Inside Antifa's Manual For How To Occupy Buildings
See What They Teach Each Other For Yourself
I infiltrated Antifa over Pride Weekend 2025 in Boston and got a ton of their propaganda. I will be releasing those files here so you can see what they’re teaching each other.
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This information is being presented for educational purposes to show people how the far left organizes and what they are teaching each other to cause chaos and destabilization.
It will teach you how to do illegal things. Don’t do them.
The Antifa Manual To Occupy Buildings
We are about to walk through Antifa’s literal manual for occupying buildings. The next time you watch protests and direct action live feeds, think about how many elements from this document show up in real life.
You can download a PDF of this zine here to follow along with the walk-through below.
The zine was originally published in 2012, but was updated last year specifically in response to the student encampment at Columbia University in New York.
To fight for single issues without addressing the state and capitalism in its entirety will not be able to make the transformations we wish to see possible.
At this moment, in relation to the horizon of the gradual generalization of building occupations, we must pose a question; what would it mean to begin a broader project of expropriation?
Recently, the discussion of private property has limited itself to vandalism; it has been mired in circular conversations about “violence vs. nonviolence.” We wish to bypass this debate by naming what this supposed violence is perpetrated against: the meaning of private property as a social and material relation.
We look ahead to when we enter the buildings, take over the streets, and occupy the city. To do this we need to further cultivate the various techniques of occupation that have been put on the table for building takeovers. That is the goal of this manual. We need to sharpen our practice until it is possible to defend a space indefinitely. This is not just a question of material means and capacity. Equally, it is a question of social strength and the development of a certain spirit.
With the advent of the #Occupy movement, the content of the occupations echoed the occupations of the student movement. Initially, it was a site to air out grievances and indignation against prevailing economic disparities - its targets were corporations, banks and politicians. This began to stand in sharp contrast to what the camp was actually doing. The camp provided a new meaning to occupation. No longer just a political means, the camp materially demonstrated that we could provide for ourselves and, more importantly, learn how to live and fight together.
Occupations can last anywhere from a few hours to a few months. While the occupation of a space may be used to satisfy social or political demands (we are taking their buildings hostage after all), we are beginning to see the utility and practicality of occupation as an end-in-itself.
Obviously, seizing space requires individuals with skills and supplies. To prevent occupation from becoming a specialized activity, those with skills and supplies need to simultaneously sharpen their own practice and disseminate the techniques and spirit necessary to occupy space.
Look for signs of an alarm system. If it is advantageous to disable the remote alarm, determine where the phone line enters the house (the phone lines are often the lowest on overhead lines). Note the presence of remote or local alarms (more information in the “alarms” section).
In preparation for an occupation, the two types of alarms necessitate two separate approaches. In the early stages of scouting, determine if local alarms are present (look for external loudspeakers, bell boxes). Finding the location of local alarms and being prepared for their removal are important steps in the initial scouting of a building.
Assume that remote alarms are present. Remote alarms cannot simply be cut out of the wall. Tampering with alarms usually trips them. It is also not an option to cut the power—they are usually hardwired into the power grid or run on batteries. Remote alarms have one weakness—the phone lines over which they travel. For remote alarms that use the existing phone line, cut the phone line where it comes into the Telephone Interchange box.
Setting up a march. Select a convergence point where there will be a rally, from where the march can begin. In deciding how to get to the space, select several alternative routes in addition to the primary route. Much of the actual decision-making may have to be made on the ground, while the march is en route to the site. Form a tactical group to decide upon the logistics of the march — several scouts pre-empting police maneuvers, individuals within the crowd of people directing the march, individuals ready to open up the space, and so forth.
The zine provides an overview of all the different support systems that must be arranged in advance, prior to the occupation: Lawyers, jail support, medical support, and even media and propaganda.
Jail support. If comrades get arrested, be ready with money for bail or bond. As comrades are processed and released from jail, be there to recieve them (with friends, coffee, cigarettes, etc.) When people have court dates, go to them in large groups.
Pepper spray. Clean out eyes with water. A squirt bottle or squeeze bottle may make this easier.
Tear gas. Bring a respirator with filters for particulates and organic vapors; easy to find at hardware stores. Wear air-tight, shatterproof goggles.
Rubber bullet injuries. Prepare to clean and suture wounds from rubber bullets for comrades who cannot be taken to the hospital.
Press releases. Have an initial statement prepared before the occupation is announced. Pour out your rage, but make sure you also provide a reasonable explanation for what you are doing, since many people will want to know why you did it. Do not have an official line. Do not prevent people from expressing themselves in their own way. Have people on hand to make and distribute flyers about what you are doing when the occupation takes place.
Emergency Text System. Collect phone numbers to set up an emergency mass text-message system in case of a police raid.
Police Liason. There are ups and downs to having a police liaison. You can decide for yourself whether having one is useful. It is important, however, that the police liaison is not known to be a member of the occupation. Because they are interacting with the enemy, police liasons are often more vulnerable to arrest and harassment.
Share everything. Inside the occupation, there is no private property.
Break down barriers. Inside, social status and jobs are meaningless.
Vandalism? Occupying a space removes the space from the capitalist landscape. A group may decide it is better to destroy or vandalize a space than to return it to its usual role in good condition. The role of vandalism may be different in each situation, but it should not be disowned outright.
Once they occupy the building, they need to defend it against the police:
In order to further develop and coordinate our movement on the streets, we could begin compiling intelligence on police maneuvers and tactics against crowds. What are basic formations the police use against large crowds? What arsenal is at the police’s disposal and how can we prepare to defend ourselves against police offensives? What codes and signals do they use so as to coordinate their actions against us? How can we coordinate ourselves in relation to the cops’ maneuvers and attacks? When the cops either prevent us from taking a space or kick us out, how should we respond?
∞ Disguising individual identity (with tactics like black bloc) helps keep everybody safer. People entering the building or defending the march should disguise their identities; other participants should do the same to give the entry and tactical crews more cover.
∞ The best form of defense is disorder. Keep moving all the time. Change your appearance. Open up new directions and possibilities; be unpredictable.
Eviction defense strategies are widely variable. An understanding of your own material capacity and social strength, a knowledge of police operations, and a forecast for the political climate are all important parts of a successful defense.
The guide provides a case study as an example of how to implement the techniques:
For these reasons, the move-in day proposal was brought before the GA. The proposal called for a clandestine tactical team to work on the logistics of the building. To build trust in this secretive structure, this group was comprised of at least one person from each committee within Occupy Oakland. The members of this committee knew the location and mode of entry into the building.The proposal included a list of parameters for the type of building to be taken:
• owned by a corporation or governmental entity rather than an individual;
• large enough to fit Occupy Oakland assemblies and committees;
• has water and power;
• relatively close to Oscar Grant Plaza;
• is relatively easy to get into;
• in a neighborhood where its impact on neighbors would be relatively low.
It is a standard trick of politicians - radical or otherwise - to describe an occupation as a tactic within a specific program or as part of a particular ideology. We would like to argue that an occupation is fundamentally the opposite of this - it is a space where all normal social and political identities are transformed. In other words, an occupation forges alliances and social relationships due to its inherent antagonism to the status quo. If the occupation has a goal at all, then it must be the expansion of occupations - across the neighborhoods, across the city, across the nation. . .
These spaces are antagonistic and a threat to the state and capitalism, as well they should be.
The occupation is the interruption of the flow of power and capital within a specific space and time. How can an occupation be amplified by, or amplify, other forms of interruption such as strikes, blockades, or expropriation?
The occupation must spread to survive. What would happen if we could take over the whole city, living without the imposition of the state or capitalism?
Entering the Building
Hand over hand method. Two crowbars, preferably around a meter long. A large hammer. Sometimes, a wonder bar (a slim, small pry bar) can help open the door for the insertion of the first larger pry bar.
Cylinder Removal. A hammer and large flathead screwdriver to create space to hook the crowbar behind the cylinder. A large crowbar. A small screwdriver to work the mechanism in the absence of a cylinder. See the diagram at the end of the last section.
Don’t be fooled by the appearance of security. Often, an expensive lock will be locked to a cheap chain, a high-security lockbox will be attached to a flimsy fence, a window can be removed because it was improperly installed, the vent on the roof of the warehouse can be detached to leave a person-sized opening, a window will be left unlocked on the second floor, a crawlspace will be accessible from the outside, or a pet door will allow you to reach the door locks from the outside. Brute entry is never preferable to more elegant solutions.
Finally, they shared some suggested additional reading:
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Crazy and willing to be crazy for their cause. Dangerous and needs to be taken seriously
They need to be expelled to any stupid country that would take them