Olympia: Reflections from the Frog House Squat & MSM article

Olympia: Reflections from the Frog House Squat & MSM article

From Puget Sound Anarchists

submitted anonymously –

What follows is the reflections of one individual Frog House Defender.

Frog House has fallen and is in the hands of the enemy, but the struggle is far from over. We hope our failure will be the stepping stone to our and others future success.

We had been occupying that house for many months, thanks to the meager protections granted during the pandemic and that fact that the landlord Neil MacLean is a giant pushover we were able to prolong the eviction for months. That in itself is a victory as under normal circumstances squats don’t tend to last longer than a week.

But unfortunately we were unable to hold it down. There are many reasons for this, and I think one of the biggest ones is we should have gone public with it much earlier. We largely kept knowledge of it within anarchist spaces. Maybe two years ago that would have been enough but since the summers uprising we are in a different context where the police are looking for revenge for months of humiliating defeat around the country. On top of that, due to covid and general post uprising fracturing (which is in itself not a bad thing) many of us are very isolated and very defeated, and many still haven’t recalibrated from the summer when anything was possible and haven’t adjusted their expectations of what’s worth risking and what’s worth coming out for. Until the isolationism and defeatism is broken, very little to nothing is possible.

Another big issue is we generally did not ask for help from others and tried to handle most of it ourselves. This stretched us thin and contributed to a general feeling of others not feeling invested in the defense of this space as well.

The eviction moratorium is coming to an end at the end of this month and hundreds of thousands of households will be cut loose with no support. The housing struggle will go on and the crisis will get worse. There is so much space open for anarchist intervention but no one will take that step for us, we have to jump into it.

One squat may be gone, but what isn’t gone is the skills and knowledge we gained doing it, and an understanding of how the terrain shifted and our shortcomings in this battle.

We are scheming new plots and preparing for new moves. The fight has only just begun.

-One of many Frog House Defenders

*****************************************************
[MSM article]

Anarchist squatters removed from eastside house

Property owner said process took nine months

From Jolt

(photos and YouTube video at link above)

By The JOLT Staff

Seven or eight squatters were evicted from an Olympia rental home today after Thurston County Sheriff’s Deputies repossessed it on behalf of its owner based on a court order.

Some of the squatters were still at the home, seemingly unaware when a locksmith, a friend of the homeowner, and several journalists arrived early on June 4 at 10 a.m. in time to watch eight Sheriff's deputies knock on the front and back doors.

One of the squatters demanded that videotaping of him stop, as he did not provide “permission.” See video, above.

The property owner, Neil MacLean, told The JOLT that it would cost him $5,000 and take six people two days to clean up. He said that the eviction process started last September.

All of the tenants who were on the lease left on Nov. 1, 2020. The last sublease tenant left on May 1, 2021, said MacLean, who resides in San Francisco.

The inside of the house was trashed, with anarchist graffiti in several rooms and a dank smell throughout the house.

Sheriff’s Deputies spotted several ballistics vests and contacted Olympia Police Department for potential documentation.

A “cold case” was solved by the eviction: a three-foot wooden structure that had sat outside the Frog Pond Grocery as an icon for decades on 2102 Capitol Way S, had gone missing in winter 2020. The frog had been repainted into a Teenage Mutant Ninja-style turtle with an anarchy sign on it. It squatted, too, in the house's living room.

No arrests were made and "no attempt was made to identify the individuals inside the house," according to the Thurston County Sheriff's office, adding "no charges at this time will be referred" [for prosecution].

June 4, 2021, 3:07 pm - This story was updated.

There are 43 Comments

WTF, I'm an individualist concrete artisan and if I was there I would have rienforce cemented and bricked up all windows and door entrances and just left one well guarded 2x2 foot opening into the occupied squat autonomous individualist convergence zone!

its not a gay squat if you dont have a wingnut with a mullet and skinny jeans.

The Froghouse was an average bourgeois premises which enjoyed a temperate climate and abundant shade from the many large deciduous trees common in this region. The offspring of the dominant species collected in what are referred to as --bachelor pods---for security. It can be a harsh and lonely world when fate, misfortune, and parental discipline act against the irreverent youthful exuberances of the young males who take out their sexual frustrations against the very abode that shelters them. Under the influence of the many mind-altering substances peddled to these inquisitive youth by money hungry cartels some vandalism does occur, though some regard the spray painted slogans akin to the cave art that their ancestors decorated the walls of their caves with. Sometimes a lonely female will befriend one of the young males and live at the Froghouse for a short time before both of them found the stench and chaos unbearable and disturbing their amorous pursuits and vacate voluntarily. This usually coincided with a sudden increase in cash for the couple and a departure from their former rebellious attitudes, mullet hairstyles, and skinny jeans and instead paying rent, trying to be nice by either working with people or trading things, and usually led to a pregnancy for the female and the survival of the species away from the desyructive nihilistic influences of the Froghouse.

"Sometimes a lonely female will befriend one of the young males and live at the Froghouse for a short time before both of them found the stench and chaos unbearable and disturbing their amorous pursuits and vacate voluntarily. This usually coincided with a sudden increase in cash for the couple and a departure from their former rebellious attitudes, mullet hairstyles, and skinny jeans and instead paying rent, trying to be nice by either working with people or trading things"

I could be wrong, but given your predictable misunderstanding of socio-economics (found in every poet's dead angle) you seem to not get that they were just fucking yuppie youngsters, using or abusing the meat-space provided by more radical people than themselves for their own formation of social-sexual capital, therefore this squat (was it really one?) has only helped in steering them back to the normie world (couples, artsy jobs, cash, lofty flats, and yoga, lol).

So this explains the detail of that "sudden increase in cash", as they were already privileged trust-fund kids, duh. Same old story with squats or communal houses that are open to those people. The crusty culture ain't enough to keep them away, as it's the appeal of social entropy that attracts them from the start... So entropy should be valued as much as they've been valuing it in their own "art" for decades already.

1. Wdym exactly by “social-sexual capital”? Do you just mean, at base, making yourself as attractive and desireable a partner as you can? If so, then how are you, or anyone else, any different? Don’t we all engage in that sort of thing?

2. What’s wrong with being in a couple or having a loving monogamous relationship, esp. if you eventually intend to raise kids and start a family? Or, more to the point, what is it about sleeping around or being part of a “polycule” that makes you so superior? Some people have argued that being in a thruple, a polycule, or wtv, as just an extension of the couple-form anyway, with all the co-dependency and jealousy struggles and all the rest.

3. What’s wrong with cash? Specifically, having it? We live in a world where we need money to live. Generally, the more cash you have, the more options you have. Like, even if my plan is to go totally off grid, I still need cash upfront to acquire tools, lay down all the infrastructure I need, etc. Why glorify being poor?

4. What’s your problem with Yoga? I get that in the west it has its liberal/new age trappings, but suffice to say that yoga-practice is very very old and should be seen as on par with brushing your teeth and getting a full 8 hours sleep every night. You are, in essence, just taking care of yourself and offsetting the more debilitating effects of old age on your body. So again, what’s the big deal?

It just seems to me that contemporary anarchism in North America makes this really weird fetish out of being a totally dysfunctional human being: (having no money, having no job, eating like crap, doing hard drugs, sleeping around recklessly, never exercising, never having a stable longterm relationship or having children, etc).

Seriously what’s up with that? Anarchism is turning into a caricature of itself.

"It just seems to me that contemporary anarchism in North America makes this really weird fetish out of being a totally dysfunctional human being: (having no money, having no job, eating like crap, doing hard drugs, sleeping around recklessly, never exercising, never having a stable longterm relationship or having children, etc)."

neo-Diogenesian anarcho-cynicism for the win, 2020s style!

1- "Capitalism, we're ALL doing it so that's fiiiine and stfu!"

2- Everything's wrong. As far as these are relations where some get it, and some don't.

3- You visibly have no clue what "cash" is, and the fact you see it as an objective need just shows how indoctrinated to capital you are.

4- Fuck New Age yuppies, and especially FUCK YOU for defending their shit suburban culture, you pathetic chump. Bye!

Yes, the indigenous folk who previously occupied this area lived in small family groups and fastidiously swept and cleansed their wigwams and had a gift economy where surplus foods any group had collected was deposited into a common lodge for distribution to those needing additional sustenance.
Monogamy was the prefered less complicated relationship which extended to the collective minimalist approach to legislation and moral codes, made easier by the spcious living arrangements available where newly married couples were expected to live in seclusion away from the single youth camp.
Activities and games which exercised and disciplined the body and open discussion about grievances ensured healthy minds and bodies and a cheerful ambience to infuse the community with a vigorous social prosperity.

Indigenous people were known for non-fixed and non-exclusive relationships where the women was choosing her partner and allowed to split whenever she wanted.

The nuclear family is a conservative Xian construct.

Oh, “indigenous people”, you say! The noble savage fallacy. Gotta love it.

Would you mind listing a few native cultures that featured this practice? It’s weird when leftists use indigeneity to justify themselves. You realize Not all indigenous cultures are the same?. Some in fact would cut a woman’s nose off over adultery while not punishing men for the same offense.

INDIGENOUS NOSE CUTTERS ARE NOT ANARCHY BROS. STUPID LEFTISTS HAVRNT EVEN SEEN LAST OF THE MOHICANS

Ball is in your camp, Rightard, as you're the one who started with these BS claims about indigenous family structures. You may as well be saying next that White Europeans have been here for 30,000 years and the whole Bering Land Bridge story was a Leftist Myth. Nothing can surprise when coming from muh-muh-muhricans' notoriously shitty knowledge of history.

Only a few indigenous nations were patrilineal and even those had an open (community-shared) family structure.

Many left leaning members of the species, particularly when in their idealistic adolescent stage of acting-out desires with irresponsible displays of attention seeking and hubris, live under the belief that the indigenous lived an undisiplined noble Utopian existence when infact strict chores and expectations were placed upon the adolescent youth to prepair them for the realities of life in a harsh environment and guarantee the survival of the tidiest parents. In layman's terms, they did not shit in their own nest as the occupiers of Froghouse had done.

^^ Me again ^^

Mimicry ^^ is a popular entertainment medium which requires no actual new material but just the copying of ideas or modes of expression, as shown by anon 22:29's feeble attempt at mimicry which is not even as good as that of some small brained species of parrots.

I defecate in the bath and smash it with my toes into the drain.

After acquiring modern cleansing apparatus, the species developed infected toenails and perished from gangrene. If only the greedy settlers had provided them with soap, and not installed baths and drains.

Another commenter here. "known for non-fixed and non-exclusive relationships" Oh I get it, with their aunties, first cousins and granddaughters and whatever?!
Most indigenous peoples are just like the 99% of other folk who live pretty ordinary monogamous lives cos for the sìmple reason its easier.

Seriously. Don’t get me wrong, I respect a lot of indigenous cultures for their deeper connection to the natural world, but, I don’t buy into the Zerzanian myth of noble utopian savages who, culturally speaking, were supposedly literally all the things liberals and anarchists dream about.

Some owned slaves, some practiced agriculture and lived in cities, and some would cut a womans nose off to discourage cuckoldry lmao. It is what it is.

One thing is clear… you’ve never read Zerzan.

I suppose this is what’s to be expected from people who live entirely on the internet.

Hm? Oh you must be saying that because I mentioned indigenous city-based cultures like the Aztecs. Ok, so selecting only for uncivilized HGs, Zerzan often implies or even explicitly states that non-city based primitive cultures were mostly egalitarian, polyamorous, feminist, anti-racist and non-hierarchical. They almost never worked and basically just gathered berries and hung out under the shade of a fruit tree hugging and loving everyone lol. We can point to the chichimecas and the yanomamis as cursory examples that disprove the above narrative.

What is a ‘civilized HG’ you ridiculous faker? Just admit you haven’t read Zerzan and move on. You’re not qualified to go down this troll road.

Have too!!! Wikipedia is a legitimate source of expertise now leave me alone!

Nobody mentioned “civilized HG”, fool. I said, civilized indigenous culture, i.e: indigenous cultures that were based on the existence and growth of cities, agriculture, royalty, slavery and all the rest: Mayans, Aztecs and a few nations on the west coast of canada immediately come to mind.

Stop simping for daddy Zerzan.

During my explorations of hominid cultures and societies, I have uncovered books on which the species wrote down [ wrote :- making marks upon a piece of of blank material with a knife, feather dipped in blood, or charcoal ] and came across books by Zerzan which contained romanticized accounts of simple non-technical lifestyles relying on the random spontaneous and boundless providence of food, good health and the benevolence neighbours in a paradise free of warfare, greed and bad manners. These writings have since been proved false.

Yes, and I read several writings from early settlers and explorers -both British and French- confirming some of these claims, boi. If JZ is embellishing some aspects of history, that's one thing, but to claim that the land wasn't abundantand people weren't living healthy lives in the pre-industrial early columbian era is literally retarded, as it's a fact told by different sources.

Colonies of species congregate in areas of splentiful food and population levels self-regulated according to food supply, the availabi.ity of water and clean hygenic living conditions. Usually the species mantained a nomadic existence so that they never resided in one place for too long and suffer illnesses caused by the accumulation of fecal matter, rotting rubbish and pathogens which thrived in crowded living conditions. This can all change if industry and modern medicine combine to produce overpopulation in thousands of cities.
Since aný doctrine such as Zerzan's which promised a reduction by death from starvation and diseases of 75%, or 5 billion people was frowned upon as a tad minimalistic and totalitarian akin to the genocidal Nazi policies of the 20th Century, and was scoffed at by many anarchs pursuing a lassé faire deconstruction of growth and consumerism.

Empirical data indicates that pre-industrial and uncivilized lifespans averaged around 40-50 years and infant mortality rates between ages 0-5 years of age were about 50%.

> infant mortality rates between ages 0-5 years of age were about 50%

This doesn't take into account abortion which would be (and still is in many places) done *after* the birth. If empirical data is what you're after, look at the current non-industrial, non-civilised peoples of the world. 50% of Pygmy babies don't die.

All underdeveloped nations and their peoples have received vaccinations for a plethora of diseases some of which no longer pose any threat like smallpox, measles, etc, not to say there are not newly emerging pathogens. However there are some folk who through the favourable fertility of their soil and salt ocean hygiene bases such as the Pacific peoples had longer life spans and low infant mortality rates.
My point is that historically speaking the world's population is booming due to increased longevity and low infant mortality rates in modern industrial capitalist Western nations, as boring and drearingly regulated and controlled by authority that it is.

Why does thecollective leave trash like this published? It’s uninformed fiction from the same reactionary troll that’s appearing in every post lately and it isn’t even funny.

Does thecollective have some sort of agenda to leave garbage up to cause drama to get more activity? Sad if so.

You’re right. I will invite people from gab, 4chan and 8chan to come comment. It will be hilarious. What a funny to create the anarchy you like to see in the world.

you'd like to see, thoughtful, incisive, provocative, creative, and stop trying to control what other people find funny.

that would be great.

So it IS a ploy to increase activity by leaving clearly awful untruths up. Nice.

and why would you take my suggestions that you do something to make the site more what you want it to be, to be proof of the conspiracy you started out with?

i gues syou're going to find the proof you want no matter what. too bad.

and anyone who takes the post you're complaining abotu seriously is pretty confused. it's obviously satirical. calling it "untruth" is kind of... missing the point?

It’s untrue and cruel and reactionary and decidedly not anarchist. Fuck your poorly written unfunny fiction.

one of the people who started this site used to be a dungeons and dragons player and they created all the trolls for you to fight with.

up ahead in the dark, smelly cave of the comments section, you see some jerkoff trolls misrepresenting issues to do with anarchy!

ROLL FOR INITIATIVE!!!

So is this the real-estate nihilism an anon mentioned earlier this week in another blog, concerning relationships between indigenous, settler and immigrant populations?

I really enjoyed this read, thnx for posting! All power to the frogpeople!

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