The Activist Squatting Movement in the United States often traces its roots back to the European Autonomous Movements of the 1970s, when those seeking social change turned away from the overtly political tactics of ’68, and began to occupy abandoned buildings, creating “autonomous” spaces that attempted to operate outside of the logic of capitalism.  This tactic of squatting to create space for social movements began to take hold in the United States in New York City of the 1980s, where activist-squatters transformed abandoned tenements in the Lower Eastside into centers for art, music, and culture that were also organizing hubs to bring recycling and bicycle lanes to the city.

Squatting of this style began to take hold in the San Francisco Bay Area of the late 1990s, as a market-driven housing bubble coupled with negligent public policy led thousands of homes and lots to be left empty in the region. Significant land occupations and squats of have been noted as emerging in the region much earlier, though, such as the fourteen-month occupation of Alcatraz Island by members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the late 1960s, and also the occupation of People’s Park, which has been an ongoing struggle since 1969.

A biodynamic soil-building workshop at an occupied farm in Temescal, 2015. (photo by Alison Moeller)

Art created by Steele as part of the Land Action Microfarm Initiative in 2015.

A farm occupation in Albany, CA in 2013. (photo by Brooke Porter)

The kitchen of an “off the grid” squatted residence in Oakland, 2012. (Photo by Brooke Porter)

Working the land at a newly occupied farm in West Oakland, 2015. (photo by Samara Hayley Steele)

Gardening at an occupied farm in the East Bay, 2013. (photo by Samara Hayley Steele)

Garden beds go in at a farm occupation in West Oakland, 2015. (photo by Samara Hayley Steele)

An occupied farm in the East Bay, 2014. (Photo by David Grefrath)

Kids gardening at a squatted library in East Oakland, 2011. (photo by Samara Hayley Steele)

Planting tomatoes horizontally during a skillshare at an occupied farm in West Oakland, 2015. (photo by Samara Hayley Steele)

Art created by Steele as part of the Land Action Microfarm Initiative in 2015.

At the Gezi Gardens farm occupation and treesit in San Francisco, 2013. (Photo by Brooke Porter)

Beginning in summer of 2011, Samara Hayley Steele became involved with a number of building and farm occupation projects in the San Francisco Bay Area including People’s Park, Hellarity Haus, Oakland Spring Rising, Gezi Gardens, and Occupy the Farm.  In these spaces, the Freegan Movement, the Food Sovereignty Movement, and the American Landless People’s Movement convalesced and reinvented each other, as participants worked to co-create systems for growing food, producing goods, and creating housing outside of ecocidal and oppressive logics.

In spring of 2015, Steele became Development Director of Land Action, a not-for-profit organization providing mutual aid to activists who occupy abandoned land and buildings in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Steele launched Land Action’s Microfarm Initiative, an effort to transform abandoned lots into arable farmland, and she worked directly with over a dozen occupation projects to organize public events, fundraisers, and sustainable farming skillshares.