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Which is encouraging. In the current crisis, spac
es like this lying dormant is a special kind of sin. I was however, curious as to where they summon the will from to build something that by its nature, is temporary. “People that have experience with squatting, you get used to the experience that spaces are ephemerous things, and you just make the best of it while you have it.” Sage explains. “Some of my best memories were in London in places that lasted a single month. You go in and you make the best of it immediately. I think it’s an exercise in imagination. The usual mindset of renting a space is trying to make it perfect, its the exercise of fuck it, if its not perfect, we’ll fix it, but lets just do it. For me that’s a beautiful thing. I feel a lot of people don’t do that, that they don’t reimagine things. I think that a lot of people get stuck in the lives that they do because they don’t think they could do it differently.” “When we walk into a space, we don’t need the bureaucracy of someone telling us how to do something, we just do it,” Shane tells me. I ask how it is dealing with the Gardaí, and the sometimes brutal nature of dealing with violent private contractors. “I wont say there’s no danger, I mean I’ve been arrested. I’m more okay with that than some people,” Shane tells me. “Guards don’t like when heavies evict a place without a court order. They will use violence, but it’s usually a strategic mistake on their part. It’s definitely traumatic and it doesn’t come without a cost, but it’s a mistake. It’s not as easy to evict people with force as you might think it is.” When we were speaking, it was difficult to know what Garvagh Homes Limited had planned for the complex. We talked about Stoneybatter, a few years back also voted one of the worlds coolest neighborhoods by some idiot who had been there once. Now, brokedown storefronts line half vacant streets. “At the end of the day, they’re closing everything along the Tesco mall, the Kung Fu Buffet, the Europalace,” Sage says. “So many charity shops have closed. Little by little, that’s how gentrification works. At this devouring pace. We’re here because of gentrification. When you start building a community, capitalism knows how to co-opt that. We need more spaces like this. Thinking about this one being turned into a car park or luxury apartments, it’s heartbreaking. There are people who came here as kids, I’ve heard rumors about the Ramones playing here when it was a venue. It really should be up to the local community what happens to a place with this history.” And when this place closed, it did not mean the end for the collective, who are currently working on a new, as yet undisclosed space. “Our wealth is community. We have numbers, we have people who’ll show up, we have people who want to be part of the space, I feel proud of that. and even when this place finishes we’ll be able to set up somewhere, in the future where there is us, or people who have come here and seen the space. It takes a bunch of anarchists and communists to say “We can do this differently.” It empowers people to think outside the box and realize they are also able to do things like this. 18 That’s the beauty of creating something, and not being attached to it. While we dont want the building to go, we make the best of these spaces while we have them, and look for the next one when we need to. We know that it will happen somewhere else.” In the current, unprecedented accommodation crisis the country faces, and the inefficiency of our government to address or make an impact on those issues, I admired the self deterministic approach the group had taken when it came to dealing with the failings they saw around them. “For some, even if they’re squatting a long time, people have this thing in their head that they’re doing something wrong, and I think that’s all nonsense. Even if it’s residential squatting, if you tell neighbors what you’re doing, most of them understand it pretty quickly. I think people should know they’re doing nothing wrong,” Shane notes. “I do agree that we should normalize the fact that there’s an empty building, and we take it because we need a house. It shouldn’t be controversial,” Sage says, and but warns the lifestyle, admirable as it may be, does not come without drawbacks. “I don’t want to get into a situation of glamourising squatting. A lot of people have been severely damaged by the experience, and if you have mental health or substance abuse issues it can be very, very tough. Some people have eviction trauma, when they hear a knock on the door that’s slightly louder than you’re used to, you panic. It takes a toll. I’m not going to say squatting has been terrible or amazing. I feel there’s some people who’ve had horrible experiences, and will enter that mindset, and I want to clarify that Top: Zine shop Below: The space