Groups in multiple cities have already announced plans for building takeovers on this date. We urge people to partake in actions that match their capacity.

Momentum is on our side; resistance is building. The natural next step of the occupy movement is to create a political squatting movement that will be a base of power for the continued struggle against the state and capitalism.

-an affinity group

From The Seattle Times:

Three men were arrested late Friday night for unlawfully entering a house in the 1900 block of East Spruce Street and apparently damaging the interior with graffiti. They left garbage and open containers of food, and were cooking in the house with a portable gas stove, according to Seattle police.

Officers responded to a 911 caller who said multiple men and women were occupying the residence, which police said is under renovation. It is near a house at 23rd Avenue and East Alder Street that has been taken over by members of the Occupy Seattle movement since November.

Occupy Seattle protesters said those arrested in the Spruce Street house were also members of their group. About 30 of them gathered outside the house to voice support for those inside as police, including SWAT team officers, surrounded the house.

The protesters, who said their occupation of several houses around Seattle is a demonstration against foreclosures, repeatedly heckled the officers and chanted things like “this is what a police state looks like.”

Someone commented on the Central District News blog that people have been occupying that house since Dec. 12.

The suspects will be booked into King County Jail for charges including criminal trespassing, property damage and weapons violations.

Police raid home at 19th and Spruce, 3 alleged squatters arrested:

From Central District News:

2:44PM – UPDATE – Slog says they spokewith some of the former residents who told a slightly different story about the house occupation:

They held up the house key. An anonymous “elf” had come by the Occupy Seattle encampment at SCCC a few weeks ago and handed them the key and the address, they said. (A different anonymous donor also gave them a sailboat that they’ll begin using and painting in the spring.) Inside, they’d begun painting a forest landscape, and planned a waterfall down the staircase; they titled the house “Water.” They denied doing damage or being a haven for any kind of destructive activity and said they didn’t know of any complaints from neighbors. Instead, they saw the house as a home base for adding art to the immediate neighborhood. To that end, they’d completed a mural nearby yesterday, on Fir Street between 14th and 15th, on a garage wall offered to them by a resident. Also yesterday, another donor gave them furniture: a futon, bookcases.

Two of their fellow occupiers are still in jail, set to be released on bail this afternoon. The third person arrested was not part of the occupation and never had lived in the house, they say. He, along with about 50 other protesters against the raid, had come to show his support, and when he stepped onto the grass, he was arrested, the occupiers say. He is the one charged with weapons violations, they say: He had a pocket knife in his pants pocket, which he then offered to the police, for which they booked him on the weapons charge.

The Story Behind the Occupy Seattle Artist House Raided Last Night by a SWAT Team

Cammi Morgan with the key anonymously given to occupiers

From Slog:

As Central District News reported, police last night raided a house at 19th and Spruce, arresting three menfor charges including “Criminal Trespassing, Property Damage and weapons violations. Other criminal charges may be forthcoming.”

According to the SPD’s account, the raid was in response to a 911 call that afternoon that alerted them about “multiple male and female subjects who had unlawfully entered and occupied a residence. …Preliminary investigation indicates that the suspects entered the house and subsequently damaged the interior of the house with graffiti. They also left garbage, open containers of food, and were cooking inside the house on a portable, gas-operated stove.”

The house had been bought out of foreclosure in August by Mountaincrest Credit Union, according to CDN. The way the CDN story reads, the house was under renovation and the occupiers were interrupting progress and damaging it—and they’d broken in.

This mural on Fir Street between 14th and 15th was painted yesterday, by Drinkwater, the same Occupy artist who created the Rise & Decolonize banners for the recent port action.

But that story doesn’t match what I learned in a meeting just now with two of the 10 or 12 occupiers who had been in the house for about two weeks.

They held up the house key. An anonymous “elf” had come by the Occupy Seattle encampment at SCCC a few weeks ago and handed them the key and the address, they said. (A different anonymous donor also gave them a sailboat that they’ll begin using and painting in the spring.) Inside, they’d begun painting a forest landscape, and planned a waterfall down the staircase; they titled the house “Water.” They denied doing damage or being a haven for any kind of destructive activity and said they didn’t know of any complaints from neighbors. Instead, they saw the house as a home base for adding art to the immediate neighborhood. To that end, they’d completed a mural nearby yesterday, on Fir Street between 14th and 15th, on a garage wall offered to them by a resident. Also yesterday, another donor gave them furniture: a futon, bookcases.

Two of their fellow occupiers are still in jail, set to be released on bail this afternoon. The third person arrested was not part of the occupation and never had lived in the house, they say. He, along with about 50 other protesters against the raid, had come to show his support, and when he stepped onto the grass, he was arrested, the occupiers say. He is the one charged with weapons violations, they say: He had a pocket knife in his pants pocket, which he then offered to the police, for which they booked him on the weapons charge.

Another painting made by Drinkwater during the occupation at the house at 19th and Spruce.

The police did not give the squatters 72 hours eviction notice, and when Cammi Morgan, one of the occupiers, asked whether the police had any contact with the property owner, they said no, she says. It is unclear why the scenario at 19th and Spruce is so different from the other house where Occupy Seattle is squatting, at 23rd and Alder—where anarchist squatters have a court date December 28 and have had plenty of notice of removal.

“This house wasn’t about anti-police at all,” Morgan says. “Our intention was to show that we could give back to the community. It wasn’t about having a roof over our heads—we’re all pretty resourceful. We were excited to use the house as a pathway to create art for everyone. We’d offered to touch up the fading murals at the food bank at Saint Mary’s. I wanted to offer guitar lessons at the boys and girls club near there.”

Neil Vandervloed, creator of the cartoon hand signs that have been the most visible graphic for Occupy Seattle, was bringing community dinners cooked by his wife to the house each night.

“I’m really disappointed,” Vandervloed said. “Especially this type of reaction. There were something like 13 cop cars and 30 cops there, with assault rifles, shotguns, and handguns out and drawn—to arrest two artists on Christmas Eve. The neighbors made us hot coffee and stood in solidarity with us as the police raided.”

A scene from Occupy Atlanta's first housing takeover in Gwinnett, Ga.

WASHINGTON — In a tangible victory by the Occupy movement, Occupy Atlanta has successfully helped save an Iraq War veteran from foreclosure.

Activists began occupying Brigitte Walker’s home on Dec. 6. By the end of that first week, JPMorgan Chase, which owns her mortgage, began discussing with the activists and Walker the possibility of a loan modification. Chase’s modification offer became official Monday morning. The offer will result, Walker tells The Huffington Post, in hundreds per month in savings.

Before Occupy Atlanta set up its tents on her lawn, Chase had set an eviction date for Jan. 3. Now, Walker, who lives with her girlfriend and her two children, will get to stay in her Riverdale, Ga. home.

“I strongly believe Occupy Atlanta accelerated the process and helped save my home,” Walker says. “If it had not been for them standing up, I probably wouldn’t be having this happy ending.”

Chase did not return a request seeking comment.

Tim Franzen, an organizer with Occupy Atlanta, credits Walker and her story with bringing Chase to the bargaining table.

“Her story is compelling,” he tells HuffPost. “I think that’s one of the things that drew us to her home — just very clear injustice on a woman who had literally been injured in one of our wars and suffered legitimate hardship. When Chase suffered their hardship, they were just given all this money.”

Walker, 44, joined the Army in 1985 and had been among the first U.S. personnel to enter Iraq in February 2003. She witnessed fellow soldiers die and get maimed. She saw a civilian embedded with them get killed. “It was very nerve-wracking,” she says. “It makes you wonder if you’re going to survive.”

Walker’s tour in Iraq ended in May 2004 when the shock from mortar rounds crushed her spine.

Doctors had to put in titanium plates to reinforce her spine, which had nerve damage. Today her range of motion is limited, and she still experiences a lot of pain. She struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder. Loud noises and big crowds are difficult for her to face. Even the Fourth of July is a challenge.

She settled in Riverdale, a town outside of Atlanta, after purchasing a house in 2004 for $139,000. She has a brother who lives in the area and enjoyed it when she would visit him. “It seemed peaceful and quiet,” she says. “That’s what I needed.” Her active duty salary covered the mortgage.

The house, she says, means a lot to her. It was her last big purchase while she was still on active duty.

In 2007, the Army medically retired Walker against her wishes. “I thought I was going to rehab and come back,” she said. “But they told me I couldn’t stay in.” Walker now has to rely on a disability check.

After retiring from the Army, Walker used up her savings. She got rid of a car to help pay her monthly mortgage payment. “I didn’t have problems until they put me out of the military,” she said. “It was just overwhelming.”

By April of last year, she was starting to fall behind on her mortgage. Chase began foreclosure proceedings.

Occupy Atlanta did not crowd Walker’s lawn when they moved in. On the same day that Occupy Atlanta moved into Walker’s property, the activists had also begun occupying another family’s home in downtown Atlanta. Occupiers had deemed the Atlanta property in more imminent jeopardy and devoted more resources there. Walker had only a skeletal crew defending her turf. They never had more than eight people sleeping at the Walker home; on some nights, they had as few as three sleeping on site. At the peak, they had 15 working in Riverdale.

The handful of activists proved more than enough. Within the past two weeks, activists repeatedly canvased the neighborhood’s more than 240 homes, helped identify 15 abandoned properties, conducted graffiti removal, and helped spur a neighborhood watch program. In one instance, the activists said they recovered stolen goods stored in one abandoned home. “We knew where to look,” Franzen says. “It was one of the homes we had cleaned up already.” They started an Occupy Riverdale and began holding general assembly meetings in Walker’s garage.

A recent meeting in Walker’s backyard this past Saturday brought out about a dozen neighbors who addressed local issues like juvenile crime and those abandoned properties. Occupy Atlanta is hoping to convert one of the properties into a community center.

The vacancies have become Topic A. “Neighborhoods have all these empty shells,” Franzen says. “It holds the neighborhood hostage. Many had windows boarded up. Many have been havens for crime. Many have been empty for five years. They are empty because the banks make a little bit more on the insurance.”

The canvasing and birth of a suburban Occupy group replicated Occupy Atlanta’s efforts in Gwinnett County. In early November, Franzen and Co. had taken up residence with the Rorey family in an attempt to save their home from foreclosure. The effort proved unsuccessful but helped them identify other families in need.

The lessons learned from Gwinnett paid off in Riverdale, Franzen says. “This brings our protest out of the symbolic and into an actual, practical, tangible win,” he explains. “Wins like these are going to be so important. We don’t just want people to root for the symbolism of what we stand for. We want people to be empowered to save their own homes.”

Franzen says Occupy Atlanta would be looking to takeover another home at the beginning of the new year.

Walker, who hadn’t decorated the house for Christmas because of the foreclosure proceedings, now is looking for a tree. She has one in mind: “A live tree — one of them nice big fluffy ones that smell like pine. I don’t want no fake trees. I want it to be real.”

The Pope Squat building of 2002. Photo: The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty

By Mick Sweetman, Rabble.ca

It was a sweltering afternoon in late July 2002 when the armoured vehicles of the Toronto Police Emergency Task Force pulled up in front of our building. Quickly we started barricading the door with an old desk, if they were coming to kick us out we weren’t going to make it easy for them. We waited tensely as the cops approached the door with submachine guns drawn. Our crime? We dared to take over an abandoned building in the middle of a housing crisis. We all survived that early raid and were eventually allowed back into the building where we lived for the next three months — dubbing it the “Pope Squat” as we occupied it during the pontiff’s visit to Toronto.

Almost 10 years later, squatting is on the agenda again as Occupy activists who have been kicked out of public parks have started taking over empty buildings. At the end of November, the “Occupy Toronto squat team” occupied the basement of a city-owned building at 238 Queen Street West and asked for the building to be leased to them for 99 cents a year. They were evicted by police a mere eight hours after going public. The same problems that we faced a decade ago are still here and a new generation of activists are taking up the fight.

Under orders from Mayor Rob Ford to cut costs, the City of Toronto recently sold 706 homes owned by the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. Meanwhile, waiting lists for social housing in the greater Toronto area have hit 87,715 people according to a 2010 data request by the Ontario Non Profit Housing Association. A report from the Wellesley Institute notes that spending on social housing at the federal level was cut from 43 per cent to 29 per cent between 1989 and 2009 and one in eight Toronto households involuntarily pay 30 per cent or more of their income on housing.

Threats of in-your-face public squats returning as a regular protest tactic echoed off a large boarded-up Victorian house at 240 Sherbourne Street during a rally for housing on Nov. 26 organized by Stop the Cuts and Occupy Toronto. As activists unfurled a banner reading “Housing now! Occupy! Resist!” from the front railing, Liisa Schofield from Stop the Cuts held up a megaphone and said, “Today we’re talking about the idea of occupying housing. We want to build towards the potential of actually taking them over, holding them, and defending them.”

When the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) took over the Pope Squat it wasn’t the building itself that was the most important aspect but rather the work that went into winning people over in the neighbourhood. We produced 10,000 copies of a newspaper featuring articles on the housing crisis and how squatting should be legal and distributed it door-to-door. It was actually through talking with the staff of a Parkdale agency that we first found out about the old rooming house at 1510 King St. West that was abandoned by its owners after failing to pay taxes owed to the city. Ultimately, it was through building public support, not a make-shift barricade, that we were able to keep the squat as long as we did.

“The Pope Squat really rooted us as an entity in that neighbourhood. After the Pope Squat you saw a lot of the OCAP membership not only organizing in Parkdale but living in Parkdale.” said Mike DeRouches a long-time organizer with OCAP, “People made friends in the neighbourhood and began to see themselves as residents there. People who lived there their whole lives were drawn into organization and the work that OCAP was doing. The Pope Squat in Parkdale really deepened the work that we did in that neighbourhood.”

Activists in Quebec City also took over an abandoned city-owned building in 2002 demanding it be turned into social housing. Nicolas Lefebvre Legault, a coordinator with the Comité populaire Saint-Jean-Baptiste recalls, “One of things we learned the hard way was if you don’t know how to negotiate yourself someone else will, and you will end up betrayed and used by other people or groups. If you’re going to start a struggle then you need to go to the end, which means that if you’re occupying a public building then the landlord will eventually be the city. We just used the media, we never asked for a meeting, we just said ‘Here’s our demands, read them, that’s all.’ And very soon the housing co-op negotiated behind our backs.”

A few years after the squat was evicted, one of the buildings was torn down by the city but the planned housing project that was negotiated by the neighbouring co-operative never happened. So Legault helped organize a committee of people who formed a new housing co-operative and started a long-term campaign to build social housing on the land. It took six years but today Legault’s family of four live in an apartment in the 80-unit complex on the site of the squat, as do two former squatters. Tenants in 40 of the units pay 25 per cent of their income in rent and the rest of the units rent below the average market rates.

“If you really want to win something at some point you need to get in contact and negotiate with the competent authorities.” said Legault, “You can do that transparently and publicly, you don’t need to do it behind closed doors, you can do it democratically and up-front and that’s what we did. The campaign was less flashy than the squat but it actually won.”

The need to win actual housing is acutely felt by Brandon Gray who is busy scouting empty buildings for Occupy Toronto protesters to squat. Sitting in a gritty diner on Roncesvalles Avenue with classic rock playing over the tinny speakers, one thing that worries Gray is the fact that there’s no legal protection for squatters in Canada.

“That’s one reason some folks who have found some potential squats are keeping it quiet and are really worried that if they go public they’ll get them snatched away from them by the police.” said Gray as he warily stirs his coffee when asked where the buildings are located.

“It’s tough when you have potential squats that you don’t want to make public because they’ll be taken away and on the other hand you have people screaming at the general assembly that they’re freezing every night and they need housing right now.”

One idea floated by Gray was a dual strategy of secret and public squats. Some squats would be kept quiet for the roughly 30 people from Occupy Toronto who are homeless. Meanwhile, a public squat which has a much higher risk of being evicted would be used for general assemblies and to protest the sell-off of social housing.

Whether the housing occupations will increase as the temperature drops or start fresh in the spring isn’t clear right now. Regardless, as Occupy transforms itself from a movement of people sleeping in parks into one that ensures that everyone has a roof over their head, it’s vital that we take the lessons of past occupations and apply them to the ones to come.

Mick Sweetman is rabble.ca’s news intern. He is based in Toronto.

The Turritopsis Nutricula house (named after an immortal jellyfish), located on 23rd and Alder in the Central District of Seattle, has now been in existence for a month. Within the span of that same month, over a dozen squats have also sprung into existence in as diverse places as Bellevue and White Center. One of them has recently set up a screen printing studio. An informal network of people from Occupy Seattle consistently brings food and supplies to the house on 23rd and Alder. The food is free for everyone who comes through the house.

The Turritopsis Nutricula house is the only one of the squats that is public and open. The person who owns the building is a man named Denmark West, current executive at BET and former employee of Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and MTV. Because of his sympathy for the movement, he has taken his time in starting an eviction. However, the city has now threatened to fine this Harvard graduate 100 to 1000 dollars a day if he does not move to evict the residents of the house. It is unclear how long the next legal process can be drawn out, but regardless of legality, there is a core of over 100 people who would respond to an eviction.

From the upper floors of the house, one can look west and see the towers of Downtown rising up from behind the hills. Below the towers, cresting down the hills, is a view of the Central District. It is this area in particular that has witnessed an invasion of outsiders over the past 15 years. Looking westward from the top floor of the squat, one can see in the expansion of wealth and capital moving over the hills from the financial core of Downtown.

Recently, there has been a high-profile instance of graffiti in the Central District. An ugly cubist-fascist-brutalist style house had the superior wood of its fence tagged with the phrase GENTRIFICATION KILLS. This caused some controversy within the gentrification community. The last time there was graffiti in the neighborhood (several tags giving the time and date of the Port of Seattle shutdown), a scared man went on the news and read a statement of condemnation against Occupy Seattle and the hooligans who would dare to tag on a church. All in all, given the massive success of the port shutdown and the continued existence of the Turritopsis Nutricula, the people who throw a tantrum after every instance of graffiti are appearing more absurd to the neighborhood as time goes by. One of the massive banners within the march to the Port of Seattle now hangs on the outside wall of the squat.

Seattle is very wealthy. Just as in all major coastal cities, massive amounts of capital flow through the Port of Seattle every day. Viewing the towers of Downtown as luminous crystallizations of capital (which they are), the view from the top floor of the squat takes on a new meaning. There are multiple squats in existence and each one of them, whether public or clandestine, is an assault against the logic of the economic system that powers the lights of the skyscrapers.

Many have found that simply throwing oneself into an effort at mass-squatting has now born far more fruit than expected. The desire and the intention to squat was there among a diverse group of people that formed its bonds and trust within the chaos of the now imploded and destroyed Capital Hell Commune. The experiences of mass-squatting are now multiplying and the new bonds and trust and skills that will be developed amongst this new group of people during their efforts will be even more powerful. In addition to this, another group connected to Occupy Seattle is starting an anti-gentrification campaign in Capitol Hill against the never ending condos that continue to be built in the bohemian neighborhood. The barricades at the Port of Seattle and the previous takeover of a warehouse are collective experiences that continue to power everyone forward.

This author would like to encourage everyone push for similar efforts and initiatives. The interest is most likely prevalent in cities that have had large occupations. We believe all that is lacking is a committed effort to establish and maintain various squats and building occupations. If more cities make similar efforts, the idea of taking over property will continue to take root in the minds of others and if it becomes generalized, it will be far easier to maintain occupied houses along the west coast. In the meantime, we hope everyone can stumble upon more tactics and innovations that they can spread and share.

More photos here.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, land was not property. It was simply land. At its edges it met the sea. It was a soft, wet rug of leaves underfoot; it was snow-capped and loomed high above the grassy plains. Water wandered through it, sometimes rushing and plunging off cliffs. Animals lived on the land and water, exchanging energy with them in seemingly endless cycles of life and death, creation and destruction. Some of these animals were humans.

Today, after centuries of brutal warfare, land has been transformed into property. It is bought and sold, excavated, blown-up, built-upon, paved, and irrigated. A few square feet over here is more expensive than an acre over there. Some of it is called “Super Fund Site,” some is “nature preserve”; other parcels are called malls, schools, roads, farms, and houses. It’s all called property. Some of it is called “public property” but people are not really free to use it however they’d like.

“Public property” is really “state property” and the laws of the state delineate its proper use. Sometimes this means: no camping, singing, sleeping, blowing bubbles, writing with chalk, sitting on the ground, gardening, panhandling, smoking, or drinking alcohol. What is and is not allowed can change on a whim and is generally influenced by the desires of the wealthiest businesses and residents nearby.

In general, one must pay to inhabit the space one inhabits. Most exceptions to this rule are illegal and precarious. All liberated or reclaimed space, be it urban or rural, is hemmed in on all sides by private property. The people who occupy these free spaces are under constant threat of violent eviction and imprisonment by the faithful servants of the owning class, the guardians of private property: the police and military forces. Yet land struggles, slum rebellions, and housing occupations erupt and persist every day across the world. They persist because people’s freedom and dignity depend on their unmediated access to their most basic means of survival: our home, the earth.

From medieval heretical sects to the present-day indigenous Mapuche land struggle, instances of the dispossessed fighting like hell for a free life are countless. And when fighting has not been an option, people have struggled the retain the memory of freedom, passing stories and “old wive’s tales” to their children in secret, hoping that one day, the strength will come. In response, the elites have formed various state and proto-state institutions to criminalize the dispossessed and their traditions, to kill those who resist, and to steal whatever they can as fast as possible. Just as there can be no plantation without its slave-catchers and Fugitive Slave Acts, there can be no private property without the law the protects it, the police that enforce that law, the courts that sentence the lawbreakers, and the prisons that contain them.

All over the world and throughout history, people have attempted to create autonomous, egalitarian communities where land is held in common. Wherever this way of life existed before imperial/capitalist invasion, many people fiercely defended what they had in an attempt to avoid the imposition of waged labor or total annihilation. We are told that domination is human nature, but it seems that the urge to struggle against domination is its inseparable, enduring twin.

In Europe, the transition to capitalism saw peasants battling the nascent capitalist class and the enclosure of common lands. Many of these rebels were accused of evil sorcery, and hundreds of thousands of accused witches were murdered in a killing spree that spanned two centuries. “[The killings] spread fear, destroyed networks and resistance and did not stop until the population was sufficiently subordinated and the emerging state, capitalist social relations, and church had got their claws into the lives and psyches of the people.”* Later, after the Black Plague, a significant labor shortage occurred, which, coupled with a glut of unoccupied land, led to unprecedented peasant power and better living conditions for the lower classes. This caused a crisis in accumulation for the rich, who then turned their eyes towards the so-called “New World.”

European colonial expansion was a direct response to the this crisis. Conquistadors and “explorers” brought to the Americas their own conception of land: as an abundant resource to be exploited and a source of capital to be accumulated. The war on native people was necessary for the privatization of the land, just as the centuries of war against the European peasantry were necessary to ultimately enclose the commons and push the poor into wage labor.

In the Americas, indigenous ways of life were incompatible with the invaders’ desires for greater and greater wealth. Thus, the threat they represented had to be eliminated—first through mass murder, then through cultural genocide and assimilation. This giant land theft project, along with the enslavement of African people and the indentured servitude of poor Europeans, is what this country is built upon. Every nation has a similar history, and though the methods may have evolved, the process of enclosure continues to this day.

Private property is the foundation of capitalism and the state that protects it. It is upon this foundation that wage labor and the entire network of domination find their foothold. Our minds have been colonized for so long that many people accept private property as sacred law, believing it to be the safest harbor for personal freedom. But they are wrong.

To be clear, we are not opposed to personal property, to having personal possessions. We don’t want to share your underwear or your toothbrush. We do want the freedom to choose where and with whom we live, we want free access to what we need to survive, and, most importantly, we don’t want our choices to be limited by the laws of the market or the state. Put simply, we don’t want bosses, cops, prisons, banks, or landlords.

Throughout the history of the United States, the elites have bought off rebels and uncontrollable workers by giving them access to the fruits of plunder—land in the west, a place at the table, pineapples, bananas, the right to vote for their own masters. And when those fruits were rejected and rebels forged bonds of solidarity and multiracial alliances, the hangman climbed the scaffold and the prison cell doors slammed shut.

But they could never snuff us all out.

It seems that something new is happening at last, after these long years of heartbreak, half-measures, and defeat. More and more landless folk are going on the offensive, taking back what has been stolen from us. The roles the police and politicians play in protecting the interests of the rich are becoming clearer by the day. The state is dropping the pretense of taking care of even the middle class, and greater numbers of people are being forced to rely on one another. As such, the idea of stealing back one’s life is catching and spreading like wildfire. May we see the proliferation of free spaces ungoverned by the laws of state and capitalism and ever more daring acts of sabotage and self-defense!

* To learn more about the witch trials, patriarchy, and the birth of capitalism, check out “Burning Women” at ZineLibrary.info or Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici.

tidesofflame.wordpress.com
tidesofflame@riseup.net

The next submission deadline is January 13.

Turritopsis Nutricula is still inside the unfinished duplex at 23rd and Alder

Mainstream media report from Central District News:

Police kicked out five people squatting in a boarded-up house near 12th and Jefferson December 14. The people squatting in the house identified themselves as part of Occupy Seattle until their camp at Seattle Central Community College was closed this week.

The occupants left the house voluntarily, police said.

Here’s SPD’s take on the eviction:

“On December 14th at approximately 1:00 p.m. a property owner observed at least one subject entering a vacant and boarded up house in the 1200 block of East Jefferson Street. The witness knew that the residence was unoccupied and no one should be inside. He subsequently called 911.

“Upon arrival officers noted that the rear door handle of the house was unlocked and easily turned. While waiting for additional units to arrive officers discovered that the rear door had been locked. An officer relocated to the front of the house just as the occupants began to exit. Five subjects (three males and two females) voluntarily exited the house with their hands raised.

“The lead subject was holding a shiny brass key in his right hand and kept repeating, “we have the key”. All five subjects immediately identified themselves with the “Occupy Seattle” movement.

“Inside the house an officer located a brand new (still in the box) door lock/deadbolt assembly, which was submitted to evidence. When the officer I exited the house, one of the male subjects said, “Oh, hey, you found our lock set”. The subjects admitted to officers that they were intending to change the locks at this residence.

“Because officers were unable to establish contact with the legal property owner, SFD responded and secured the premise.

“Officers identified and released all five subjects with a request for charges by the city attorney’s office for trespassing.”

Meanwhile, the group at Turritopsis Nutricula are still living in the unfinished duplex at 23rd and Alder, nearly one month after taking the space over. While police and the Department of Planning and Development have signaled their intent to evict the occupiers there, Publicola reports that the property owner (Denmark West) has some concerns about liability should there be a police raid.

Other vacant houses could see groups of squatters moving in. An article in anarchist newspaper Tides of Flame (posted on the Puget Sound Anarchists website) has some helpful tips for those looking to occupy a vacant home.

Soon the idea of occupying one of the many vacant buildings in the area spread and people marched down 5th Ave towards an unoccupied building. The one at the base of the 4th Ave bridge with the boarded up windows and until yesterday had a bunch of street art on it. People gathered in the parking lot and Mic checked about the bold new step they were taking. Then with no theatrics of a broken window or nothing someone opened the door that was already unlocked. Many people hesitated about crossing the line of the door at first. Once it was deemed safe most people took a look inside. Food, water and first aid supplies were quickly organized. People amassed a pallet and dumpster barricade out front. It was later announced that the building was now the Rachael Corrie Community Center, named after slain Olympia peace activist Rachael Corrie.

More photos here.

Santa Cruz activists convert a vacant lot into a community garden. Credit: Creative Commons/Margaret Killjoy

By leila peachtree, The Precarious