On 5 February, 2026, Aristotelis Chantzis began a hunger strike to the death to defend his home from the latest development attempt that would result in the violent eviction of over 400 people. The next attack is imminent.

Surrounded on either side by the police headquarters of Athens and the supreme court – two pillars of state power – the eight housing blocks that make up the squatted community of Prosfygika stand proud and unflinching – and always threatened. The neighbourhood is marked by a long history, both as a haven for refugees in Athens since the 1930s (Prosfygika means 'refugee homes' in Greek) and as a stronghold of partisan resistance in the December 1944 uprising, which left the blocks scarred by bullet holes. Today, the neighbourhood plays a key role in the fight against the ongoing state-backed gentrification of Athens.

For most of the residents, living in Prosfygika is not a choice. It is imposed by the realities of housing in the city, which forces people without homes to squat. Many residents have lived in the neighbourhood all their lives, always on the brink of eviction. But they choose to live there on their own terms.

In 2010, the residents of Prosfygika formed the Assembly of the Squatted Community of Prosfygika and dedicated themselves to a political project based on ‘the communal ownership of resources, structures and infrastructures'. They retook control of their own neighbourhood, which had been taken over by drugs and organised crime. Slowly, they turned the neighbourhood into a thriving community united by ‘a common political project, a common political culture and a common perspective’. This requires carefully thought-out systems.

The community, home to over 400 people, including 50 children, from over 27 nationalities, organises itself through a system of structures. The basic and most important tool of this system is the weekly general assembly, which is the main decision-making body alongside the women’s structure. It can take upwards of six hours and includes translation into multiple languages. At the assembly, people can raise issues, suggest changes, and debate their differences. It is a form of direct democracy, where decisions affecting daily life are made collectively.

In the words of one community member, 'We cannot talk about revolutionary plans just by fighting against stuff and destroying; instead, we should fight to create and build. These structures offer answers to the needs of the people who live in the community, but they also exist to offer an alternative to the sick capitalist system. We try to solve problems collectively with the community, not individually'.

From the general assembly, 22 self-organised structures have emerged, open to anyone who wants to participate. Alongside a cinema structure, a social centre, and key infrastructure projects, some notable examples include

The bakery, one of the oldest structures, has been producing bread and pastries daily for residents and the surrounding area since 2013.

The Women’s Structure, a decision-making body and emergency shelter, aimed at building a culture that brings women together and challenges patriarchy.

The Children’s Structure, including a children’s house and self-organised nursery, where children participate in a children’s assembly and help shape their environment; for example, they proposed a playground, which was then built by the community. They are treated as equals to adults.

The Health Structure, which provides healthcare in collaboration with medical groups across Athens. Together with the workers’ union at the nearby cancer hospital, two flats were renovated to house relatives of patients, many of whom previously slept in their cars when visiting the hospital.

So why is the community subjected to regular police raids, tear gas, and arrests — including of minors?

The answer is land and money. Prosfygika sits on valuable land in the centre of Athens. For decades, there have been attempts to demolish the listed Bauhaus buildings. The latest plan involves €15 million in European funding to build social housing as well as accommodation for hospital patients and their relatives.

But Prosfygika already provides social housing. It houses hundreds of people — children, migrants, elderly residents, people with mental health issues, as well as hospital patients and their families. The proposed project would force over 400 people onto the streets, at a time when the community is renovating the ageing buildings themselves, without a drop of public money.

Destroying existing social housing to build new social housing, while 80,000 empty homes owned by the Municipality of Athens sit unused, is absurd. It fits into a broader pattern of gentrification, which aims to move wealthier residents into working-class neighbourhoods and push people who can’t afford exorbitant rents further and further out of the city.

But Prosfygika is not only a fight over buildings. It is a fight over imagination.

We are taught that capitalism, the system we live under, may be unfair, but that there is no alternative. Prosfygika contradicts this idea. It shows that people can organise housing, healthcare, childcare and decision-making collectively. A constant everyday practice of experimentation, by no means perfect, it nevertheless shows that a different reality is possible.

“We do not see our project as an 'island of freedom', nor do we have such illusions”, the members write. As well as offering its structures to the wider community of Athens, the neighbourhood works directly with workers’ unions and self-organised groups to resist the social and economic conditions forced on us, which plunge countless people into poverty. It’s part of an ecosystem of practical, democratic alternatives that allow us to question the system we live in. That experimentation should be allowed to take place.

On 31 January, 2026, 50,000 people took to the streets of Turin in the middle of winter to protest the forced closure of the social centre Askatasuna. People depend on their social centres, and when these places are threatened, they defend them — with their time, their energy, and their bodies. Prosfygika, one of the largest squatted communities in Europe, is no different.

Zoe Peillon is a writer based in Bulgaria. Supporters are calling for public attention and solidarity. If you are interested, you can find out more at saveprosfygika.gr

Last October, the Advisory Service for Squatters celebrated its 50th anniversary, though squatting has been around much longer. In October 2024, we published the 15th edition of the famous Squatters Handbook, which had to be more detailed and complex than earlier editions.

Squatting used to be a mass movement; a way for almost anyone in need to house themselves or make space for social use, against the domination of buildings by money and power. But after decades of attacks, sacred property values have been gradually restored, patrolled by the law and the increasingly bloated security industry. In 2012, a law was passed to criminalise squatting in empty residential buildings in England and Wales.

SQUATTER CONTINUA

Yet, squatting endures across London and major cities, as well as more quietly all across the country. Empty buildings and land continue to be requisitioned for housing, emergency shelters, social space, and growing spaces.

It's not impossible, even with the new laws; squatting is still legal in non-residential properties, and residential properties can be, and often are, occupied as a protest but not to live in. Another important fact is that if people have ever had a tenancy or a licence in a residential building, even if it has officially ended, the new squatting law does not apply to them, meaning that the new squatting laws cannot always be used by owners to remove people in this scenario.

WANT TO SQUAT?

Squatting takes organising. You can’t do it on your own because there needs to always be someone at the house, at least until you know how the owners will react. Multiple people are also important for developing and sharing skills for opening places, keeping things together, resolving disputes, and meeting the usual requirements of social living. You might be fortunate and find an existing squat with space, but you’d have to be very lucky, friendly, or have a lot in common with those already living there. A good place to start is the monthly London practical squatters' evenings, which help bring people together and teach basic skills.

As well as a crew, you’ll need to find one (or two, as it’s always good to have a backup) of the thousands of empty non-residential properties. Government websites, such as the Valuation Office, can help confirm whether a building is residential, and local council planning registers can provide useful background information on buildings. Of course, there's a lot more to it. A good place to start is by talking to us.

CHIPPING AWAY AGAINST ABUSE

In January we led a workshop on observing bailiffs to better challenge their illegal and unlawful activity. Along with our friends, we have had some successes in bringing cases against bailiffs and obtaining compensation for victims, but it takes a lot of work and, most importantly, clear evidence. We’ve also been working on ways to make sure people get notice of an eviction, instead of just finding a bunch of thugs smashing through their door at some unearthly hour.

An important part of squatting has always been the Legal Warning, put up to explain that someone is in the building and that it is therefore illegal to force entry. Originally, the notice referred to a law from 1381, designed for use against revolting peasants, and was later updated to include 1977 legislation (S6 Criminal Law Act 977). Since 2012, it has become more complicated, with many variants.

We are now recommending that crews have an email address they check regularly and that its included in the Legal Warning, so they are informed of any legal action with maximum notice. Whether you want to communicate with owners more generally about making a deal is up to you.

Most squats will end when the owners go to court and get a possession order. We can advise on defences you can put forward and mistakes made by the owners. Even without a defence, it can still be worth going to court and trying to get an order for notice of eviction, which can make a big difference to your last days or weeks in a property.

BAILIFF BOTHER

As well as hassling and evicting squatters, bailiffs also do the same to tenants and to those in debt, though their powers are less in these circumstances. ACORN and London Renters Union, among others, are committed to fighting them. We’re part of a wider movement to make housing safe again.

The Advisory Service for Squatters is a collective of workers who have been running a daily advice service for squatters and homeless people since 1975. We can be contacted by email:

[email protected]

www.squatter.org.uk

On the evening of 15 December 2025, just before 9:40 PM, a large group of people dressed as Santa Claus and his elves went into a supermarket in Montreal. They moved calmly through the supermarket aisles, filling their sacks with food. Within minutes they left taking thousands of dollars' worth of groceries, none of which was paid for.

Santa and his masked elves then went to the Christmas tree in the central square. Underneath the twinkling lights, they laid out the stolen food and attached signs that read ‘Christmas is expensive, free food’. The remaining groceries were distributed to community fridges across Montreal.

In a statement released afterwards, the group said they were responding to rising food prices and supermarket profiteering. ‘We work more and more just to be able to buy food from supermarket chains that are using inflation as a pretext to make record profits’, the statement read. ‘A handful of companies are holding our basic needs hostage…. For us, that is theft.’

The Santa Claus stunt in Montreal comes at a moment when shoplifting is once again a central political talking point in the UK. In recent years, shoplifting has skyrocketed. Office for National Statistics figures show that shoplifting offences rose by 13 per cent in the year to June 2025, with 529,994 incidents recorded. Meanwhile, the British Retail Consortium, a trade body representing retailers, claims there are as many as 20 million incidents a year.

Much of the mainstream media coverage has focused on individual morality and criminality. The right-wing press shouts ‘Broken Britain’, while many reports fixate on drug users stealing to fund addictions. But what is almost always missing is the wider context of poverty and hunger, and the reality that if people had enough food or money, they wouldn't be stealing.

In 2024, the Trussell Trust estimated that 14 million people in the UK faced the prospect of going hungry because of a lack of money. At the same time, drug treatment, homelessness services, and rehabilitation programmes have been cut back for years, so it's hardly surprising that people are also stealing to fund drug habits. It's an obvious point, but if people are living with poverty and trauma, they are more likely to take drugs. When people cannot meet their basic needs, most normal people will break the law to survive. If everyone had enough to eat, stable housing, and access to support, crime would plummet overnight.

As Santa and his Elves pointed out in their statement, supermarkets aren't struggling. UK chains have reported record profits since the pandemic. Sainsbury's posted around £1 billion in profit in April 2025, in line with similar figures right across the sector. Rising prices have hit shoppers hard, but haven’t hurt the bottom lines of major supermarkets.

This gap was what the Montreal Santas were trying to expose playfully. Food and money are in abundance, but access to them is the problem.

Actions like that carried out last December are not new. In Italy during the 1970s, working-class communities organised the self-reduction of prices- more commonly known as autoreduction. Neighbours would collectively refuse price rises, either paying the old rate, or not paying at all. These campaigns spread from shops to rent, utilities to transport, rooted in powerful workplace and neighbourhood struggles. The basic attitude of the working class at the time, borne out of heightened class consciousness, was that these activities were not theft. Instead, they were viewed as a collective taking back of some of what had been stolen from them by the capitalist class. Capitalism, after all, is based on mass looting of our labour and of common land. If we are to talk about stealing, we should start there.

The Montreal action is obviously not on the same scale as during the 1970s in Italy, which was a genuinely revolutionary situation and could have led to a working-class revolution in the heart of the capitalist world system. But it gestures in the same direction—away from individualised survival and towards collective response to our situation. It suggests that rising theft cannot be understood only as crime, and certainly not as moral failure.

At the moment shoplifting is widespread, but this expression of class struggle is not organised and has not developed an outward-facing political form. Maybe we should start taking inspiration from the 1970s and organise around the class struggle that is going on every day, all around us, into something that is capable of transforming society. By focusing on organisation, we can create shared action beyond individual shoplifting.

Hazel Barker is a London-based writer interested in class struggle.

As we write, the world is on fire. Trump threatens Greenland and Venezuela, Iranians are being killed for protesting against their regime and the Gaza genocide continues. Climate breakdown is quickly entering a critical period. There is a desperate need to shift towards peace and reconstruction, and ideas for how to do so without relying on the state, government, or political parties are becoming increasingly popular. But those ideas are not equally accessible for all. As deaf people who use British Sign Language (BSL) as our first language, we face barriers that prevent us from participating in these discourses of resistance.

Means of resisting war and oppression locally and internationally have interested us since our teens, and this interest has drawn us to the anarchist movement over the last 20 years. In 2022, we discovered the writings of a deaf anarchist, Leonard A. Motler, who was an anarchist-communist active in the UK from around 1910 to 1925. We undertook in-depth research, which resulted in a journal article, presentations on Motler, setting up the website deafanarchy.com, and the Radical Signs project.

The Radical Signs project aims to find ways to make information about radical politics, including anarchist politics, more accessible to signing deaf people. We have done this in numerous ways, including creating political BSL vocabulary, translating political texts, and collecting biographies of deaf people involved in radical politics.

According to the British Deaf Association (BDA), 150,000 people use BSL daily. This makes it the fourth-largest indigenous language of the UK, behind English, Welsh, and Scots Gaelic. The language was legally recognised in 2022 with the BSL Act, which came about as a result of grassroots activism from 1998-2004 with direct action, pressuring MPs, lobbying and campaigning.

Sign Language and deaf culture, or Deafhood, has survived despite decades of suppression by the medical profession since the 18th century. Over time, the oral method of instruction - trying to teach children through speech - has become the default mode, specifically gaining traction after an unrepresentative congress in Milan in 1880 (only 4 delegates were deaf) claimed oralism was a superior means. This led to deaf teachers being fired worldwide, and deaf children forced to learn to lipread and speak, even when their natural means of expression was in sign language.

This suppression has not been without resistance, and deaf people worldwide formed organisations to struggle against prejudice and discrimination against sign language users, including the BDA here in the UK. Deaf people have, in this resistance, developed a diverse range of cultural practices, from poetry, theatre, television, art, and sports, to particular values such as collective community activities at deaf clubs, spaces, and events.

However, one area in which deaf people still struggle for access is radical politics. While parliamentary politics are sometimes interpreted into BSL on the TV news, small radical non-institutional political groups often do not have the funds to pay for BSL translations of their principles and actions, which means that deaf people are often unaware that there is a world of alternative politics beyond the tired and archaic systems of parliamentary politics.

Deaf people may therefore be familiar with mainstream political signs such as those used for the main parliamentary parties, but are less likely to be familiar with radical signs. The raised fist, for example, can refer to anything from rebel to radical to socialist to communist, and many other concepts in between. The sign for anarchism might be portrayed as the same as the sign for chaos or damage, which obviously misrepresents the term, leaving us back at the raised fist representing anarchism. Without the vocabulary to discuss radical concepts, how can deaf people access alternatives?

To this end, we set up two Radical Signs workshops in central London, consisting of deaf people both familiar with political activism and knowledgeable in sign language, plus hearing people who are engaged and active in the anarchist movement and knowledgeable about its politics. We created a list of the most common radical-left terms for translation at each workshop. We discussed each one as a group and reached consensus on the sign, or signs, that best reflected the term's meaning. Often, there were more than one sign, in which case all relevant ones were agreed on. Once agreed, we recorded the sign in BSL, and also included a short description of why that sign was chosen.

We then set up the deafanarchy.com website, with help from The Lipman-Miliband trust. This enables us to host videos of the signs and the rationale for their use. It’s a public website, meaning anybody can access the signs. The signs are useful not only for deaf people, but also for interpreters and radical activists. Effective political discussion about anarchism and radical left politics is limited without the signs as it is difficult to convey and understand many terms without them. We hope that now these signs are out there, they will stimulate discussion within the community, both about the signs themselves, and about how radical politics can contribute to deaf communities, and vice versa.

Politics shouldn’t be confined to the language of political parties and parliament since there is a rich tradition of political activity that takes place outside these formalised, rigid structures. Societal change through radical action - be that local, regional, national, or specific to a group - need not be confined to lobbying MPs, becoming involved in a formal political party, or campaigning for state-based reforms. There are actions that can take place outside of these arenas which may be more practical for those who want to get involved. With radical signs, we can discuss and explore these methods and ideas within the very movements where it all happens.

Dai is deaf and works as an Associate Professor of BSL and Deaf Studies in York St John University.

Steve is deaf and is currently working on a number of projects in the field of sign language and Deaf culture.

Illustration by Rory Robertson-Shaw.