Activity

A tenants union helps transform groups of people into defensive and offensive communities. Community isn’t a resource waiting to be tapped, or a static object ready to be discovered. It isn’t a network we access or a system we unveil. Community is an intentional process and a long-term commitment. …

Their tenants association both forged new relationships and gave new meaning to old ones. Some members remarked how little they knew of who lived next door, how “good day” and “good night” was the extent of their communication with people who share a profound aspect of their lives. Now, they’ve put…

EVIDENCED IN BOTH the skyrocketing price of rent and the colander of policies we have to protect us, tenants are losing the class war. It is landlords who shape the policies that govern us while they extract rent and evict us. Landlords claim a greater and greater share of what we earn, while we lo…

When tenants win rights enshrined by legislation, it’s because we’ve fought our landlords. The mass rent strikes in New York’s Lower East Side tenements brought us building codes that mandate basic habitability standards, the requirement of a court process to legally evict, and the country’s first …

But policy is not a neutral tool that balances the interests of tenants and landlords. Policy reflects and congeals class power; it is a tool for class war. The founding document of the United States, the Constitution, designed our electoral process around protecting property holders from the prope…