SF Cops Raid 'Vacant' Building Occupiers Invaded for Commune (Warning: Video Includes Freaky Dancing...)

Cops ousted the San Francisco Occupation of a church-owned building this morning, bringing an abrupt end to "one of the first real occupations of 2012."

The Occupy Wall Street offshoot in San Francisco of a few hundred activists began the Occupation yesterday when they took over a building belonging to the city Archdiocese.

Videos from live on the scene (courtesy of YouTube) show just what went down this morning when the cops circled the building and started making arrests:

Apparently, the Occupiers were mistaken in their assumption that the church property was vacant. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, George Wesolek, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said:

"Activists were wrong about the building's vacant status. The building was used for regular music classes until as recently as 18 months ago, Wesolek said. The archdiocese was also considering leasing out the building and using the revenue to help with financial aid for low-income Sacred Heart students, he said."

"This is definitely not a vacant building," Wesolek said. "It's not forgotten. It has a purpose."

With that in mind, the archdiocese signed a citizen's arrest warrant for graffiti vandalism and trespassing.

Some of the Occupiers, as you can see in the YouTube clip below, did not go quietly:

The latest San Francisco Occupation didn't last, and the Nation magazine has a theory as to why, writing that this is:

"The trouble of being an activist group in America. Those big, headline-stealing events like major occupations are also the ones that guarantee the biggest police responses, which in turn drives movements underground to regroup for longer periods of time."

Meanwhile, the May Day "general strike" protest gets closer each day, and Occupiers across the country are organizing to once again steal the headlines, and maybe do much more than that.