From Squat 2 Own

Adapted from Survival Without Rent

We will go through a step-by-step guide on how to find your building, what to look for, and the cheapest and easiest ways of making it comfortable. Once you are in the building, you will have to deal with the law eventually, so we have included a section covering some basics to keep the police from messing you up. We aim to show methods that you can use to live more comfortably and safely than on the street. We believe that — even if you have no money at all and don’t want to have anything to do with other people — you will still find these ideas useful. It may be less work and in some ways more comfortable to live in a shelter. However, we believe that if you can manage to take an empty building, you will have a home with more self-respect and more independence than just about anyone. You can get off the street or out of the shelter and make a decent home for yourself very simply. If you do, we hope that you will use whatever political, legal, or other means you can to keep the powers that be from making you homeless again.

You can improve a vacant lot without being busted for trespassing — insist on your right to squat on unused PUBLIC property.

Contents
How to Form a Group
Finding a Building and Investigating It
Getting In
Emergency Repairs
Light, Heat, and Fire Safety
Makeshift Toilets, Water, and Cooking
Legal Hassles

1. How to Form a Group

This first part is often the trickiest, since a bad, un-together group will do more damage to the project than the city government will in many cases. The people you live and work with are more important than the building that you chose. One of the most important aspects of a group is diversity. Every group has its own style: some are more political than others; some like to party; some like to be real business-like and legal; some are arty; others are just trying to get over and off the street. Whatever your group is like, you should keep in mind that not only do you have to relate to each other, you also have to relate to your community. If your neighborhood is all the same ethnic group as the members of your group, you don’t have to worry about diversity. But if your group has only token members of the main ethnic group in the neighborhood, then you could get yourself in some trouble.

A group of people living and working together who all agree on everything cannot exist: someone in the group is always going to have to shelve, give up or compromise on an idea. As you will be living in the unfamiliar condition of having no landlord, no way of calling in the police to settle your differences, you should give some thought to the kind of people you want to live with.

Once you’ve decided to squat, its up to you to make the first contact. How you do this depends on your situation. If you live in a welfare hotel or a shelter, you will have a readily-available supply of people who are in the same situation as you. After studying this book, the next time someone says to you, “God! I’m sick of this shit,” spring the idea on them. Sit down, have a coffee and go over the pros and cons of squatting. We’re sure you’re going to disagree with some of the things we say, just as sure as you will come up with ideas of your own (with enough energy and luck). Communicating with people in this way you will soon find yourself in a group which is seriously considering the option of squatting.

We feel that six adults is a big enough group to go to a building (figure out yourselves what “adult” means). If for some reason your group is only two or three people, don’t be discouraged. Go ahead with the project, since once a building is opened, within weeks you’ll have people coming around, looking for a place to stay.

If for some reason you happen to be isolated, that is, living alone in a hotel, or even in the park, and you can’t get enough people interested or organized, then don’t give up! Remember that this city is full of homeless people and all you need is a few of them to start your group. You could advertise on lamp posts and bulletin boards. For example: “Wanted: people interested in homesteading. Contact ____.” (Note: some squatters call themselves homesteaders when dealing with the public, but in many areas no one understands what this means.) The groups listed at the end of this book may help you make contracts. We have found that a set of rules is must for any new group. The rules should be discussed in detail and agreed upon by all concerned. They should be written down, since verbal agreements tend to get pretty vague after a few months.

Here is one set of house rules you can think about if you need ideas for your own:

* No hard drugs: they can be used as a pretext to throw everyone out of the building.
* No violence.
* No stealing.

Breaking any of these first three rules can get you thrown out of the squat, though everyone should remember that squatters have no legal right to throw anyone out or evict them.

Every member must work a minimum of hours per month on the common areas of the building. Jobs may include childcare and other non-construction work. What work people do depends on their abilities.

Every member must pay a certain amount per month to a construction fund for the common areas of the building: roof, stairs, plumbing, electricity, etc.

The construction funds should be deposited in a joint account, which requires at least two signatures to get money from. The name on the account should be something like “The 537 E. 5th St. Homestead Association.”

All new members must go through a trial period in which they work on the building with old members for a month, and can then be accepted as a member by agreement of all the other members.

We want to emphasize again that these rules are our own, and you will probably need to adapt them to your own circumstances. We also hope people will keep in mind the cruel wave of evictions that has made so many people homeless when they consider whether or not some offense is serious enough to throw a member out.

2. Finding a Building and Investigating It

The way to find a building is to simply walk around the streets with your eyes open. Try to concentrate on areas where people are already squatting or homesteading, as you will usually get less hassle from the neighbors if you squat there. Look at the buildings surrounding the one you’ve got your eye on.

If the surroundings look as if they’ve been renovated for well-off people, this may mean more hassles from neighbors and police. The neighbors can be dealt with just by talking to them and explaining your case. Give them some figures on how many people are homeless. Tell them who is in your group and how you came to be in the situation you’re in. Be realistic and honest. See what you can find out from them. Ask about the history of the building and whether or not any one has been using it since it was abandoned.

Try to get an idea if any community groups, politicians, gangs or real estate operators have an eye on the building. If so, figure out if they are for real and, if not, whether you will be able to take the building and keep them off your back. If you think they are for real, you might approach them and see if you can work together. You may also meet squatters who still have room in their buildings and are looking for new members.

Be polite, but be careful of people who are in too big a hurry to be your friend. Be particularly careful to avoid antagonizing any of your neighbors during the first month, that is, until you’ve established your residence. As for dealing with the police, refer to the chapter on legal hassles.

You will notice that some buildings have been painted with squares. These squares are painted by the city government to indicate the status of the building. An empty square indicates that the building is abandoned. A square with a slash in it indicates that fire fighters should be cautious entering the building. A square with an X in it indicates that the building is condemned. Don’t presume the building is not good: perfectly good buildings get condemned all the time.

It’s worth knowing whether a building is still privately owned or has been taken over by the city government. If the owner of a building shows up and wants you out, it is easier for him to get you evicted than it is for the city to get you out of one of their buildings.

Also, if it ever gets to the point that you want to hold on to the building you have squatted and stay there over a long term, it is possible to do so with city-owned buildings, but practically impossible with privately owned buildings. People on the block may know if the city owns a building or not, but to be sure you should check at city hall.

Take the exact address of the building with you. In the office, look first at the Lot and Block maps. Find the block number and the lot number of the address in which you’re interested. The records are kept according to these numbers and not according to addresses. When you have this information, check out the micro film for the building (you need ID to do this). When you’re reading the microfilm, go directly to the last few pages in the records to find the last transaction, because this will tell you who owns the building now. The city government ends up owning a building when the previous owner didn’t pay the taxes on it; the city takes the building (forecloses) in lieu of back taxes. So look for a statement of foreclosure.

Have a look at the exterior walls of the building you’re researching. You may have to wait until you’ve gotten inside before you can get to the back of the building, but what you need to look at is the same. Are there major holes in the masonry? If they can’t be filled or covered, they might be significant structural defects. Are there signs of bulging or sagging? Are there wide gaps where the mortar joints should be? If the answer is “Yes” to any of these questions, find another building to squat.

Is the fire escape pulling loose from the wall? Is it falling apart? Is the cornice (the part that sticks out from the face of the building along the roof) broken apart and dangling? If the answer to any of these questions is “Yes,” you’ve got dangers to people walking on the sidewalk in front of the building, and so you will have to fix these problems. But remember: though a cornice is just a decorative frill (and so can be removed or tied back so it won’t fall), its deterioration can be a sign of overall deterioration. A dangerous cornice is a building code violation and can get your squat closed down.

OK, so at this point you’ve got your eye on a certain building and, from the outside, it doesn’t look too bad. Now for a look inside. To be on the safe side as far as getting hassled goes, it may be best to go in the evening when it is dark. But it may be that, after familiarizing yourself with the neighborhood, you feel comfortable with entering the building during the daytime. Either way, bring a strong flashlight and be very careful where you step and what you hold onto. It’s very easy — if you are not watching what you are doing — to step through a rotted floorboard or lose your balance when a piece of broken window frame comes loose in your hand. The riskiest part of an abandoned building is usually at the top, because there are usually some bad leaks in the roof that will cause rot. But dangers can be found aplenty on the lower floors, too: vandalism and fire damage can be found anywhere in a building, and years of leakage will result in lower-floor rot as well.

Normally the easiest way in is through the back. You can climb up the fire escape and go in a window. Even if the back is bricked up, you can get to the roof, and from there it is often easy to find a way in. Now, say there’s no way into the back — what do you do? You’re going to need about five people and a 12-foot ladder. Two people are needed as lookouts; one person holds the ladder while the remaining two enter the building. It’s always useful to have one person with you who has some knowledge of old buildings, so if no one in your group knows old buildings, you should get someone who does to help out.

If you are unfortunate enough to choose a building that is totally bricked up, your only way in will probably be on the roof. If you can’t get up to the roof, you will have to chisel out a couple of concrete blocks from a window and get in through the opening you’ve created. We recommend that as few people as possible do this so that too much attention isn’t attracted.

It is easy to get in if you can get friendly with someone who lives next door: you can get onto the roof of the building you’re interested in through this person’s building.

So! You’re finally inside and ready to inspect the building. It will almost certainly look and smell like shit: it will be full of old rotting furniture, rubble and ceilings that have fallen down all over the place. Some apartments in the building will be burnt out. Don’t be discouraged by any of this, it’s all quite normal.

Inspect the roof. Check it for holes. Look for missing, burnt or rotted joists, the timbers that support roofs and floors. Rot can be tested by sticking a knife in the lumber as far as it will go. When checking for rot, find a spot where the leaking water soaks in and doesn’t dry up right away. Up to an inch may be rotted or burnt, and the timbers might still be OK. The ends of the joists can suffer a lot of deterioration without endangering the structure, but the joists in the middle cannot be weakened without risking collapse. Check the parapet walls around the roof to see if (or how badly) they are falling apart and what will need to be done to them to make them safe.

Inspect the stairs. If you’re lucky, there will be nothing wrong with the stairs except for some missing steps. If the building has no staircase at all, you will have a lot of work to do, perhaps too much. Until you are able to replace the stairs, you will have to use the fire escape or a ladder in place of stairs. There are enough buildings with stairs around that you may be wasting your time on one that doesn’t have any staircase at all. One squat in NYC was evacuated by the Fire Department for not having stairs. Eviction by DOH (Department of Housing, which is typically the landlord of city-owned buildings) can be delayed by legal means for a long time. But evacuation by the city’s Fire, Health or Buildings Departments is swift and hard to contest.

Inspect the floor joists. These are the timbers that support the floors. Make note where they are missing or damaged. If the floors are sloping more than an inch or so, this may mean that the structure has shifted so much that it has become dangerous. If timbers are dangerously damaged, they can be braced by scavenged lumber (four-by-fours are best).

Inspect the sewer pipes. The toilets will typically be smashed or missing, but the water pipes may be in salvageable condition. Follow the waste pipes through the building down to the basement, checking for holes along the way. Look for holes in the walls which DOH, upon taking over the building, may have made in order to damage the pipes and thereby discourage squatters. Copper water pipes will certainly have been stripped, but if there were steel pipes originally, they may still be in place and useable. If your plumbing is in OK condition, you can probably get water running pretty soon. Otherwise you can get water from a fire hydrant, which can be opened with a pipe wrench.

Inspect the front door. If the front of the building has been sealed with concrete blocks, make sure that the door or any windows are ready to use before you knock the blocks out. If there is already a working door you can use or if you have to knock a hole in the block wall and install a door in the opening (see below), make sure you are ready to keep the building secured once you have opened it and made your use of the building public.

3. Getting In

Now, you’re ready to move in. If the area you’re in is run down, it’s possible that no one will bother you while you smash out the concrete blocks. With a twelve-pound sledge hammer, a door-sized opening can take as few as seven and a half minutes to create. Quickly get all the broken blocks off the sidewalk and into the building; sweep up to remove signs of your work. You may want to keep a low profile and do this while lookouts watch for the cops, or bring along lots of friends and supporters, and dare the cops to intervene. It is also possible, and it may be preferable, to work from the inside out, to chisel the blocks out discreetly, one by one.

You should have a door and frame prepared to set into the new opening. Measure and mark the hole you’ve opened with your new door in mind. In any case, work quickly and as quietly as possible. Once inside, unless there is a useable door in place, either set up a barricade or install a door. Steel door frames and doors are easily scavenged from demolition or rehab sites. Unless you’re pretty strong, it will take two people to carry a steel door or a cart to roll it on.

To install the front door, set the frame in the opening and fill in around the edges with pieces of broken blocks and some mortar (a couple of bags of mortar mix should be enough). Make certain that the bottom of the door frame is exactly as wide as the top when it is set in place. Otherwise the door won’t work. Use a board that has been cut to exactly the right width to keep the correct space at the bottom of the frame while it is being installed. Make sure the frame is straight up and down and not crooked, bent or twisted out of line in the opening. If the frame you have is bent, you can straighten it with a hammer, laying it on the pavement and using a block of wood to protect it from getting dented up too much.

Install the frame so that the door will open into the building. There are steel tabs on the inside of the door frame that are meant to be bent out so that they will anchor the frame into the mortar joints in the block wall. As you fill in the opening around the door frame with mortar and block, be sure that the inside of the frame itself is filled with mortar and block pieces, because the frame is not solid by itself. If you’re not able to afford or install a heavy duty bolt lock on the door, a heavy chain and a padlock will do the trick. Pass the chain through a hole in the door and around the door frame.

Paint the name of your group and your address on the door. For the example: “The 537 East Fifth Street Homestead Association and Neighborhood Improvement Committee.” Do all the work that you can in advance so that on your opening day you can simply set your door, lock and door frame in place all in one go.

If this is more than you can manage right away, you’ll need to rig up some sort of barricade for the doorway and have someone inside at all times to let others in and out. You should not leave your building unattended in any case, especially right after you move in. It is good to have someone on hand to watch the place when most people are out during the day. The risk from police and other evildoers is high right after the building is occupied. Don’t let anyone in that you’re not sure about; don’t let any cops or city officials in under any circumstances unless they have a warrant. (See the legal section for what to do if the police do have a warrant.) Keep the door closed and locked at all times, don’t sit out on your stoop with the door unlocked or open. Needless to say, you’re in the building illegally, and so there is no need to make your front door an open invitation to cops and thieves.

Nothing is worse than coming home to find that your tools, sleeping bags and heaters have been ripped off — except maybe walking upstairs to your apartment and meeting a junk-sick thief running downstairs with your radio in one hand and a knife in the other.

Your security depends on making it so difficult to enter your building that most thieves will pass it up. If your building looks funky and people on the street can see that only poor people live there, you won’t need as much security. You should keep your ground floor windows barred or sealed with concrete block or even plywood. Eliminate hand and footholds by knocking them off or by setting nails or broken glass in masonry cement or roofing cement. More of the same or coiled barbed wire around the base of the fire escape and continuing across the face of the building at the second floor level will help to deter climbers. Grates on windows facing the fire escape are good, but it will take a lot of them to do your whole building. It might be good enough to bolt full sheets of plywood to the outside of the fire escape railing on the second floor. This will make a wall around the fire escape too high to climb over. You can top it off with a coil of barbed wire or nails. The roof is another point of entry, so be sure that the penthouse door is secured.

Note well that having a front door with a lock, beds and other basics such as a kitchen is good for your own well-being, but it is also important in establishing that you are a resident and not a trespasser. It may seem like a small point, but it is actually quite important. It can make the difference between getting run out of the building by the cops if they feel like doing it and getting them to back down so that they will have to wait until DOH manages to go through the lengthy proceedings necessary to legally evict you.

4. Emergency Repairs

In most cases, the most important repair that abandoned buildings need is work on the roof, which will almost certainly leak. The roof will typically have a large hole or two in it caused by a fire, fire fighters or vandals from the city government. For your own comfort, it may only be necessary to locate a room into which there is no leakage. However, a building in which the roof leaks will have lots of spaces in which no one will be able to live. You want to avoid squatting in a building such as this, because the more people you have living in your building, the better your chances of resisting eviction and protecting yourself against hassles from the city and from thieves and drug dealers. The more people you have, the more comfortable and secure you can make your place.

The long-term maintenance of a building depends more on the roof than on any other single thing. If the roof is not maintained, it will eventually rot until it collapses. The floors will go and, sooner or later, the exterior walls will collapse. Then what you got is a pile of useless, rotten timber and broken masonry — which will cost the city a lot of money to clear out and turn into a vacant lot. Unfortunately, letting abandoned buildings rot until they collapse is just what cities are doing with the buildings it owns. Don’t let your city get away with it!

Clear the roof of any debris and sweep it clean. Patch the holes. You can lay 5/8-inch-thick plywood boards over them. Try using mineralized felt paper and roofing tar as a way of patching holes. If your roof is so far gone that you have to cover it entirely, get someone who works as a roofer to help you out. To do this kind of work, you should be able to get the materials donated by local charitable groups or organizations.

[Note: if you have some work to get done, its helpful to write your plans down on paper, step by step, and keep track of any changes you make in the plans as you work. Make drawings or diagrams that describe and show how to do the jobs that are hard to explain in words; they will make it easier to organize and help get people involved in the project. Books such as the Reader's Digest Complete Do-it-Yourself Manual or Carpentry and Construction are handy for dealing with construction problems and can be found in the public libraries. We've found that books dealing specifically with roofing, electrical work, plumbing and other "specialized" trades are also easily obtained.]

If repairing the roof is too big a project to take on right away, you can use polyethylene plastic sheeting to protect the roof temporarily. Get a hundred-foot roll of 4 mil plastic that is twenty feet wide, and a couple of buckets of flashing cement. (Be sure to get flashing cement, because other kinds of roofing tar won’t do the trick.) Begin by clearing and sweeping the surface of the roof clean. Fill or cover up all the holes. Make sure that the roof drain is clear and unclogged at all times. Unroll the plastic so that the entire roof is covered. If you have to cut the plastic to cover the entire roof evenly, make sure the lap joints where the edges of the plastic meet each other are perfectly sealed with flashing cement, leaving not even the smallest gap. Drape the ends of the plastic over the parapet walls on all four sides. Lay bricks or boards on top of the plastic so that the wind doesn’t blow it around. Fasten the ends to the walls with the flashing cement or with boards that have nails driven in to the mortar joints between the brick in the parapets.

This is a somewhat temporary protection, but if you do a good job, it should make it through the winter. But summer heat will certainly cook the plastic until it breaks apart. To make your plastic roof a bit more permanent, spread flashing cement over the entire surface of the roof before laying the plastic down. Make sure that there are no bubbles in the plastic and that all of the plastic is stuck to the cement below.

If you have leftover plastic, you can use it to seal the places where window are missing. Use lath, which is the thin slat with which plaster walls used to be made, to nail the plastic to the window frame or staple it up using strips of cardboard as reinforcement. You can also use leftover plastic to make tents for your living areas: these can be really handy in the cold winter months.

Shore the place up. Close off any areas of the building where the floor or the roof is unsafe. Then if you can’t replace, repair or reinforce the damaged timbers, you can brace them with four-by-fours or pairs of two-by-fours that have been nailed together. Be sure to brace the damaged timber against something solid; otherwise you’re just making the problem worse. The brace must ultimately be supported by a bearing wall or footing. You can brace down to a joist if it’s near a load-bearing wall.

You can generally assume that brick, block, or stone exterior walls are load-bearing walls and that interior walls (studs with lath and plaster) are probably not. However, just because a wall is not a load-bearing wall doesn’t mean you can take it out safely. Even if it is only a partition wall it can’t be safely removed if there are walls in the corresponding places on the floors above it. Even if there is no wall above the one you’re thinking of removing, you have to make certain that the floor joists above are not being supported by or, as a result of settling, come to rest upon it.

Missing stair steps can be temporarily replaced with wooden ones. If there’s no other way to secure them in place, drive nails through the top and then go underneath and bend the nails’ tips over so that they will hook on to the steel part of the stairway. Cover holes in the floor with plywood until you can get around to replacing the missing flooring.

Holes in sewage pipes can be patched by a variety of methods, including fiberglass, auto body filler with window screen, and even roofing cement. The waste pipes have already been discussed: they should be tested to see if they will drain but not leak. Until you’ve got the pipes working, you’ll have to dump your piss and other waste waters in the storm sewer in the street. Do not dump your waste waters out the window!

To remove debris, start at the top of your building and work down. Don’t throw stuff out of upper story windows, because you may draw justified complaints and hassles from your neighbors. Since you may not be able to get the kind of tube that contractors use to get stuff down from the upper floors to the street, you may have to take up the flooring in the same corner on each floor and throw the unwanted stuff down through the holes. If you use the through-the-floor method, hang a curtain of plastic that stretches from floor to ceiling on each of the affected floors, so that dust or asbestos particles won’t spread all over the place. Once at the ground floor, the debris can be chucked out the back of the building or bagged and taken out for bulk refuse collection by the Sanitation Department. (It might take quite a few tries to get a response from Sanitation; it depends on who you talk to. When you find someone who is helpful, get their name and only deal with them in the future.)

Asbestos causes cancer and other serious diseases. There is no safe level of exposure to asbestos fibers. Studies of exposure to asbestos suggest that as little as one day can result in significant damage to the respiratory system and disease. But the health risks of asbestos come into play only if the fibers are released from the material and enter the air. If the material is in excellent condition and not in a living area, leave it alone. A greater hazard can be created than originally existed if the asbestos is removed by inexperienced people. Only trained asbestos abatement professionals should remove materials containing asbestos, which is typically found in boiler and pipe insulation. It may also be found in radiator covers, fire-proof doors and certain kinds of light-weight construction blocks.

If you see insulation that is not fiberglass, that is ripped, split, ragged or powdery looking (don’t touch it!), you should get the material tested for asbestos. Contact the White Lung Association (http://www.whitelung.org/) and arrange to have a sample tested. The WLA also gives courses in asbestos removal.

If for some reason you must handle asbestos, be sure to wear disposable gloves and a respirator that has been approved for use with asbestos. A half-face respirator equipped with a High Efficiency Particulate Absolute filter will be sufficient. Keep the asbestos wet. The weight of the water will keep the asbestos particles from becoming air-borne.

Note: it’s a good idea to take photographs or shoot videotape of the work you have done on the building, even if it seems as if you are documenting crimes you have committed. You’re not! Save your receipts for any materials you buy. Keep records of the jobs you did and the hours (or weeks or months) it took you and your group to do them. All of this is documentation that you are a homesteader and not a trespasser, a vagrant or a drifter (common stereotypes for squatters).

5. Light, Heat, and Fire Safety

Candles are the easiest way to provide light. The best kind are in tall glass containers, the kind that often have pictures of saints or magic charms on them. They last a long time and are not easily blown out. The cold does not easily shatter them. Somewhat better light can be provided by old-fashioned kerosene lamps. If you use them, trim your wicks now and then to make the brightest flame and least smoke. Coleman lanterns generate light as bright as incandescent light. The kerosene type is safer than the gasoline ones, although they take longer to light. Kerosene is generally cheaper and easier to get than white gas.

We think kerosene heaters — though they can be messy and fire hazards — are a practical and economical means of heating. DO NOT store your kerosene in rooms in which heaters will be operated and never go to sleep with the heater on.

Get a wood stove if you can, because it can be a very cheap source of heat. Wood stoves are also safer and healthier than kerosene heaters. If you can’t find one, you can make one from a discarded steel drum.

Start by making two holes in the drum: one to put the wood in (this one will need a door to keep smoke from backing out into the air), and another for the smoke to go out and into a flue pipe that you will have to make. The easiest way to cut these two holes is to drill a pivot hole to start each new cut, and then make your cuts using a jig saw with a sheet-metal blade. If there is no way for you to make use of power tools, you could even cut the holes using a cold chisel. The hole for the flue must be measured to fit the flue pipe: four or five inches in diameter seems good. The swinging door will have to be attached by hinges that are located along the bottom of the opening. The door will also have to be lockable.

A damper will allow you to control how fast the fire burns without opening and closing the door (another method of controlling the blaze). A damper can be made by cutting a round piece of sheet metal slightly less than the diameter of the flue. Punch two holes on opposite ends from each other in the flue pipe. Stick a piece of heavy wire through the holes and attach the round piece to it. When the round piece is in the up-and-down position it allows the smoke through freely and thus stokes the fire; the more you turn it toward the side-to-side position it restricts the flow of smoke and thus the pace of the blaze.

You will need to set the stove on some kind of support that will keep it well above floor level. You can use anything you can find — bricks, old bed frames, etc. — as long as it won’t burn or char. Never burn painted, shellacked or treated wood in your stoves: they give off poisonous fumes and gases.

Since complaints can be made to the fire department about smoke coming from your squat, it is important that the smoke from your stove run out of a proper flue or chimney. If your building has a chimney, make sure it is clear of obstructions. To see if the chimney is clear, you can put a flashlight in one of the flue holes, take yourself up to the roof and look down to see if you can see the light. You can locate the chimney stack in your apartment because it sticks out into the room from the wall on either side of it. The hole for the flue in the chimney may be open or bricked up or completely hidden by plaster or sheet rock. If so, just chop it open with a hammer.

If you don’t have a chimney or the chimney is blocked and you can’t clear it, then you’ll have to chop a flue hole in the wall or run the flue pipe out a window. In either case, the flue pipe should go all the way up and past the roof by five feet.

Fire extinguishers and smoke alarms are well worth having for your own safety as well as in case any city officials manage to get inside your building and have a chance to look around for code violations. Place the smoke alarms so that the stoves don’t set them off continually. Keep your place well ventilated no matter how you heat it in the winter, and never leave a fire or a heater unattended.

Keep passages, halls, stairs and fire escapes clear of obstructions. Place fire extinguishers or buckets of sand or water on every floor and in locations where they can be easily reached. Form an arson watch. A round-the-clock fire and safety watch may be advisable for your situation. If so, there may be already an arson watch group or community safety patrol of some sort in your neighborhood. These organizations are well worth joining or starting yourself with other squatters and/or with like-minded tenants in the area.

6. Makeshift Toilets, Water, and Cooking

Use buckets or empty bottles for waste waters. Keep the buckets from getting foul by never putting toilet paper in them and by rinsing them with lime or a disinfectant. Construction sites are easy sources of empty five gallon buckets. As far as shitting goes, do it on a few sheets of the New York Times, wrap it up, put it in a plastic bag and throw the bag into a trash can on the street. To avoid unnecessary hassles, do not use the trash cans owned by your neighbors. If you let your place get unsanitary, you can have complaints lodged against you by the Health Department, which will not only get you thrown out in a big hurry, but will also make hassles for other squatters.

Keep your food hanging in a bag or on a shelf hanging by wire so that mice and bugs and cats can’t get to it. Do the same for your garbage and dispose of it every day. This way you won’t get any mice or bugs and your cats will only eat what they are supposed to.

To make an alcohol stove start with an empty can. Loosely pack it with cloth: gauze bandage is best. You will need something to set the can on so it doesn’t rest directly on the burner. You can place a grill (an old refrigerator shelf will do nicely) on top of some bricks. Or you can place the burner can inside a larger one. For example, you could put a beer can inside of a coffee can. (Your pot would then sit on top of the coffee can.) The larger can should have holes punched around the top with a can opener, so that when you put a pot on top the burner won’t be sealed off from the air. Punch holes around the bottom rim of the can to help the flow of air. You may find that holes around the top of the burner can are also needed. To fire it up, pour rubbing alcohol on the cloth until it is soaked and then light it. The stove should burn for about 15 minutes. (Never refuel while its still burning, and never use anything stronger than 70% isopropyl alcohol as fuel.) Enclose the whole thing in a metal reflector to keep the heat in and cut down on drafts. Otherwise, it’ll take forever to get anything hot. If water accumulates in the gauze, just take it out and squeeze it dry.

You might consider using propane camp stoves with large tanks and hoses attached as your food-cooking device. They are very practical and economical. You might consider using an ordinary gas stove: they are easy to find on the street, and you can put propane jets on them to make them work better. But you should be careful that the one you’re using doesn’t leak. A backpack stove is handy for traveling light and is small enough to hide easily in a building in which there are security problems.

To make your squatted apartment space more comfortable, contact the Red Cross and the local churches. They might well give you blankets or sell them to you cheap. When the weather gets very cold, a tent around your bed will really make a difference. Insulation can be made by putting rugs or thick cloth on the floors, walls and ceilings. If no one is living above you, you can fill that room with garbage bags filled with newspapers. Newspapers can also be used for wallpaper. Such wallpaper — especially if it is painted over — will reduce the problem of old paint or plaster that has begun to flake off.

Windows and panes can be scavenged from construction sites at which buildings are being renovated, and from window suppliers that leave unwanted stuff out on the street. Doors can be obtained the same way.

Electricity, water and other services can all be provided by a variety of methods that you will be able to discover by using your imagination and staying in contact with other squatters. Getting hooked up with the public utilities providers can be a way of strengthening your case that you are community members and not trespassers.

7. Legal Hassles

Every effort you can make to show that you have established as normal as possible a residence will be an advantage in dealing with the law. Operate on the assumption that you are a law-abiding citizen and a legal tenant of the building in which you are squatting until it has been decided otherwise in a court of law. Use your address freely, and get library cards, swimming cards and other forms of ID that have your address on it.

Have mail sent to you at your building. This will help you prove that you live there and that you aren’t breaking and entering or trespassing. Put your address on the front door and make a mail slot in it. Find out when mail is delivered to your street and be there when the mail carrier comes by. Explain that you are living here and that you will be receiving mail at this location. Sometimes the carriers will be uncooperative, but usually they will be friendly if you are friendly. If friendliness doesn’t work, it might be that the carrier you’ve talked to isn’t the regular one, or that several carriers take turns delivering mail to your street and thus don’t feel any inclination to help you out. Try a different mail carrier.

If nothing else works, try the postmaster at the office for your route. He or she might tell you that there has to be a mailbox locked and unlocked by keys for the carriers to deliver mail, or that you are not a legal tenant, or that you don’t own the building, blah blah blah. Point out as politely as you can that the building isn’t a multiple dwelling unit, that it is undergoing renovation at the moment, and that the addresses on the letters that will be sent to the people who are living there will not have separate apartment numbers on them. Tell the postmaster that you are living there and (more to the point) have not been evicted yet, so your legal status as a tenant simply has not been decided in court as of yet. Tell that bureaucrat that your tenancy is a civil matter between you and the City, and not a criminal matter involving the federal government and your right to receive your mail.

If nothing works, it may actually enable you to get an eviction case thrown out of court. If you cannot get any of your mail because of the Post Office’s refusals to deliver it, you literally can’t be served with an eviction notice, which typically arrives by mail and is not served in person!

If it is not delivered to your building, your mail will be held for you at the local post office. Once picked up, such mail can still serve as proof of residence.

Never sign for or accept any registered or certified mail until you are absolutely sure it is not from the city government. It could be a summons or an eviction notice!

There is something to be said for putting wild shapes, slogans and colors on the front of your squat: it underlines the changes that the building is going through and shows that you are proud of them and of your role in bringing about these changes. There is also something to be said for making the front of your building look as much like an ordinary building as possible. In either case, working diligently and productively on the front will give your neighbors a chance to size you up, to come out and talk to you. They will respect you when they see you working on your place.

Go to block association meetings and seek their support. Although the members of the block association may be merchants and professionals, they may want to help you if they see that you are making good use of the building and that you are not housing or attracting drug dealers, users, pimps or prostitutes. If there is no block association, you may want to start one. You can rally your neighbors by pointing out that both squatters (or homesteaders) and rent-paying tenants want to stop the twin-headed monster of benign neglect and gentrification. Once you’ve got your block association together you can go to your local Community Board to seek their support as well. Its also worthwhile to check out whatever housing and tenants’ organizations are active in your neighborhood.

If you are confronted by the police or officials from the Department of Housing you have a right to all the protections inherent in the eviction process. You can ask for a postponement of your case because you haven’t been able to get a lawyer, or because your lawyer has had insufficient time to prepare your case or cannot appear in court the day your case is to be heard. And so on. In the meantime, you’re still living in your building. Since DOH is often bogged down in lengthy eviction proceedings — some of which it loses — this bureaucracy may very well try to get other city departments to throw you out.

You cannot be denied welfare benefits because you are a squatter. It is illegal for the Bureau of Child Welfare to take your children from you on the grounds that you are a squatter. Besides, plenty of people pay rent to live in apartments that are in terrible condition; these people’s children are not taken from them because of these conditions! Persistence and good legal advice will be your best weapons as you try to make sure your rights are being respected and are not being arbitrarily violated.

* Don’t let anyone from the city government or the police department into your building, even if they claim they have a warrant. If they do, they can slip it through the mail slot or under the door so you can read it first.

* Don’t identify yourself or answer any questions through the door.

If you do receive a legal notice with your name on it, don’t miss the court date unless you’ve cleared it with your lawyer or an informed housing activist in advance. If the notice doesn’t have your name on it or says “Resident” or “John Doe” or something, definitely do not answer it. It most likely shows that the DOH has not yet made a really serious attempt to find out who each and every one of your group is, and that they are trying to get an easy score with the “Anyone living at this address” bullshit. But you should take the notice to a tenants’ rights organizer or housing lawyer for advice, and then take it to the clerk of the court’s office so that you can put it on record that nobody with those names live at your building.

If the people in your building start getting eviction notices, be sure that there is always someone living with you (who has proof of residence) who hasn’t been named in a notice. In this way, if it comes down to an eviction, DOH won’t be able to seal the building since there will still be someone living there that they can’t evict yet. Once the “eviction-minus-one” is over and the cops are gone, you can move back in without problem.

If the authorities have served you with notice that the building is going to be evacuated for reasons of public safety, you’ll have to come up with a detailed plan that shows how you you are going to repair the problem. You will no doubt need the help of professionals to do this, and you’ll their help right away, for you’ve got only a few days to get a judge to issue a stay of execution order.

At the first sign of trouble, someone should be using your “Eviction-Watch List” to contact all your friends and supporters, so that as many witnesses are on the scene as possible. This will keep the cops on their toes and “best behavior,” that is, slightly less likely to start beating people up. If the cops get through your front door, write down their badge numbers and names, demand to see their identification, etc. etc. Have witnesses to absolutely everything. Videotape, audio tape and photograph whenever possible. You have a legal right to make a record of all that takes place. If the cops ask to speak to your leaders, tell them you don’t have any. If they ask “Who is in charge?” or if they ask if you are in charge, tell them “Nobody is in charge.” Never admit to having leaders, even if you do, and you will (like it or not). At all times, be firm and reasonable with the cops unless you are ready for a fight.

Anarchists in the Occupation Movement 2009-2011

Since the first day that Zuccotti Park was occupied there has been a shadowy figure haunting Occupy Wall Street. The anarchist. Who is this anarchist? What role has she played in the Occupy Movement? What would Occupy be without him?

This is a book where anarchists, in their own words, express how and why they engaged in Occupy, what methods they used, and evaluates the success of Occupy on anarchist terms. It also expresses the flexibilty, energy, and experience that anarchists brought to The Occupy Movement as it moved beyond lower Manhattan onto the docks and streets of Oakland, the town square of Philadelphia, and abandoned buildings around the country.

The anarchists’ way of operating was changing our very idea of what politics could be in the first place. This was exhilarating. Some occupiers told me they wanted to take it home with them, to organize assemblies in their own communities. It’s no accident, therefore, that when occupations spread around the country, the horizontal assemblies spread too.
-From Nathan Schneider in The Nation

Contributors: Antistate STL, Anon, Ben Webster, Cindy Milstein, Crescencia Desafio, Crimethinc, David Graeber, Denver ABC, Dot Matrix, Ignite! Collective, ingirum, John Jacobsen, Phoenix Insurgent, R.R, Serf City Revolt, TEOAN, Tides of Flame, TriAnarchy

Edited: Aragorn! publishes books at Little Black Cart, edits The Anvil Review and writes on popular culture, nihilism, and identity. He also blogs and does technology consulting.

Buy: Now
250 pages, Digest
$15
ISBN 978-1-62049-000-6

Purchase at Little Black Cart

*Table of Contents*

Introduction

History

1. From Tsarist Russia to Zuccotti Park: the Paradox of Anarchism by Thai Jones
2. Squatting in the Beginning by ADILKNO
3. We are the Crisis by anonymous
4. The Characteristics of the Occupation by anon
5. Resolution by Public Assembly of Syntagma

Ideas as Origins – Theory

1. Autonomous Organization and Anarchist Intervention by Wolfi Landstreicher
2. Occupy Wall Street’s Anarchist Roots by David Graeber
3. Reclaim the Cities by Cindy Milstein
4. Occupied with Class by Phoenix Insurgent

Locations

various

1. Chicago – Open Letter to Occupy Chicago by some potential friends/enemies
2. Portland – An Anarchist Account by A Former Occupier
3. Southern Ontario – Why are Anarchists Involved by Some Southern Ontario Anarchists
4. Vancouver – Occupation is a Fuckin’ Freak Show & notes for We, Antagonists by d.
5. Chapel Hill – This Building is Ours by anonymous
6. Santa Cruz – 75 Hours In by anonymous

Philadelphia

1. Who Threw the Can of Green Paint by Ben Webster
2. We are Anarchists by anonymous
3. We are Our Own Demand by Cindy Milstein

Denver

1. #occupywallstreet Begets by Ignite! Collective
2. Eyewitness Testimony by anonymous
3. Denver ABC Statement on Occupy Denver

St Louis

1. Introduction by anonymous
2. Are We an Occupation or Just a Gathering by anonymous
3. N17 by anonymous

Seattle

1. The Port Shutdown was a Wild Success! by anonymous
2. Capital Hell Commune by anonymous
3. Becoming Uncontrollable: an Anarchist Reflection on Occupy Seattle by anonymous

Oakland

1. Open Letter to the Anarchists of Occupy Oakland by TEOAN
2. #occupyoakland: One Week Strong by Autonomous Individuals
3. Dear Occupy Oakland by ingirum
4. Letter from an Anonymous Friend after the Attack by anonymous

Oakland General Strike/Port blockade

1. Statement on the Occupation of 520 16th St. by Some Friends of Occupy Oakland
2. Blockading the Port is Only the First of Many Last Resorts by Society of Enemies
3. The Anti-Capitalist March and the Black Bloc by member of Bay of Rage
4. Oakland’s Third Attempt at a General Strike by Hieronymous

Violence and the Police

1. Seven Myths about the Police by CrimethInc

Next Steps (Strategy)

1. The Other Way to Occupy Denver by igloosRforever
2. A Somewhat Belated Intro Communique by The Turritopsis Nutricula Collective
3. Occupy Wall Street Act 2 by Peter Lamborn Wilson
4. Occupy Boston’s Anarchist Alliance Calls for Neighborhood-Based General Assemblies by anon
5. Occupy Wall Street’s Next Steps by John Jacobsen

Criticisms

1. Lost in the Fog by Lost Children’s School of Cartography
2. A Debate on Occupation and the 99% by Cresencia Desafío & R.R.(anon)
3. Occupation, the Other Word for Work by Wylden Freeborne
4. On the Recent #occupations: a communique from W.A.T.C.H.
5. Occupying Terminology by Dot Matrix
6. I’m Tired of This Shit by anonymous

Appendix

From Applied Nonexistence:

There is something to be said about the response of state apparatuses against an escalation in what is being billed as a popular, broad-based movement’s progression of objectives.  This afternoon was a rather sobering experience for the activist-left in the East Bay – and it’s probably for the better in terms of the evolution of tactical praxis which will ideally follow today’s events.  This afternoon’s action can be read in multiple ways yet we believe that the two most pertinent points are as follows:

ONE:

The sheer impossibility of Occupy taking and the immediate defense by OPD of the Kaiser convention center, proves that the timbre of Occupy Oakland’s demands moving into the realm of the acquisition of private property (indoor space in particular) is much more confrontational, and by extension more desirable, than the tamer stages of Occupy’s initial forays into the repurposing of the public commons.  If the implicit threat of taking an abandoned building was enough to warrant such a response which, tactically at least, completely nullified any potentiality which may or may not have existed in seeing this objective to its fruition, then it is telling that it is precisely along these lines which such energy needs to be propelled and proliferated.  In national states which have a much more visible squatter’s culture (The Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Greece for example) the actual laws around the legitimacy of squatter’s rights and the legality of acquiring previously dormant physical spaces are actually much more lax than what we have here in the US.  Seen within this context, in the United States the occupation of private property with the aims of creating spaces for a distinct sociopolitical body is at once almost guaranteed to be impossible – but nonetheless desirable precisely because of this impossibility.

TWO:

Aside from the obvious critiques in terms of errors in the “on-the-ground” tactical maneuvering (i.e. bottlenecks at Laney/bridge-crossings, self-imposed kettling on E. 14^th, linear confrontational exchanges in front of the Oakland Museum) we’d still like to make the case (the same redundant shit we here at AN always say) for “exploring” sites on the periphery.  While the carnivalesque atmosphere can often fulfill latent psychological manifestations for some individuals it often is not the most tactically sound site for engagement.  If anything it creates a veritable vacuum around the locus of contestation itself – and this is not something which has yet been explored in conjunction with high-profile events like today’s (this would look like “X” happens here, while “Y” happens here – where X is the much more high-profile and accessible action which commands ALL the resources of the authorities, and “Y” are a disparate number of smaller yet higher-stakes actions happening far away from the main spectacle).  While the locus always has an undeniable magnetism, laden with the desire to participate in narratives of resistance, the periphery is always more vulnerable and higher-stakes during such carnivalesque moments.  Explore the periphery.

Solidarity to the friends arrested and hurt. Solidarity to the FUCK THE POLICE 5 march about to pop of right now.

From Oakland with Love,

TEOAN

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.