Rev Left Radio - Brooklyn Eviction Defense: Tenant Organizing for the People

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

Members of Brooklyn Eviction Defense (BED) join Breht to discuss their organizing, housing justice, slumlords, the pandemic and moritoriums, what housing could look like under socialism, their confrontations with the paid muscle of landlords, the Eric Adams administration, stoop watches, and much, much more. Learn more about, contact, and support BED: https://brooklynevictiondefense.org/en/ Outro Music: "K*ll My Landlord" by The Coup ----- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, I have multiple members from BED or Brooklyn Eviction Defense on to talk about the tenant and housing rights struggle in New York City in particular. They're doing really important and I think beautiful work, creative work, as you'll hear throughout this conversation. These are really dedicated comrades doing their best to have. help their community and just listening to how they deal with really crazy shit slum lords and hired thugs that want to initiate violence to scare them away and the state and the cops and the mayor and all of this stuff as you listen to this it's a fascinating listen in its own right but also it generates a lot of of generalizable truths about housing in this country

And if you're engaged in a tenant organization of any kind, these struggles will resonate with you. You'll learn from them. But even if you're not, you'll learn from them. And you might get interested in joining a local tenant union wherever you're from and fighting for this core human right, which is the right to fucking have a roof over your head and walls around you and heating and electricity for your fucking family.

Like the basic core needs of human beings are being denied people. in the best of times, let alone during a pandemic and financial crisis, like has happened over the last several years. So this is a fascinating, heart-wrenching, but very informative and even downright inspiring conversation with some really solid comrades doing really solid principled work up in New York City. And as always, if you like what we do here at Rev Left Radio, we are 100% listener-funded. you can go to patreon.com forward slash rev left radio and in exchange for the cost of one cup of coffee a month you can have access to hundreds of Patreon exclusive episodes.

So without further ado, here is my interview with members from the Brooklyn Eviction Defense on their struggles in New York City around the housing rights and the eviction crisis going on in that city and all around the country. Enjoy. There are four of us here as members of Brooklyn eviction defense, which is an autonomous group of tenants in Brooklyn in New York City, working to stop evictions in all sorts of manners. legally and extra legally with and to build tenant power overall through other types of tenant

organizing beautiful well it's an absolute honor to have you here um you're doing the lord's work trying to help people stay in their homes especially during this pandemic and the rapacious inequality of the capitalist system during and after it uh so i'm very honored to have you all on to discuss this stuff and hopefully people listening no matter where they're from can learn more about your specific struggle and then have some general tips and advice and knowledge that they can apply in their own circumstances in their own cities. I guess the best way to start this conversation would just talk a little bit more about your organization, how it formed and the role that the pandemic played in its formation. Yeah. So our organization formed directly

out of the George Floyd uprisings, a group of tenant organizers primarily from the Crown Heights tenant union once the pandemic started quickly started talking about the need for a specific organization to attend to the avalanche of evictions that we were all watching pile up and what happened late in the summer of 2020 in the midst of the george floyd uprisings uh in crown heights there was an illegal eviction attempt this uh terrible terrible like stereotype of gentrifiers these like two white, I think divorced couple who like own eco yoga coffee shops

and like I think he installs those green walls in coffee shops, you know, with big wall with big like... It's literally astro-turfing neighborhoods. Literally astroturfing neighborhoods. Yeah, they tried to evict like three or four young, mostly

they're like two femmes of color. Yeah. And just throw them out and he used like the typical landlord tactic of telling them that his family was moving in. And so our comrades, I'm a member of the Crown Knights Tenet Union.

We found out about it right away. And we were there on the scene within like a couple minutes. And what sprang up there was like a really intense, autonomous sort of pretty unorganized eviction defense. It kind of turned into a little bit of encampment.

It was a really raucous and like energized action, but it was really, really, really unorganized. No one knew what we were doing. No one knew who was leading anything. No one knew what the tenants needed. No one knew what was going on. But through like sheer people power, we managed to force off the eviction. Yeah. Also just maybe not to push back against. I mean, there was a lack of organizing, but there wasn't a lack of kind of like a trajectory, which was to fight against systems of oppression that were kind of like rearing,

their head in the police brutality movement, in the gentrification movement, I think in the article that was written in, you know, fire, fire to the gentrifier was like a really big slogan. Like, we definitely knew who the enemy was. We were organized as a class against a certain class enemy. The tactics were ad hoc for sure. But I think the energy wasn't sort of co-opted because it was very, very precisely aimed at a specific class antagonism. It was at that encampment, that brief encampment where the Brooklyn eviction defense was named. We had our first meeting a few days later. And we spent the beginning of our organizational lifespan, mostly fighting because there was an eviction moratorium in New York State.

we were kind of a small cadre of people running around Brooklyn fighting illegal evictions for the most part initially because as the as the number of like potential evictions after the moratorium arising all these landlords were getting so antsy that they were just trying to throw people out any way they could and that's kind of how we formed can you talk about the like the housing crisis in new york city more broadly i'm sure there's a problem i know there was a problem before the pandemic but also how the crisis itself exacerbated that already existing housing crisis. And then, you know, looking now as the, I assume the eviction moratorium has been lifted, if that's correct, maybe you can explain what happened in the wake of that. Yeah, it's a good question and an important question. The housing crisis in New York City has been going on since, like, 1971 in the neoliberal turn.

but most markedly we look at like 2008 in the financial crisis as like the beginning of the current crisis the current housing crisis but during the pandemic we saw the like hyper financialization of housing which means like huge corporations started buying up massive amounts of multifamily apartment buildings and like creeping into public housing which in New York city has been, like, uniquely enduring, whereas other cities, like, public housing has fallen apart completely, NYCHA has survived to some extent, but... Do in part mostly because of the tenants themselves fighting for its existence. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, with the proliferation of corporate ownership of multifamily apartment buildings

and the sort of the hold that these corporations, or the hold on these corporations of their shareholders, right? They have a certain profit that is expected not just of a normal landlord. So it kind of like nuances the typical class relation between landlord and tenant. And it introduces this third party. And it just causes like massive displacement or it compels massive displacement. But it also comes in an important context, right, where the tenant movement in New York City, particularly in New York State more broadly, has like had really incredible wins in the last few years. I think most notably, like, right to counsel was one in 2019, or 2020 it was one and instituted during the pandemic. And historically, eviction court,

housing court, we call it eviction court, is just an eviction mill. It's, like, there to suppress righteous tenant anger, and it just sublimate, like, all of that anger into, like, these bureaucratic, like, drowning eviction mills, right? But right to count. But right to count, council means that every tenant who goes into eviction court has the right to a lawyer. And like, just that mere fact has had like a huge dent on, on the actual evictions that take place. But as an organization, we do understand evictions to be like merely a flashpoint within like a spectrum of dispossession. And so we understand that like reforms like right to counsel, which are beautiful and like allow people to stay in their homes essentially only ever like displaces the dispossession

that happens, like, it's still occurring in different means and different modes. And also, just to kind of bring it back to how these, like, incremental wins kind of get enacted is through mass tenant mobilization, through direct action, through huge, huge protests in the street, at Housing Corps, at these, you know, politicians' houses, like, these weren't just somehow backroom deals that happened between, you know, amicable and, uh, I'm, you know, well-meaning politicians. Benevolent, that's the word, benevolent politicians. I struck that word from my brain because I'm not a liberal.

So, yeah, it didn't happen because of that. It happened because we fought for that right. And a lot of what I think we're going to get into is how the nonprofit industrial complex and progressive politicians use that anger and that energy that the mass movement kind of creates and then funnels it into kind of policy prescription, funnels it into reformism, revisionism of the actual energy and demands of the tenant movement, and then, you know, kind of like puts them into articulable demands within the imaginary of capitalist housing nonprofit complex. Yeah. And as is always the case with any meaningful

incremental reform it's always you know spearheaded by bottom up mass movements and then if it gets passed as policy it's the establishment democrats and the liberals that try to take credit for that incrementalism and then weaponize it against more revolutionary forms of or theories of political change just like well we see we have these incremental reforms and it's gradualism and you know our system is best and we fight for these reforms but even the things that they want to claim as their creation or actually the creation of bottom-up mass struggles forcing them to concede these reforms in the first place. So whether it's meaningful reforms or full-hon revolutionary, it's always the masses leading the way. I do want to touch really quickly, I'm sorry, on the eviction moratorium a little bit,

just to get an idea of how it actually played out in New York City, because I know in a lot of places there were these technical moratoriums in place, but landlords immediately set about trying to find ways around it, or in some cases, waiting until the very moment that that moratorium technically ended to just kick everybody out. So can you talk a little bit more about that before we move on? Yeah. So I think that in Brooklyn eviction defense, we really see eviction not only as a flashpoint, like we said, but as a really multifaceted tactic to dispossess their homes. So we see landlords doing a lot of different type of tactics, whether that's something like not keeping up with the repairs that they have to do in order to, that is their job as providing housing, whether it's trying to make it look like someone wasn't, like they weren't able to cash a check that someone put in.

And so the landlords were really trying to make it look like any way that tenants weren't doing their job when it's actually often. the landlords that were that were not doing that job in addition they would try to file things in other areas of court that uh so filing something uh that basically said that a tenant was trying to be be a nuisance or that a tenant was like doing something uh like acting out of turn in order to get around the eviction moratorium which only applied to cases where the tenant didn't pay and for things like that and so uh bed or Brooklyn eviction defense is really devoted to supporting tenants no matter what type of eviction process they're going through, whether it is in the courts, whether it is harassment or whether it is not providing the other services

that come along with providing like four walls and a floor of housing. Yeah, to get very specific about some examples of this that we've seen without like identifying anything, you know, we've seen tenants who their landlord wanted them out so bad, oddly that they would come into the house and rip out the toilet and the sink and the counters in the kitchen and cut the cable to the refrigerator, take their mattress and their belongings and throw them on the curb, and, you know, also just go turn their water off. It can be, like, I saw someone, a landlord put a boom box behind a door near a tenant's bedroom and turn it to between radio stations, and it was just playing white noise, blasting it 24-7. And, you know, we, as part of our work, we try to protect the tenants, help them stay in their homes by performing guerrilla repairs where we go in. put a toilet back in or make a kitchen counter repair their refrigerator power cable go in and figure out how their water was turned off turn it back on you know buy a

Bluetooth repeater and find the radio station that they turned it to and silenced the boombox stuff like that very creative yeah I like that and it obviously based on what you're saying and stuff that anybody who's ever rented or been in these tenant struggles knows is just how criminal these landlords are. And that's true everywhere. We have our own slumlords here in Omaha, to be sure. But yeah, just absolutely cruel and unusual attempts to destroy people's lives for their own financial interests. I was hoping maybe you could talk a little bit more about some of these struggles or conflicts that your organization has participated in since it's founding over the past couple of years and maybe point to some of your

specific successes. Yeah, so we, like we've alluded to, we have a lot of different strategies. Some of those are more on the ground. So some of our huge successes have come from doing things called stoop watches, where basically if someone is worried that their landlord might come by and change the locks on them, which is often something that landlords will do when they know the tenants are out, or if they think that something in their home is going to be, messed with when they are not around or if they want other people to basically see and provide witness to the harassment that they've been experiencing, we will set up groups of people that will go at whatever hours the tenant is concerned about, whether those are overnight or

during business hours for however long is needed, and just sit out on the stoop or sit out directly outside of the door and provide sort of like extra support for the tenant. And that is enough to often, if intimidate or annoy the landlord into changing their practices or, and it can really change the stakes of what has gone on in any specific landlord-tenant interaction. And I think we've had like one really important recent victory, which had a variety of tactics involved. Yeah, we were working with the comrade and, a wonderful tenant organizer who she was subletting from a leaseholder who is also living in the apartment. And the leaseholder assumed some psychotic guys as if he was the landlord and was

trying to treat our comrade like he had this power in the situation. And so what he ended up doing was he turned off the electricity in the whole apartment. And then he ran an extension cord for his like portions of the apartment and ran it to some exterior outlet and so that he had electricity and then he would tell our comrade in between like harassing her and actually putting his hands on her you would tell our comrade that uh you could the electricity was a fire risk in the apartment so that the whole apartment couldn't have any electricity and our comrade suffered through this for 10 months she was 10 months without electricity um so what we as an organization did we we first went out there and held a rally and like had a bunch of people out in the in the snow and we were outside of the apartment led by our comrade who lived there and we were like just yelling at the at the at the leaseholder and just like letting him know that we were watching and then uh we were talking to our comrade on the on the scene and she was telling us about the harassment she had been going through so we on this on the spot instituted a stoop watch um and so we held a stoop watch um and so we held a stoop watch

for five days in in the fucking snow we had our comrades like sitting out front on little chairs we had a table in like two hour shifts we have a table and like we're constantly doing outreach while we do it it's like one of the most beautiful like integrations of both outreach and praxis and then after five days we held another rally and at this rally we had one of our more legal comrades write up a cease and desist letter that like looked pretty official and And so then after the rally, after a few people spoke, our comrade invited us into her apartment. And so about 12 of us masked up, followed her into the apartment. And the leaseholder refused to let us in to the apartment, even though we were her guests.

And he actually ended up calling the police on us. And when the pigs showed up, we had this fancy looking cease and desist letter, which like held no fucking legal water. But the cops, the pigs started looking at it and we're like, oh, like, that's. That's interesting. And all of a sudden, even though like an organization born out of the George Floyd uprisings, absolute abolitionists, we understand that like we have to trick cops into like enforcing what we need them to enforce sometimes. And so the pigs forced open the door, told the leaseholder to like fuck off and not fuck with us. And we walked in like 12 of us and we flipped on the electricity and like we saw the light. And and since then, this is about five weeks ago. Our comrades' electricity is. been on and their harassment has stopped. So to piggyback off of what Comrade was just saying about other Comrade

who has been neglected electricity, who has been harassed, violently assaulted and invisibleized by police, by so many different agencies of the state that they have filed dozens upon dozens of complaints to

so many groups, you know, advocacy groups, police, police community affairs officers, HPD, the housing preservation and development, you know, housing court, they've done it all. They did, you know, they were on their peace and cues. They did through all the steps that, you know, the liberal mind will have you believe that if you do, that, you know, all things should just be resolved and you shouldn't be suffering from quotidian violence that for almost a whole year they were suffering. So what Stoopwatch does, what organizing around your community does is not only, you know, scare the landlord or convince them because it would just be less of a hassle to just give in.

What it does is truly change the reality of the situation. It truly changes the material reality that is present amongst oppressed classes. like tenants and were the working class, no longer are we individualized, no longer are we alienated amongst these very, very opaque and disparate avenues of help and charity. Now we have come together and gathered and accumulated our power as a class to flip the switch on the landlord or the wannabe slumlord or even the pigs, right? We said, no, we are no longer going to approach this from an atomized liberal's perspective. We are going to come together as a working class, as a revolutionary movement, to literally turn the lights on.

Like tenant power is literally going to turn the lights on. And it's, yes, they are afraid, but also they are understanding a new reality that we are kind of forcing in as a new paradigm. And we think that part of building the world we want to see is for everyone to control their own housing. And so, you know, it's not just tenancy, although most of the people that we end up helping are tenants. But right now we have an active eviction defense that we've been fighting for two weeks. For two weeks, we've had people on a stoop and inside of a house in crowds. Crown Heights, Brooklyn, one of the first black family that moved into that block in 1951 in 2017 had their deed stolen from them when they attempted to refinance their home. And now three

weeks ago, we were on a call about something totally unrelated with comrades in the Crown Heights Tenets Union. And they received, found out that. one of their members had been evicted. We worked with Crown Heights Senate Union, but we reversed the lock change from the landlord, got the family back in there. And although we're still sort of involved in an active court process, not us, but the lawyers representing them, we don't have legal possession, but we have been in that house. Running shifts, people on the stoop, people inside for two weeks, and there was actually a fair bit of political attention that this got. The Attorney General of New York came down and did a, you know, participated in a rally sort of

unexpectedly calling for, you know, investigation into this deed theft process. But this is unimportant to us. Like, there are all sorts of ways that people lose control of their own housing, and we're fighting all of them. It was really a beautiful thing when Latisha James comes down to the stoop on a day when she's getting tweeted at, you know, 10 times the second about indicting Trump or his kids or whatever. And she spends five hours talking in these negotiations between a landlord and and, or not even a landlord, a false deed holder and the family that had this house. and we get on the microphone after she's on the microphone

and just talk straight to the crowd that she was just talking to about how politicians will not solve this problem. Legal protections are not what we need. Community capacity is the only thing that can help us take control and keep control of our own housing. And that's what we have to help build

if we're going to win this fight. I want to add a couple things. to that because this is an ongoing eviction defense it's like so many things happening at once but one thing I want to focus in on it first is that our comrade in the crownites tenant union was uh legally evicted by a marshal and uh collectively we have reversed a legally marshal executed eviction which which as as comrade over here was saying that like through community organizing through tenant power we like change paradigms of reality and like a Marshall executed eviction is like one of the firmest expressions of like capitalist reality right after that happens there's no going back right and like

organizationally for so long we've we've worked on so many different like preventative tactics right so like we organize TAs and like we do all sorts of outreach but like we've we've talked about but like we we hadn't really honed in on like the practice of reversing actual legally executed evictions until this came and we we did it and we're doing it and like that sort of reality shift has been like incredibly infectious like the the stoop watch that comrade alluded to that's been 24-7 for 14 days now has been just like a greeting a breeding ground of like radical tenant power. Also, just don't want to detract, but I'm going to bring it back. I was doing door knocking today with two new comrades that actually joined through the kind of community outreach that was fostered at the Stoop Watch. You know, while we're doing Stoop Watch, we're not only inviting community members to support the tenant that we are Stoop Watching for, but we're also, you know, kind of uplifting the fact that this is a very, very textbook example of gentrification. and, you know, deep theft and illegitimate eviction, but also there are hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of people

who are actually experiencing similar cases of vulnerability, susceptibility to a predatory eviction machine. So we at Brooklyn Eviction Defense do kind of canvassing for open court cases that whether, you know, face some degree of imminence to eviction, whether they defaulted from one of their court cases or they defaulted for a second one or they have a marshal assigned or they have received a 14-day eviction notice.

And so we were on a route in Flatbush, Brooklyn, trying to hit 12 houses. And on the fifth one of the new comrades, I felt that they were comfortable enough to do it on their own. They went outside, me and the other conrad was kind of cold, so we kind of just kind of pushed them like, yeah, you can do it on your own.

And they came back. taken a picture of also so first off they knocked on the wrong door when this was actually a good thing and this is something the tactic that we do after we knock on the tenant's door if they don't answer we'd knock on the neighbor's door see what's going on they first knocked on the neighbor's door the neighbors said they hadn't seen them in a few days but they weren't around and then we went the comrade went to the door and there had been a notice a state notice that said marshals have possession of this home at first i think From, you know, a year ago, seeing that, we would have just given up.

And we'd be like, okay, whatever, it sucks. And it's horrible and beat yourself up because we didn't get to this person soon enough. But because of that paradigm shift and that new reality that was kind of ruptured, because of what has been happening with the work we've been doing, Conrad came back to the car and said, this is what I saw, Marshalls have possession, the information of the fact that they probably weren't aware of their eviction. It was probably executed when the tenant wasn't home. we came up with a plan.

We said, okay, we're going to, we have this outreach flyer that has, you know, the information of what to do if you can stop your eviction, but not information of what to do if you've been evicted and want to gain possession again, which can happen and historically has been possible. And recently we kind of repeated history, history that was kind of lost. And so we came up with this plan. We were like, we're going to give our number to the neighbor. If the neighbor is going to be vigilant and kind of keep an eye out here, out. So if the tenant comes home, tell them that, like, or we also left all of our contact info behind the eviction notice. You know, sometimes you see something like you to rip it down. You're so angry and then boom, our information just falls on the ground. And so we want to

be able to reintroduce this reality to a different part of Brooklyn, into every part of Brooklyn, into every tenant's home that's been victim to the eviction machine. And that's only possible because we made it possible. Reality is fungible. And like, this is, totally a new thing, not a new thing, but it's a tactic that we now have access to. And it wouldn't have been in our toolkit if it wasn't for what's been happening at this Stoop Watch that we should continue to talk about because it's so important. Yeah, I love that. I think it's incredibly creative and doing amazing work, helping people at some of the lowest and scariest and most vulnerable points of their life in a lot of cases. So I really, I really salute you. Anything

else? I thought I heard somebody else want to say something before we move on. Well, if we want to talk more about what's going on right now, I mean, we've been on this two weeks. And, you know, the stress that the tenant is under in this situation, sorry, I'm used to using this language. They're not a tenant. They own the home. They have owned the home for 70 years. And it's being stolen from them. And the stress that they're under, right now, there's you know three generations live in that house but there's two of them there and it is wearing on them a lot we want to make sure always in these situations that we are centering what the needs of the person in the house and like what that means is is making sure that the tactics

we use are approved by the the people we're protecting or helping to protect keep them with them in their house. It's always a challenge to do that, but we think that that's of primary importance. So like we've been saying, this has been a 14-day onslaught. Not only have we been using a lot of different tactics, the Stoop Watch, we've been, we had a whole day last week where we just did outreach in the community to make sure everyone in the neighborhood in local businesses and neighbors on, on nearby blocks knew what was going on and we're ready to come out to support.

But the illegitimate landlord has also been using their own sort of playbook against us. So just to go through a little bit of a timeline, two weeks ago today, the family was reentered into their home after a Marshall evicted them. The Marshall evicted them while one of the family members was in the hospital getting surgery, which the landlord had found out about and got the marshal to change, to put an eviction notice up when the family was out of the home. And that also included changing the locks so that the family could not get back into the home. Our comrades were able to reenter the family into the home one morning. And this family who had just come out of the hospital, just recovering from that experience, enters their home to find it completely. trashed, completely, like completely torn to pieces. And this is the home that they've lived in

that two generations of their family has been born in. They've been in this home for 70 years. And they are dealing with the trauma of that moment and walking in to see their family home torn apart when an agent of the landlord first in thinking that we don't know exactly what he was thinking, but he was there to do some sort of business in a home that they thought that they they possessed. And they were very shocked and surprised to find out that actually the legitimate owners of the home and a bunch of comrades who were there to support were in the home instead. So this man became extremely violent towards the family and towards the comrades who were there and actually threatened and was trying to physically fight everyone and intimidated everyone

physically out of the house. It's a large man. Large man. Large man. Large man. One of the largest men I've ever seen in my life. Located. Maybe. Yeah. Big guy. Big intimidating guy.

He can curl a hundred pounds second. Yeah. He had set up a weight room in one of the old bedrooms, like, trashed all the stuff, and there were like a hundred pound dumbbells littering the place. Terrifying. Which now we're using to barricade the door, so they can't come into the roof. Yeah. So we all, we turn these things against them.

But anyways, the first tactic that they're trying to use is physical intimidation by a hired, hired agent of theirs. And they intimidate the family and the comrades out of the home because everyone's sort of taken by surprise and once again, change the locks. And they sort of think that this is over and done with. But what they don't know is that we have a, we have these multiple associations of Crown Heights, tenant union and of bed members who are ready and able to be there within 15, 5, 15 minutes to support the tenants and to get them back in. So we all go out there onto the stoop. And this was, this was the beginning two weeks ago. So the timeline is we hear about the eviction on a Tuesday. Thursday night, a covert group goes to change the locks, Friday,

morning, family gets back in, gets attacked by the very strong man, gets compelled out, but then quickly reassert possession of the house. And what happened was on Monday, the following Monday, when we had a stoop watch going, one of our comrades was attacked around noon by the same strong man shoved and punched our comrade and so then what happened we made the stoop watch a little bigger,

had some more people there and then what happened was we were sitting on the stoop and about 30 of the landlord's community members showed up and bumrushed the stoop while there were about 20 or 30 cops there. They bumrushed the stoop and like

try to shove their way past us to get to the front door and we're not really sure why. We know they're trying to get in, but we don't understand quite like how far they're willing to go in front of the cops, right? So there's like this incredible tension where like we are holding strong. These people are like actively trying to get past us and seemingly will do anything to do it. But the cops are watching us. So what happens is like a stalemate kind of ensues. And there's about 45 minutes and like the really cold weather.

where we're like sitting on the stoop, we're not sure what the pigs are going to do, we're not sure what these motherfuckers are going to do, and tensions are increasing, and these are community members of the illegitimate landlord, so these are like a group of Hasidic men who have charged at us, right? And things get tense,

people are yelling at each other, and then eventually the cops come and drag everyone off of the stoop, and they push all of our people across the street, and leave the landlord or the illegitimate landlord's people on the sidewalk. And while this is happening, there's a yeshiva boarding house like four doors down from the particular residence. And while this is happening, some of the people who had bum rushed us go into the boarding house and then proceed to go up onto the roof.

And at this point, there are three women, two of the two homeowners and one of our comrades, three women in the house. And so we see them go in the yeshiva boarding house. and then they go up on the roof and proceed to trespass across like four different buildings and get onto the roof of the house that we're protecting. And like while the cops are making sure that our people are on the right side of the street, we can literally see and hear these people trying to break into the home. And by the grace of God and as our comrades said, through the power of solidarity, the lock held.

They managed to break through parts of the door and we like later went up on the roof to see what happened. and they had like torn off half of the door, but one of the locks held. Yeah, it's also just like an ongoing eviction defense that all four of us have spent probably like 14 hours a day for the last 14 days working on. So like we are drunk with like all of this shit. I bet. Yeah, it sounds absolutely harrowing and insane that you have to go up and have that level of conflict just to secure somebody's basic human dignity. Um, it's, it's incredibly daunting and jarring. But the, the bravery and the solidarity is what allows you to stick with it and to stay together in the face of that. And a lot of people, you know, are conflict diverse. A lot of people, um, you know, when the situation gets really heated, they feel like they want to turn and run. But when you have a bunch of people at your side and you know you have backup and, uh, people are there to, to, to fight alongside you, it can, it can really change the dynamic a bit. Uh, so I salute all of you for, for having to go through that and everything that you say that you've, you've done to help people. people in your community. It's really, it's really beautiful.

Yeah. Can I just jump in real quick, actually. So I think that one really important thing that's coming out of this active eviction defense that we are participating in right now is we're like participating with the community, with the neighborhood to demonstrate that we can win against people we don't usually win against. And that knowledge and awareness that we can actually actually win against those people is super important if we're ever going to change anything. And it's important to note that like the opposite, the flip side of your, um, of what happened is that like you were saying, but the conflict diverse folks or the people who would depend on the police or the people

who would depend on, you know, just and fair society, um, you know, uh, the meritocracy of it all. Like they would say, you know, I'm not going to deal with this right now. this is crazy, I'm going to go home. And what the landlords would do, what that would create in the, in the consciousness, the global consciousness of the landlord class would say that we won again, guys, we did it. We scared this shit out of them by, you know, either incentivizing or giving literal money to these goons to strike fear and potential death, you know, because that's what it is, right? Being evicted is a death sentence. So what we're doing is another win to make these people not ever want to fight back.

And what we did with community members, with the tenants, was say that we're creating a completely new reality. Hell yeah. Absolutely. Now, one of you earlier mentioned the nonprofit industrial complex. And I think this is important to explain to people specifically who might not have any experience organizing in the housing movement. Can you talk about the role that they play in co-opting the housing movement? and whose interests that they ultimately serve? Yeah, this is particularly relevant with this active eviction defense.

And we also want to really emphasize that while we are doing this grueling 14-day eviction defense so far, we have been fighting other evictions constantly during this process. But we can get into that in a little bit. But what happened was, right, there's a big housing coalition in New York State. It's called Housing Justice for All. and it's like a really massive coalition of mostly non-profit housing organizations. And like I was talking about earlier the wins that the tenant movement has had. And like housing justice for all has been the site of the tenant movement struggle in many ways in New York State for the last three or four years.

But we historically as an autonomous radical tenant organization have had our gripes with this. coalition. You're being soft. I am being soft, but I'll get into it. To contextualize, right, we were talking about the moratorium and housing justice for all and other like nonprofits and the Democratic Socialists of America in New York City. Back in about September, all of these groups sort of while the eviction moratorium, after the eviction moratorium had just been extended, all of these groups kind of feeling fatigue,

feeling like another extension to the moratorium was impossible collectively decided that rather than pursuing another extension of the moratorium, which we have to say, every installation of any moratorium in New York State in the past

years has been at the behest of the autonomous tenant movement. It's been like radical direct action that has forced the hand. So Housing Justice Frail and the DSA, who are like heavyweights in New York State tenant movement, they sort of, they collectively decided that instead of fighting for another

moratorium extension, they were going to fight for good cause legislation. And good cause legislation, uh, essentially protects people, particularly people in unregulated, uh, apartments from being evicted for, quote, no good cause, right? Um, and, and it's a really important bill. And it's a bill that like, we collectively at in Brooklyn eviction defense and like all of our tenant comrades think is important because it like raises the floor from which tenants can organize with that protection right and like we we are all about it we love good cause and we want good cause to be enacted but the this coalition uh they made this political decision right to to not only pursue good cause instead of the moratorium extension but also to pin the campaign

for good cause onto the date of the expiration of the moratorium right So like this whole four-month campaign process was like a good cause was being consistently latched on to this January 15th moratorium expiration date. And so in the lead up in like the end of December, beginning of January, all of these like DSA politicians and also like all of these representatives for all these nonprofits were putting out these statements that were like the moratorium, the moratorium is ending. there is an avalanche of evictions we need good cause now and like this was the sort of core messaging of the whole campaign and so we

who are like sort of part of housing justice for all because they like the work that we do we showed up to their meetings and we're just like this is trash because good cause does not attend to the 225,000 eviction cases that are set to

enact once the moratorium ends because good cause protects against no cause evictions and not paying your rent is apparently a good cause to be evicted, right? And so we came into these meetings and we were like, this is trash.

Like you guys are making political calculations that are like allowing people to be evicted and this is like your base and the coalition sort of responded to our grievances. They always call them grievances because liberals love to personalize what are like political and structural

interventions right so they started to like tone police us right and then and then fast forward two weeks because the moratorium had expired the the legal eviction that we are fighting right now was allowed to happen right so because the moratorium expired this eviction that we're fighting took place and so then right when we hit the ground running in this eviction defense people in housing justice for all reach out to us and we're like how can we support this effort and like we knew that they couldn't really support

us in any like material on the ground way like we knew they weren't going to send people out we knew that like they were not going to be on the stoop watch we knew that they weren't going to like do the actual like meat and potatoes of eviction defense but we do know that they have like a huge statewide coalition and like they have really they have a really like refined press

list, right? So we were like, can you shoot out this press release that our comrades have put together? It's like the least they can do. And so we had written like a really thorough press release that centered the demands of the tenants that included canceling rent because the tenants are, or the homeowners are members of Crown Heights Tenet Union. It was like a really thorough platform of a press release. And what these motherfuckers and housing justice for all did was not only did they defaying all of all of our demands, but they inserted They inserted good cause legislation into the messaging of the whole action. They literally said that this eviction defense,

It's not enough. Said that the on-the-ground direct action was not enough and that what was needed to support and to save this family's housing was good-cause legislation. And so they sent this out to their whole press context, right? And with not only our organizational names, but literally the actual... legal names and phone numbers of our comrades who wrote this press release, right?

Who wrote the original press release that they- Astro-Turfed. And then, and then, and then, sorry, we're getting worked up. But then a handful of us showed up to the subsequent field call, right? And like, with an unplanned but, like, righteous desire to intervene. Can I just interject for a second? so there are a there's a faction on the left of housing justice for all within housing justice for all within the DSA even in New York City there are there are good communists they are good Marxists

they're good socialists they're good anti-capulous however you'd like to say it you know people who do good work and actually have their heart in the right place not everyone is just like a fucking you know total you know sycophant for these like politicians and stuff and So we've identified those people. We've tried to rally the base. Obviously, the base is democratic. Obviously, the base is working class, so they want working class things. And we had access to the central committees of housing justice for all's notes.

For weeks, we had it. And they were updating it. They were dropping our names in there. They were saying, oh, such and such comment came on the last meeting. They said this. The base was riled up. Shut it down next time. Let's get some scripts so our base can challenge them next time.

And they were literally, literally doing behind the scenes, like, manipulation of their so-called base in order to squash, like, righteous demands that would actually help their base and not necessarily, you know, deliver on their promises that they had for the board. In addition to that, I think just to bring it back to the ways that they, so not only have they changed the language, that the autonomous tenant movement has written and asked for not only have they made their own demands and decenter the demands of tenants and homeowners that in the way that they've actually been made but they also co-opt as we've seen like a lot of language about the way that you interchpersonally

relate with each other they have they called some of our comrades abusive for and they accused people of being abusive for saying that it was not okay to change the press release and they sort of are weaponizing the kinds of words that we try to use to care for and to care for and to have solidarity with each other against the movement and I think that is those things are fundamentally how nonprofits and the nonprofit industrial complex have been affecting. Yeah. And another aspect of the nonprofit industrial complex that we've think is really destructive is viewing work as service or charity instead of as solidarity. And we view ourselves as a group of tenants. And as tenants, we know that we never know when the

other shoe can drop. And we are going to be at risk of eviction ourselves. And this attitude has led directly to problems with the act of eviction of defense we're working on now. The incentive structures of, you know, politicians, the government agencies and philanthropy that fund and sort of approved projects for these nonprofits, they create a situation where the tenants do not have agency over the situation. In this case we're working on now, there was a nonprofit that serves to provide legal counsel for elderly people. They were appointed as legal counsel for this family, and they fucked up the case, and they told the illegitimate landlord that the family had no interest in the home. This created a situation where the family lost their deed. And because the tenant didn't have agency, no one actually listened to what the tenant needed. And what that resulted in was a legal deed transfer.

And when you're not actually considering the agency of the tenant, then these are the sorts of mistakes that you make. the incentive structures that are inherent in the nonprofit industrial complex center the agency of politicians and philanthropy, not the agency of tenants. And that is a fundamentally untenable situation for actually giving people control over the home. Yeah, exactly. Well, said. And that, well, I always say one of the most wretched innovations in the maintenance of the liberal status quo,

over the last several years has been the co-option on the part of like establishment liberal types of the language of social justice and then weaponizing it against those in favor of the working class of anti-imperialist politics, et cetera, basically weaponizing the language of social justice against people to the left of liberalism. And that manifests in a million different ways. And I can see just in the way that you described how this particular nonprofit operates, you can already see that happening there. I do want to ask really quickly about the new administration, right? So you just have a new election. You have Eric Adams coming in to be the mayor of New York City. And I'm just wondering what impact he has or is likely to have on this broader situation, if any at all. Maybe

it just stays the same. And then maybe beyond just him, what broader conditions and lack of services in New York City also contribute to fueling the housing crisis? Yeah, I can take that first one. So the reason why politicians, non-profit paid staffers, boards of directors don't have the interests of the working class in mind of the working class tenant is because they're not tenants themselves. They're oftentimes landlords. Um, Eric Adams, uh, he has tons of landlord friends, uh, donors, uh, interests, um, that are, uh, rested at the very heart of his politic. Um, Eric Adams, uh, himself was actually on the phone with Tish James, the attorney general inside of the house of the tenants who, um, of the, of the homeowners who were converted into tenets through illegal deed theft, we as a mass tenant movement and a working class

movement brought so many politicians, so many would be concerned bodies that want to save face to this forefront of this crisis that we're dealing with. And they made these speeches. It was alluded to that we obviously pushed back against that. But what was really interesting was how these many legal and political bodies came to kind of encircle this moment that could have broad implications for many, many homeowners and tenants and kind of de-legitimize the structures of the legal system in New York City, legal system in the United States more broadly. And what they were offering was not a solution to an intrinsic problem, was not a structural solution to, you know, you know, capitalism's nature, it was rather like, we're just going to

offer you some, like, thing we think you're not going to turn down, which was Eric Adams sent a pastor and two rabbis to the house at 11 p.m. literally, the Eric Adams, they came from Gracie Manor, which is where the mayor of New York City sleeps. They were having dinner, and they told that to the tenant and said, oh, we just had dinner. And we came because we heard about the awful news of what was going on in this house. At, you know, 11 p.m. suited thugs, you know, suited thugs of capital, these pastors and rabbis who, you know, eat fat off the blood of the working class, they were like, oh, you know, we're here to offer you a solution so all this, we can make all this go away.

You trade your house, give it to this horrible, you know, organized crime syndicate that has been displacing, gentrifying, and stealing deeds from people in Atlanta, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Florida, you just give up your home that you've lived in for 70 years and we'll give you six months in a hotel. That was the best they could fucking offer. And so not to mention, and we're not going to name names, but Eric Adams has personally, Eric Adams has personally received cultural, spiritual, and wellness advice from the family, literally, from the family. He's a vegan. Yeah. So the reason why Eric Adams is a vegan, and I think he's a shitty

vegan because he's not actually committed to what the teachings of this cultural institution that he sought, you know, advice from, the reason why he's a vegan, the reason why he's, you know, practices and preaches his wellness is because from a very young age, he would go to this cultural institution in Brooklyn and Crown Heights that this homeowner lived out and that this has been a service for for years he literally knows them personally and all he could offer was six months in a hotel for 70 years of struggle for 70 years of cultural capital that this family has created for the community um it's sick and it's it's honestly uh you know he's he's he's no more than just a black face on capital yeah can i add a nuance to that and

explain kind of why there are rabbis on the scene um because when we were bum rushed by the couple dozen Hasidic men during that standoff tensions were very high right and certain like press outlets in the landlord's

community took images of that and then started labeling our organization and the Crown Heights Tenet Union as anti-Semitic and framed it as a clash between Semitic homeowners and

anyone too much. Antisemitic communists and radicals, right? And so they started this like press cycle calling us anti-Semitic even though a majority of our organizers are Jewish. I was on the stoop with these Hasidic men speaking to them

in Hebrew, right? But they still labeled us as anti-Semitic. And put words in our mouths. Oh, and put words in our mouth. And even though it was super disgusting and like our comrades, our like press comrades were like in the Twitter trenches fighting these accusations, which was pretty funny. But even though it was like such a disgusting thing,

and especially as a Jew, like, it was particularly horrific because on top of everything else, these particular Hasidic men were like a sect. And I don't want to speak to particularly or mess up any details, but they are like part of a messianic settler, colonial Zionist sect, right? We were on the stoop and it's a black family that lives inside and they were chanting death to Arabs, right? Like this is a very very. This is a very. particular articulation of like messianic reactionary uh judaism and so they started labeling us as anti-semites and i i just got to comrades house here um after what is what was what has now been our second stoop shabbat or stoop shabbas where like the jewish community members that are part of the eviction defense um and neighbors who are

also jewish have gathered with with the homeowners and like celebrated shabbas and people uh baked chalas and like we did the prayers and we lit the candles and we drank the wine and like we shared stories of not only like the past couple weeks but one of our comrades read read a long essay about uh uh jewish bunde eviction defenders in 1930s poland and like how their tactics are like eerily similar to our tactics and it was like an incredibly beautiful moment of like a resurgent judeic uh tradition that like repels not only evictions and displacement, but also like the co-optation of our religion and culture that these messianic settler colonial Jews do, right? Like they claim that they're real Jews, which is like an

attack on our culture. And Chavez was beautiful. Amen. Yeah, that's that's absolutely wild. And that that, you know, that accusing of anti-Semitism as a way to often even protect reactionary politics. I mean, that's the whole Zionist line is like, if you don't support Israel and Zionism, that means you're anti-Semitic, which is in and of itself a pretty anti-Semitic line of thought. But the same nonprofit that appointed the lawyers that wound up with these homeowners losing the deed to their house, like faced a huge backlash from their workers this summer during like the assassinations and uprisings that were going on in Palestine.

And that exact tactic was used against the employees internally. And it's all part of the same machine. Yeah. Wow. Absolutely. Anybody want to touch on the broader conditions and lack of services in New York City? Well, I think maybe you're referencing in that essay that we wrote, sort of how eviction is like a continuation or an entrance into like intense markets.

marginalization, which is just like, which is just the neoliberal Ruth Wilson Gilmore says organized abandonment that is like urban life right now, right? It's like the withdrawal of all sorts of services. And it's like on top of that, it's like the incredible policing of poverty that happens in New York City and every city, right? And it's like, but it's like just an all out assault because like public housing gets attacked, public schools get attacked. Even like Eric Adams, one of his first acts as a mayor, was to address the homeless problem by, like, sweeping them off of MTA subways, right? So, like, it's just like a constant winnowing of like abilities to survive for so many people. Absolutely. Yeah, the interconnectedness

of so many of these issues and problems, fueling one another. And yeah, I was referencing to that article, which just to reiterate, I will link to that full article in the show notes. So anybody interested can go and read that piece in its entirety, which was, I have to say, very well written, passionate, moving, informative, very well done. And that will be in the show notes for anybody interested. I really wanted to focus on this question, which is, you know, what could housing look like? Because we've laid out a lot of the problems. I've had episodes many times before with different tenant organizations talking about similar problems in different cities. So, you know, and I think my audience will definitely know how this is related to capitalism and the

overall rapaciousness of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. But it's always nice to ask this question because we'd like to offer a vision of what could be in addition to critiques of what is, right? So with that in mind, what could, and this is a big question, so take it in whatever direction you want, but what could housing look like in a socialist society? And why is a broader socialist movement and maybe even a principled communist party important for the advancement of are multifaceted struggles, of which, of course, housing is a core, but one among many. So we're going to each, there's four of us here, we're going to each give each other a minute, and we're going to correct ourselves when we go over.

So I will say, this has been a question that we've actually posed at the Stoop Watch for not only tenants, not only people who come by, but for literal children, we put on poster boards that what does a world without landlords look like? I had a comrade's child come up to me when they got there and they said, they said, hey, comrade. And I said, what a comrade. They're literally four years old. They're an amazing kid.

And I said, nothing. You know, we're doing some art. And so I walked them over to the poster board, past the, you know, food stand, past the folks who had the waters, fast the folks who had the hand warmers. And I got them over to the paint and we started talking and said, you know, what does landlords look at you? Luckily, her parents had explained what landlords were, and she obviously asked, you know, why do they exist?

And then so what I asked was, what does the world look like without that? And they instantly started painting a fire truck. They started painting, and they were telling me what they were painting. It was horrible. It was shit. They said, this is the ladder. And then they were painting a tent. They said, this is the zipper.

And from what I understood of that is infrastructure. It's the right to be habitable anywhere that you want. And so these things are completely up to us. But the only thing that is kind of limiting our imagination and limiting our ability to collectively control who we are, where we live and how we live, is capitalism, is private property, is landlordism. I think that my answer to that really hinges on what housing, I mean, it branches off from what you were saying, but it hinges off of what housing is fundamentally sitting on. Housing is sitting on land. And in New York City, in the U.S., in so many places in the world, the land that we're on is a colonized space. And it's a space that many of us are not

actually at where we're from. And we are guests here. So in, you know, in the socialist future, in the future where we figure out how to actually decolonize and not in a liberal fantasy, it means that land gets land back is what it means. And it means that we all actually have ownership of the place that we are at in a way that recognizes where the land comes from and who the land's fundamental, who is at home here. wherever you are. I think that for me it's really important that we center that people should always have control over the place where they live.

How do we make that happen? I mean, I wouldn't be mad at, you know, all private property rights disappearing tomorrow. And I'm not sure that most people who listen to this podcast would be. If, you know, deeds went away and there was no mechanism to force a remove someone from where they lived, then housing could look a lot like it does now. You just have control over what it is. And I think that the practical implication of that would be huge. The ripple effects of people not having to worry about working jobs they hate means that they

would have more time to both just relax and enjoy life, but also to build community. just by building community, you're already just automatically organizing. And when you're organizing your community, you're automatically building the capacity to fight against capital. Was there something about the Communist Party in your question? Yeah, just, you know, what a broader, or why a broader socialist movement or a principled communist party would be important for the advancement of this struggle and many others? Absolutely. The important, the important, importance of a principled and disciplined Communist Party to the movement is that we understand that decommodivization of housing can't happen under the regime of capital, that housing as a human right can't exist under the regime of private property. And so we understand that to actually give tenants agency, to actually give us tenants,

control over how we live that means the end of the regime of capital that means a rupture of private property and we understand to get there we need mass working class organization and we understand

to achieve mass working class organization with a coherent voice and like coherent discipline we understand that that requires a communist party a disciplined communist party. Yeah, I could not agree more with that. It's absolutely essential in, you know, communist

formations in the past, whether in the U.S. or abroad, they have this wonderful upside of being able to unite many seemingly disparate struggles. So you could have some labor, you know, organizations over here. You have some tenant organizing over here. You have some environmentalism over here, some feminism over here. And they're all pushing and they're all making advancements in their own sphere of concern. But, you know, the best of the political, the best of the communist parties of the past were able to weave all of those struggles together and create a sort of spearhead that could lead a multifaceted movement towards broader forms of liberation on all front. So I think that's essential. And it is just always worth pointing out, as you all did so beautifully,

that we are, we are not only wanting and desiring a world free from the dictatorship of profit and growth, but we increasingly are realizing we need it to survive. Nature is putting her hand in our chest and saying, it's time for humanity to grow the fuck up or get the fuck off. And that climate crisis, the eco crisis

puts a temporal limitation on what we have to do, a sort of urgency of how quickly we have to do things and move things in the direction of equality, of justice, of truth. There is a bubbling up of a movement. The old order is dying. The new world, as Grand

she says does want to be born. And we're in our own humble ways trying to move toward that better world, that new world, and build something beautiful on the ashes of this rather horrific social order today. So I really appreciate all your input. Yeah, go ahead. Tomrat, I just would love to like re-emphasize what you're saying, especially the like anthropomorphization of Mother Earth. and what the liberals will not kind of accept as reality of, like, you know, climate crisis.

The liberal answer to the housing, the quote-unquote housing crisis, which is not a real crisis, it's just a crisis of kind of like spinelessness from the liberals to expropriate the mass, mass amounts of empty luxury housing, of neglected buildings of, you know, public housing that is going and being tossed aside for neoliberal private markets to just suck up and drain away there the the a lot of these nonprofits that we're fighting against on the right they want to expand they want to grow more they want to build up you know they want to continue to build more housing their answer is let's build more uh they want to build mixed income housing And like you were saying about the kind of co-option of leftist language, one of the most rightists in the New York City DSA Housing Working Group calls mixed income housing solidarity rent.

It's this insidious, disgusting fucking left co-option or right co-option of leftist language to push for a rightist expansionist, just environmentally degrading practice of building more housing. that we don't need. There are more empty houses, I mean, more empty units to live in than there are homeless and houseless people in New York City. And they are just afraid to broach that reality that it will take full-on expropriation, that it will take full-on revolutionary change

in order to kind of rectify this crisis. And so the first thing that bed kind of, kind of was born through what is this 1214 Dean Street that we were talking about in the beginning. What is happening now? That landlord, their building was expropriated.

It is now turning into public housing. And so that is a complete kind of encapsulation of what we are fighting for the new reality that's being born. And to touch on the new administration according to them, it's Mayor Adams is doing.

And yeah, Mayor Adams is taking credit for what we did and we know you know there will be Mayor Adams is they'll fade they will die they will wither away he will say some funny shit he will look goofy as hell he'll wear a dorky ass fucking bike helmet but

we will continue to do what the working class does right and that's move history forward hell yeah um tenants hold up the sky tenants hold up the sky tenants create public housing tenants will occupy the mechanisms and levers

of this state and we'll watch it wither away. Hell yeah. Beautifully said. And it's always worth remembering that when liberals talk about freedom, when capitalists talk about freedom, especially with the housing crisis in particular, it's the freedom for rich people to own 100 houses and the freedom for poor people to sleep in the fucking gutters. That's no freedom at all. Last question for all of you, what advice would you give for anyone out there listening to

this that might be interested in starting a similar organization in their community? Two pieces of advice that I would give. The first one is if you are trying to start an eviction defense organization, reach out to us. We would love to talk. We've talked with many groups all around New York, all around New York State, all around the country. We would like to continue doing it. And the second thing is every tenant organizer's advice, talk to your neighbor, knock on doors, get to know people. I'd say also look up the autonomous tenant union network.

They have a lot of great resources that can get you started with all the things that Kamrad just talked about. Beautiful. And if anybody listening is anywhere in the Omaha area, we have our own tenant organization here, OTAU, Omaha Tenants United, definitely check that out if you're in the area. But yeah, I will link to whatever links you send me for people to get in touch with you, however you deem appropriate and safe, we'll link to that in the show notes. So anybody interested that is seeking advice on this front can reach out and connect with you

directly. Thank you all so much for coming on. And more importantly, thank you so much for the amazing, creative, beautiful work that you're doing in your community. It really, really truly is inspiring. Before I let you go, can you please let our listeners know where they can find and possibly even support you and your organization? So you can find us at brooklyn eviction defense.org.

We have resources, both for people who are facing all of the different types of eviction and eviction-related processes that we talked about, and we also have ways to get involved. You can also find us on social media at Brooklyn Eviction Defense, Instagram, and Twitter. And we have just kidding, Brooklyn Defense on Twitter. And if you are in need of support from us, you can call our hotline at any time. It is 911, 982-2265, and you can also text us. You'll get sent to voicemail, and then someone on intake will call you back that same day and talk you through whatever situation you're going through.

Wow. And also we are raising money at the moment for our active eviction defense. We are helping install a new heating system in the whole house, and it costs a lot of money. So we are accepting money to our Venmo, which is at Brooklyn Eviction Defense. I will put all of those links. If you want to send me an email in the next few days, I'll make sure I include all of those links in the show notes so people can easily find everything that you mentioned. Thank you all so much. Keep up the amazing work.

And Rev Left is always here if you want to come back and have a platform to discuss anything at all. Thank you, Conrad. We do love you, Brett. I love you, Brett. I love you, too. Solidarity. Now check it. The topic of discussion is more than the financial profit. United Snakes won't stop it.

Blow for blow. The blow of the commentary gets heavy. Six-settillion tons is spinning steady. Stepping into a new phase. New force representing our slavery days. The seat to reach a crop is much more than your figure. You, if he's a black man, he must be a nigger. I went in doubt

Did a suck of selling out For the sake of a scream and shout Elements don't blow with none Sense Rather kick a little bit of science Science about controlling actions of another America was built on a sweat of black sisters and brothers Never allowed to read

But allowed to bleed And breathe Brain stripped of our creed and religious Survivalving on intuition And what the master said give up Besides the black man is the original Lord of the land So I'm clenching my right hand

Brothers and sisters We must fight this Slum Lord overlord Of the concrete jungle But I'm humble As I witness my Opposed a grumble Like the shack that I live

In the house that I went from him Roach infested I'm sure that the rats have pusted He doesn't work He still hasn't checked it Disrespected me For the last time I'm loading up my nines

I'm going up my nines Five and step in double time Tom Bozai Another point scores Right between the eyes of my landlord They tell me to hold my piece, but I just can't, but I'm defrosted the rap group of point blank

So now I'm chilling at the table with my family, hypothetically, trying hard to keep my mind off the economy here I know the rules and my fighting hard to pass the test Call me a victim because I'm another brother jobless Every day it seems I'm moving closer to the streets PG&E report the lights in my fucking heat The situation's getting parked for me to handle Had to trade my knife

To the store to buy some candles Now the first and I'm a run it in the hole I know the man is gonna come And throw me in the cold tears in my hide As I think of a place to stay While I'm staring at the freebie cheese up in my plate I heard a bang bang bang bang knocking at my door

I looked up it was my motherfucking landlord Let him quit Fall apart the chef deputy Trying to come in Every boat on my property Stair me down Mucking harder in my family's face While I was sitting at the table

Trying to save grace But remember I made this for my last meal Any moves she ever I'm looking for the damn kill I said it twice in case you didn't hear me though Sucker made a move And it echo when you get the flow So now I make cuts for the crimes I've committed

Maybe I go to jail Or maybe I get acquitted But the fact still stands I kill my landlord dead Now I got three mills sand a roof up on my head cash is made cash is made in lump sums

the street bumps so I defeat scum as I beat drums rum to the tum like the little drum boy song Here comes the landlord at the door Ding dong, is it wrong That my mama sticks a fat-ass thong Of his ain't no cavity

Because he causes gravity to my family Says we gotta pay a fee So that we can stay and eat In a house with light and heat The bastard could get beat Stole the land from Chief Little Keep House is built on the seat Got no remitt receipt

So I'm living in the street And I'm down now Don't you know to not fuck with the Mao Notice of eviction For an uncle dental affliction Friction, oh did I mention You'll be finger licking As I handicap your diction

And you say you're not a criminal like Tricket Dickson. Whoa, we're fixing to impose rent control. We didn't vote on if this land wasn't bought a soul. It was stowed by your great granddaddy's gangit. Osage Four said they call it primitive accumulation. Play attention, TV stations, wealth is very stationary. I learned the game and I became a revolutionary.

Scared to corporate asses because the masses are reloaded gun. Killing a world banking in a national monetary fund. I'm done. We're done with what you done for 25 score. We got a battle crack. Kill my, kill my, kill my, kill my, kill my, kill my, kill my, kill my, kill my, kill my, kill my Lord. I need $600 by the end of the wick.

My body is cold, dirty socks on my feet, not a black seat, but who's the crick? Trying to put me on the street while I'm trying to sleep. kill my man, Lord murder in the first degree. If there's something wrong, he wants to blame me, wants to be a threat, so he carries a gun. Will I fact a nine, because I can't trust 911. Son of a gun, and I'm the one that catches the grass. Wash the windows, and he still want me to kiss his ass.

But I laugh, because America's not my home. My dad and Lord took me away from where I belong. But it's a sad song, so I face reality now. Pick up the phone, and here comes to loud now. rescue down with the coup. Yo, then, Lord, I got a little message for you. I'm going to go to fuck your machete or swore. Iraq is on the mission to kill my landlord.

Thank you.