KILL! SWIM! DESTROY! Some notes on the Guelph wood squat, community support, and more...

I was late, and by the time I got close enough to the fire to recognize people's faces, I could see that an informal go around was already in progress. My friends spoke passionately about skills they had learned here, relationships that had been fostered, and, for some, a feeling that they'd come into their own. People I’d never met before enthusiastically explained that though this was their first time here, the stories they'd heard carried with them more than just a glimmer of hope. Others recounted their first taste of what life outside of capitalist mediation might feel like, and how it had strengthened their resolve. Someone who'd lived in Guelph for longer than I recounted the history of these former jail lands. Some cast startled looks as they learned that our fire pit was in the middle of the old shooting range, where guards had previously honed their aim on live targets just for the hell of it. Some of us smiled knowingly because, like us, other would-be escapees had used these same woods for shelter. KILL! SWIM! DESTROY!

Some notes on the Guelph wood squat, community support, and the "false" something or other of insurrectionary anarchism.

I was late, and by the time I got close enough to the fire to recognize people's faces, I could see that an informal go around was already in progress. My friends spoke passionately about skills they had learned here, relationships that had been fostered, and, for some, a feeling that they'd come into their own. People I’d never met before enthusiastically explained that though this was their first time here, the stories they'd heard carried with them more than just a glimmer of hope. Others recounted their first taste of what life outside of capitalist mediation might feel like, and how it had strengthened their resolve. Someone who'd lived in Guelph for longer than I recounted the history of these former jail lands. Some cast startled looks as they learned that our fire pit was in the middle of the old shooting range, where guards had previously honed their aim on live targets just for the hell of it. Some of us smiled knowingly because, like us, other would-be escapees had used these same woods for shelter.

It was reassuring to look around and see how much support there was. People from all over had responded to the callout issued only a few days earlier, after the eviction notices had appeared around the site. After having squatted this piece of land for almost two years, the city was going to kick us out. But not without a fight.

Looking back on that night and the enthusiasm that seemed to infect us all, it's more than a little disheartening to see how the eviction response actually played out. That piece of parkland still sits on the edge of Guelph, but now only the birds and squirrels call it home. Many saw the Guelph woodsquat as a foothold, a potential start for a broader squatting movement that, up to this point, seems to have eluded North America. Even if that goal does sound a bit lofty (of course, not more so than destroying capitalism, the state, and civilization itself!), it's still worth discussing what contributed to its ultimate failure if we hope to create new opportunities for future action.

Perhaps one disturbing aspect of the looming eviction was the far reaching amnesia that seemed to come with it. The woodsquat was already a mess before bylaw officers started nailing notices to trees, but you would never had know it from the fireside discussion on that chilly august night. Maybe no one brought up previous problems (some of which we were still wrestling with) because we felt the threat of eviction took precedence. Maybe some thought it would do more harm than good to dampen the high spirits of the moment. Whatever the reason, it seems that in actuality our own internal dynamics posed a greater threat than even that of the pigs. After all, they never came. There was no eviction. Not in any tangible way, really. And yet our former home sits empty, the foundation for our new straw bale house still incomplete, waiting patiently for crossbeams, walls, a fireplace, and someone to play bad Woodie Guthrie covers. Perhaps that meeting was the wrong place to discuss the troubled past of the squat, but, given the outcome, I would say that it's important to discuss it now.

A TROUBLED HISTORY

It’s probably worth pointing out that no one was actually living at the squat at the time of the "eviction". Those living there had gradually abandoned it over the course of that summer. This happened for a variety of reasons. Some left out of frustration with other squatters. This is an example of a common trend not just among woodsquatters, but among Guelph anarchists and probably North American radical communities as a whole. The Guelph woodsquat was actually founded by one persyn, and originally it was a bit more of a clandestine getaway than the community oriented social centre it later became. This individual slowly began inviting trusted friends and lovers, who in turn would invite their trusted friends and lovers. It’s no mystery why a place like this (or a community of people who also despise social convention) would be magnetic. But as more folks become involved, conflicting desires and needs often lead to conflict. The split at the woodsquat seemed tedious in its predictability: on the one side you have quieter folks, politicized in more traditional ways (or boring ways, depending who you ask), perhaps more explicitly anarchist, cleaner, better organized, often more proactive in terms of projects, more judgemental, and with a tendency to be coming from more privileged backgrounds. on the other, louder kids who like to party, maybe more punk or hippy rather than "anarchist", messier, more easy going, at times downright destructive and with a tendency to be from less privileged backgrounds. These are of course gross over generalizations (like all generalizations!), and the individuals involved are far more complex than the crude caricatures I’ve just described. But, since it did at times feel like two opposing factions, with many discussions about the squat centering around "them" as opposed to "us", this may serve as a useful model to deconstruct, at least for the sake of this article. Besides, describing the actual banalities of who made what mess, who fucked who, and who used to say the most busted shit would only serve as an example of poor security, poorer taste, and take more time than any of us are willing to spend. So fuck it.

In general terms, the party animal squatters who liked getting drunk and rowdy soon started to get on the nerves of the more quieter squatters who liked to garden. After all, they were the ones who would end up cleaning up the broken bottles the next day. For their part, the quieter folks would rarely call the other folks on their shit, and on the odd occasion that they did, the forcefulness of their objections certainly fell short of reflecting their actual frustration. Instead, many took an approach of avoidance; they slowly started disassociating from the squat. Of course, this lent more influence to those who preferred a rowdier squat. Even those who might object to seeing other squatters burning plastic bottles, and other toxic materials they dragged back from the dump for no apparent reason, found themselves isolated, as other squatters who might have supported their objections had already jumped ship. In these sorts of conflicts, it seems like louder folks always dominate since quieter ones face the challenge of voicing their needs and the fear of having them rejected, whereas louder folks only have to keep doing what they're doing to get their way. Inertia is on their side. Most commonly, the quieter ones sit stewing in self imposed exile. Since they don't feel comfortable around the camp fire, they'll spend the evening alone in their lean-to instead, until their imagination has warped their inconsiderate but well meaning friends into ghastly alcohol fuelled monsters of destruction! This sort of thing leads to the “us and them” mentality, which upon closer inspection also doesn't hold up. Some of the party animals were younger and less initiated into radical culture. These were caring people who proved themselves very responsive to constructive criticism, if only someone would offer it! It makes sense that these friends seemed to only listen to louder folks, since the louder folks did all the talking!

Ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away, quite the opposite, so the apparent tactic of avoidance soon became totally unfeasible. Those with strong objections to the direction the squat was taking couldn't pretend anymore, they had to do something. So they did the only thing they knew how: they called a meeting.

Calling a meeting to address problems certainly has its advantages; calling people on shit can be difficult and the support of others often makes it easier, and having lots of people present creates a kind a transparency that avoids the constant retelling of a situation and the rumours that are inevitably born of this. On the other hand, being called on your shit by a large group is more likely to make you feel attacked. In some cases, it even seems like group meetings allow people to sidestep calling out someone directly, yet maintain self righteous posturing as someone who's trying to work shit out. For example, the common referral to the acts of specific individuals as the acts of "some people". Like saying "some people act in ways that make me feel threatened" as opposed to saying "jerry, you yell very aggressively after you've been drinking." this affords people the chance to simply throw vague words into the abyss of "the meeting" in the hopes they'll hit their target. They rarely do. Speaking clearly and concisely is difficult and intimidating, but it's a valuable skill we should cultivate, just as we would gardening, knitting or street fighting.

Meetings can also have the flaw of calling upon other socially upheld power dynamics. It's no surprise that people from middle to upper class backgrounds are more familiar with "meetings" and are therefore more comfortable operating within agendas, possible speakers lists, and other forms of "process." People who might feel fucked off by dynamics similar the ones described above often feel empowered after meetings discussing them, not necessarily because there are meaningful steps made towards deconstructing power dynamics, but because the meeting merely reverses them. It might be worth asking ourselves if meetings are in fact the best way to solve our problems or if simple one on one discussions could yield more effective results. It would be ridiculous to say that we should never organize community meetings, but it would be even more ridiculous to use them as our only form of conflict resolution.

Although the meeting mentioned earlier did seem to make everyone feel better, the situation was perhaps a bit too far gone. Those with frustrations eventually broke ties with the squat almost completely, at least for awhile. Of course, in and of itself this is not necessarily a bad thing. Not all conflicts can be resolved, nor should they be. It brings to mind the age old anarchist principal of voluntary association, or as I like to call it, do shit with who you want. With this comes the unspoken assumption that there are some people with whom you don't want to do shit, and that should be recognized, accepted, and kept free of value judgements. I like to sleep in, and I once had a roommate that liked to listen to break beat techno before he went to work at the crack of dawn. There’s nothing wrong with either of us, we simply should not have been sharing that space. Similarly, if woodsquatters could have arrived at similar conclusions sooner, they could have either moved on or respectfully asked others to, without clouding the issue with self righteous notions of being better than those they differed from.

A lot of these problems might be chalked up to miscommunication between well meaning people, but that can't be said for all individuals involved. Many people are drawn to radical communities because the extreme irresponsibility of capitalism and industrial civilization infuriates them. But though most of us are motivated by the desire to foster true responsibility, there are those who see the spaces we create as opportunities to escape responsibility altogether. I think this is a fair description of several people who made their home at the woodsquat. Their actions seemed to mimic that of the dominant culture on a smaller scale; leaving an otherwise relatively wild space strewn with their garbage, consuming and interacting in ways that were hardly sustainable with no regard for how it affected those around them. This eventually peaked when, after a night of heavy drinking, a few individuals decided to tear down the main cabin and burn the remains. The cabin had been a been a main point of discussion up to that point, and though many felt that it should be torn down due to mould and poor construction, nothing had come of it. The decision was made to destroy it based on the idea that it would force the construction of a new, better shelter. This may sound inspired, and if it had been discussed with all those affected by it, and if persynal belongings that were stored in the cabin weren't lost and presumably burned, then it would have been. But the truth is that the people who started the job never finished it, instead leaving a huge mess for others to clean up. They had essentially done the fun part, then left town. The lack of shelter, incidentally, was another reason some people stopped living at the squat.

If anything, the worst part about the dynamics described earlier is that they clouded the issues to the point that these individuals (a small minority) were not recognized for what they were. But believe me; standing in the smouldering wreckage it became very clear. They were fucking leeches, parasites that had taken advantage of us. It may seem petty to make such a big deal of it here, but I’ve met enough people with similar experiences (sometimes similar experiences with the same people!) to think that this incident is indicative of a larger problem within radical communities. Should it be so difficult to deal with people like this? While we may do a better job than the dominant culture, which would reward them with titles like CEO and give them lots of money, we still have a long way to go when it comes to protecting ourselves from predators. There seems to be a common trend of vilifying certain aesthetics or lifestyles (fuck those crusty travelers!) rather than the actions that are actually objectionable. This does us the dual disservice of cutting ourselves off from potential allies (I’ve met some pretty rad crusty travelers, and I bet you have to!) and distracting us from creating real strategies to confront objectionable behaviour. The most obvious solution seems to be developing our skills at recognizing and calling people on shit, and being prepared to work through it with people. Maybe this can be done informally between friends, or maybe more organized models similar to ones used by groups like Philly Stands Up could be necessary. And if people aren't willing to work on their shit, what can we do besides ostracize? Of course this should be a last resort, and if possible efforts should be made to warn other communities so that predators can't simply relocate and continue the same behaviour. Simply kicking somebody out of the scene isn't a real solution, but if the resources or genuine desire to work through things with people aren't present, the reality is that other people will simply kick themselves out instead, as they did at the woodsquat.

It would be easy to write off all these dynamics as mere "persynality conflicts", therefore more appropriately situated in the realm of "mind your own business" rather than "discuss widely and publish". But if these dynamics have consequences with far reaching implications, perhaps we should consider them more carefully. Situations similar to those described above actually happened several times at the woodsquat, with several waves of squatters coming and going over the years. Nearly identical dynamics have played themselves out in collective houses and countless other arenas, and we never seem to learn our lessons, not even the hard way.

There was another reason why many people were not living at the squat; because they had simply left town. Travelling for the summer seems to be as prevalent among anarchist communities as black hoodies and bad hair cuts. While there's no denying that many returned carrying new inspirations they'd picked up in other places, their absence had also left the squat vulnerable (as it did our whole community). There’s also the distressing trend of the September rental rush, as anarchists returning from a summer of adventure find themselves scrambling for a new place to live. Eventually they find one, and the collective houses that are formed provide a safe place to crash, scheme, organize benefits, and discuss new ideas. But almost inevitably, the warm spring weather leads people out of their leases and on the road again, and the spaces created over the winter collapse. This is not to say that leases or rent paying are desirable or inevitable, but it becomes frustrating to feel like you're starting over every fall. If we're serious about creating communities that are really capable of cutting their teeth on the capitalist infrastructure, this kind of transience is something we might want to address.

The implications of creating strong communities go beyond merely our own wellbeing and enjoyment. The eviction notice came at a pivotal time in the squat's history. It had been all but decimated without so much as a word from the authorities, which of course meant that it had nowhere to go but up! A small group of people started to rebuild with the most ambitious project to date; a full on straw-bale house! A permanent, warm shelter was of course essential before winter, but also provided the arguably more important task of reinvigorating those involved. We needed something to rally around, and fuck, it had to be big! Some saw it as goading the powers that be into a fight. They’d ignored us for this long, but would they really ignore us once we started pouring concrete for foundations? Probably not, but for some, that was the point! State intervention, though entirely unpleasant, could possibly inject an immediacy to the struggle that had previously been lacking. The point of the house wasn't just to give us a fight, but to give us something to fight for!

But the belief that the eviction came when it did only in response to the construction, commonly held even among squatters, is overly simplistic. While there's no doubt that the construction of the house sent the message to authorities that we weren't going anywhere (cleary unacceptable from their point of view!), the same could be said of the large garden that was planted the previous spring. We know that this was also of great interest to the police, since somebody who had been arrested for unrelated reasons not long after work started on the garden was questioned about it while in custody. Police wanted to know all about the garden, especially the names of anyone responsible! They were clearly intimidated by the garden for much the same reasons that made the straw bale house a threat. So why didn't the eviction notice come in May? One possibility is that in May there were many people living at the squat, the atmosphere was positive, and the momentum seemed to be with us. Compare the situation only 4 months later as squatters were attempting a desperate act of resuscitation. Based on the line of questioning our arrested acquaintance was subjected to, the police were obviously engaged in heavy surveillance of the squat, and would have been aware of the difference. If they had chosen to strike in May, there's the possibility it could have been devastating, but more likely it would have provided a rallying point and possibly even broadened the struggle. How do you keep a bunch of kids off a piece of wooded land that they're technically allowed to be on anyway? Unlike those wiley anarchists, cops are much less likely to pick a fight they can't win. Conversely, in august they saw a squat struggling to get back on its feet, and seized the opportunity to crush it in one fell swoop before we could regain our strength. Is it not unreasonable to say that our once strong community had actually protected us from state repression? If so, then we need to recognize the importance of community building and support, and approach them with the same seriousness we would any other form of resistance.

The timing of the squat eviction seems to be an example of surveillance paying off for the pigs. Police and other security agencies busy themselves gathering all sorts of information that at first glance may seem unimportant or mundane. Why do they even care who your roommates are or who you had a one night stand with last summer? But you never know how a trivial detail can be used against you. Maybe that persyn you had a falling out with a few months ago didn't snitch on you, but if police told you they did, you'd have to think twice about it, right? This is why police work so hard to establish "friendship networks" and understand the social workings of "criminal elements". This is also why you should NEVER talk to police or give them any information about anything. but really, the best defence against this kind of thing is to make sure that we do trust each other, and that each of us is deserving of that trust and lives up to the responsibility that comes with it. This is easier said than done, but the end result is more meaningful and fulfilling relationships for us, and fuckall for the pigs! It’s win win!


JUST A BEGINNING...

When it comes to the eviction, there were several things that seemed odd right from the start. Like for instance, people who'd previously abandoned the squat suddenly seemed more committed than ever. not that this wasn't encouraging, but how come when staying at the squat would have necessitated frank and open discussion, they chose to leave, but when it meant struggling against city hall and the police, they vowed no force would move them? On the one hand, you might have to politely ask someone to leave (and I think they would have!), on the other, you have what seems to be an unwinnable battle. The contrasting decisions seem nonsensical, unless the persyn making them was motivated by something other than a genuine desire to see the squat continue. Or were motivated by something more?

And what of the squat? The garden hadn't been weeded in probably a month, and to look out at it on that chilly august night, the fire was just bright enough to illuminate various piles of garbage and debris that still remained from the wreckage of the cabin. If the city wanted to argue that the land was better off without people living on it, we were in no position to offer a response. We’d fucked it up big time. And in this respect, our squat was somewhat unique. Unlike many other well known squats in the woods, our woods didn't face serious risk of development. The site is an abandoned quarry that was dug out by prisoners over a century ago. the resulting cliff provides quite a challenge for would be developers, since blasting it to a flat rock face would be a pretty awkward operation, and still leave access to the top rather limited. Not only that, but the cliff face itself is somewhat ecologically sensitive, since cliffs provide habitat for unique kinds of vegetation. For this reason, the cliff is often studied by the university. So really, the land itself is not nearly as threatened by the sprawling subdivisions of Guelph as other forests surrounding the city, such as an old growth forest recently slated for destruction to make way for new developments, or the ever precarious Lafarge site. So the squatters can't reasonably claim to be defenders of the land (not that land, anyway). Furthermore, the squat land is designated parkland, meaning anyone is allowed to be on it (just not live on it or collect belongings on it). So it's not even an example of a privately owned wild space that we aren't permitted to have any connection to (it's only having a meaningful connection to the land, such as living on or from it, that is forbidden). The things we were struggling for were less tangible; for our own autonomy, for a space outside capital (from which to attack it), to not have to do what a bunch of fucking bureaucrats and pigs tell us. My experience told me that people were usually hard pressed to fight for such intangible things, yet here people seemed more willing even than usual. if anything, the intangible aspect even seemed to excite us further!

Could it be that the struggle actually had transcended itself? That we were no longer fighting for a parcel of land, but for an end to the parceling of land? An end to capitalism, industry, civilization?!?!?!

At first, it felt like it. It was exhilarating, terrifying, and exhausting.

If our struggle seemed intangible, we initially chose to see this as a good sign. After all, desires can be intangible, and their fulfillment is what we were really after! But ideologies are also intangible, only for different reasons, and perhaps they held more sway over our struggle than our desires had.

Just as we were on the verge of something transcendent happening, there was some aspect of the old world to drag us back, some old piece of baggage that we'd carried with us like a ball and chain.

BAD DECISIONS THE SYMPTOM...

Initially, the eviction notice seemed to backfire. It came not long after construction of the house began, before we really expected it to be noticed and when a lot of people were out of town. But after a frantic few days there'd already been a sympathetic article on the front page of the local paper, supporters both local and from out of town (some even crossed oceans!) created a crowd larger than our little squat had ever known, and the woodsquat suddenly seemed a force to be reckoned with. A large group of us gathered around the fire one night to plan, and the excitement in the air was electric.

So what went wrong? From this point on, bad decisions and missed opportunities seemed to characterize the resistance. A breakfast show at the squat on the morning we were ordered to vacate was successful in bringing out an even larger crowd than the meeting the night before, and local musicians performed to a much more diverse audience than one would expect to see at a typical squat eviction. A friend of mine who used to put on local punk shows was amazed that so many people showed up for a show in the woods on the edge of town that started at 7am! This clearly demonstrates that there was a large pool of people willing to support or contribute to the struggle, no doubt many of them moved by the above mentioned article in the local press. But sadly, there was nothing done to follow up with these people and most of them were never heard from again. I believe there were two main factors which contributed to this unfortunate turn of events. The first was a supposed anarchist refusal to organize actions for other people. Some squatters seemed to feel that expecting others to show up to an event, or follow an itinerary or plan of action that they had not directly participated in creating is essentially the same as telling them what to do. The importance of this critique should not be overlooked, since the practice of organizing events where "participants" are meant to passively consume whatever message is handed to them the same way they would any other commodity, or else shuffle along dictated parade routes with the same sense of duty with which they would fulfil any other role society might hand them, is a practice that should hold little interest to anarchists. However, the insistence by some squatters to rely on "autonomous self organization" had problems of its own, because, let's face it, autonomous action is not something the average persyn is used to! Even if the students and middle age market goers who came to show their support that morning did regularly check anarchist websites, the anonymous calls for action might leave them feeling somewhat stumped. The challenge posed to anarchists should be how our own actions can create space for others to participate meaningfully, where possibilities can present themselves in ways they might not have otherwise. While most forms of liberal "movement building" are rightly dismissed, there is some middle ground where anarchists can help people realize their own potential. It’s hard to broaden a struggle without giving thought to creating new points of entry for potential allies.

Another problem was the question of media. In early discussions, the idea of creating a media spectacle was put forward, but quickly abandoned. The idea behind this tactic was presumably to make such a big issue of the squat that local politicians would feel pressure to distance themselves from it, therefore calling off the eviction, waiting for shit to blow over, and allowing us to return to the much more important task of waging social war. The short comings of this tactic should be fairly obvious, as it is actually a tactic developed by the capitalist media as a strategy to distort struggle and reframe it safely within the pre-existing social order (and this is precisely what did happen in the few mainstream articles that were written about the squat eviction; they turned it into a conflict about social housing, whereas we didn't give a fuck whether the drywall boxes they were trying to force us into were affordable or not). This is the process known as recuperation.

While anarchists shouldn't give a fuck whether the corporate media speaks well of us, it is worth pointing out that our enemies do, and this can be used to our advantage. To give a past example, a Guelph protest at the police officer's ball almost two years ago saw a "restrained" police force putting up with shit that would usually unleash harsh repression; street youth were spitting on them, throwing shit at them, stealing their sunglasses right off their faces, and stabbing them with needles! It's reasonable to assume that police violence and arrests would have created a real media spectacle, something the police were anxious to avoid what with their request for an increased budget (possibly juxtaposed with images of pigs in tuxedos and ball gowns) and the fact that their public image had not yet fully recovered since a Guelph pig publicly sexually assaulted a protester the previous year. It could be said that those who seized the opportunity to unleash their frustration upon the police that day owe a debt of gratitude to those who had spent the previous year working on "liberal reformist" campaigns. These campaigns helped create a social climate that essentially left the pigs with their hands tied and opened new possibilities for radical action.

This is not to say that anarchists should actively pursue media coverage, just that we should recognize that it can provide certain opportunities. Sympathetic (if not accurate) articles about the eviction printed in the Guelph Mercury were usually followed by a wave of people stopping by the squat to drop off supplies or a word of support. Once they were there, you could be sure we'd tell them what we really thought of city hall! The unfortunate fact is that this media coverage provided us with one of the few connections we had to people outside of our immediate social circle. What makes this unfortunate is that we weren't able to create these connections ourselves. It may be admirable that so many squatters were sickened by the idea of relying on the corporate media to fulfil our needs, but the problem is that this rejection wasn't paired with any serious discussion of how those needs would be fulfilled otherwise. So inevitably they weren't. There was no pamphleting, no zines made, no interviews on the community radio station, and the few posters with the now infamous image of burning baseball bats served as inspiring threats to those in power and encouragement for ourselves, but the rhetoric was probably puzzling to most who read it. We should have been more honest with ourselves about whether we had the necessary resources and desire to do this kind of outreach (or "affinity building", if you prefer). If not, maybe the odd statement issued to the corporate press, however nauseating, would have been a compromise that provided more benefit than harm.

Perhaps the more negative aspect of the unofficial media blackout was the rifts it created amongst ourselves. Those who wanted to talk to the media, not on behalf of the group, but as individuals, were often met with harsh words and dismissive attitudes. This fostered an almost competitive atmosphere, with each persyn vying for the title of "most radical". It seems hypocritical that those who were the most forceful about the need for "autonomy" acted so disrespectfully to others whose autonomy took them in different directions. Rather than celebrating this diversity and the advantages it could have offered, people were made to feel inferior if their suggestions too closely resembled anything that might be considered "activism". The result was that simple things like tabling at the local farmers market, or getting in touch with already existing community groups that shared similar interests didn't happen (the few exceptions, such as a community meeting meant to discuss the squat, had so little effort put into them that they totally flopped). It is this kind of grunt work, though not glamorous, that helps build real affinity. The specialized role of "activist" is certainly not something to aspire to, but having realized this, it's important to recognize that the mindless fetishization of militancy (essentially a few specific tactics) is not the only alternative. Remember a few years ago when "diversity of tactics" was all the rage? it might be worth reminding ourselves that finding ways to make different tactics compliment and reinforce each other holds much more potential for us than prioritizing certain tactics as "radical" (property destruction, street fighting) and dismissing others as "activism" (tabling, benefits). If nothing else, our case shows that such a narrow tactical focus clearly did not help broaden our struggle.

Eventually our group became smaller and more insular. We would call "open" meetings, and then if a new persyn actually did show up it would be considered a breach of security. This was another victory for the authorities; usually they have to work hard to isolate radicals from more moderate folks. Instead we just isolated ourselves for them. After awhile we began to feel less like a community and more like a clandestine secret society (and if Bakunin taught us anything, it’s that secret societies are stupid!). This was mostly the result of people trying to copy security culture rituals they’d seen elsewhere without giving any thought to what these rituals were meant to accomplish or whether they were appropriate for our situation or not.

At times a group of us would be huddled around a computer, scrolling through the usual anarchist websites, looking at actions reports from Guelph. "Hey everyone, someone trashed a McDonalds yesterday in solidarity with us!" Everyone cheers! The image was disturbing. Like a bunch of hockey fans, mesmerized by a screen portraying the actions of others. Not that these actions weren't inspiring (I cheered as loud as anyone when I saw that solidarity actions were taking place as far away as Santa Cruz! How cool is that?!), but they didn't seem to be part of a broader social struggle as similar illegal direct actions often do in Guelph (i.e. property destruction targeting Linamar, 2010 Olympic sponsors, etc.). In other words, they didn't seem to be going anywhere. This might have been a fair characterization of the woodsquat as a whole.


...IDEOLOGY THE DISEASE!


Since hindsight is 20/20, it's now obvious that we made some poor decisions. What’s maybe not so obvious is how ideological tendencies had infected our approach to the eviction resistance. For a clear example of this, we can look at the main course of action we agreed upon after the "media spectacle" tactic was tossed.

Since city hall had ordered our eviction, and presumably the police would be charged with the task of enforcing it, it was decided that it was only fair that we evict city hall and the cop shop. Because if we could pull those off, they'd be "the last evictions guelph would ever know!" We certainly get points for ambition, don't we? Everyone was excited by the idea, but the thing that made it strange is that there was never any concrete talk of what the hell it actually meant. We set a date for the evictions, and we even had a photoshop whiz of a squatter make up some eviction notices by modifying the ones that were served to us (seeing the city of Guelph logo reworked to read "Guelph Woodsquat" was priceless!), but at no point did we actually discuss what would happen when the date arrived. The politicians and pigs were even less likely than us to respect the notices served to them and leave of their own volition. So what exactly were we going to do? The date drew closer, and eventually posters were made to publicize the eviction. But the posters only had the date and a general explanation of why the evictions would be desirable. No time, no location, no nothing. Was this a security precaution, so the pigs couldn't prepare for and thwart our plans? We weren't sure. Even amongst ourselves we wouldn't talk about it. It was eerie. I mean, why wouldn't somebody, at some point say to somebody else, anybody else, "hmmm...evict the pigs and the city. That’s a great idea. How should we do that?"

But "how", the dreaded "h" word, seemed to have disappeared from our collective vocabulary. Why was that?

Maybe it is possible for a handful of committed people to evict a police station and a city hall, both on the same day. I don't want to be the sceptic who says they can't. But to do so, they'd probably have to do more than simply set a date. It was as if the editors of Green Anarchy magazine had decided that they'd really had enough of civilization, so they'd set a date for its destruction. Two weeks from now. Be there.

Did we really think that merely believing that we were going to evict our enemies would be enough to make it happen? If that were the case, we would have been better off praying than making posters (the prayers might have been more well received!). No, I think it's more likely that the tactical discussion of the eviction, the dreaded "h" word, was put off for so long precisely because we didn't believe we could do it, and probably never did. But hey, nobody wants to be the first to point out that the emperor has no clothes. And besides, what if we did end up evicting them? Wouldn’t you feel stupid! But with less than a week to go before enforcing the notices we'd served to pigs and the city, we finally did get together to figure out what we'd do. The resulting suggestions weren't quite so inspired, and none of them resulted in an empty police station or an abandoned city hall. Finally an idea was agreed upon, and people split off into their affinity groups to iron out the details. Except they never did, and come the day of the eviction, nothing happened.

If you were to ask about it today, the mention of the eviction of city hall and the cop shop would most likely make a former squatter blush with embarrassment. So the question then becomes, why would so many otherwise intelligent, dynamic people have put so much stock in something that seems to be, in retrospect, pretty ridiculous? One possibility is that ideology had crept its way into our community. The way people dismissed possibly effective tactics in favour of ludicrous ones suggests that they were holding their actions to some standard other than effectiveness. Were they more concerned with having their actions resemble something they'd read in a zine that summer? Or was it a book they were halfway through? Or was it a you-tube video with some cool overseas footage of "uncontrollable" riots? Since ideologies don't fare well with the nuances of real life, those of us with clear ideological tendencies chose to ignore the realities of our own social context, and instead pretended we were in denmark, about to star in our own riot porn feature. It seems as though our chosen course of action might have gained us editorial approval from A Murder Of Crows, but it did little for our squat and even less to create new possibilities for struggle. And since I can already hear the anarcho-pundits pens' furiously scratching a response to that one, let me say this; just because some people will insist that insurrectionary anarchism is not an ideology, that will hardly stop others from treating it as such.

In the Guelph anarchist scene, and other places as well, it seems that insurrectionary anarchism has become trendy. This doesn't take the form of insurrectionalism: the project, so often as it does of Insurrectionalism: The Ideology. The distinction can be murky. A project implies certain goals or desires, with ideas being shaped towards their fulfilment, whereas an ideology is the other way around, implying the subservience of projects and goals to a greater Idea. This could explain some of the oddities encountered earlier, since something that is ideologically sound (like anarchists wanting to evict a police station) could make an absurd project. In fact, someone working towards "projects" that have no practical application in real life is a good indication that they're an ideologue (i.e. "let's all form one big union and then go on strike! It’ll be the end of capitalism!!!"). Fiercely denying being an ideologue is a good indication too (for evidence of this, just ask a trotskyist if Marxism is an ideology). Another clue is the inevitable arrogance that comes with any ideology. after all, those who would mistake insurrectionary anarchism (or green anarchism, or >gag!< syndicalism!) as the way forward for resistance to state and capital can't help but get a bit of an ego boost for having figured everything out in its entirety. And you can bet they're up to the task of explaining it to the rest of us!

In the context of the woodsquat eviction, this ideological arrogance took its toll. It meant that a small clique of people were able to dominate and manipulate meetings. Sometimes this meant simply cancelling things without telling anyone outside their clique, leaving more reliable people waiting around for others who never showed. Sometimes it meant organizing exclusive meetings, like one meeting that was meant only for people who were actually living at the squat (a preposterous proposal when you consider that no one was living at the squat). Sometimes it meant ending meetings early to break off into affinity groups, knowing damn well that some folks weren't part of affinity groups and would be excluded by the process. But most commonly it simply took the form of ganging up on people who wouldn't tow the party line (as described above), or the exclusion of people who chose not to participate in certain actions. This final aspect was of particular significance. All of a sudden, people were organizing like they had something to prove. The competitive nature that had taken over left people feeling reluctant to skip any actions. Opting out, even once, was perceived to come with harsh judgements, as if demonstrating a lack of commitment. For instance, if you didn't take part in the mass panhandling today, no one would tell you about the postering tomorrow. You would have to fight your way back into the loop. This excluded not just people who chose not to participate in actions that didn't reflect their desires, but also those who liked the ideas for actions but just needed a break. Once the eviction notices came, squat organizing became a full time thing, with some people taking part in squat related activities all day, every day. Since many people felt guilty or feared exclusion if they did take a break, and since those who took breaks often were excluded and therefore unable to relieve others, burnout became a major problem. And to make matters worse, this self destructive behaviour was at times falsely celebrated as the insurrectionary principal of "constant attack". All of these factors contributed to a climate that made self care very difficult, leaving many people feeling undervalued, with one persyn falling into a depression and being mostly ignored by the community. Combined with the psychological warfare of an overbearing police presence, the situation was such that when resistance did seem to fizzle out all but completely after the "eviction" of city hall and the cop shop, some people seemed almost relieved.

There were several attempts made at calling people on their shit, which were met with either dead silence, awkwardly broken by changing the subject, or the predictable response of "sure, people need to think about how their actions affect other people, but those people also need to respect people's ability to act autonomously", which can be loosely translated to the childish response of "you can't tell me what to do! I’m autonomous!” The internal dynamics of the squat were already thoroughly fucked before the eviction, so it's no surprise that many relationships crumbled during a crisis. Perhaps we should have put more effort into developing better forums for communication and regular check ins, while respecting these as an important aspect of our "attack". I could be criticised for associating these oversights too heavily with insurrectionary politics (or perhaps more accurately, the image of insurrectionary politics). As a friend told me the other day, there's a difference between the insurrectional project and some of our friends acting stupid (and I can't stress enough that they are my friends!). While there's truth to that, I’m also not the first to associate insurrectionary anarchism with arrogance, a fetishization of certain tactics, and (at least in the North American context) an apparent disconnect between theory and practice. Rather than dismissing these notions as sectarian, would be insurrectionaries might want to consider some of these criticisms in order to more effectively further their own projects.

Criticism’s aside, all of these events are still extremely valuable if only we can learn from them. Unfortunately, there has not been much critical analysis of the wood squat, and the little that there has been seems more interested in twisting things to once again serve as ideological cheerleading. Some would attribute failed actions to the difficulty of organizing among "such a diverse group of people", when in actuality you'd be hard pressed to find a more homogenous group anywhere outside of a board room. Since people began to distance themselves from squat related activities, the appropriate response of examining our own dynamics has been eschewed in favour of blaming police repression for scaring people off. The repression itself also seems greatly exaggerated. After the eviction notices showed up, police never attacked and there has yet to be a single squat related arrest. Instead the police have pursued more subtle forms of psychological warfare, such as leaving marked cars parked outside radical houses, constant surveillance, following people, and a smear campaign in the local media. While these tactics can be devastating, surveillance in and of itself does not constitute an eviction. And the much talked about appearance of members of the tactical unit (the Canadian equivalent to swat teams) at the squat was just that; an appearance. Some people spotted a few tactical pigs milling about one day, and then they left. The tactical team should be expected when it comes to the eviction of a squat, while in our case their presence was about as elusive as Bigfoot. When compared to other squat evictions that have happened in Canada, it becomes clear that we never experienced anything close to the full potential of state repression. It’s also worth noting the difference between "distancing" yourself from struggle, and taking the time for self care in the face of police harassment. Taking this time is actually very important, and serves our potential for attack much better than the macho response of pretending it doesn't bother you. But ultimately, if we really want to understand why people began to distance themselves, the best course of action might be to just ask them, as I have yet to meet a single persyn who cites repression as the cause of their disillusionment. In any case, we need more honest discussion amongst ourselves if we are to truly understand why such a measly show of repression actually was so effective.

FIRE FROM ASH

Of course, even failures offer us little victories. In the case of our own failed eviction attempts, well, what would you prefer; reasonable people who set feasible goals? If we were those kind of anarchists (that is to say, not anarchists), then we would have never even had the joyful experience of having a squat, let alone the learning experience of losing it! Kicking the pigs out of Guelph might have been a bit beyond our means (for now!) but how can we be sure we're really challenging ourselves if we don't occasionally take on a challenge we can't quite meet? If nothing else, we've got the reassurance that yes, we are a pushing ourselves. As for their eviction attempt, well... all they've done is speed up some long overdue diversification! Because that one piece of land may now be empty, but Guelph is not yet rid of squats. Far from it...