Rent Strike: Housing Activism in the Pandemic Online Forum 4/28

Check out this upcoming livestream event about the rent strike and discuss with authors and activists from Ottawa, Los Angeles, and the UK.

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We were already suffering from a housing crisis, with landlords and banks jacking up the rents and doing mass evictions. And that was before the pandemic. With the global economy now in lockdown, many people simply cannot pay their rent. Yet the capitalists expect to keep raking in massive profits while we struggle to survive.

More and more, tenants are collectively organizing to fight back. In the growing calls for a rent strike, many are withholding their rent simply so they can eat as well as a pressure strategy to push for a suspension of payments of rent, mortgages, and utilities. Other activists are demanding that homes should be provided for all, and are opening up vacant housing to allow the unhoused to safely quarantine. At the heart of such organizing is a vision of housing as a human right, democratically controlled and not for profit, rather than as a commodity.

In partnership with Pluto Press, It’s Going Down, and Submedia, Black Rose Books is pleased to announce the first event in its Radical Livestream Series. Join us for this live event, and send in your questions and comments for the speakers to [email protected] or in the comments of the livestream.

The event will be livestreamed through our YouTube channel and will begin on Tuesday, April 28th at 3:30 pm EST (12:30 pm PDT, 8:30 pm in the UK). Click here to find the time of the event in your timezone: https://bit.ly/2S47BPZ The video of the event will also be available on YouTube afterwards.

REGISTER to get the video link: If you register for the event, we will send an email with a link to the livestream on Monday and a reminder email on Tuesday. For those who will not be available to attend the livestream, you will be able to use these links to watch the video on YouTube afterwards.

DONATE: As you register for the event, we invite you to make a donation to support our work in these difficult times.

Josh Hawley is an Ottawa-based housing activist involved with Keep the Rent Ottawa and the Herongate Tenant Coalition (fighting to save a poor and majority immigrant Ottawa neighbourhood from the biggest mass eviction in Canadian history). He is also co-editor of Villages in Cities: Cooperative Housing, Community Land Ownership, and the Milton Parc Story, published by Black Rose Books. He will be joined by other activists from Keep the Rent Ottawa.

Swift, Yaya, and B are members of the Los Angeles Tenants’ Union (Northeast Local), and the autonomous group called Defend Northeast LA. They collaborated with other Reclaiming Our Homes Coalition organisations in the action to open up vacant publicly-owned homes, in order to help them quarantine during the pandemic. DefendNELA focuses on tenant organizing and fighting against gentrification using direct action and visual media, in collaboration with other autonomous orgs in LA. Twitter: @defendnela @latenants and @nelo.latenantsunion

Ben Tippet is a UK-based educator, activist, and author of Split: Class Divides Uncovered, published by Pluto Press. He is currently doing a PhD at the University of Greenwich, researching the causes of wealth inequality in the UK. He is a researcher for The Transnational Institute and has written for Novara, Stike! and Economy. Twitter: @BenTippet

50% DISCOUNT! For the occasion of this online event, we are offering a 50% discount on the eBook of Villages in Cities: Cooperative Housing, Community Land Ownership, and the Milton Parc Story, co-edited by Joshua Hawley and Dimitrios Roussopoulos. Visit our Black Rose Solidarity eBookshop where you can get new free eBooks each week, 50% discounts on our other eBooks, and make a donation.