“You can evict the building, but you won’t evict the movement” - The Story of People’s University

On April 26, over a hundred people marched towards an empty building close to Frederiksplein. Together, the protesters revealed the squat and named it Shadia Abu Ghazaleh Campus. The name was chosen to commemorate a Palestinian woman who was amongst the first women who joined the military resistance in the 1960s against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Until the eviction that took place on June 12, the squat – also known by the name ‘People’s University’ – became a space for de-hierarchized knowledge production that served as an alternative to Amsterdam’s educational institutions. To learn about the story of the squat, Amsterdam Alternative interviewed four activists who are part of the movement. 

When asked about how the campus came to be, Ano begins by saying that the need was already there: “So many people live in alienation in the colonial Western institutions, which represent the same system that we are against.” They provide an example of Delft University, which plays an active part in supporting the production of F35 fighter jet parts, which are used as weapons by Israel. This is “complicity beyond moral support.” The institutions’ complicity is met with the student’s call for boycott and financial divesting. So, Ano asks: “What if we divest our intellectual energy and force?” That’s where the People’s University came in. WS shares this sentiment: “There is no choice in the Netherlands — if you want to to escape working the minimum wage jobs in the future, you have to get a degree by giving money to the institutions that are helping in genocide”. Thus, they consider People’s University as a start for seeking alternatives, showing that one doesn’t need to rely on an institution to acquire knowledge. 

They consider People’s University as a start for seeking alternatives, showing that one doesn’t need to rely on an institution to acquire knowledge.

Another activist, Alex, at the time of the opening of the People’s University, was struggling with their Master’s thesis. The moment student encampments started, they felt disillusioned about the university they were enrolled in: “I’m studying all these kinds of things about decolonization or protests, and I’ve been trying to put it into practice, but then the university is like, oh, but not like that, though.” Therefore, Alex decided to change their thesis to write about the student protests. When the squat was revealed, Alex saw a banner hung on the building, saying: “You must resist, otherwise, you and your education are useless.” These are the words of Bassel al-Araj, a revolutionary Palestinian writer and activist. Alex remembers that this sentence gave them a lot of affirmation that “what I’m doing is the right thing.” 

“You must resist, otherwise, you and your education are useless.”

Ano reminisces that once the squat was revealed, the space came together in the blink of an eye: some groups fixed the bathroom, others the floor or the leaking rooftop, another group connected the electricity. “This brought about a decentralization that I could not imagine,” Ano says. Soon after, events started taking place: movie screenings about oppressive systems throughout the world, philosophy classes where people would discuss how to learn philosophy through a collective conversation or the preparation of a journal that would focus on the experience of student protest. Even a theater group was established, where people learn how to talk about oppression and activism through movement and performance. As explained by WS, there was a board inside the squat with a calendar, and whenever someone wanted to plan an event, they just needed to write it down. 3asfour remembers a workshop where a person taught about the history of Palestine, as it showed them a new way of co-producing shared knowledge: “He would sit with us and people would contribute, interrupt him, and say that I don’t think that’s right. And then we would all learn together and deconstruct a lot of the ways we were taught before.” Alex, in turn, recognizing their privilege of being Dutch, stresses the importance of listening and working communally for the space to thrive and become a platform where everyone could feel safe to express their voices.

Considering the existence of People’s University as part of a bigger student movement, Ano explains how they realized that their action continues the legacy of resistance against the Dutch system of political hegemony. For example, people who occupied Magdenhuis in both 1968 and 2015 visited the squat, as well as the staff working at educational institutions who supported the movement. Ano further asserts how encampments bring the revolution and the resistance into the city, as well as the presence of immigrants and refugees. Often, the refugee crisis is linked with faraway borders, such as the Polish-Belarusian one, or even considered to be outside of the nation states, as is the case of refugees dying while crossing the Mediterranean sea. Framing the crisis as being ‘far away’ allows many to turn a blind eye or avoid taking responsibility. However, for Ano the barricades of student encampments are “a metaphor of this border of the nation state being brought as a conflict inside, not just at the margins.” Alex, in turn, emphasizes that People’s University reflects on how people can reclaim their agency in telling the stories about the protests, as the university and media are misrepresenting the movement as violent. 

When asked about eviction, Alex admits that they expected this to happen, yet were still affected by this, as they miss being able to go to a place where there was always a diverse group of people where one could learn from each other. They stress how special the talks they participated in were, as everyone was doing it “out of care.” In a more determined tone, 3asfour simply contends: “You can evict the building, but you can’t evict the movement.” WS agrees, and emphasizes that People’s University is not temporal but rather fluid. In time, they would strive to become permanent, but for now the events will take place in different venues — for example, the philosophy classes were moved to the encampment at Rietveld. For now, WS urges people to follow and continue reading about their activities on Squat Radar or Instagram, as they are hoping for sustained and long-lasting practices: “we will be as entrenched as the systems we are opposing.”