unfortunately some of the older locals have distanced themselves from the squatters and thus divided the campaign
BARNET TODAY | NEWS | Library campaigners refuse to join activists occupying building | 2012
although as residential squats are now illegal (they always got evicted quick anyway) its not surprising those chaps would use the library building and at least its not being trashed.
at the most active recent squat in Reading it had a computer lab (where me and a friend would demonstrate security issues to hippies) and also a library in the next room and stocked it with fuckloads of random books. What was shocking though is many were obtained because some charity shops were simply dumping them due to overstocks (though Reading is affluent and middle class and people like books so not so odd there is a surplus)
what was worse was finding a box in there of then brand new harry potter books and a load of other newish books. I asked the two hippy girls what brought them in how they had got them – many of these books were still new enough to fetch good resale prices! They weren’t the sort what would have robbed them but it didn’t make sense, until they told me which charity shop bins they had “raided”. It was a shop run by Christian volunteers- I inspected the rest of the box and every book had a theme of occult, magic, other spirituality. someone in the shop had carefully gone through the donations looking for what they hoped to censor and dispose of..
