All your life is a long chain of fears – fears which bruise your body and lacerate your soul. On those fears is based the authority of God, of the church, of parents, of capitalist and ruler.
Alexander Berkman
The "Arab Spring" (which was never fully Arab, and as far as the season was concerned, of spring there was little) has dissolved into a complex of political realities; testimony to the very superficiality with which the events that carried this name were treated. Morocco's passage through the season was peaceful, reformist reason having won out against the voices of rebellion, or so the reigning regime and subservient media would have one believe. But the mechanisms of control remain untouched and the underlying relations of domination continue unrestrained.
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Un desalojo, otra okupación
Colin Ward, writing of the post WWII british squatters movement, he came to identify four phases in squatting understood as a form of direct action to the housing problem in non-revolutionary situations. There is first the initiative, the action that begins the occupations. Secondly, he spoke of consolidation, “when the movement spreads sufficiently to constitute a real threat to property rights and becomes big enough to avoid being simply snuffed out by the authorities”. The third phase is that of success, when the authorities concede defeat. And lastly, follows official action, when the state is obliged to respond to popular demands while simultaneously protecting private property. (Colin Ward, “The People Act: The Postwar Squatters’ Movement)
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