PARTISAN!

How was it that a squat attempt backed by RAHU and other left-adjacent groups was so quickly broken up? Anthony Furia questions Jordan van den Lamb aka ‘purplepingers’ to find out more.

In December, a community occupation of three empty properties in Brunswick was initiated – backed by a variety of organisations and organisers, including Renters and Housing Union (RAHU), Victorian Socialists (VS), and the leading VS senate candidate for the 2025 election. The occupation was ended within a day, with Police issuing a move order for ‘disturbing the peace’.

The demands, determined by in-group consultation and debate, read as follows; Immediate Use of Empty Properties for Emergency Accommodation, Forcible Acquisition of Long-Term Vacant Properties, Extend No-Fault Eviction Laws (“to people occupying empty dwellings… used as investment properties”) to Prevent Commodification of Housing, and Build community support and solidarity (not of the same variety as the others, clearly).

For the most part, these demands are expected – logical, easy to argue for, and largely part of the communist minimum program with regards to housing – although it is a little surprising to see nothing of capping rents or expanding the national housing insurance scheme.

The questions that actions such as this raise, however, are important. We reached out to Jordan van de Lamb (aka ‘purplepingers’) to provide his perspective, as a socialist and electoral candidate for the Victorian Socialists, on the strategy and demands raised by this squat.¹

[This interview was conducted over email in December, 2024. Jordan van den Lamb’s responses are mostly unedited except for formatting]

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The squat seemed to attract a lot of attention on social media, relatively speaking. What tactical advantages does squatting as a tactic have, in comparison to other forms of protest or disruption in the face of a housing crisis?

JORDAN: In terms of direct, collective action when it comes to housing – the two most powerful options available to us are rent strikes and occupations. An occupation is slightly different to a regular squat, and it is inherently loud and political.

There are many advantages to occupying empty homes openly and publicly – this includes drawing attention to a worsening housing crisis, connecting and collectivising people in the area, including neighbours who might never have engaged in anything remotely anti-capitalist prior to coming to show support for an occupation. Ultimately it can and has previously resulted in the transfer of ownership from the ruling class to the people. When that happens, an action ceases to represent the working class simply flexing a muscle, it becomes a metaphor for what can be achieved if we organised en masse.

Other forms of housing protests too often end up with people being asked to simply sign a petition or in some way or another begging the ruling class to fix something for us, something that is quite obviously not in their interests – but squatting always requires the ruling class to either respond with force or relinquish power.In terms of direct, collective action when it comes to housing – the two most powerful options available to us are rent strikes and occupations.

An occupation is slightly different to a regular squat, and it is inherently loud and political.

How can we, the socialist left, work to make future squats like this more successful? What was the response to this like from organised groupings on the left?

JORDAN: By getting involved, joining the organising group, and joining housing related unions that are participating in direct action such as RAHU and SEQUR.

With respect to the response from organised groupings on the left: this occupation was organised by a number of leftist organisations and individuals. This was not a RAHU occupation, though some of the organisers including myself are RAHU members, many of the organisers were not previously associated with RAHU.

Clearly, RAHU had certain immediate demands this occupation aimed to promote. What other demands should socialists be raising with regards to the housing crisis? How do we popularise these?

JORDAN: These weren’t RAHU demands, these demands were determined by consensus over many organising meetings composed of individuals from a number of groups.

Socialist demands with respect to housing should involve a transfer of wealth, and should empower the working class to enact those demands regardless of electoral consent. We shouldn’t solely demand “better policy”, we shouldn’t even just be “demanding”, we should be taking.

It’s all well and good to say this would be our housing policy under socialism or initially under a minimum programme, but unless we are organising to take what is ours in the meantime until we get there, then those are simply words on a piece of paper.

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Here, Jordan raises some excellent points, and some contestable ones. For the sake of brevity, my own thoughts on each response will be kept brief, yet it is important to highlight areas of interest and indeterminacy.

Jordan’s answer with respect to direct action tactics on housing is strong – particularly the point that squatting forces a confrontation between protestors and the repressive state apparatus in a way that sanctioned protests do not. Police must, by the nature of a squat, either intervene or concede to oppositional forces – thus exposing their direct role, and the role of the bourgeois state, in protecting and maintaining a system of property ownership that consciously dispossesses and divides workers. This, of course, assumes a high publicity of, and level of participation in the occupation itself – without which it is doomed to insignificance.

An ‘occupation’ as an agitational differs from the use of a squat for the purpose of resource requisitioning – organised, militant squats could be carried out by a cohered communist party for the purpose of seizing property and thus resources for the party and its alternate pole of state power.

Jordan’s response to the second question is interesting, to the extent that it reveals the degree of openness in the preparations for this occupation. Despite its public promotion, it seems one would have to have been in the right place or time, or possess the right connections, to take part in the organising meetings for this occupation.

It is hard for organised communists to “join the organising group” of an occupation if they are not aware of its existence in the first place – of course, we can rally what forces are available once it is publicly announced, it is more difficult to do so without preparation. In general, organising groups of direct action (at the very least acts that are going to be made openly and with community support) would be wise to work to coordinate existing forces. How can we overcome fragmentation without opportunities for cooperation and debate?

In response to the third question, Jordan slightly confuses what precisely the minimum program is. It isn’t solely a list of ‘things to do once revolution happens’, it is the determinate preconditions for workers power; the road to workers power itself. Achieving these conditions, fulfilling the demands of the minimum program, is a process stretching both before and after the seizure of state power as a revolutionary instant. Thus ‘taking what is ours in the meantime’ as a notion doesn’t necessarily make sense – organising for successful occupations is a component of organising for workers power, the fulfillment of the minimum program.

The notion that the working class should be empowered to enact the minimum demands without electoral consent is not an uncommon one – nor is it entirely wrong. Electoral consent is not a necessity for revolutionary action itself, yet bourgeois elections can be a useful platform for determining the popularity and support (with the proletariat and its allies) that a future communist party enjoys; this includes the actions it undertakes, such as organised occupations, and both illegal and legal work generally.

Overall, Jordan van de Lamb of VS articulates a popular socialist perception of occupations generally and does so well. My thanks to Jordan for his responses, and for the value of the perspective offered to Partisan by said responses.

1 RAHU was also contacted for comment, with no response.