If I Can't Dance to It, It's Not My Revolution

by Gene Levin | 2009

I descend a concrete staircase into a dense fog of cigarette and marijuana smoke. A fifty-fifty mix of Fernet Stock and cola, running its course through my body, makes me feel unusually top-heavy and disoriented. Strobe lights, bursting to no particular rhythm, scramble my brain to the tune of some of the trippiest fucking music I've ever heard. Dub DJs, sampling and distorting instrumental tracks, weave a musical tapestry that's part prayer blanket and part mind-bending magic eye landscape.

The walls are haphazardly smeared in graffiti tags and posters and hand drawn art, as if a subversive counter-culture grenade had been tossed into the room, hurling its psychedelic shrapnel in every direction.

Slavs with Rastafarian dreadlocks sway back and forth in the back room, trapped within an intoxicated delirium as their friends rush over to the bar for one dollar beers and ten dollar t-shirts. In the well-lit front, gray-haired gentlemen talk up girls who'd be considered underage in the states; wasted twenty-somethings stare glossy-eyed at the ceiling while their still-sober friends roll joints.

Those who've consumed one beer too many are greeted by the hospitality of cramped bathrooms where pools of fermenting piss and shit sit in toilets that don't flush, with toilet paper spools that seem perpetually empty.

This debauched carnival is all contained within a quaint little building known to the locals as the squat Milada, an abandoned house used by anarchists, autonomists, and anyone else looking for a place to go crazy or simply crash. The relatively small abode, sandwiched between, and overshadowed by, two towering college dormitories, carries the old-fashioned, rustic appeal of the Bates' Motel. Practically a concrete cottage; one would never have assumed what was going on inside were it not for the subversive slogans, chastising capitalism and government, scrawled on its façade. And all just a fifteen minute bus ride west of Prague's center.

"So these people... they're Anarchists?" I had asked Veronika, a local student, as we hiked across the unlit rural path that would lead us to the squat.

Jan, an old high school friend of hers, picking up on the subtle unease in my voice, simply smiled as she replied, "Yeah, but not everyone who shows up is, some people just come for the music."

"How often do they do this kind of thing?"

"Oh," she paused to catch her breath while vaulting across a chest-high concrete barricade, "A few times a month, they're trying to raise money so they can stay."

Though the house itself has no legal owner and has been occupied by these anarchists since May of ‘98, the property on which it sits has some value to the city. Naturally, the Czech government has tried to evict the squatters, often relying on police intimidation to shut the entire operation down. The latest police raid took place in November of 2008, under the pretense of a criminal search which quickly escalated into a hostile confrontation—though according to squatters, there was no evidence that any criminals were hiding there. Several arrests were made and riot police were mobilized; the entire incident incited 150 people to organize a demonstration of protest a few days later. This was the second confrontation with police during that month and the fourth since that October, though these incidents have done little to shake the squatters of their resolve.

"How long have they been doing this?" I asked her.

"Years..." she answered between breaths, "But the police are trying to shut it down."

The government's interest in shutting these squatters down is not an arbitrary one; since the Velvet Revolution, anarchists, mostly students in their 20s, have acted against the current of mainstream political and socio-economic interests. In 1992, there was a movement among anarchists to vote the Communist Party into power, citing it as the lesser of two evils—the other evil being liberal capitalism. In September of 2000, 12,000 anarchists assembled to protest the IMF and World Bank meeting in Prague and chaos ensued. Confrontations with riot police escalated from mere stone throwing to assaults with fireworks and Molotov cocktails as they attempted to storm the conference venue. Innocent bystanders and business owners were attacked as the raging mob unleashed thousands of dollars of damage to the city in their petulant alternative to reasoned discourse.

I don't think I was unjustified in feeling a bit uneasy. But when I'd finally arrived, it didn't feel as if I were in the midst of ideologues that night. They had the dreadlocks and the slogans, but otherwise they were relaxed in the pub-like atmosphere of the front room. Pardons were exchanged as I navigated between bodies, nodding politely and even sharing the odd smile. Some wore tattered jeans and dirty shirts, some had tattoos and piercings jutting out from every spare scrap of flesh, but some seemed modest and reserved, sporting sweaters that they, or their mothers, had picked off the shelves of whatever GAP analogue the free market had shoved into this city.

Veronika herself claims to be a "conservative anarchist", whatever the hell that means. I've yet to see her toss a Molotov or denounce the principals of the free market, but somehow, here, she doesn't seem all that out of place. I imagine between studying full time at a local university and playing basketball, there must not be much time left in the day for setting cops on fire. In due time, I imagine, despite her insisting otherwise.

Looking around, I decide it's a good time to check out the main event. Jan slides past me as I gravitate towards the back, where the music is deep and loud and makes your mind feel like a lava lamp. "You want a beer?" he asks as I get one foot through the doorway.

"No, I'm alright... hey, Jan, man," I think for a second, "Are you an anarchist too?"

He smiles condescendingly as he pats me on the back, snaking through the crowd on his way to the bar. With any popular trend there are always those that believe, those that want to rebel for its own sake, and those that are just in it for the drugs. Deep within that overwhelming fog of cheap beer and strong weed, these groups are practically indistinguishable.

Two hours after we've arrived, I find myself in the back room, sitting in a chair far behind the 6-foot speakers and the swaying bodies—each to their own rhythm, most likely fucked out of their minds, if not by booze or drugs then by the music. A slim man sits next to me, his blond dreads tucked neatly into a wide-weaved bonnet; he spills some beer on my lap as he attempts to reconfigure himself into an optimal joint-rolling position.

"S-sorry, man!" he stammers, "It was an acci—"

I look down at my lap before slowly arcing my gaze unto him (or where I approximate him to be), "Maaaaaan... don't worry about it."

Veronika taps my shoulder, cupping her hands to her mouth and leaning into my ear, "Are you sick or just stoned?"

"Neither..." I stare through her, "...both?"

I'm sure that's a popular sentiment tonight. Everyone looks like they're high on something and sick of something else. Hell, this may not be my revolution, but when that clumsy stoned Czech offers me a beer, I figure I can dance to it.

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