Hansen’s memoirs of the Squamish Five, Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerilla, Michael Barnholden’s Reading the Riot Act: A Brief History of Riots in Vancouver, and Aaron Vidaver’s anthology of writing by and about the occupation of the Woodward’s building, Woodsquat. Taken together, these works document a vigorous line of anarchist and autonomous struggle on Canada’s so-called “Left Coast.”
DIRECT ACTION
Ann Hansen’s Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerilla tells the story of Canada’s most infamous guerilla group from the point of view of one of its key participants. Technically speaking, the book is not a “pure” memoir, as it blends first-person accounts of the group’s actions, their routines and their political reasoning, with fictionalized third-person narratives about the police counter-intelligence unit deployed against them (Hansen explains her decision to break with the conventional memoir on the grounds that she needed “a counterpoint to [the Five’s] unfolding campaign”). While at times the shifts between first and third person narrative are awkward, and some of the recreated dialogue wooden, after the first chapter the book is impossible to put down, largely because of its unflinching honesty about the qualitative changes that occur when activists who are tired of “working within the left, organizing demonstrations, putting out information, going to rallies and meetings, and doing everything else involved in lives of radical activism” decide to go underground and commit themselves to anarchist illegalism.
While a good portion of this story consists of plots to steal cars and commit various armed robberies, a fact that was used later by the media and state prosecution to portray the group as petty criminals, the Squamish Five, or the “Vancouver Five” as they are sometimes called (Julie Belmas, Gerry Hannah, Ann Hansen, Doug Stewart, and Brent Taylor), are known today mostly for carrying out two major bombings in the early 80’s. The Five as a group also provided various forms of support to the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade (WFB), which Hansen and Belmas were directly involved with. The WFB carried out several arsons against Red Hot Video, an “adult entertainment” chain that distributed violent pornography in BC before legislation was brought in to stop it.
The group’s first political action was against the Cheekeye-Dunsmuir power lines, an unpopular but taxpayer-funded mega-project designed to carry electricity from the mainland across Georgia Straight to satisfy the growing needs of industrial plants on Vancouver Island. In this attack, Stewart and Hansen detonated 150 pounds of dynamite stolen from a highway crew in Squamish, destroying two transformers worth $1 million each. In their communiqué following the bombing, they explained that they were acting against the “ecological destruction and the human oppression inherent in the industrial societies of the corporate machine in the West and the communist machine in the East.” The Cheekeye-Dunsmuir line was targeted in order to create “an insecure and uninhabitable place for capitalists and their projects,” projects which were being used, in the Five’s analysis, “as a means of overcoming the ongoing economic crisis.”
The second action – more controversial because of the injuries it caused – targeted a Litton Systems plant in Toronto which was manufacturing components for American cruise missiles during the height of the Cold War. In this action, Belmas, Hansen and Taylor exploded a van loaded with 550 pounds of dynamite in front of the building, destroying an administrative area (their intent was to damage the manufacturing area). Although the group took precautions to warn police and to have the building evacuated, the bomb exploded early, likely due to interference with the timing device caused by police scanners. On top of the $4-5 million of dollars in damage, a security guard was seriously injured, as were several other employees and police.
After the Litton action, the Five issued both a communiqué and a statement of apology. In the communiqué, they argued that “those in power have always used warfare and repression in order to maintain their control over other people’s lives…nuclear weapons are the ultimate tool in the oppressive apparatus—the key to maintaining their power. Thus, they will never voluntarily disarm or stand aside and watch their power be peacefully taken away.” In the apology, they stated that they were “very disturbed and saddened” by the injuries they caused, and identified four critical errors: 1) the malfunctioning of the bomb’s detonator, 2) not repeating the warning call they placed 25 minutes prior to the explosion, 3) not providing a suitable back-up warning, and 4) relying on the police to clear the building. A fifth error, which they realized only later, was that in their communiqué, they used facts gleaned from literature produced by another activist group, the Cruise Missile Conversion Project. Although the Five tried to distance themselves from this group, members of the CMCP were interrogated and harassed by police following the action. This last error had the effect of creating, or perhaps fuelling, antagonisms between the Five and the broader, anti-nuclear movement.
The Dunsmuir and Litton bombings resulted in a lot of ink being shed in radical circles over the efficacy and legitimacy of clandestine militant action in Canada. Opponents argued that the actions were vangaurdist, that the time was not right for such militancy, and that the repercussions (i.e. the criminalization and harassment of legalist organizations) would discredit the peace movement at the very moment that it was beginning to win popular support. Supporters, on the other hand, some of whom were once among the Five’s most vocal critics(5), responded that the traditional forms of protest used by the left were aimed merely at “consciousness raising,” which ultimately could do nothing to stop, or even slow down, the manufacturing of weapons and the accelarated destruction of the environment. And if consciousness was not being “raised” in order to inform radical actions, then what was the point? If action was indeed the aim, which actions would consciousness inform once it was suitably raised? Were the Five not acting from a position of “heightened consciousness”? By carrying out their acts of sabotage, the Five were able to demonstrate that the State was weak and the movement strong; this recognition, their supporters argued, was a valid contribution to the growing sense that radical social transformation was both possible and imminent.
Hansen’s account of her own political background and experiences indicates that the Five’s decision to engage in sabotage was grounded in a shared sense that the traditional left in Canada was unable to effect any kind of significant radical change; the Five were, Hansen reports, “very burnt out…tired of all [the] useless leftist shit.” For Hansen, this conclusion was not exactly an epiphany. Three years prior to the bombings, she had spent six months researching, and doing support work for, the Red Army Faction in Paris, where she was also exposed to the European autonomous movement during a demonstration. “Every aspect of their lives reflected their politics,” she noticed. “Essentially they lived as total outlaws, existing outside the boundaries of legality, rejecting all political parties in an attempt to live the revolution in their daily lives.” After being drawn in to a skirmish between the autonomen and the police, Hansen felt she had found her true political allies: “I had no desire to return home to a country where revolutionaries seemed to be an endangered species…[nevertheless], I decided to return to Canada and find some like-minded individuals and do whatever it took, no matter how long, to initiate some militant political activity in the Canadian left.”
And the rest is, as they say, history. While Hansen was successful in finding a small group of “like-minded individuals” on the fringes of Vancouver’s activist milieu, they soon realized that their aspirations were not exactly going to fit in with the official campaigns of “the Canadian left”: “The problem we have,” she acknowledged, “is that the workers in our society identify with the values of the owners of the companies and aspire to have their lifestyle… Unions are fighting for the workers to acquire more stuff, they’re not fighting to change the premises upon which society is based. They are far from revolutionary.”
READING THE RIOT ACT
If the trade union movement has not provided an adequate forum for anti-capitalist struggle in Canada, as Hansen claims, then where does one turn for an account of such struggle? That question is answered in part in Michael Barnholden’s Reading The Riot Act: A Brief History of Riots in Vancouver, an engaging and punchy “popular peoples’ history” that examines all of the major, and several of the minor, riots that have transpired in Vancouver since the city incorporated in 1886.
A riot is defined legally in S64 of the Criminal Code of Canada as “an unlawful assembly that has begun to disturb the peace tumultuously.” In his Introduction, Barnholden nuances this dangerously vague legal definition, noting that the “sound of broken glass” is usually the signal to police that “the peace” has been disturbed. Broken glass, Barnholden explains, “is a potent image signaling the breakdown of the barrier between public and private property.” Thus, an attack on private property, often a shop window, along with a “police presence beyond the ordinary,” are for Barnholden the two distinguishing characteristics of a riot.
As for the political composition of such events, Barnholden’s analysis appears to take some of its cues from autonomous Marxism. In the earliest stages of this perspective, the social order is described as a fragile arena of struggle between the working classes and capital. In the course of this struggle, the former attempts to “recompose” itself autonomously, through wildcat strikes, sabotage, and occupations, causing a crisis for the latter, which in turn must constantly adjust and reimpose itself, by “decomposing” its antagonist through an overhaul of the “division of labour.” While the autonomous Marxists, as far as I know, never treated the riot specifically as an instance of class recomposition, Barnholden’s reading, sustained as it is by the claim that “the riot in itself is not the breakdown of social control; it is the penultimate event or crisis in a long drama followed immediately by the reimposition of state control,” could, I think, be read as a contribution to this perspective.
While the book is indeed “a brief history of riots in Vancouver,” coming in at 135 pages, the conditions which led to the various riots discussed (over a dozen) are too detailed to be summarized here. It should be noted, however, that Reading the Riot Act begins on a rather sour note, with the “Anti-Asian Riots of 1907.” This is one of the nastier moments in Vancouver’s long history of xenophobia, but one which nevertheless does force Barnholden to qualify his analysis of class agency in the riot, and for that reason is worth closer inspection.
To celebrate Labour Day, 1907, Vancouver’s newly formed Anti-Asiatic League (a front for the conservative Knights of Labour) and its supporters organized a “parade,” complete with banners reading “For A White Canada,” which culminated in attacks on Chinese and Japanese businesses and later, “hand-to-hand combat with clubs, knives and guns, rocks, bricks, bottles, and blocks of wood” between white and Asian workers. Given that Barnholden’s overall aim in this book is to consider rioting as a “battle in the class war” (as opposed to the “a-few-bad-apples” approach favoured by police and protest marshals), it comes as no surprise when he writes that the anti-Asian riots are the “most troubling…to deal with.”
The problem Barnholden faces here is that while this riot did emerge in part as a result of pent up class tension, it was articulated primarily along racial lines, which neutralized it immediately: disaffected white working class men turned their anger first against Asian capitalists (the emphasis fell on the adjective), and then against the Asian workers who had no choice but to defend the businesses which, under capitalism, sustained their communities. Thus, according to Barnholden, labour as a whole was “duped” into fighting a battle that ultimately served the interests of a White capitalism (the emphasis falling on the noun), the class which was, of course, calling the shots from the start.
Fortunately, the other riots discussed in the book did not serve the interests of capitalism and conservative labour. Barnholden moves through the Free Speech Riots of 1909 & 1911 (“political riots”), the Unemployment Riots of 1935 & 1938 (“food riots”), several prison riots between 1934-1976 in the BC Pen. (“the clearest case of the marginalized taking matters into their own hands”), the Youth Riots of the ‘70’s (a response to a “system dedicated solely to profit”), various Sports Riots in 1963, 1966, and 1994 (the Stanley Cup riot of ’94 was, he argues, fought by “losers in the class warfare that had been waged for the previous ten years”), the APEC Riot of 1997 and its follow-up, The Riot at the Hyatt in 1998 (two well-known “dissident student riots” that ended up dragging Government officials in to a public inquiry), the Britannia Riot of 2002, the Guns N’ Roses Riot later that year, and finally, the Punk Riot of 2004.(6)
I suspect that many readers, after reading such a list, will find it hard to accept that the Stanley Cup Riot of ’94, to take just one example, was a meaningful contribution to anti-capitalist struggle.(7) But this is in fact exactly what Barnholden claims for such events: “What all of these riots have in common,” he writes, “is that they are easily identified as episodes of ongoing class conflict between various elements of the working class and the ruling class.” If that doesn’t sound immediately convincing, Barnholden offers a nice bit of anecdotal evidence to support his disaffected class-antagonist thesis: in the course of researching the book, he tells us, he found not a single example “of the rich rioting for better tax breaks, or against government service cuts. No black-tie riots, no drunken symphony riots, no riots at all.”
WOODSQUAT
Aside from their geographical affinity, the main thread tying these books together is that in each case, resistance to capitalism is not expressed merely as content, but has assumed a form that is not recognized by capital, nor by the institutions capital authorizes to defer and manage class conflict. In other words, these struggles are defined by their rejection of formal/legal organization, their suspicion of negotiation and “dialogue,” and their avoidance of officials and representatives of all stripes.
But perhaps even more specifically, their “illegitimacy” is bestowed mainly by virtue of the fact that in each case, there has been a direct attack on private property, an attack that draws attention to the shaky foundation upon which capitalist society is built. As Barnholden observes, “Damage to private property is almost always the most significant activity during a riot and should be seen for what it is: an attack on liberal democratic government that places property rights against human rights.”(8) While both Direct Action and Reading the Riot Act show that organized labour has proven incapable of accommodating the struggle against private property, neither book raises the possibility of the expropriation, rather than destruction, of private property by those it most ruthlessly uproots.(9) This is the terrain of Woodsquat, the single most comprehensive account of squatting in Canada yet.
The occupation of the Woodwards building, a prominent, if neglected, corporate landmark located on the cusp of Vancouver’s downtown Eastside, by an assortment of street people, punks, the working poor, activists, anarchists, students, adventurers, addicts, and people passing through town, began on September 14th, 2002, and lasted for exactly three months. Although the building had for decades been the focal point for housing struggles in the city, being passed back and forth between various provincial governments and developers until it was quietly left to the pigeons and rats by Gordon Campbell’s neo-liberal government in 2002, a full-scale occupation of the building was by all accounts not on the radar when the building was “popped” by three local residents. Once this group was inside, a small demo was held, during which ladders were raised to the second floor of the building (there were security dogs on the first floor), and people started to make their way inside. Some spent the night, and by the next day, local anti-poverty groups began referring to “the Woodwards squatters” and calling for support in the form of food, blankets, and mattresses.
Aaron Vidaver, the editor of this collection, is a trained archivist, and it shows. In addition to this expertise, he also produced during the squat a daily zine with news, statements, minutes from meetings, poems, safety tips, etc., unofficially assuming a role as the squat’s samizdat publisher. Thus, the material he includes in the collection reflects both his training and his position as a “witness-participant,” someone both inside and outside the occupation. In his collection, we find a multiplicity of competing perspectives on the occupation – those of local homeless people, of Native squatters, of the activists who saw the squat primarily as a “tool,” the police who saw it as an affront to their clumsy “law and order” approach to the area’s problems, and, finally, of the municipal government who, tellingly, assigned the squat to their Sanitation Branch. These perspectives are documented in public statements and speeches by squatters and activists, individual testimony and interviews, photographs of the building and of support rallies, poems, flyers, comics, a wonderful series of portraits of the squatters taken by Vidaver, academic essays on gentrification and media coverage of the squat, and numerous documents obtained though freedom-of-information requests (some of which are censored), such as police surveillance reports, stills from police video footage taken during the first eviction, and internal memos prepared by city staff.
Taken together, these documents demonstrate better than any third-person analysis could the political composition of, and tensions within, the squat. Vidaver makes these tensions very clear by opening the collection with Theresa D. Gray’s piece “Canada is All Native Land: Non-Natives Are All Squatters: The Devil + Canada are One.” Indeed, the squat was never able to fully address the problem that it was, from a First Nations’ point of view, a kind of meta-occupation (an occupation of already occupied land), nor could it resolve the contradictions between its immediate use as “a self-managed poor people’s site of reclamation,” as Vidaver calls it in the introduction, and its more commodified or symbolic use as a bargaining chip in a campaign for state-controlled social housing.
For instance, in “Squatting as an Organizational Tool,” Lisa Wulwik describes squatting as an instrument deployed by renters and the poor in their struggle with the state over “effective rent controls” and “social housing.” “People squat,” she writes, “for various reasons: to live free of huge rent prices and overbearing slum lords, to live in occupant-controlled housing, to open community spaces and social centres, to publicize the need for social housing and to call attention to the number of vacant homes and buildings…[activists have] been very successful in using squatting as a political tool to demand social housing.” This perspective is echoed in another piece by Mike Krebs, titled “Demands.” Here, the author seems to be under the influence of Trotsky’s notion of “transitional demands” – short-term demands for concessions that can be achieved under capitalism, in the course of a long-term struggle for socialism – to explain why the Woodward’s squatters needed to “define the movement for housing.”
While this perspective – that the squat was primarily a means-to-an-ends, and that those ends were social housing – is very prominent in the collection (possibly because activists, due to the nature of their work and experience with the media, are often articulate and charismatic and good at securing air time), it frequently encounters challenges from other statements and perspectives that call for a break with the politics of demand. Lyn Tooley, for instance, in “We Need to be Left Alone,” describes how six months of homelessness – “of having to live [her] private life in public space” – amplified her need for “solitude” and “creativity.” Linking the Woodwards squat to autonomous movements in Europe and South America, Tooley argues that “we don’t need government interference to solve our problems. We need to be left alone, unmolested and unharassed be police brutality and government do-gooders… We are not asking the affluent sectors of society to give us charity… We are taking responsibility for our own needs using the only resources left available to us: waste spaces, garbage materials and our creativity.”
T. Forsythe, also, suggests that the final neutralization of the squat was tied directly to its reification in the media as part of an activist “campaign” before it had a chance to develop autonomously: “[Leftists] seem to be attracted to media cameras like flies on shit. This phenomenon of self-policing leftists seems to be limited to North America… I remember one meeting where this womyn was telling people not to ‘spare change’ and not to use drugs because ‘it would look bad in the media.’ Come on, you don’t walk into the ghetto, straight out of the white middle class progressive leftist circus and start telling poor people they can’t use drugs or panhandle… it was people like this who sold out Woodwards in the end.”
Today, a “stylish and modern” 560 square foot condo in Woodwards – featuring “9 ft polished concrete ceilings, laminate floors, a Juliette balcony, customized doors, glass tiles & floor to ceiling windows” – starts for around $400,000, and local arts organizations are lining up to get their hands on some cheap office and gallery space.
CONCLUSION
The notion that one can or should achieve freedom and self-determination through political institutions is difficult to accept. Engels once said that such “democratic” freedoms were “a farce, and the worst possible slavery.” For this reason, Gustav Landauer insisted that radicals should “under no circumstances have anything to do with politics.” While there’s nothing overtly wrong with the necessary albeit minimal demands that help people survive or improve their workplaces, it is clear that historically, representational politics have failed to address deeper, more radical “demands” for self-determination, creativity and autonomy – the demand for a freedom not conceived of as “political” in the narrow sense.
As BC, like the rest of North America, emerges from a period of decreased unionization that began in the eighties and has continued steadily through the last two decades,(10) radical resistance to capitalism, it seems, has become more widely dispersed, and more direct. Thus, if it is true, as Wobbly historian Mark Leier puts it, that “the history of British Columbia is a history of class struggle,” then as these books show, the forms this struggle takes in the future will very likely not be those offered to it by organized labour and the traditional left.
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Notes
1. I must stress immediately that this history has also been told largely by settlers. I have not included as part of this review any literature on autonomous Indigenous resistance in BC, mainly because suitable published accounts of this movement (i.e., accounts from within its own ranks) are scarce. It would also be erroneous to link all Indigenous struggles together under a single, “anti-capitalist” flag. For a more complete perspective, however, see Gord Hill, 500 Years Of Indigenous Resistance (Abraham Guillen Press/Arm the Spirit, 2002), and the Ts’peten (Gustafsen Lake) Archives online at http://sisis.nativeweb.org/gustmain.html
2. According to a study published in 2001, the richest 50 percent of the province control an outrageous 95.7 percent of its wealth. Steve Kerstetter, “BC Home to Greatest Wealth Gap in Canada.” Behind the Numbers. November 28, 2001. .
3. The Northeastern Anarchist (#10, Spring/Summer 2005).
4. I’m borrowing this phrase from Richard Day: “[the politics of demand] assumes the existence of a dominant nation attached to a monopolistic state, which must be persuaded to give the gifts of recognition and integration to subordinate identities and communities.” Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements. London: Pluto, 2005. 14.
5. See the article from Kick it Over, reproduced in Allan Antliff’s Only a Beginning. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp, 2004. 249-250.
6. And given the class tension building in the city surrounding the upcoming 2010 Olympics (a tension now famously recorded in the “RIOT 2010” graffiti decorating the city’s East Side), future chapters of this history, it seems, are soon to be written.
7. But who could deny the catchiness of the slogan “We’re Number Two! Who the Fuck Are You?”
8. For a critique from an anarchist perspective of Barnholden’s reliance on the notion of “human rights,” see Max Sartin’s [M.Gouldhawke] review in The Rain Review of Books. : “The author’s concept of human rights isn’t defined in the book, leaving open the question of whether such rights, or the very idea of rights itself may be just another legal technicality, like the definition of a riot, subject to the whims of those in power.”
9. Expropriation / occupation, I would argue, poses an even greater threat to capitalism than does property destruction alone, because the occupation opens the door to new forms of social relations, and moves beyond economic critique towards a politics of everyday life.
10. See Chris Riddell, “Changing Patterns of Unionization: The North American Experience, 1984-1998.”
The Struggle Continues – The Woodwards Squat in Vancouver
by some Insurrectionary Anarchists of the Coast Salish Territories (Vancouver)
Sunday, September 29, 2002
On Saturday, September 14, 2002, a group of homeless people and community members occupied a huge department building in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside that has been vacant for 9 years. The old “Woodwards building” takes up an entire city block (656,000 square feet of space, and 6-7 floors). The Downtown Eastside is the poorest neighbourhood in Canada, and with the current Liberal government’s cuts to social services, social housing, welfare, and the lowering of the minimum wage, poverty and homelessness are growing; class contradictions are deepening. The Woodwards building is owned by the BC Housing Corporation, the segment of government specifically designated to build social housing.
Over the past 9 years various different community groups and agitators have fought to have the building converted into social housing, only to have the government agree, and then go back on their promise.
Out of this desperate situation, a small group of people cracked open the building, and held a short demonstration and march to the new squat. Many people set up camp outside the building and donations of food, mattresses and other essentials poured in. Banners were hung from the windows, the sides of the building, and the large “W” on the rooftop. Over the first few days 15-30 people moved into the building. Initially the small group of activist organizers planned the action as a symbolic gesture, deciding to stay for a week, if possible, and to then vacate the building. There was no intention to have any organizational structure, any meetings, or any decision-making process that would include the homeless people who were now living in the squat. The organizers were hesitant to allow any more people to move in, although many wanted to call up local homeless shelters and call on hundreds of people to make the enormous squatted building their home.
Eventually an intentionally democratic decision-making structure was decided on, contrary to the initial organizers wishes, and daily meetings were held inside the squat. From the beginning, a small group of activists, as well as a small group of politicians who were supporting from the outside of the squat, dominated meetings and marginalized the majority of the homeless people, Indigenous people, and squatters who had taken up residence in the building. Most squatters dropped out of attending meetings, although a few remained to challenge the authoritarian structure that claimed to be democratic and egalitarian. The initial organizers decided that the squat would be explicitly pacifist and that security guards, corporate media, and cops would be allowed to wander the building at will, without the consultation or approval of the vast majority of the squatters.
On Monday, September 16, 2002, a court injunction against occupation of the Woodwards building was presented to the squatters. As the days went on the resolve of the squatters to not abandon their new home grew stronger.
To counter a threatened eviction a demonstration was called for Thursday, September 19, 2002. Hundreds of supporters showed up, including rank-and-file union workers, and many entered the building to see the operations of the squat themselves. Many more people moved in, and the police called off the eviction until the next day.
A group of autonomist squatters decided to self-organize and to attend future general squatter meetings as a bloc, in order to fight the marginalization they had experienced up to that point. A press conference was called for the next day, in part to deter another eviction attempt.
The police who had been assigned to negotiate with the squatters began to implement a “divide-and-rule” strategy, attempting to pit the older activists against the younger squatters. Sergeant Scott Thompson of the Vancouver Police Department told the Vancouver Courier that “…they tried to hijack the protest from the coalition… We went in to negotiate (Thursday) and there were faces, young faces, we had not seen with a very different attitude towards us. You could tell how they felt about us by their body language, the things they said, the fact that they were wearing masks…” (Vancouver Courier, September 25, 2002). Unfortunately, some squatters bought in to this ploy and began to be hostile towards the autonomists.
The next day, Friday, September 20, 2002, the autonomist squatters affinity group met and developed plans. The group decided to begin constructing barricades to slow down any attempt by the police to storm the squat. They also began building “lock-boxes” with which to secure themselves inside of the building and to make their arrests more difficult for the police. Up to this point the squatters in general had not developed any specific plans on what to do in case of an eviction. As the construction of the barricades began and the other squatters learned of them a meeting was called. Some squatters strongly objected to the barricades. Somehow the barricades contradicted the “pacifist” nature of the squat in the minds of some people, and it was said that they would provoke the police. “Barricades speak to violence” said one person. The pacifist squatters strongly believed that the police could be negotiated with. The autonomist squatters did not agree and argued that the barricades were merely defensive and a matter of safety precaution. Regardless, the autonomists ceased to construct barricades.
At the general meeting that night an Indigenous woman spoke of how the Indigenous people among the squatters had been marginalized by the general group. She also spoke of the necessity for recognition of colonization and the first peoples of the land, and more Indigenous representation in press conferences and outreach. Some autonomist squatters echoed her views. It had become clear to many that the general meetings did not represent the majority of people who were living in the squat.
Word came that the police intended to evict at dawn. Some squatters decided to construct barricades. Almost 100 people were counted inside the squat that night. At 6am on Saturday morning more than 100 riot police broke through the barricades and stormed the building. The barricades allowed time for those who wanted to leave to do so. The majority of the group linked arms in a circle. Media was forced to leave. Two people who were attempting to leave were pepper-sprayed while on the ladder and then arrested. A Vancouver Independent Media Centre reporter outside was also arrested. Squatters inside were choked, beaten and dragged away one by one, to then be taken through an underground tunnel to jail. The University of British Columbia student newspaper “the Ubyssey” reported on the eviction. “…It’s a far cry from the promise of a peaceful eviction that floated through the news last week. After telling the SFU Peak that the Vancouver City police “were fully understanding of the housing issue” in the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver Police Inspector Ken Frail was among those who evicted squatters from the property Saturday. But of course, expecting the police to do as they say is foolish…”
The 58 squatters arrested appeared in court in the afternoon of Saturday, September 21, 2002, and all but one were released after signing an undertaking that they would not re-enter the building. By the time of everyone’s release tensions between the squatters had eased, as the eviction had unified them in rebellion to the forces of the State.
A defiant group of homeless squatters returned to the building Sunday night, only to have a public meeting be attacked by the police. Cops rushed in without warning and immediately began clubbing people and pushing them out of the area. The cops grabbed one woman and smashed her face into the concrete. One man had his arm dislocated. About 40 squatters were surrounded and then forced to leave the area and 12, including the squatters lawyer, were arrested for “obstructing the sidewalk.” A garbage truck immediately disposed of all the squatters belongings. An all-night demonstration took place outside the courthouse where those arrested were held, but they were not released until the next day.
On the morning of Monday, September 23, 2002, an angry and defiant demonstration and march made its way to the Woodwards building, at which point food was set up and everyone began spray-painting anti-cop and pro-squatter graffiti all over the outside walls. Two police officers walked into the crowd only to be shouted at and denounced and forced to leave. The group then marched a block over to where more police had gathered. The crowd screamed and yelled at them and chanted “No more pigs in our communities!” and “Get the fuck out of our neighbourhood” until the cops left the area in shame.
The next day, Tuesday, September 24, 2002, about 600 people rallied outside the Woodwards building to support the squatters, blocking off the surrounding streets for several hours.
As of Sunday, September 29, 2002, all charges against the squatters have been dropped and the squatters tent city outside the Woodwards building continues and grows each day. More than a hundred people are now squatting the sidewalk outside of the building. A Woodwards Squatters Coalition meets regularly to plan further actions. The squat has emboldened the community and strengthened its spirit. The police repression has outraged the squatters and the greater community, and has only served to increase the determination to fight.
The squat served as catalyst, bringing class tensions to the foreground, and showing that simple direct actions can accomplish what endless rhetoric and “long-term strategic planning” consistently fail to. For anarchists the squat provided another living example of the necessity of decentralized organization and a confrontational attitude towards the State.
Although some squatters and supporters objected to the autonomist affinity group’s self-organization and practical actions, the autonomists acted with respect towards the wishes of the larger group. At no time did the autonomists seek to act in an evangelistic manner, either by imposing its will on others or by trying to win recruits to its cause. Unlike activist democrats, anarchists do not attempt to represent others, and instead act and speak for themselves, struggling alongside other members of the exploited class.
The squatters gained invaluable experience through the action; lessons in self-organization and the reality of class warfare.
The support for the squat that came from “left”-politicians and union bureaucrats was interesting to the anarchists only in that it displayed the fact that these people have no ideas of their own and must jump on the bandwagon of those who do, in order to “stay in touch with the base”.
For insurgent anarchists squatting is the direct appropriation of what we need to survive, and an attack on the basis of the capitalist system: property relations.
For more and more people of the exploited and excluded classes, squatting is becoming a dire necessity.
We are going to have to fight this system tooth and nail, for life, freedom and dignity.
– Insurrectionary Anarchists of the Coast Salish Territories (Vancouver)
Social Workers – Cops Without Guns
The Dismantling of the Woodwards Squat Tent City
an insurrectionary 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 three 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 three 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
More info:
Squatting in Vancouver – A Brief Overview (2002)
Review: Reading the Riot Act, A Brief History of Riots in Vancouver (2006)
A Rent Strike in Vancouver – Anders Corr (1971)
