Firstly squatting is like any other activity and is no more agressive than anything else. For the past two years I lived in a squatted house here in New Zealand, our neighbors loved us and we were on good terms with the community constable. I don’t think anything we did could be construed as agressive. We dug up the lawns gardened the whole property and when we ran out of space set up a community garden down the road.

As for legality depending on where you are and how you go about it there may well be nothing illegal about squatting.

Those of us involved in transition know that the current distribution of land is inequitable and unsustainable. Squatting can be one useful tool in reevaluating how land is distrubuted and used. Like anything else I don’t think squatting is inherently good or bad, it is simply a tool.

I am a community organizer in California.

I am looking to move to an active town/city to help out their work.

I am wondering what the most active transition initiatives are?? Or what you all think are the most active communities are in the World?

Thanks
Patrick

That isn’t to say that what they’re doing isn’t great… I’d love to go and see them; just that I’m wondering if we’re seeing a much broader understanding of what ‘Transition’ might be and also what might constitute a Transition Initiative.

I get the feeling that the second edition of the Handbook – incorporating the Pattern Language style toolkit for and by initiatives – will take this even further (which can only be a good thing).

Just thought i’d try to spark some opinions from others.

Hats off to Transition Heathrow. I’ve been involved with a couple of squated sites and get it and love it but not without it perturbing the positivity puritan within me. 100′s if not 1000′s of squatted/community sites have taken on this kind of positive act of soft aggression that is illegal but plausibly morally sound and its been happening long before the birth of Transiton.

Worth noting though that in similar scenarios like the Brazilian landless movement similar acts of re-appropriating disused spaces escalates into very violent aggression rather than soft aggression and in the Brazil scenario it is plausibly even more morally sound given that it’s live or death for the people without land.

It’s a question of lines in th sand. Given the growing embracing of collapse within the Transition movement we might see a lot more talk about Argentina style reopening of the factories….

The current climate activism reminds me a lot of the direct action in the early-mid 90s (anti-roadbuilding, Reclaim the Streets, Reclaim the Land, etc.). Bringing it together with the ideas and experience of the Transition Towns movement has a real potential to make new links and ideas, and hopefully will make it harder for people to portray it as just another ‘anti’ movement.

I think (hope!) both movements can inspire and teach each other a lot.

I never thought I would find myself thinking the words “if only I lived nearer to Heathrow…”!!

(Made me cry too!).