Eleven Years Without Rent: Daan on Anarchy as Organization
Details
- Interviewee: Daan
- Role: Community Member
- Community: ADM
- Date: 2026-01-14
- Language: en
Summary
Daan reflects on his 11 years at the ADM community, highlighting how he arrived through music and squatting networks. He discusses early challenges of integration, the significant cultural differences between free spaces, and how the community operates with minimal formal rules while fostering personal responsibility and self-reliance. The narrative emphasizes the unique governance of the ADM, where collaboration flourishes without commercial pressures, allowing individuals to thrive creatively.
Furthermore, Daan provides insight into the essence of anarchy as a form of natural organization, contrasting it with common misconceptions of chaos. He expresses hope for the future of ADM as a long-lasting space for creativity and communal support, advocating for similar alternative spaces that cultivate social value over economic viability.
Key quotes
Everybody pays their contribution to cover the utility bills.
If you have a guest, they can stay here for one month. After a month, you need to informally introduce the guest and then the community decides if they can stay longer.
There’s no desire for more rules. Everybody has their own life rules and how they want to live.
It’s a tough learning school because there is a lot of expectancy to become self-reliant, to fix your own things.
I think there are many more community ideas to experience.
I want many people to come and feel the ADM, to experience it.
Many talents are not economically viable but have huge social value.
When the workload to create a commercially successful product is not the baseline for starting a project, you can come up with amazingly fun and creative things because you don’t have to sell them.
I live in a group where the group doesn’t rule the individual and the individual doesn’t rule the group.
It feels like living in a tribe — a community that grew into one.
Transcript
**[Interviewer]:** Cool. So let's start with your name and maybe a short introduction of how did you get here at the beginning.
**[Daan]:** People know me as Daan and I came here a bit more than 11 years ago at the ADM terrain because I was playing music together with people I was living with, and also one of the people that was living here. We were playing in a band, and me and the community I was living in — this Living Group — had been quite active in squats in the city to provide space for social events, get-togethers, jam sessions for bands, parties, meetup groups, banner-painting sessions, and stuff for actions.
Then we came into a situation where we were in two squats that were evicted in quite short succession. The person that was living here at the ADM, who was playing in a band with us, said our Living Group could stay here for a little while. We arrived with a group of 15 people.
In principle, the ADM community does not absorb whole groups because they don't want to have groups within the group. That is prone to have group politics versus group politics. They showed us a lot about their experience.
We had experience about being in a free space, which was a building in the city with a relatively small group — a communal Living Group — compared to a village that's grown into a tribe. The size difference and amount of people creates a lot of organizational differences. Since all the groups that squat start using the term "free spaces," they all generate their own culture inside the free space of how they do things.
Getting here was a very interesting growing experience to have. First of all, I had to figure out that the definition I used for free space is not the same as other people use. So it was a very interesting way to meet the neighbors.
After the community asked us to break up the group, they invited a bunch of the people to stay and some others had to find other places to live, which was the invitation in the first place — you could stay here for a little while and reorient on where you’re going. That was a bit more than 11 years ago.
**[Interviewer]:** What did you think about the community in the early years, the early days?
**[Daan]:** When I arrived here, I was super young and naive about certain things. I couldn’t see the amount of work that had gone into this space and I couldn’t necessarily see what people had achieved before I got here, which was very interesting. I was like the young dog that needed to learn.
My naivety and arrogance — “you gotta do this, you gotta do that” — needed to be tempered. One of the main things I really learned was that the tendencies I had, just because you learn this in the system, were to come up with mechanisms and systems to set up what to do and how to plan things ahead, and come up with projects for the whole group. But that was not necessarily welcomed here.
This is a very unique space where the individual has a lot of leeway, a lot of freedom. This community does not have a core set of guidelines written down in stone. A lot of living communities start as project groups and have an intention statement or mission statement. This community didn’t have that. It was all implicit.
The best example is that there are, as far as I know, two main rules for the community:
Everybody pays their contribution to cover the utility bills.
If you have a guest, they can stay here for one month. After a month, you need to informally introduce the guest and then the community decides if they can stay longer.
These two basic rules make it so the community does not get abused by the individual. That’s the core idea. There’s no desire for more rules. Everybody has their own life rules and how they want to live. If you understand that you are infringing on someone’s personal freedom or space, and they say “my rule is this,” you need to become more sensitive and grow as an individual.
**[Interviewer]:** Can you give an example of a set of values or a conflict that is solved here in a different or more productive way than in mainstream society?
**[Daan]:** I don’t know if I can give an example about what’s more efficient.
I think it’s a playground and a learning ground where people get to experience how to respect other people’s freedom and also to stand up for yourself. It’s a tough learning school because there is a lot of expectancy to become self-reliant, to fix your own things.
What I experienced here is that once you show initiative, once you start moving forward, once you initiate the process, people are willing to help out. They’ll give you tips so you don’t make the same mistakes, but they encourage you to do it. You don’t end up as a consumer of each other’s services; you share skills and knowledge.
**[Interviewer]:** ADM has been organizing itself for over two decades. Can you talk about that in the context of anarchy?
**[Daan]:** Yes. The ADM is 21 years — or close to 21 years — of experience of organizing anarchy. But anarchy is a word that has gained a really negative connotation because everybody associates chaos with anarchy. They are not the same thing. They are literally two different words describing two different things.
A way for people to start talking about anarchy in the modern day is to use words about natural principles of organization because nature organizes itself in an anarchistic way. There is no ruler inside the garden deciding where the weeds are going to grow and where they’re not going to grow. They sort it out themselves.
It’s very interesting to experience some of these principles. I would love to share that for a lot of people to understand.
**[Interviewer]:** Maybe share a lesson you think ADM has to give to the world?
**[Daan]:** I’m really immersed in it, so it’s sometimes hard to have an outside perspective. But one story stands out.
I met a girl in town who was really enthusiastic about alternative spaces in Amsterdam. She started talking about this big alternative space in the West Harbor, full of people, and said she had visited wanting to help, but found it hard to connect with anyone. She thought it was messy, a waste of space, and couldn’t find a way to engage. Then she asked if I knew the place. I said, “I live there.”
What she told me was exactly how I felt when I arrived. I saw all this potential, all the possibilities, but the question is — who is going to do it?
There’s a group of very capable people here. When they are attracted to an idea, they will manifest it. They will form an organizational hierarchy, but it’s not about being at the top or being better or getting paid more.
I learned here that we live in a group where the group doesn’t rule the individual and the individual doesn’t rule the group. It feels like living in a tribe — a community that grew into one.
**[Interviewer]:** What hope do you have for the future — for ADM and for its effect on the outside world?
**[Daan]:** For the future of ADM, I wish it to have a very long life, and for it to remain in the context in which it grew — a tribe where there is space, where people don’t have to pay to be on planet Earth, only for the services they use.
I want people to be inspired by the idea that when the workload to create a commercially successful product is not the baseline for starting a project, you can come up with amazingly fun and creative things because you don’t have to sell them. You can share them. That starting position changes everything.
I want many people to come and feel the ADM, to experience it. I also want there to be more spaces like this, in the city and around the world, where people can find a context for their talents to truly develop. Many talents are not economically viable but have huge social value.
Globally, we are stuck looking at things through the economy, which comes from the Greek for “household.” Ecology, on the other hand, is the logic of doing the household. It’s not about nature, it’s about how to manage your house. I think there are many more community ideas to experience.