Residents in Chicago, Illinois are Reclaiming Vacant Properties

Report from squatters in so-called Chicago, Illinois about reclaiming vacant properties which by been abandoned by the Chicago Housing Authority.

For over a year now, a group of hooligans, wingnuts, and other anti-state dropouts have been reclaiming vacant properties owned by the Chicago Housing Authority. The city and its private contractors abandoned thousands of units of so-called public housing. They let the pipes burst and the walls mold over, just so they can call them uninhabitable, schedule them for demolition, and sell the lots to the highest bidder.

NO MORE. We are inhabiting the uninhabitable. We have dumpstered our homes.

The houses, many of which were sitting empty for years, have become FREE SPACES that hold so much more than a roof over our heads. They are home to anarchist libraries, food distros, parties, film screenings, dinners, constantly re-arranging affinities, intimacies, and an endless tide of batshit ideas and inciteful possibilities. To live inside walls slated for demolition is to live outside of this world and against it. We are doing this because we want to. We believe in Nothing and we believe in Everything because “we” is undefined and always changing.

Squatting public housing helps us bridge divisions prescribed by society. Together, long-time unhoused residents and younger folks trying to build a freer city can understand our shared enemies, violent state forces seeking only to cleanse the neighborhood of its poorest and most non-compliant residents in attempt to squeeze the last drips of profit from stolen land while it still appears to belong to the crumbling empire. We are our neighbors, we protect ourselves, we protect each other.

Squat the world! Fuck private property, fuck landlords, and fuck the State!

A.narchist N.etwork of U.ngovernable S.quatters (ANUS)

**Notes: If you want to support the squats, join our eviction defense signal thread for updates about phone zaps and other long-distance solidarity opportunities, as well as on-the-ground eviction defense in Chicago.

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