oin the San Francisco DSA and Left Cinema for a screening of Rompiendo Puertas (Break & Enter), a documentary about Operation Move In and the New York squatter’s movement in the 1970s. Facing increasing rents and forced relocation under “urban renewal” programs poor black and brown families in the city’s gentrifying Upper West Side decided to take matters into their own hands. Operation Move-In found housing for more than 300 families by seizing and squatting vacant apartments, many of them owned by the city and slated for demolition. With support of community groups, they repaired these structures and even managed to win the right to remain for many families through militant direct action. Shot by the radical Newsreel Collective in the summer of 1970, Rompiendo Puertas is a gripping portrait of the movement through the eyes of Dominican and Puerto Rican families fighting for their right to exist in a city that’s determined to deny them space. It is an eye-opening and important film with many parallels to the contemporary situation in San Francisco
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