Welcome to Spookstad

Spookstad is a publishing initiative that has emerged out of squatting collective Mokum Kraakt. We address current social struggles through culture and activism, looking for ways in which art and counter-culture can play a role in reclaiming people's right to the city.

Via this website, you can order our print publications, which we will ship to you (if you're in the EU). For worldwide shipping, order Take Back Mokum from our distributor, Idea Books.

Take Back Mokum

Take Back Mokum cover image

How to squat a house?
How to organise a rent strike?
How to fight gentrification?
How to take back the city?

Take Back Mokum portrays the housing struggle in Amsterdam today. It shows how the squatting movement intersects with queer activism, the struggle of undocumented migrants, with ecological issues, and grassroots right-to-the-city initiatives. Consisting of essays, interviews, visual stories and much more, it compiles the insights and practical knowledges of a large variety of activists and collectives from all over Amsterdam. Together, they represent a shared exploration of urban life lived autonomously.

Take Back Mokum is the English translation of Pak Mokum Terug, and was released on 17 October 2024.

Pak Mokum Terug

Pak Mokum Terug cover image

How to squat a building? How to organise a rent strike? How to fight gentrificaiton in your neighbourhood? This book, our first publication as Spookstad, centres these and other questions in a broad collection of essays, interviews, graphic stories, and more. It bundles the insights of many different activists and collectives from all of Amsterdam, who each in their own way contribute to the struggle for the right to the city. Written from an activist perspective, and full of radical alternatives, it offers the reader much-needed inspiration to become active themselves in the fight for an affordable and livable city.

Pak Mokum Terug is translated into English as Take Back Mokum. See above!