The State - News from Dec. 28, 1987

At least 20 homeless people and community activists were arrested in Oakland after they broke into an abandoned Victorian home and refused to leave for the second time since Christmas Eve. Protesters chanted, “We shall not be homeless,” and linked arms and legs for two hours before they were dragged by police from the steps of the house and carried into waiting vehicles. Before arresting the protesters, police insisted they first be placed under citizen’s arrest for trespassing by John Boone, the 24-year-old son of the house’s owner, Robin Orr, an Oakland Tribune society columnist and one-time press secretary to First Lady Nancy Reagan. “I did not want to have them moved on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day,” Orr said of the squatters. But she added that she wanted police to move them eventually “because the house is not a safe place for human habitation.”