Oakland (USA): Stay Away Squat evicted

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The StayAway squat in Oakland was evicted by a paramilitary camo-clad SWAT team with assault rifles. A long-time rent paying resident was also evicted and left homeless, all for the profit of REO Homes.

At around 10am, four heavily armored black SWAT trucks turned heads as they rolled down Vallecito Place in Highland. Deterred by the barricades that had been built in front of the StayAway over the previous month of eviction defense, the camo-clad SWAT team packing AR-15s went up 28th street and entered an adjoining property. This maneuver appears to have been pre-planned, as the neighbor said that while the Sheriff did not gain her consent to pass through her yard, she was addressed by name upon stepping outside. Entering through the backyard with no warning, StayAway residents confronted by this paramilitary squad were forced at gunpoint to abandon their possessions and leave their home with nothing but the clothes on their bodies. Two comrades were arrested and at the time of this writing their charges are unknown, although we know they were taken to Santa Rita County Jail. [Read More]

Oakland (USA): Squat defense for the Stay Away Squat

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We are the squat collective at Stay Away in East Oakland. Tuesday, August 6th makes two full weeks we have been living behind the barricades in order to defend and save our home, a radical space, and one of the lasting vestiges of the Occupy Oakland movement. We are still struggling. We are asking the community of the Bay Area; fellow squatters, fellow radicals, our comrades to come out and help us in the event of an attempted forcible removal by the Sheriff’s Department. Oakland has lost too many of its radical spaces. We are facing the same evil corporation, REO Homes LLC, that evicted the G-Spot–another radical space–and the state and corporate forces are trying to quash our movement to live free.

This house has a two year history that rose directly out of Occupy Oakland, and has gone through many changes with many members, but it has remained, and will remain, an activist house. Members of this collective work or have worked with various groups from Food Not Bombs to Cop Watch as well as founding the Park Gardens and many other activist groups. We are a diverse group or individuals working together collectively to provide a space that is liberated from corporate control of our lives, and to be an example of how we can live free of the chains of capitalism. [Read More]