The time veganarchy made the front pages.
Earlier that year, at the end of August before we left town, Alyssa, our little affinity group, and I had agreed to allow the local paper do a profile piece on us. It was the at the height of our notoriety in Albany after over a year of doing so many things and putting on so many events, and it felt appropriate to take the opportunity to further get our ideas out to the mainstream while also promoting our upcoming events and projects. After several emails, we invited the reporter, a woman named Lynda Edwards, to visit us all on location at our squathouse. She was very friendly and acted extremely sympathetic to our causes. Our friend Lori, a vegan photographer for the paper, was able to do the shooting. Lynda hung with us for a couple hours, asking us all sorts of personal questions, as well as getting a better idea of what we believe in and what the goal of our local organizing is, all while we gave her a tour of our squat. She actually asked a lot of good questions, which was promising. According to her, we were a very refreshing representation of anarchists and people living "off the grid", or as she put it, "off the urban landscape", particularly because we were not anti-social nihilists. We couldn't have agreed more. We conditioned the interview on the grounds that she would not disclose the address or location of the squat or give away any identifying information in the article, so we felt safe enough. It was also just always a big focus of mine to speak openly about petty crimes in hopes of normalizing and destigmatizing them.
A month later on the 23rd, I woke up to a tag on Facebook by Lori. My friends and I had made it to the front page of the Times Union under the captivating and unprecedented headline, "Anarchy has a home." We had all been anxiously awaiting its release. It was all very exciting at first, and the first thing Alyssa and I noticed about the article was the adorable picture of us all on the stoop of the squat. We had no idea it would be on the front page. We had literally brought anarchism to the front page! The picture of us was literally inside a squatted building; I was wearing a shirt that said, "Smoke Cops, Not Weed"; Garrett was wearing a shirt that said, "Go vegan you cow-sucking perverts". We thought it was awesome. I thanked Lynda for spending so much time with us, listening about our ideas and lives, and for giving those ideas a mainstream platform, and encouraged everyone to steal a copy of the paper. Lynda left me a Facebook comment on my post, saying, "I enjoyed having a chance to spend time with you. As Garrett pointed out, it's not a lifestyle everyone can maintain. But I hope your ideas spur people to think of how they can sustain their community. When I saw a CBS story today, I thought about all of you and started collecting donations for the free market."
The article hadn't been posted online yet, though, so we had to wait to read it. When I zoomed in on the scan of it and saw the opening paragraph, I was mortified.
"David Gunn had just been released from the hospital after trying to kill himself when he met the fallen beauty who changed his life. It was a downtown Albany townhome painted ivory, abandoned years ago but with its elegant bones and tall glass windows intact. Gunn, 30, climbed the wooden stoop and turned the doorknob. The door was unlocked."
It was a story opening she'd run by me a few nights before over the phone. I corrected her, saying I had actually already stayed there months before my suicide attempt, and that I wasn't the one who discovered the place was unlocked. I jokingly apologized for the facts being inconvenient to the romantic narrative she was trying to weave, but apparently no correction or clarification was enough to stop her from writing exactly what she wanted to write.
By the time we'd gotten the link and read the whole article online, we were anxious and disappointed; Alyssa was devastated. The entire thing was overly romanticized bullshit where she fabricated a narrative overstating the significance of the squat some of us sometimes stayed in. She wasted entire paragraphs on Garrett's love life and irrelevant anecdotes she must have found personally amusing or attention-grabbing. Every single thing in quotes was either a misquote, completely made-up, or at one point something she had said herself being attributed to me. Michelle had been omitted from the article entirely. Perhaps worse than not being in it at all, Alyssa was misrepresented, and reduced to a prop who joined me in this lifestyle because of love and not because she genuinely believed in anything. The only reason we agreed to do it--getting our ideas and projects out to the capital region--hadn't even been satisfactorily accomplished. While it was noted we were vegan, not even a definition of the word was included; while she briefly and sloppily described anarchism in three sentences and included soundbites from a local professor about it, it wasn't at all contextualized, and the Really Really Free Market and our food giveaways were mentioned merely in passing without any explanation. This was all despite several lengthy phone calls with her. We'd noticed she never took notes the day we spoke together, but I assumed she knew what she was doing as a professional journalist. Ironically, I had foolishly appealed to authority. The article loomed over us the entire day, and we didn't even know how much worse the aftermath would become.
In the meantime, I had taken to Facebook and offered a list of corrections and clarifications, in the order in which the mistakes are made in the article...
1. I had stayed in the squat months before trying to kill myself.
2. The stoop is wooden, and Andy was the one who discovered it by opening the door.
3. There has never been more than three people in the squat at one time.
4. I think the article mischaracterizes the significance of the squat in my life.
5. Anarchism means, to us, more specifically: abolish government, dismantle all forms of hierarchy (including class), and create real-time tangible alternatives to the state and capitalism in our community by any means necessary.
6. None of the quotes in this are direct quotes.
7. I have a family, just no relationship with my parents, nor familial support.
8. The next Really Really Free Market is on Sunday, October 21st!
9. We never successfully got the power turned on at the squat due to wiring that would have needed to be inspected.
10. Samuel Wells is full of shit. It's more or less obvious when a structure is unsound. I would wager based on my own experiences exploring countless abandoned buildings of all types, especially houses, that most are perfectly livable. These things were built to last, and they have.
11. We support thieves reclaiming copper and other valuable resources from abandoned buildings (and stores).
12. The pipes' meter was easily removable, and we did successfully get running water. We had tried to solder a cap to a pipe that had been cut, to prevent the running water from spitting out into one of the kitchens.
13. I am uncomfortable with the reduction of Alyssa and Michelle to mere girlfriends. They are equally important, active members of our group and projects.
14. Alyssa didn't move into the squat because of me, nor in spite of any misgivings implied here. Alyssa was going to quit her job and live in her car long before we started dating. She loved the squat, probably more than I did.
15. Both Alyssa, and Michelle (who should have had been more present in this article since she is an integral part of our projects), love dumpster diving and are oftentimes more risky and gross about it than we are.
16. The food giveaways on the squat stoop have never been a solitary act on Garrett's part--we do it together, and at locations other than the stoop.
17. I was the one who emphasized a refusal to use the toilet in the squat. I'm in some ways a bigger baby than Alyssa.
18. There is no "Gunn's group"! Tobi met us all at a Really Really Free Market's closing, but was already on the same page as us.
19. The vigils at Albany Med aren't in any way planned by us and are the result of NY Farm Animal Save. Tobi has been vegan for years and would be there with or without us.
20. The man who found a size 10 pair of shoes didn't weep and the man who took the shower support bars was not in a wheelchair.
21. Anarchism isn't as reactionary as it seems to be framed by that professor. It's a logical conclusion that's been around for at least two centuries. Even when the economy is "good", anarchism is relevant, because there is still endless suffering and oppression when it's "good". Arguably, an increased GDP relies on there being problems.
22. I was diagnosed with depressive mood disorder when I was 15.
23. I would refuse employment even if I could work, just for the record.
Both Alyssa and I reached out to Lynda right away, politely expressing our disappointment and dissatisfaction with the article, while still thanking her for the opportunity. We weren't trying to burn bridges. Unfortunately, it seemed like she certainly was, and she responded to both of us in a shockingly hostile, combative manner, telling Alyssa to leave her alone and accusing her of "harassment". My interaction with her didn't go well, either, and was very unnerving...
The next day, sitting at a bench inside the Walmart after taking an urgent morning piss, Alyssa came in with her eyes wide and face pale. I instantly felt panicked.
"Have you seen Garrett's status?"
I had not.
Garrett was being forced out of the squat because of the stupid fucking article. I wasn't yet sure how or why, but I was already overcome by dread over it. I called Garrett repeatedly until he answered. He had come home from the dentist and saw two men on the stoop. When he asked them if he could help them, they didn't seem to know what he meant. When he told them he lived there, they told him he had to have his things out by 1:30, giving him about two hours, after which the police would be showing up and the house would be boarded up. He tried to flex his rights, but all they had to say in response to his proclamation of squatters rights was, "This isn't New York City," showing just how little they knew about anything, or exhibiting just how confident they were that no one's rights mattered either way. They were from The Department of Buildings & Regulatory Compliance, whatever the fuck that was, and what they were doing was from all angles illegal.
I immediately got on the phone with two different vegan attorneys I knew. Both got back to me almost immediately and offered invaluable advice. As expected, my understanding of squatters rights (also known as "adverse possession") was correct, and even if the "owner" of the property (some guy named John, according to property databases online) was behind the city officials and police showing up, he would by law have to give Garrett a minimum of ten days before he submitted any legal action against him. Otherwise, neither the city nor the state nor the military they call the cops had the right to force him off the property. Their claim was that the building was "unsafe" on the grounds that it didn't have electricity or running water, as if everyone who has ever had their electricity turned off was subsequently evicted. The entire situation was bogus, and testament to just how irrelevant our rights were when the government wants to take something away from us. The Legal Project and Legal Services were contacted, but I never heard back about their responses. People swarmed Facebook offering Garrett assistance with couches to sleep on and transport to remove his belongings. Our friend Colleen helped him get as much of the stuff important to him out as they could fit, but he forgot some important stuff of mine.
By 1:30, the police did show up and the property boarded up. Apparently, they found it safer for someone to sleep on the streets, and homes better off sitting vacant than being useful. Garrett responded as care-free and optimistic as expected, but in being so ultimately didn't defend his rights as aggressively as I'd wish I could have been there to do. Lynda offered an empty and cold apology later in the day while a commenter on the Facebook link to the article asked the assholes upset about us squatting, "They're getting kicked out, are you all happy now?"
We couldn't help but wonder who was behind it. Was it the author of the article, retaliating in as extreme and nasty a way as she had via text? Was it Gurnoor, who had threatened several times in the past to call the cops just because we wouldn't let her inside? Was it Garrett's sister, who was very upset and mean about their "family name" being embarrassed in the paper? Was it one of the assholes on Facebook, somehow passionate enough to do some serious 4chan type of investigating and figure out the location? I hoped whoever was responsible was outed so we could all excommunicate them from any and all relevant circles. Despite all of that, we were simultaneously overwhelmed by the kindness of the people we knew on our side. Both Felicia and Susan, the attorneys, went above and beyond figuring things out for us and offering advice. Susan even mentioned a lawsuit, since illegal eviction was grounds for damages.
A couple days later on the 26th, we had to discover the Times Union had posted another article about me and my friends, this one updating everyone that we had been evicted by the city. At the end of the article, the author claimed none of us had responded to requests for comment, but he had actually never reached out to any of us. The trembling dread and anxiety made me feel cold in my chest. The toxicity of Albany was extending its reach to me from thousands of miles away and I hated it. I talked on the phone with Garrett a little bit before making a post about it. Of course, plenty of assholes commented on the Times Union Facebook expressing joy at our misfortune, all supposedly concerned with criminals being punished when the only people who behaved illegally were the city and the police. At the end of the day, people just hated poor people, they hated people doing things that were unconventional, and they hated people who were free in ways they were not.
Lesson learned: never trust liberals, never trust the media, practice better security culture. "Corrections" were eventually made on both articles. Lynda had added a passive-aggressive correction, saying, "Editor's note: This story has been updated. The building's stoop is wooden; an earlier version incorrectly identified the material from which it is made." In the second one, they added a quote from me, from my own Facebook post about it all, saying something that I actually thought was pretty bad-ass: "I'm sure a lot of people are thrilled at our brief misfortune here, but allow (me) to assure you: we are all highly adaptable survivors who will never run out of schemes. And if we really want to, we'll just find another abandoned building to live in." The story attracted a lot of attention, and afforded me the opportunity to engage in heavy dialog with all sorts of different people in the comments section of the article's Facebook post, much of which I felt was really fruitful. Squat the Planet picked it up on their forum as well as their YouTube/podcast, and the members seemed more enthused by it than critical. In the end, we all decided it was worth getting the ideas out there. Once we removed our own egos from the situation, it became more apparent to us that the fictitious story would be just as real to anyone reading it, and that it was actually an unusually positive article about leftist politics being put into practice.