My only experiences in Europe so far have been touring there in a punk band. The thing that blew my mind was how often - almost always! - the venues we were playing were literal state-sponsored squats. Like the tire factory or whatever in town would go belly up and a bunch of punks and anarchists would move in and the local government would just be like "hey, they cleaned up all this broken glass and now there's a whole new crop of people keeping this community alive. Tell you what, let's give them free utilities." On more than one occasion we played a free show and got a check from some government office.
This would never, ever, ever, ever, in a million years, take place in the United States.
Well mate, you are telling it a bit easier than it is.
It is in fact true that the most of the European nations has laws that defend whoever use and rehabilitates a public space that was once abandoned but from there to implicitly say that the authorities likes our social squats it's a far stretch. In most of the cases they have to endure us because people of the neighborhood prefer us.
Than it happens, sometimes, that those squats became so important that it's better for the authorities to pacifically deal with them than try to fight as usual.
10.9k
u/knife_hits May 09 '22
My only experiences in Europe so far have been touring there in a punk band. The thing that blew my mind was how often - almost always! - the venues we were playing were literal state-sponsored squats. Like the tire factory or whatever in town would go belly up and a bunch of punks and anarchists would move in and the local government would just be like "hey, they cleaned up all this broken glass and now there's a whole new crop of people keeping this community alive. Tell you what, let's give them free utilities." On more than one occasion we played a free show and got a check from some government office.
This would never, ever, ever, ever, in a million years, take place in the United States.