Why talk about an occupation?
And how we have transformed an old house ruins into a community space
Back in 2013, with a small group of friends, we occupied an abandoned house in Rio de Janeiro suburbs. We removed trash and bushes, we painted the walls, sowed a vegetable garden and promoted community events with book fairs, charity campaigns, art exhibitions, breakfast, acoustic music and debates. Completely free and collaborative with the neighborhood participation.
The project, which had an unknown life span, lasted a gestation period, inevitably succeeding in our expulsion in the 9th month. However, the action was able to fulfill much of what was proposed and also of what was not proposed, bringing about a collateral benefit caused by all the movements of the occupation’s initiative.
Walking between the Constitution and civil disobedience, we pleaded for the social function of the property, which had accumulated decades’ worth of rubbish and garbage of all kinds, hospital waste, chemicals and pet corpses. Below the undergrowth that reached three meters in height, an outdoor breeding ground consolidated for venomous animals, mosquitoes and rats.
We know that Mother Nature does not believe in political boundaries, which allowed the whiff of unhealthiness to stretch out onto the sidewalk and to the surrounding properties without any constraint. Vectors of diseases such as dengue and leptospirosis were seen daily in an environment that for them seemed — and rightly so — quite welcoming.
Since the first week, aware that an hour’s movement would attract the attention of previously unknown owners, we agreed that our goal would be to resist as long as possible and to defend the reason behind our mobilization.
With the universalist proposal to bring together everyone from different social and economic realities, we have named the initiative “Meeting of Wisdom”. A title that today sounds old-fashioned and even pretentious, but which we were convinced was very suitable at the time. Fortunately, there was also a second name, which after so many years was relegated to a subtitle; I now come to do justice to what brought a slightly more accurate description of what the project was about: “Suburban Cultural Occupation”.
From curiosity to social responsibility
Underhanded would be to say that our great initial impulse had been that of any revolutionary act. Such an assertion would not only be inauthentic, but also loaded with immense vanity.
The truth is that, walking every week on the sidewalk that bordered the house, it was the adventurous spirit and the desire to know what was behind the wall that always motivated us. Despite this, the transition from the initial idea of “urban exploration” to “suburban cultural occupation” occurred very quickly and organically, starting from the moment we stepped onto the rubble of the property for the first time.
When we were finally inside and observed the conditions of the terrain around us in those first days, the idea of mere pioneering began to sound incredibly stingy among us, and the possibility of starting something socially relevant, that would benefit a larger number of people and with potential for reproducibility, already tinkled like music. And it is this last aspect that I want to talk about.
Reproducibility. And why am I in a hurry?
When someone approaches me mentioning the “house project” (as it was called) and they ask what it was all about, the feeling I can describe on my part would be, who knows, the same as a child who comes back from an incredible walk and wants to tell everyone how extraordinary the experience was — and I need to tell you.
The need to tell you does not come from an internal whisper wanting to boast of an incredible feat that would make any kind of boring youth worthwhile. I have to tell you why it goes through me, and why the memories of that event cannot die with me or with the others who participated in it. And we know how it is, we leave it for next year, and when we realize it, we are already at the end of life and then comes that thought: “I think I forgot something…”
Without really knowing where we were going, we discovered a wealth of human capacity that cannot be measured in numbers. And it is because of this feeling of satisfaction, belief in the power of change, of collective work and of perceiving the other, that the desire to bring this material to public knowledge is consolidated.
Volunteering to volunteer
As soon as I got into the Faculty of Psychology, even before the beginning of classes, there was already a cycle of academic week lectures. And I, a freshman in the course, in the furor of absorbing as much information as possible, signed up for a lecture on Psychological Assistance in Major Disasters, given by a multidisciplinary time of academics from PUC-Rio, the Pontifical Catholic University.
After a talk that took place about the work developed by this team with the victims and those affected by the Brumadinho disaster (2019, Minas Gerais), a listener asks: “How can we get involved in these efforts? Is there a website?”
Although I already had a reasonable idea that these acts will often occur without any prior recruitment calls or organization, I must say that I sympathize with a question from this fellow student. Just as our schools do not teach students to deal with many fundamental aspects of everyday life, we are also not taught to engage in causes without feeling like strangers due to the absence of a bureaucratic device that tells us how and when to do it.
I go on to say that I have no intention of equating the abandoned house project with the assistance provided in the Brumadinho disaster. In fact, what I want to illustrate is that many times the intention will make itself present, and we will depend on the luck of a day when we encounter something that becomes the catalyst for us to take the first step. And if this content I am publishing here may be part of the process that triggers this initial push, I will know that the goal was achieved.
— Proofreading by Daveon Young
