Unsettle Portland Goals and Strategy

Unsettle Portland envisions a world in which communities have control of their land and housing, and in which housing is a human right.

We are working towards this goal in the following ways:

• We support those taking direct action to unsettle spaces formerly held in foreclosure or otherwise abandoned by the banking system, and who plan to use these spaces to benefit the 99%, and all of our non-human allies.
• We are aware of the way in which the intersections of class, race and patriarchal oppression disproportionately distribute the burdens of the 1%. We seek to work with, and to be accountable to, the most impacted communities of people.
• We intend to offer a three-tiered organizational structure to our network to encourage individual and community-based organization, and to create an alternate people’s economic structure.

1. The defense from eviction in spaces currently in foreclosure

2. The reclaiming of vacant spaces for use by people displaced from their homes

3. The development of community hubs as models for the societal systems we are creating

• We understand that before the banks stole these properties from we, the 99 percent, the land was stolen from the native peoples of this bioregion. In reclaiming these spaces from the banks we endeavor to move into solidarity with peoples of the first nations.

We offer our work as a template and acknowledge the pre-existing and ongoing work of many others, here and around the continent.¶

The Take Back the Land Movement is rooted in the following principles:

• Housing is a human right;
• Local community control over land and housing;
• Leadership by impacted communities, particularly low income women of color;
• Positive Action (direct action) oriented campaigns.

The overarching objective of the Take Back the Land Movement correlate significantly with our principles:

• Fundamentally transform land relationships;
• Elevate housing to the level of a human right;
• Community control over land and housing;
• Empower impacted communities, particularly low income communities of color.