Public Building Occupations: the Homes not Jails SF Method

As the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement evolves and has started a “second phase,” the occupation of vacant and unused buildings has become an increasingly popular tactic with notable occupations in San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Cruz, and Raleigh. My intention here is to describe how Homes Not Jails-San Francisco (HnJ) plans and executes their public housing takeovers/building occupations, based on their public actions that I observed over the course of 2011.

All information contained herein is only intended for academic and informational purposes only and should not be taken as legal advice or encouragement to violate any law(s). Building occupations are illegal everywhere in the US.

Your results may vary. In planning any kind of political action, it is important to consider local conditions; what works in San Francisco doesn’t even work in Oakland the same way. San Francisco’s law enforcement, justice system and political climate are unique within the United States.

Planning and Preparations

Security Culture and Legal Considerations

Almost all of the planning is done in public HnJ meetings, everything except location, method and means of breaching, and preoccupation can be conducted openly and publicly. The number of people who know the location of any occupation in advance should be kept as small as possible, for HnJ, this has usually meant five or fewer people. Code names are given to potential sites, so that they can be safely referred to by the group, without disclosing its location. Standard security culture practices are observed regarding digital forms of communication.

There are three general working-groups that bottom line, or take responsibility for making sure that the tasks necessary for a successful occupation are completed; Arts, Propaganda and Media, Logistics, and Cracking/Breaching.

Arts, Propaganda and Media

One of the most basic tasks that deserves attention is the fabrication of banners and placards for the march and to be dropped/hung at/on the occupation site. Flags are fun, festive, make for powerful imagery, and can be used to direct the march.

This working group is also responsible for booking speakers and musicians and arranging mobile sound amplification. Speakers help to “message” the event, get people excited and start the march on a good foot. Having music, live or recorded makes a rally more upbeat and creates a more energetic march. Spoken word performances are another possibility.

Both physical fliers and digital event notices need to be made, detailing time, place and message of the rally. Digital copies are posted/sent to local Indymedia pages, social networking sites, listservs, etc. Fliers should be made in both quarter sheets (for handing out) and full sheets for wheat pasting, posting in free paper machines (no tape or paste required), etc.

Several press releases can be prepared, with different versions released over time to let media know where march is meeting, what is planned, why you are doing it, etc. Once the building is occupied, a press release about the actual site can be sent out. It may be useful to have a media contact, somebody in a safe place outside of occupation to take media calls (on a land line preferably) and distribute press releases as events unfold.

Logistics and Resource Coordination

This is another public function of an occupation, the acquisition and transportation of materials and resources. The transporters should be told the general neighborhood the day of the occupation and the location once the building has been occupied. This working group needs to coordinate with the breaching team, specifically the pre-occupiers in order to stage “shelf-stable” materials at the occupation site in advance. Resources that have been found useful by HnJ include:

Food- HnJ usually brings some freegan food but also enlists the help of Food Not Bombs to serve hot food on the street in front of the occupation. Folks need to eat, keep them well-fed and happy. Bring coffee and tea or means for making it, hot coffee is a great way to wake up.

Water- Potable water needed to drink and clean, also to flush toilets if the plumbing is out of service.

Medical- Some form of med-kit, the most common ailments I have seen are muscle pains, headaches and lacerations. Most recently, with the rise of Occupy, it is very likely that the occupiers may face pepper spray and/or tear gas, so plan medical supplies accordingly. A good zine with instructions for treatment and defence of “less than lethals” can be found here (.pdf).   

Sanitation- Somewhere to wash hands and/or hand sanitizer. Somewhere to poop and toilet paper.

Legal support- Contact the National Lawyer’s Guide in advance to setup legal support, including a legal hotline to call if arrested. If NLG is not available, have a comrade with a local landline phone on standby to record the names and birth dates of those arrested, in any so they can be tracked within the jail system by comrades.

Cracking/Breaching Team

Selecting a Location- Home not Jails selects sites for demos that are unsuitable to house people due to security or access issues; the group doesn’t wish to “blow up” potential space where people could be housed. Residential properties are preferable because HNJ is a housing advocacy group, but office and other commercial properties may be suitable for other groups with different goals. IMO, the bigger, the more expensive the property being occupied, the better; one purpose of public demos is to highlight the extent of wasted properties, large properties do this better. Although it should be noted that larger building also means a less cohesive and more chaotic occupation as people naturally want to explore, run around etc. and not remain as a group and function accordingly.

Casing/Researching- Extensive research and surveillance needs to be done on a building both before and after you secure access. You want to establish who owns the building and any other information or history about it; this helps determine it’s viability and visibility as a demo site as well as providing the substance of your messaging.

Does the building has security guards or a property manager who regularly inspect the building? The number, area of operation and frequency/time of visits all need to be determined. Use a small piece of tape that connects the door and the door frame to determine if people are accessing the building and when; if the door is opened, the contact will be broken. By continuously checking and retaping, one can determine the best time to breach and pre-occupy (more on that later).

Does the building have functioning security camera? Note where the cameras are and which areas are not covered by them; exploit the weakness during surveillance and entry.

Gaining Entry- The method of entry will vary by building. Choose the path of least resistance.

First check if any ground-level windows or doors are open. It may be necessary to get into the back yard/parking lots to try back doors and windows.

If nothing at ground level is accessible, climbing may be required. Google Earth and/or on the ground intel can be used to determine if there is roof access to the building; to get to the roof either climb up a fire escape/pipes or gain access an adjacent roof and hop over. Open second story or higher windows may be accessed via fire escape or other means of creative climbing. Some people can pull some real ninja shit in terms of scaling/climbing, seek them out and utilize them.

If you have the skill, pick the lock, either on a door or a gate to gain required access. A good way to secure continuous access to a property is by replacing the padlock or door lock with an identical lock of your own; remove the old lock by means of bolt cutters, sledge, picking, etc.

“Storming the Castle” is a somewhat less finessed method, but in some ways more effective politically due to bravado involved. If you are not able to secure covert entry, you simply lead a march to the target and forcefully breach it. This tactic was used during Homes not Jails on World Homeless Action Day (10/10/11) on the Cathedral Hill Hotel, a vacant 600+ room hotel with two 24-hour on-site security guards, who didn’t know what hit them as 30 people ran past them while they were distracted by one person.

Preoccupation- If possible, the night before the action a team of 2-4 people should covertly enter the building and start preparing it for the occupation by cleaning, de-fortifying, etc. This eliminates uncertainty on the day of the occupation and allows march participants to enter an already opened building, giving them additional legal protection and making for a more comfortable and welcoming occupation experience. The preoccupation group can also stage bulky/heavy occupation materials such as water, food, and banners in advance.

The Day of the Action

The basic form is a rally, march and occupation. The rally and meeting point should be a large, open public area such as a park or plaza. This is a good time for music/performances and speeches to build moral and allow for the size of the crowd to grow.

The march should be guided by somebody who knows the route to the not-yet-publicly-known target, as well as a banner which sets a reasonable pace. Megaphones can lead chants to build moral and gather participants from the neighborhood. The doors should be open when the march arrives and enters the building. Occupiers should be welcomed inside and can given a tour a tour of their “new home,” and a common food and assembly area established. At this point it may be possible and helpful for people who do not enter the building to provide a buffer against police approaching, securing, or entering the building.

During the Occupation

Educate people, as much as you can on what to expect in advance of the occupation, it will reduce chaos during the occupation and increase likelihood of success. Specifically it is helpful to educate folks on the potential legal ramifications, if they will have a chance to leave building before arrest, the general format of the occupation and how occupations have gone in the past

Have fun! Building occupations are incredible and liberating, enjoy and explore the building and spending time with your fellow occupants. Play magic cards, or whatever.

The building is your new home, treat it accordingly. Personally,I would advice that you don’t be destructive (separate topic), it helps maintain good public image and limits potential legal consequences for all of the occupiers. Additionally it seems that over time SFPD came to understand  HnJ’s modus operandi, that HnJ is not there to vandalize, and started to treat actions with more “respect”/restraint. Although that restraint went right out the window with the rise of #occupy, more on that later.

Over the period of time I observed HnJ actions, the began experimenting with having people in charge of Safety and situational awareness. As mentioned elsewhere, this has included keeping at least one person on the door. Additionally, HnJ members have started taking up observation posts (OPs) during occupations, from windows and roof tops, and monitor police presence and watch for the trespassing complaint to be signed by the property owner or agent thereof. In my experience both of these functions are important and useful, but are not a required element of an occupation.

Dealing with the cops

Inevitably the police will show up and swat/tactical units may be used to breach and enter the building to evict the occupants. Cops like to bring out all their toys and practice group tactics when they have to clear a large number of occupiers. Barricades of any sort will not prevent the police from breaching if they so desire. Ergo, make attempting to enter the building an undesirable situation for the cops by other means. For example, police do not like to enter dark buildings at night, so staging occupation a little before the sun sets improves the chances that the occupation will last until morning.

“Blocking” entrance with people who don’t want to enter the building, a semi-tight crowd  in front of the door is a good way to keep the police at bay. It might be helpul or necessary to post a guard at the entrance to keep access open but secure; if the police approach the guard can pull the door shut and lock it, if they leave the person can reopen the door.

Legally, the property owner has to sign off on a trespassing complaint to give the police authorization to enter the premises. This can take some time, the property owner may be hard to locate. This can be used to your advantage in keeping the building open and/or free of police for as long as possible. They can also show up in 15 minutes.

Although not a tactic employed of HnJ, for folks doing an eviction-defence occupation, Sheriff's typically execute evictions, regardless of location.

What’s Next?

There are three ways I have seen building occupations end.

1) Everybody leaves when given the options by police or security. SFPD almost always gives Homes not Jails the option to leave willingly and freely before sending officers to clear the building and arrest the occupants. This option may have to be negotiated for.

2) Folks take a symbolic, “voluntary” arrest.

3) All the occupiers leave covertly before the police enter the building, under the assumption there are people to arrest inside. This makes the police look foolish; SFPD sent multiple tactical squads into an empty building that HnJ occupied and spent the day clearing the entire building floor by floor, looking for occupiers who were not there.

Because of its illegal nature, squats are most often covert endeavors; personal property rights are one the most dearly held legal rights in the Western legal tradition (“life, liberty and property”) and as such vacant properties are vehemently defended against use by non-legal entities. Long-term, overt occupation of a large building, especially by an social/political movement with as much potential as #occupy is, at this point in time, a pipe dream. The state will do anything in their power to squash any attempt to establish permanent liberated zones by any radical social movement.

I have not yet seen or read about any way to hold a building in the long term using non-violent tactics; the state has incredibly powerful methods of breaching buildings, from armored vehicles to pneumatic devices to explosives and no amount of feasible fortification will delay this from happening. If they want to enter a building, they will do so and it may not be pretty.

#occupySantaCruz held an abandoned bank, re-named 72 River for around 72 hours, a record for overt occupations under the banner of Occupy. HnJ public actions have typically lasted between twelve and twenty hours before police serve trespassing notices.

Post Script: Lessons of #J20 and #J28

The majority of this article was written and informed by occupations before Occupy San Francisco’s occupation of the Cathedral Hill Hotel on January 20th and the much publicized attempted occupations of buildings by Occupy Oakland’s Move In Day action on January 28ths. Having observed both of these actions, it is clear that the game has changed in terms of building occupations. That is, the occupations that informed the bulk of this article, occurred in a different socio-political climate that than the one we currently find ourselves in.

Both of these days were incredible learning moments in many ways. Relevant here is what we can learn about planning and carrying out public building occupations. To begin with it is clear that the state, its corporate masters and their forces of repression are talking any attempt at liberating buildings by the Occupy movement much more seriously than those conducted by other groups prior to September 17th, 2011. They seem dead set against allowing the Occupy movement to move inside or re-establish itself outside. Federal law enforcement was coordinating with SFPD on #J20 at the staging ground near the hotel.

The interest of law enforcement in these types of actions have made a higher level of operational security culture necessary for planning successful building occupations. On #J20, the police knew the occupation was going to happen and the intended target and planned a detailed defense of the building. These defenses were thwarted by the protesters’ ingenuity and Occupy San Francisco occupied the building. However, it would have been a completely different occupation had the original march arrived at an open building not protected by mace-spraying riot cops.
On #J28, my understanding is that the intended targets were widely known throughout the ranks of Occupy Oakland as far as a month in advance of the action. As such, the police were able to plan a response and stage police at the Kaiser Convention Center and repel the occupation march.

It is clear that simply large numbers of determined protesters is no longer enough to ensure a tactical advantage versus the police when attempting a building occupation. Tactical prowess, effective security culture and experienced and capable participants are now more than ever vital in planning and conducting semi-clandestine building occupations.