Maricarmen Abascal had lived in her Madrid flat for seventy years when an investment fund bought the building and raised her rent by more than 200 per cent. On 23 September she was evicted, and the people who tried to block it were cleared with tear gas. She died in hospital two weeks later.

This Sparks follows what came next. A march and a camp in the Puerta del Sol. Emergency housing decrees thrown out by parliament. A snap election, and a general strike for housing called for 11 November. In Portugal, camps in Lisbon and Porto were cleared by police twice, and went back up.

Then we go back to 1931, when the anarcho-syndicalist CNT led a rent strike across Barcelona, and neighbours carried evicted families’ furniture back up the stairs. The question it leaves is an old one: do you wait for the right law, or do you make a building impossible to empty?

Facts as of 29 October 2026. The story is still moving.

Content note: discusses an eviction and the death of an elderly woman, and police force against protesters. Nothing graphic.

In this episode

• Maricarmen’s eviction, and the investment fund behind it
• Proudhon’s line between a home and property
• The march, the camp in Sol, and the decrees parliament threw out
• Rent at nearly a young person’s whole wage
• A general strike called by tenants’ unions
• How this camp differs from 15-M in 2011
• Lisbon and Porto: camps cleared twice, and a popular assembly that stayed
• The 1931 Barcelona rent strike and the Ferrer i Guàrdia neighbourhood
• Wait for the law, or empty the stairwell of bailiffs?

Sources

• Al Jazeera, “Spanish unions call general strike over housing before snap election” (7 October 2026): https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/7/spanish-unions-call-general-strike-over-housing-before-snap-election
• Working Mass / New Left Review, “Fifteen Years Later” (26 October 2026): https://working-mass.com/2026/10/26/fifteen-years-later/
• Euronews, “Lisbon police arrest 55 housing protesters and clear Rossio tent camp” (20 October 2026): https://euronews.com/2026/10/20/lisbon-police-arrest-55-housing-protesters-and-clear-rossio-tent-camp
• Euronews, “Demonstrators wounded as police break up Lisbon and Porto housing protest camps” (25 October 2026): https://www.euronews.com/2026/10/25/demonstrators-wounded-as-police-break-up-lisbon-and-porto-housing-protest-camps
• Wikipedia, “1931 Barcelona rent strike”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1931_Barcelona_rent_strike

Episode Tags

anarchism, housing, housing crisis, Spain, Portugal, Madrid, Lisbon, Porto, Barcelona, tenants union, Sindicato de Inquilinas, rent strike, evictions, general strike, Puerta del Sol, 15-M, CNT, anarcho-syndicalism, Proudhon, direct action, mutual aid, news, anarchist podcast

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There's a pharmacy in a small Swedish town where a paper ticket machine keeps the line moving all day. Nobody enforces the order. Nobody breaks it either. That's not a Swedish habit. It's a human one, and it's where this episode starts: most of the cooperative structure that actually holds a day together was never built by a government and isn't enforced by one.

From there it moves through Colin Ward's "seed beneath the snow" in Anarchy in Action, Peter Kropotkin's guilds and village communes in Mutual Aid, and David Graeber's case that most people already live like anarchists without ever calling it that. The evidence gets less European from there: West African esusu rotating savings pots carried into Caribbean mutual aid circles, the Filipino tradition of bayanihan house-carrying, the Sámi siida herding system that never fully stopped functioning under Swedish and Norwegian law, and queer chosen family built with no legal paperwork behind it at all.

Where the disagreement never resolves gets equal time: Murray Bookchin thought naming this "anarchism" let people off the hook, a comfortable substitute for actually organising against the state. Colin Ward thought naming it was the whole point, removing the excuse that people can't be trusted to run things themselves.

Further reading: Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action (Freedom Press, 1973) Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (William Heinemann, 1902) — available via theanarchistlibrary.org David Graeber, "Are You an Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You," 2000 — available via theanarchistlibrary.org Scott Branson, Practical Anarchism: A Guide for Daily Life (Or Books, 2022) Murray Bookchin, "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm" (AK Press, 1995)

Tags: everyday anarchism, mutual aid, Colin Ward, Peter Kropotkin, David Graeber, esusu, bayanihan, Sámi siida, chosen family, Murray Bookchin, lifestyle anarchism, anarchism

Show notes: You Are Probably Already Doing Anarchism A Thousand Small Fires, Season 2, Episode 9

Most of the cooperative structure that actually holds a day together was never built by a government and isn't enforced by one — from a pharmacy queue in Sweden to rotating savings circles across four continents, this episode asks whether recognising anarchism already at work in ordinary life is a radicalising insight or a comfortable excuse to stop there.

In this episode:

• A pharmacy ticket machine in Sweden and the informal order nobody enforces
• Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action, and the "seed beneath the snow"
• Peter Kropotkin's guilds, village communes, and Mutual Aid
• David Graeber's essay "Are You an Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You"
• West African esusu and its Caribbean diaspora forms: partner, box hand, sou-sou
• Bayanihan, the Filipino tradition of communal house-carrying
• The Sámi siida system and Scandinavian state registration
• Queer chosen family as mutual aid with no legal recognition
• Murray Bookchin's "lifestyle anarchism" critique of Colin Ward

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At 11:52 on 1 November 2024, a newly renovated canopy fell at the railway station in Novi Sad and killed sixteen people. Students began blocking their own universities, and ran every faculty through a plenum: an open assembly where anyone can speak, the room votes, and nobody is in charge.

This Sparks follows that model from Belgrade in 2006, through the Zagreb occupation of 2009 and the Tuzla plenums of 2014, to neighbourhood assemblies across Serbia. We look at the unions and farmers who joined, what the state threw at the students, and the strict rules the plenums wrote when they decided to stand for parliament. Then we set it against Otpor, the leaderless student movement that helped bring down Milošević in 2000 and was gone as a party four years later.

On 25 October the Student List won a projected 140 of 250 seats on the highest turnout in decades. The students haven’t named a prime minister yet. Their victory speech started late because they couldn’t agree on who should give it.

Results are preliminary projections as of 26 October 2026.

Content note: discusses the deaths of sixteen people in the Novi Sad canopy collapse. Nothing graphic.

In this episode

• The 11:52 silence, and the canopy that fell in Novi Sad
• How a plenum works, and why delegates can’t negotiate
• From Belgrade 2006 to Zagreb’s Occupation Cookbook and Tuzla’s plenums
• Zborovi: the neighbourhood assemblies that spread off campus
• Unions, farmers, the 15 March protest and the alleged sonic weapon
• Vučić’s resignation and his run for prime minister
• How the plenums vetted 250 candidates, and the Student Plan
• Otpor: the last leaderless student movement to become a party
• The result, the irregularities, and a victory speech nobody could agree on giving
• Can a plenum hold on to its own MPs?

Sources

• Al Jazeera, “Serbia’s Vucic concedes election defeat to student-led movement” (25 October 2026): https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/25/serbia-voter-turnout-highest-in-decades-as-students-oppose-longtime-leader
• The National, “Serbia’s leader concedes defeat after 12 years in power” (26 October 2026): https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/2026/10/26/serbias-leader-concedes-defeat-after-12-years-in-power/
• ECPR The Loop, “From plenums to parliament: the rulebook behind Serbia’s Student List” (21 October 2026): https://theloop.ecpr.eu/from-plenums-to-parliament-the-rulebook-behind-serbias-student-list/
• European Western Balkans, “CRTA reports widespread violations of ballot secrecy and voting irregularities” (25 October 2026): https://europeanwesternbalkans.com/2026/10/25/crta-reports-widespread-violations-of-ballot-secrecy-and-voting-irregularities/
• transform!europe, “From Grief to Resistance: One Year On”: https://transform-network.net/blog/analysis/from-grief-to-resistance-one-year-on-how-students-sustained-serbias-broadest-protest-movement/

Episode Tags

anarchism, Serbia, Serbian protests, student movement, student protests, Student List, plenum, direct democracy, horizontalism, leaderless movements, assemblies, zborovi, Novi Sad, Vučić, Serbian election, elections, Otpor, Occupation Cookbook, Balkans, news, anarchist podcast

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In 1906, two men recently released from a Tsarist prison started collecting boots, linen, and clothing for comrades still being marched into Siberian exile. Harry Weinstein and B. Yelin had no organization behind them yet, no funding, no headquarters. They had a list of names of people who were cold, and a decision that those people were not going to be forgotten just because the state had put them somewhere designed to make forgetting easy.

From that first list of names, the Anarchist Black Cross's story reaches Nestor Makhno's Ukraine and Bolshevik repression, then Giuseppe Pinelli, an ABC member killed after three days of police interrogation in Milan, and Kotoku Shusui, executed in Japan in 1911 despite an urgent appeal London anarchists sent within weeks of his arrest. From there it carries through Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin's 1979 proposal, written from a federal prison cell, that eventually became the Anarchist Black Cross Federation; Angela Davis, who was never an anarchist but faced the same state claim this episode is about; and Mariame Kaba's work with criminalised survivors in Chicago today.

In the present, Mapuche political prisoners in Chile and Anarchist Black Cross Belarus are still doing exactly what Weinstein and Yelin started in 1906: tracking names, raising money, refusing to let a government's prisoners become a government's secret.

Further reading: Matthew Hart, "Yelensky's Fable: A History of the Anarchist Black Cross" — available via libcom.org Mariame Kaba, We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Haymarket Books, 2021) Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Anarchism and the Black Revolution: The Definitive Edition (Pluto Press, 2021) Kate Sharpley Library, "Urgent Appeal" (Freedom Group, London, 1910) — katesharpleylibrary.net Global Nonviolent Action Database, "Mapuche prisoners hunger strike for law reform, Chile, 2010" — nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu

Tags: Anarchist Black Cross, prison solidarity, Białystok, Angela Davis, Mariame Kaba, Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Giuseppe Pinelli, Kotoku Shusui, High Treason Incident, Mapuche prisoners, Chile, ABC Belarus, Ojore Lutalo, abolition, anarchism

Show notes: Prison Solidarity and the Anarchist Black Cross A Thousand Small Fires — Season 2, Episode 8

The Anarchist Black Cross started in 1906 as two men in Białystok collecting boots and letters for comrades marched into Siberian exile, and it's still running today — through fascist Italy, a failed appeal in Japan, a Marin County courtroom, and present-day Chile and Belarus, asking what solidarity actually costs the people who practice it.

In this episode:

• Harry Weinstein, B. Yelin, and the founding of the Anarchist Black Cross in 1906
• The 1919 renaming, Nestor Makhno's Ukraine, and Bolshevik repression
• Giuseppe Pinelli, the Piazza Fontana bombing, and Italy's strategy of tension
• The Kotoku Shusui case and the London appeal that couldn't stop an execution
• Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin's 1979 proposal and the Anarchist Black Cross Federation
• Angela Davis, the Soledad Brothers, and the Marin County courthouse takeover
• Mariame Kaba, Survived and Punished, and criminalised survivors
• Mapuche political prisoners and the 2010 Chilean hunger strike
• Anarchist Black Cross Belarus and the Black Nightingales

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On May 1, 1886, roughly three hundred thousand workers across the United States walked off their jobs at once, demanding an eight-hour day nobody had granted them. No court had ruled in their favor. They simply stopped, together, and dared their employers to run without them. Emma Goldman put the theory behind it into words a generation later: anarchism, she wrote, stands for direct action.

That argument runs from Haymarket through Lucy Parsons and the founding of the IWW, into the Flint sit-down strike, where a twenty-three-year-old organiser named Genora Johnson built the Women's Emergency Brigade out of the wives and sisters of the men occupying the plants. From there it moves to the 1973 Durban strikes, illegal under apartheid, that built independent Black trade unionism from nothing; ACT UP's Sell Wellcome action, which cut the price of AZT within days; and the Chipko movement, where women in the Indian Himalayas wrapped their arms around trees a logging company had already been given permission to fell.

The harder question direct action never fully answers gets asked too: once a movement rejects a single leader who gets to call the shots, who decides what counts as legitimate action at all? Occupy Wall Street lived that argument out loud, in real time, with no chairperson to settle it either way.

Further reading: Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays (Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1910) — available via The Anarchist Library and Project Gutenberg Jacqueline Jones, Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons (Basic Books, 2017) Genora Johnson Dollinger, oral history "Striking Flint" — Marxists Internet Archive / historyisaweapon.com Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, "The 1973 Durban Strikes: Building Popular Democratic Power in South Africa" — thetricontinental.org Mark Bray, Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street (Zero Books, 2013)

Tags: direct action, IWW, Lucy Parsons, Haymarket, Flint sit-down strike, Genora Johnson, Durban strikes, Chipko movement, ACT UP, Food Not Bombs, MST, Occupy Wall Street, diversity of tactics, anarchism

Show notes: Direct Action Gets the Goods. A Thousand Small Fires, Season 2, Episode 7

One tactic, one argument, four continents: from the eight-hour-day strike of 1886 through a stock exchange balcony chained shut in 1989 to land and forests defended by force of bodies. What do these very different fights have in common, and the harder question underneath: who decides what counts as legitimate action once no one's in charge?

In this episode:

• Lucy Parsons, the IWW, and "direct action gets the goods"
• The Flint sit-down strike and Genora Johnson's Women's Emergency Brigade
• The 1973 Durban strikes and the birth of independent Black trade unionism
• ACT UP's Sell Wellcome action and the price of AZT
• Food Not Bombs — a thousand chapters, sixty countries, one refusal to stop
• The MST's land occupations and Paulo Freire's literacy campaigns
• The Chipko movement and Gaura Devi's stand in Reni
• Occupy Wall Street, Mark Bray, and the diversity-of-tactics debate that never resolved

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What came from the state after Hurricane Katrina was not aid. It was armor. On August 29, 2005, the storm breached New Orleans's levee system in more than fifty places, killing more than eighteen hundred people across the Gulf Coast, while National Guard troops arrived under orders to shoot and kill and food and water took days longer to reach anyone.

Malik Rahim, a former Black Panther, and three fellow organisers founded the Common Ground Collective six days after landfall, with no funding and no authorization from anyone above them. This episode doesn't look away from what the state's own agents did that same week either: the Danziger Bridge shootings, the Gretna bridge blockade, and white vigilante patrols in Algiers Point who shot at least eleven Black men. Common Ground's actual record, a free clinic that has logged sixty thousand patient visits, twenty-two thousand volunteers over six years, sits against Naomi Klein's account of the "disaster capitalism" that fired 7,500 teachers and demolished public housing HUD's own inspectors had called structurally sound.

It closes with an honest complication: one of Common Ground's own founders became an FBI informant, and the pattern this show traced through COINTELPRO two episodes earlier reached even here, at the founding table.

Further reading: Scott Crow, Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective (PM Press, 2011) Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Metropolitan Books, 2007) A.C. Thompson, "Katrina's Hidden Race War," ProPublica/The Nation, 2008–2009 Democracy Now!, "Prominent Austin Activist Admits He Infiltrated RNC Protest Groups as FBI Informant" (January 6, 2009) Elena Poniatowska, Nothing, Nobody: The Voices of the Mexico City Earthquake (Temple University Press, 1995)

Tags: Hurricane Katrina, Common Ground Collective, Malik Rahim, mutual aid, disaster capitalism, Naomi Klein, Danziger Bridge, Algiers Point, New Orleans, Mexico City earthquake, brigadistas, state failure, anarchism

Show notes: Black Flags in the Flood: Katrina, Common Ground, and What the State Left to Drown. A Thousand Small Fires, Season 2, Episode 6

Hurricane Katrina wasn't a natural disaster so much as a test the state failed on camera, in real time — the anarchists and one longtime Black Panther who built the rescue the government didn't, and what happened to New Orleans once the water receded.

In this episode:

• Malik Rahim, Scott Crow, and the founding of Common Ground Collective
• The Algiers Point vigilante shootings and Donnell Herrington
• The Danziger Bridge shootings and the Gretna bridge blockade
• Common Ground's free clinic, 22,000 volunteers, six years of work
• Naomi Klein, disaster capitalism, and the firing of 7,500 teachers
• The demolition of New Orleans's "Big Four" public housing
• The 1985 Mexico City earthquake and the topos who dug survivors out by hand
• Brandon Darby's FBI informant betrayal, and what survived it anyway

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On August 9, 2014, a Ferguson, Missouri police officer shot and killed an unarmed eighteen-year-old named Michael Brown and left his body in the street for four hours. What happened next did not come from a headquarters. A rapper helped found Hands Up United. Three young women formed Millennial Activists United days later, because the loudest microphones in the street kept finding their way to men. Nobody asked anybody's permission first.

That organising sits alongside the founding of Black Lives Matter a year earlier by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, who insisted the movement was "leaderful, not leaderless." Ferguson organisers had already absorbed the lesson from COINTELPRO and the assassination of Fred Hampton, that a movement with no single leader has no throat for the state to reach for — the same structural instinct that shows up half a world away in Hong Kong's 2019 "Be Water" protests.

What decentralisation doesn't solve gets an honest accounting too: a foundation that quietly bought a $6 million house, and a media apparatus that, when a leaderless movement declined to supply a face, simply invented one anyway.

Further reading: Wesley Lowery, They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement (Little, Brown, 2016) "Whose Streets?" (2017), directed by Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis Alicia Garza, The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart (One World, 2020) Mariame Kaba, We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Haymarket Books, 2021) Ming Sho Ho, "Solidarity and Implications of a Leaderless Movement," Communist and Post-Communist Studies (on Hong Kong's 2019 protests)

Tags: Ferguson, Michael Brown, Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, decentralized organizing, leaderful movement, Hong Kong protests, Be Water, COINTELPRO, Mariame Kaba, We Charge Genocide, anarchism

Show notes: Ferguson and the Streets. A Thousand Small Fires, Season 2, Episode 5

Ferguson produced a horizontal, mutual-aid-driven uprising with no headquarters and no single leader, and then the press, the politicians, and eventually the market went looking for a face anyway. This is what happened when they found one.

In this episode:

• Hands Up United, Millennial Activists United, and the Organization for Black Struggle
• Water, milk, and legal observers: how a leaderless response actually organises itself
• Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and "leaderful, not leaderless"
• COINTELPRO, Fred Hampton, and why decentralisation is a strategy, not an accident
• Mariame Kaba, We Charge Genocide, and UN testimony that echoed a 1951 petition
• Hong Kong 2019 and the "Be Water" protests
• The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation's $6 million house
• DeRay Mckesson and the leader the media invented

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