On the one hand, this is dangerous amateurism; worshipers of spontaneity who are of a mind that, "if we make the demands and people follow them, it'll all work itself out in the wash."
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Rent strike thread: I'm reading a lot of calls for rent strikes by people who've never done any tenants organizing, and are not involved in any local or national efforts to organize tenants.
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This is foolishness, and it comes from a tendency on the left that is too lazy to build organization needed to win in the downtime between big upsurges.
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If you know anything about winning strikes, you need widespread community support, deep prior relationships between strikers, funds to sustain the strike, and a strategy. None of this is coming from the "rent strike 2020" camp.
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On the other hand, renters can't pay what they don't have. Many renters are not going to pay their landlords next month, not because of some ideological belief, but because they don't have any money.
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In that sense, it *is* a spontaneous movement, but one driven by desperate material necessity rather than ultra-left sloganeering.
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The rent strike demand also cuts at a core political question: why do we pay half our income to a parasitic class that offers us nothing in return? Rent is a protection racket: "pay up, or I send the police to evict you with guns and batons."
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The fact that cities throughout the country have issued eviction moratoriums shows that the political moment is ripe for the movement to push for big concessions from the ruling class.
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A moratorium on rent payments, and the organizing of tenants against their landlords to fight for an immediate amnesty on rental payments (or at least to struggle for a significant reduction in rents), are all winnable fights.
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Activists shouldn't be lowering our sights at the exact moment that new possibilities are opening up.
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So don't pay the rent if you can't afford it! But, more importantly, get organized! Organization will prove a million times more effective politically than will isolated acts by individuals, I promise you.
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Currently, the movement doesn't have capacity to achieve the demands being put forward for a rent strike. Unfortunately, as the communists used to complain, too many workers see the union like it's the fire department: they only call when they're in trouble.
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Contact your neighbors and get involved in your local tenants union, like, yesterday.
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Going forward, probably more important than whether or not to support the rent strike demand, extend the eviction moratorium, etc. is preparing our movement for when the ruling class and its government tries to return things "back to normal."
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A rent strike is something of a moot point when the courts are closed and evictions aren't being processed. However, the wheels of injustice turn slowly, but they eventually succeed at grinding down their targets, i.e. us.
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Without strenuous political intervention from the grassroots, we're going to see a mass wave of evictions once the immediate danger of the coronavirus has passed. The real question for our movement is: are we ready for the return to normalcy?
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It's all well and good to posture about a rent strike at home on our computers, but are we willing to put our bodies on the line defending our friends and neighbors from eviction when the landlord's state comes knocking?
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I should add: I don't think it's a bad thing that folks who've never organized with renters before are getting activated now. It's a very good thing! But it does mean there's going to be a big learning curve for a lot of people.
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