writing and reading

writing

if you follow me on social media you've probably already seen me mention the article i put out yesterday, For a ‘Bill of Rights’ package in every state, county, and city. for those of you who have not, though, that 4,300 word piece is my first post-election foray into how the electoral left should orient itself in the months to come.

as i see it: we know liberals do not have the answers and will capitulate to/co-opt the moment; we know that there is widespread political discontent with the existing political system and the capitalist duopoly to be harnessed; and we demonstrably have political power—however small that power is—to throw around. the time is now for socialists to try and set the agenda when it comes to resisting Trump, because we cannot count on there being another moment down the road.

what i've been reading (52/50)

Abolish Rent

The housing crisis is not a problem to be solved; it is a class struggle to be fought and won. The conclusion that Engels drew still applies now: “In order to make an end to this housing shortage there is only one means: to abolish altogether the exploitation and oppression of the working class by the ruling class.” Rent is a fundamental engine of inequality and injustice, a transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest, the most vulnerable to the least, which drives millions into debt and despair and onto the streets. From the perspective of tenants, the answer to the housing crisis is as simple as it is revolutionary: a world without landlords and a world without rent. Our self-interest as tenants isn’t just fixing the leak in our shower; it’s dismantling the capitalist unhousing system.

Abolish Rent is a good book and, in my view, required reading for anyone interested in housing struggles in the US. you should go order it and learn from it; and while you're at it, maybe check out the Autonomous Tenants Union Network (ATUN-RSIA) and Tenant Federation.

the central argument for the abolition of rent is a pretty easy and correct one in my view, even if it's not really actionable as anything but a long-term demand. as the first chapter observes:

Rent isn’t the dispassionate outcome of supply meeting demand; it is the index of struggle between those who own or invest in housing and those who live in it. Rent is a power relation that produces inequality, traps us in poverty, and denies us the capacity to live as we choose. Rent is exploitation and domination. It separates us from our neighbors and alienates us from the places we live. It is the engine that turns a human need into a product to be exploited, bet on, and banked. [...] All human beings need shelter. All human beings need a home. If we don’t own property, we have to pay rent to meet these needs. Rent is a fine for having a human need.

there are still immediate-term takeaways, of course. one that i take from this book is we on the left need to get into the business of organizing tenant unions as much as we organize labor unions; these are a vital and overlooked area of struggle. we ought to do this soon, too: if the labor movement is fighting for its life, the tenant movement is totally moribund. even LA Tenants Union (LATU), the central union in Abolish Rent, has only organized 3,000 or so families—a fraction of Los Angeles's renter class. and undoubtedly the number of newly-christened tenants outstrips the number that organize each year.

as for how we can facilitate this organization? my specialty is legislation, and so i see a worthwhile legislative path here. socialist politicians should make it a protected, clear right to form tenant unions and oblige landlords to collectively bargain with their tenants. (Berkeley Measure BB, as i observed in the last Cohost Union News, passed this year and does this. as far as i'm aware it is the only place with an explicit, obvious, codified right to organize a tenant union as you would a labor union.) as is, this ability seems to exist only marginally and it can hardly be called a right. tenant rights should also be codified more explicitly, and no longer be derived from a framework of "if you are a landlord, you have to do the bare minimum provide an inhabitable place to live." there should be an affirmative right to dignity as a tenant.

politically, it will also be important to have strong tenant unions that enforce any existing or newly made protections on their own; certainly these cannot and should not not rely on cops. the existing regulatory regime is also barely enforced by social agencies—while much of that inability is a product of underfunding and atrophy and can be reversed, it ultimately strikes me as dubious to count on them either. strong tenant unions, moreover, are good and politically beneficial for the left. as Chapter 4 of the book notes:

A tenants union redistributes power down into our everyday lives to challenge power and property relations directly. It operates at the level of our concrete grievances, our broken pipes and busted appliances. Instead of relying on the law to act on our behalf, we promote disruptive, direct, collective action that concentrates on our immediate antagonist—our landlords—while cultivating grassroots leadership and capacity along the way.

we should do our best to not impede/constrain these new organizations from flexing and exercising their powers.

besides Abolish Rent i finished I'm Gonna Say It Now: The Writings of Phil Ochs and Coyote Settles the South; i'll be talking about these tomorrow though. also up on the docket this month and next month is The Palestine Laboratory; we'll see how interesting that one is.