Syrena is not a squat
it's a strike
Wilcza street, in the heart of Warsaw.
Here two worlds pass each other every day.
The world that devours and the world that is being devoured,
the world that blinds and the world that is being blinded.
... a 1490 piece by the painter La Fuciera ...
A world backed by careers, power, police, money, the media,
and a world represented by the naked history of 25 years
of privatization and subjugation, falling wages and rising rents,
more debt and less hope.
Finally, a burning need to scream, fight and resist.
Syrena at 30 Wilcza street doesn't hide behind any facade.
Here, we transform our fears into the energy to act.
Why do we reappropriate abandoned buildings?
There's that squatter in 1945.
Here is a squatter family. They're eating dinner in the ruins.
I think, as wild tenants here we are part of a strong tradition in Warsaw.
We are the second wave of wild tenants, squatters.
The first, much larger, mass wave appeared in Warsaw in 1945.
Not only in this building but in the entire city.
In 1945, Warsaw rather looked like this.
Besides the Jewish ghetto area, the city center was the second most destroyed.
In the old town 1 apartment in 15 survived.
Here in the center city 1 apartment in 7 survived.
There would be far fewer of these old buildings around today
if not for the enormous wave of people
who came back to the city and settled the ruins.
The best example of this history is this building, at 30 Wilcza street.
Half of this street was destroyed.
Our building was so damaged that it was slated to be demolished.
The City Reconstruction Office noted:
"In terms of contruction and architecture the building is too damaged to be rebuilt."
That's a document from 1945.
So what happened?
How come this building and others are still here?
The same documents show that these buildings were squatted
even though they were to be demolished.
And that's how they survived.
The people who lived here rebuilt this building themselves
because they wanted to survive, and that's why it's still here today.
At the beginning of 1945 only the people were concerned with city reconstruction.
In those first months, the authorities were more concerned with government buildings.
... In the first place, we begun the reconstruction
of ministries and other important central institutions ...
Only in the new year 1946, they started an official city reconstruction program.
That's when the squatters who rebuilt their homes
were legalized and became public tenants.
... Every 10 minutes, in Warsaw a living quarter is built
which means 6 new quarters for every hour.
8 hours of work give 48 quarters,
48 quarters make a big house.
Yes, it's quite a lot, but still too little to satisfy the housing need ...
Don't take my picture when I'm on a smoking break!
Absolutely not.
It was mostly the women of Warsaw who worked for 50 million hours for free
in what became known as "community work" [czyn społeczny] but was really free labor
in the hopes of finally living in dignity and peace in this city.
70 billion was spent on reconstructing the city: buildings, infrastructure, streets.
All that effort and all that sweat gave birth to a city,
but today that sweat is forgotten and the city is being privatized.
People who already once worked for free are now debtors in the very buildings
that they rebuilt themselves.
As debtors they have to work to pay off their debt: free labor once more.
So history turns in a circle and if we don't know our history,
we're forced to repeat it.
We know our history very well and we're not planning on repeating it.
As that second wave of squatters we're going to resist with all we've got,
knowing that this city doesn't belong to developers, it belongs to the people.
We occupy abandoned buildings
because we don't want to drown in debt!
Housing in Warsaw is more expensive
than in Berlin, Vienna, Copenhagen or Lisbon
even though we earn 4 times less in Poland.
If an average person in this country
decided to spend the entire earnings
to buy a house or apartment,
they could almost afford half a single square meter,
almost 2 times less than they could afford 10 years ago.
In the past 7 years, private housing prices
and rent in public housing almost doubled,
while the average wage only increased by a third.
Soaring housing prices do not come along in a package
with soaring wages and stable work contracts.
Instead, we fall further in debt
and hold on to any job, working almost for free
and in precarious conditions.
The city authorities want to auction off the Syrena building.
The debt collector [bailiff] wants to inspect and show Syrena to potential investors.
"Warsaw Tenants' Association" (WSL)"
"Stop looting the city"
I have big money, I'll buy this building!
And those few people inside, you know ...
We'll "clean" them out.
The city of Warsaw is the creditor here, and so the city could take away
these developer's rights to this building, and reclaim it for public housing.
But the city is not interested in public housing.
Human capital is the best investment, I always said it.
And since the shares of the building are so cheap,
and since the tenants come with it for free: all the better for me!
This street reflects all the problems that people face in the entire country.
For one: enormous wealth inequality.
Look, those who think these here are "dirt."
Do we look dirty to you?
No.
If the city wants to clean out the "dirt," the "dirt" will take over the city center.
Tomorrow, at 12 let's meet at the parliament building and then we'll see.
If you want to create ghettos, kick out the poor,
then those who are affected will take over the center.
Evict the politicians! Evict the politicians!
The housing situation in Poland and in Warsaw is tragic.
And vacant, abandoned buildings are scandalous.
So squatting and the whole counter-cultural movement around squatting
is really practical, it stirs things up in Polish society.
This building represents the naked truth
about the living conditions of most people in this country.
And we are in solidarity with those people.
- Together we challenge Poland's worst myth: "sacred" private property
which is used to justify all the worst crimes
against workers, tenants, and union activists.
- We gave out flyers on this street.
Our neighbors' solidarity with us is class based.
At the cigar shop or the sushi restaurant, they said to us: "Get out, you scum!"
At the sewing shop and the kiosk where the lady lives in Stara Praga
and is in the same situation as we are, the people stand with us,
because solidarity is what we have left.
The "sacred" law of private property is so dearly loved and guarded by those assholes
on the other side of the road, the Congress of the New Right [Thatcher-Pinochet copy].
That private property is guarded by those gangsters in uniforms called the police,
and real estate developers, landlords want even greater protection, as do employers.
Today private property is the only god in Poland,
it's the only thing of value to public authorities.
We say that more important than private property are the people.
We are more important.
Why did I come here? I was involved
in the underground resistance in the 1980s, and this is a clear continuation
of being on the right side.
It's the sort of imperative that made me take a day off work
to come here and demonstrate.
After WWII we had a slogan: "The whole nation rebuilds its capital city."
But today we have the slogan: "The whole nation works for developers."
Down with the developers, we've had enough of you.
Warsaw can't be a privately owned city.
- This is not a squat it's a strike.
A strike against housing politics, exploitation politics,
and we're going to continue striking until this situation changes.
"Syrena means fighting"
There's the debt collector Moryc.
"Debt collectors to the basement! Debt collectors to the basement!"
Mr. debt collector Moryc!
How do you sleep at night after you evicted 2 people to a basement 5 years ago.
And those 2 people died.
And how can you even go about your so-called duties
when you robbed a woman, who had cancer,
and illegaly took over her account and stole her medication money.
You should be evicted from public service.
- I thought you would give us a tour of the building today.
- Yes, I am here, and you can look at the building.
- But only from the outside?
- So I can see the building today? - Go right ahead.
- But ... Will one of you go inside with me?
- Because of technical problems ...
- I'm interested in buying this building.
- Come to the auction. - The auction on Friday?
- Yes. - You can count on it, I'll be there.
- I can't imagine buying something that I can't see.
- It's what the police is there for, to ... - You should ask the police yourself.
The first part of our struggle is behind us,
We won! We won!
We're staying, we're not moving from here.
We're staying, we're staying,
We're staying, we're staying.
We're not moving from here because these few walls, that's our home.
The building was empty so we went in.
We didn't ask anybody, we cleaned up some rubble, we created our own world.
Though you call us scum and dirt, don't believe in miracles,
we won't give you back the house.
We put in too much work and too much time.
We're staying, we're staying, we're not moving from here.
About half of the housing units constructed today
stand empty and are intended only for speculation.
Between 2009 and 2010
the number of empty, brand new housing units
in Warsaw was exactly 25 thousand.
With no alternative in sight,
meaning an adequate amount of available public housing units,
the prices of private housing
depend only on how much can be squeezed out of us:
How much more debt can we be made to owe?
The speculation bubble grows
and along with it, the number of people with debt up to their ears
and home mortgages, that are impossible to pay off.
And also,
the number of homes without people
and people without homes.
Housing politics have nothing to do with democracy.
Those who count are banks, developers and their allies in public office.
Hello!
I have lived in this house for a year already.
This is my room. We live here all together.
Before, I lived in Poland for 7 years.
I did't have a home here, I didn't have anything.
I found work, but I didn't have any papers.
I was afraid to talk because I worked illegaly.
I earned money cleaning houses and streets.
But all the money that I worked so hard for I had to pay to the landlord.
The landlord who had 10 other apartments or maybe even 20.
He didn't need that money but he took it anyway
because he couldn't imagine taking money from us only
for the actual costs, like the utilities.
Even though he had a lot of money
he couldn't back off just a little, so we were evicted to the street.
At 3 in the morning, the landlord came and evicted us.
Eviction blockade of an elderly woman, Warsaw, June 2013.
I am the court debt collector...
- Hello!
Hello, I ask you all to please leave this corridor
because you're preventing a public official from performing his duties.
I said, if you have a heart, if you're human,
let us stay until the morning because the children are sleeping.
"No!"
- Hello, here is my [medical] exemption. [An attempt to stop the eviction]
- Alright, your appeal for an exemption...
I dismiss it.
- But you can't dismiss it! - And you can't refuse to accept it.
- I accept it and dismiss this appeal.
- That's not legally possible.
- You can't do that all by yourself.
- I'm a one-person public administration...
- It's the court that has to decide.
- Ok, the court will examine this appeal, but that won't stop the eviction.
- At this point you can only perform
the most necessary debt collection enforcement proceedings ...
- And this eviction is exactly necessary proceeding.
- I hope the police takes that into consideration.
- Alright, you all leave this corridor now.
- They won't leave here, because we need a place to live
and we're waiting for social housing.
- And you can't just evict an elderly woman onto the street...
- I'm not evicting onto the street.
- So where?
- A temporary housing facility.
- What then?
- How long can she stay in temporary housing?
- All of that is described in the appropriate legal act.
- How long?
He kicked us out.
We were on the street.
We spent the night at the train station and we decided to go to Germany.
There, they told us that Poland invited us back [as refugees],
that we will get a place to live, a home, everything.
That was a great joy to hear; my kids really wanted to come back to this place
and live here because they came here first and here they learned about life,
childhood, school, happiness, all of that they learned in Poland.
And what ...
Again we spent a week at the train station, then we slept in some basement,
then in the park with the kids.
You know, it was too cold, and too hot, the kids didn't understand.
I kept telling them that our train hadn't come yet,
that it was supposed to come for us and take us away from here.
- We will not leave here ...
- Today this lady is sick, but yesterday she was in my office and she was healthy!
- And what do you expect from a 78 year old woman!
- You want her to run a marathon? Maybe she should jump over hurdles?
- What sort of argument is that, she's 78!
- And what role do you play in all this?
- I'm from the housing cooperative.
Then they locked us up in a detention camp.
They accused us of crossing the border illegaly [to Germany].
And what was I supposed to do?
I didn't want to go back to Chechnya.
I hadn't been there for 9 years already, and I don't ever want to go back there.
Then I received a paper telling me I had to leave Polish territory within 2 hours.
When I got that paper, I didn't do anything.
I didn't have any problems with anybody,
not with the police, not with criminals.
I lived quietly and in peace along with my kids.
Where to find bread, that was my main concern.
- I understand all that but ...
- If someone was condemned to life in prison,
would you be there protesting and blocking?
- But this lady didn't commit any crime!
Tenants are not a commodity! Tenants are not a commodity!
Demonstration against nationalism, Warsaw, November 8, 2014:
Polish, elderly, grandmothers live with us here in this house.
You evicted them out of their homes.
Once they were young they had work and bread.
They're parents like any other.
You throw them out onto the street, and they go around digging in the trash.
That's your culture.
We support people, who were evicted from their homes,
older folks who had made their nest, where they planned to spend their old age,
where they had everything.
How can older folks be thrown out onto the street
where they can't live?
These are the sorts of people who live here.
According to a government report,
6.5 million people in Poland
live in conditions of housing poverty:
Overcrowding, too little space, degrading conditions.
But that's only half of the truth,
and the other half?
We take over abandoned houses
because empty homes mean profit at the people's cost.
To provide housing and a place to rest,
that's one of the city's most important missions.
In Zoliborz, Kolo, Ochota and Mokotow,
comfortable and healthy housing is being built.
- The struggle for just housing in Warsaw
has an exceptionally beautiful and dramatic history.
The only uprising that was succesful in this city
was the people's rising up, out of those ruins.
Armed with trowels in hand, they wanted to finally build a city for themselves.
They didn't plan on rebuilding a playing field
for speculation, evictions, high rents, and low wages.
The residents have a place to rest after work
in the restored public parks and gardens: the lungs of the modern city.
- They brought the city back to life with their collective effort,
so that the city would become collective property.
In order to motivate people to rebuild, the authorities also celebrated
the "social deed", they kept talking about "our" Warsaw, "our" capital" ...
We are all building Warsaw: the bricklayer who lays the foundations
and everyone donates to the city's social rebuilding fund.
Because rebuilding Warsaw is the responsibility and honor of every Pole.
"Seating for city council members"
After some time, the tenant-workers entrusted
the fruits of their labor to the management of those in power.
- They're expropriating, expropriating ...
- They allowed themselves to be disarmed, in exchange for the new regime's promise
that a time had finally come, in which there would be no more
rent exploitation, no more overcrowding, no more housing poverty.
Indeed, for the first time in this country's history,
cheap public housing was created.
"Tenants are not a commodity! Tenants are not a commodity!"
- Because they believed in what they were doing.
- And why did they believe?
- It was their city, and now it's not.
Something went wrong.
Today we see that what appeared to be
a final break with the logic of housing speculation,
after 1989 turned out to have been just accumulation of capital frozen in time.
If not for all of that free labor in hopes of justice,
the capitalists today wouldn't have anything to privatize.
That's the whole point of this great swindle.
Years later, the authorities treat these buildings
like their own and privatize them.
That's why we remember this story of hope and deception.
In this house, we won't be disarmed.
Syrena fights not only for public housing: we show the strength of housing communes.
It's not about quaint legends and identities
but about organizing methods that work,
strategies of organizing common struggles
in defence of our homes and other benefits.
It's the sort of idea, that cannot be evicted.
The biggest crises of the past years,
from the US to Spain, began with mass evictions.
Speculation bubbles
burst!
And you just can't pay off a high mortgage.
The most common image of failed cities
are streets filled with empty homes.
In response to such crises
more and more cities
decide
to take over and settle
abandoned housing left to waste.
Often it's the people themselves
who decide to move into a vacant building,
to rebuild it themselves and to live there.
In Poland, dilapidated, abandoned buildings
are a blatant image of the battered condition
of many city residents who face the same dilemma:
Take out a mortgage?
Emigrate?
Or shoot myself in the head?
Are there any alternatives?
Together ...
Together we act,
we find another route.
Defend yourself!
Take the initiative!
Take your life into your own hands!
Refuse service!
Take over empty buildings!
Occupy!
Resist!
Listen up, Syrena is really only a symbol.
This situation has a much wider dimension.
It concerns people, children, older folks,
homeless folks ... because the city is giving away,
public property where there are schools, preschools.
What I can't stand, is when tenants are accused of demanding too much.
Look at the sort of money that flows into developers' pockets,
money and the fruits of the labor
of tens of thousands of working people in this city.
Who is really demanding too much?
The right to housing for everyone
is just far more important than the accumulation of wealth.
- Instead of believing in all those lies that we are indebt, that we want too much
we should finally ask for those 70 billion in reparations from the authorities
who don't give a shit about us because they think they deserve everything.
I think they deserve rubble from all those ruins ...
... or a brick on the head.