Landlords are scum. Building solidarity and power among fellow renters is really fucking important. Discuss
How to organize a Tenants Union in your building.
If organizing your building yourself seems too intimidating at first, seek out and help with housing organizing in your city/region and learn from more experienced organizers. You’ll have helped out other renters and pretty soon it won’t feel so intimidating to lead organizing yourself.
Create something like a “Cornavirus Neighbors Assistance/Mutual Aid Contact List” with phone numbers and/or emails. You can approach neighbors with the idea that since we’re all having a hard time, or know people who are having a hard time, you want to bring the people in your building closer together so you can help eachother out whenever someone is in need. It’s a great excuse to consolidate contact info, and you don’t know who might be in need right now. With that network in place, you can start bringing up things about housing in your building/city/state/region, and eventually talk about how great your city’s reters’ union is. :thumbs up:
This is honestly one of those special times where a flyer campaign might actually help. I put a couple hundred fliers out (late at night so the supers and landlords couldn’t see who it was). Included a burner email (xyzMutualAid@gmail or whatever) and a link to a Slack (discord works too).
You can use the slack to vet people before you bring up the renters union. It also serves as a good cover for organizing, it can be public and used for actual aid and non-union discussion so if the landlord finds out it’s not a big deal.
What was the response like to your fliers, if u don’t mind my asking? And do you have a cheap solution for printing out hundreds of pages?
About 10% response, but I only did one pass. Left the complex a couple weeks later. I printed them 2 per page on my cheap desktop laser printer. The landlord put in clips on the doors for their announcements, so I hijacked them. Did about 100 in a night.
I’d say be ready for multiple passes, and save some to put up in common spaces (laundry, pool, mailbox, etc). Just make sure everyone sees it more than once and has one in their possession. Make it look cool too if you can. I used bold font with a stupid little logo I made with the apartment complex’s name and the mutual aid logo.
