Reinventing the Political Economy: Squat’s the Story

Abstract

Researchers Darragh Power and Michael Phoenix first interviewed members of the Grangegorman Community Collective on Monday, 4 May 2015. Power has been involved with the group since, and they have recently been evicted from the site. This essay considers the potential for places like Grangegorman for building community and laying the foundations for an alternative economic system.

Key Words:

• Community
• Eviction
• Grangegorman
• Power
• Squatting

Acknowledgments

I'd like to thank my friend, comrade, and fellow researcher, Michael Phoenix, who contributed to this piece in the italicized paragraphs under “Our First Visit.”

Notes

1 Us, here, loosely refer to the assumed 99% of ordinary people upon whose shoulders the debt for bailing out the banks was placed.

2 See “Cracks in the City: An Interview on Dublin's Independent Spaces,” Provisional University, 16 July 2014, https://provisionaluniversity.wordpress.com/2014/07/16/cracks-in-the-city-an-interview-on-dublins-independent-spaces.

3 See “Census 2016: Number of Vacant Houses ‘Scandalous,’” Irish Times, 15 July 2016, http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/census-2016-number-of-vacant-houses-scandalous-1.2722435.

4 See “About homelessness,” Focus Ireland, accessed 3 October 2016, http://www.focusireland.ie/resource-hub/about-homelessness.

5 See “The Radical Revolution,” YouTube, 10 February 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHQUnxswCBs.

6 See “Alexis Tsipras & Slavoj Žižek: The Role of the European Left, 15 May 2013,” YouTube, 19 May 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUh96oXYt18.