Rev Left Radio - Organizing in a Pandemic: NYC Housing Justice and Fighting Cuomo

Episode Date: April 23, 2020

Lena Melendez, Charlie Dulik, and Nicolás Vargas - all organizers in and around New York City - join Breht to discuss Housing Justice 4 All, tenant organizing, the broader fight against Andrew Cuomo and the NY State government, and how you can help!  Learn more about, and support, Housing Justice 4 All here: https://linktr.ee/housingjustice4all Check out Freedom Arts Movement (@freedomartsmvmt) here: https://www.freedomartsmovement.com/ Donate to their fundraiser here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/freedom-arts-movement-fundraiser Outro music 'Crown On the Ground' by Sleigh Bells ------- LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com SUPPORT REV LEFT RADIO: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Our logo was made by BARB, a communist graphic design collective: @Barbaradical Intro music by DJ Captain Planet. --------------- This podcast is affiliated with: The Nebraska Left Coalition, Omaha Tenants United, FORGE, Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), Feed The People - Omaha, and the Marxist Center.

All right, so thank you all for joining us. We're going to cover a really important topic about organizing specifically during this pandemic. Before we get into it, can each of you please introduce yourself and your organization, say whatever you want about your background so people can orient themselves to you? My name is Lena Melendez. I live in Washington Heights. I'm a native New Yorker. I entered the housing fight back in 2016.

When my mother passed away, my landlord questioned my tenancy. And then I joined all of these groups Housing Justice for All, in Wood Legal Action. I joined DSA. I'm involved in lots of different groups now. So I'm in it neck deep. My name is Charlie Doolock. I am a tenant organizer with the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board. I organized with our community group Hope out in Brownsville and East New York, Brooklyn.

And I have been organizing and working with our statewide, houses and coalition, housing justice for all for over two years now, basically since it started. I'm Nicholas Vargas. I'm an organizer with the Taffy Tenets Association. An organizer with the We Keep Us Safe Collective, Abolitionist Collective, with the Freedom Arts Movement. Yeah. And I got into housing movement stuff basically through this crisis. I mean, I've always been an advocate for housing rights, but really on the ground work with the association. through this crisis, through my union that was formed just a couple of weeks ago. Wonderful. Well, it's an honor to have all of you here.

I know this is thrown together last minute and I know there's lots of people out there who are organizing or wanting to get into organizing who have a lot of questions. So this will just be sort of a shorter interview discussing the work that you're doing and hopefully it'll help other people learn about and hopefully be inspired to do similar actions. So the first question I have, and we can answer this in whatever order you all want to, but why are rent strikes right for this moment and in what ways is trying to organize rent strikes fundamentally different than they would be in a non-crisis situation? Run strikes are right for this moment because people are not going to be able to pay either way.

Millions of people are not going to be able to pay their rent either way. So either we are going to end this quarantine shelter in place period with mass evictions, the head of one of the major landlord lobbying groups in New York State, Had a quote yesterday where he said, I think housing court is going to turn into a collection agency. So either we can have that vision of what happened after this crisis, or we can use this opportunity to build much stronger tenant power. And I think rent strikes are one really important part to that. I do think it's important to say that they are part of a larger campaign to cancel rent. And, you know, rent strikes need to be coupled with, you know, people who are withholding, maybe in buildings that aren't organized, winning a narrative battle against Governor Cuomo right now, base building and coalition building.

So it's one piece of the puzzle that will be necessary to stave off mass evictions and mass, you know, people falling into debt. I saw some figures, something like 40% of renters won't be able to pay their rents in May. So, yeah, we already have a captive audience to join on this rent strike. And I think it's a great way to build solidarity around communities. I know that that's the angle that I'm approaching it as I organized my building and the buildings on my block. I think rent strikes are right for this moment. And I think this moment is defined by what Lennon describes as a revolutionary situation,

which basically is a time when the people at the bottom don't want to or cannot continue to exist in the current state of things. And also a time when the people at the top cannot and struggle to continue to rule in the ways that they did before. And then in later works, Lenin postulates there's a third condition where there's a moment of high political activity among the working masses and their readiness for revolutionary action is very apparent. And I think for my experience, this is really true and this is what's happening now. My Tendent's Union was kind of formed out of the COVID-19 crisis. It formed because people of all stripes within my building have been experiencing a collective consequence of capitalist dysfunction and neoliberal austerity.

everyone in my building is being affected by the systemic lack, the systemic denial of basic human rights of enough hospital beds or enough PPE for the people taking care of people. So it was really easy, I think, for me and for the organizers of my building to get people on board, and we got 150 people on board in three weeks. And as we've moved forward,

it's given people a great lesson in collective action, collective strength and solidarity, people who would have normally never engaged in something like this are beginning to realize that they can and should ask or better yet demand this kind of ceiling and it's fucked up because the ceiling for most people under this like constraint of capitalist realism on people's imaginations is basic human rights like that's the that's what we have to fight to ask for

but what's great is that there's a lot of people moving left and moving forward really fast in our group, like people who would, who weren't engaged with, like, socialism or communism or anything or, like, even, like, real leftism, people who would, like, identify as Democrats. They're, like, you know, fomenting these really, really organic communist ideals. And I think that's really dope. So, yeah, and so now I'm wondering what the relationship is between, you know, organizing a building and then the relationship to that with the overall statewide political organizing or the fight

against the powers that be in the state more broadly. I was hoping one of you could touch on that relationship. I think that there's a statewide movement of tenants that we can already tap into, that we could point to and say we've changed the rent laws that we can point to and say we got the IDC out that we can point to and say we've got power and we've gained traction. So in my building and the buildings that I organize, that's something that I rely heavily upon because people are so entrenched in their thinking of, well, that's the way it is, and we're living in a capitalist society after all, and who are we? Like, people don't have the awareness that we can ask for more, that we are in the majority, tenants are in the majority, and that we can, we can, we can, can ask and we should ask from we can demand more like nick said it's uh this moment uh we're

of some real clarity on you know who is on which side and i think um people are realizing that when you target your individual landlord whether it's uh you know repairs conditions in your building or something like this to cancel rent or decrease rent you are also at the same time canceling Cuomo because that's who he speaks for. I mean, that's who most major politicians in New York and really everywhere speak for is their political donor, which is in New York, always real estate. And, you know, the real estate class more broadly. So it's pretty cool to be able to target two birds with one stone here. And I know just in the buildings that I've been working with, people going and run strike, every time that landlord will turn around. I was like, well, what do you want me to do?

I don't have the funds. I can't manage my finances through this to be able to turn around and tell them, well, you should talk to Governor Cuomo because you've cultivated such a close relationship with him. And one more thing is that why it needs to be statewide organizing and not just in individual buildings is because housing issues don't necessarily begin and end with people who are currently housed. It's really important to link our demand to cancel rent with a demand. to house the homeless. We know that there are hundreds of thousands of vacant hotels across the state,

hotel rooms. We know that there are tens of thousands in New York City of vacant apartments, most of them luxury apartments. And unless we are combining our rent strikes that speak for renters and, you know, activism for homeless New Yorkers, I don't think that we're. we will really challenge the current system of, you know, housing and private property in quite the same way. Yeah, I think that we should, I think that we should not only liberate those hotel rooms, but liberate those luxury apartments that are empty. Definitely. What are some of

the structural challenges that you're facing in this time of organizing? That the fact that I can't just go and knock on somebody's door or, you know, there's lots of people that I don't have that I usually, you know, when I knock on doors, people come out. They come downstairs. We do a tenant a meeting. But without their, if they didn't write their phone number or if they don't, I don't have their email address, it's, it becomes an issue because I can't reach them. And I'm not going to go and knock on somebody's door. They're not going to open. I'm not going to talk to them through the door. It's just too much. So I find that there's some people that I haven't even been able to reach. Yeah, I think one of the structural challenges that you just mentioned

not being able to kind of have this face-to-face interaction or even do like outreach how we normally would, you know, like standing outside of the building. We've had trouble doing that. You know, folks are just like kind of apprehensive about taking a flyer or doing something like that, but also it's just expanded, I think, our organizing toolkit, our activist toolkit, or whatever you want to describe it as. Like, we've been able to do, like, phone trees. We've been able to do, like, we're planning on spray painting, like, the tenants association number, like, outside of every single door. So people see it right away and they're, like, can call us and talk to us and ask us questions. There are definitely a lot of structural challenges, but also there's a lot of

ways that, like, these challenges have brought a lot of creative solutions. So I think it's definitely, it's definitely not, like, overwhelmingly impossible. And that, like, we're definitely getting it done. I mean, we, my tenants association got 150 members in, in, like, three weeks, I think. So it's been super dope. And we're across five buildings. Wow. Nick, I'm shocked you didn't bring up meming as a new strategy as well.

Yeah, I would also add that, like, in addition to it. Being difficult to do outreach, it's also difficult for us to assert our power in the same way. Normally, we do things like actions at elected officials offices or, you know, the opposites of our real estate, you know, companies. We do big marches. We like very physical, I mean, even meetings, like getting together to coordinate. So it's been interesting to think about how we can exert the same influence. I also like banner drops is an idea. We have not done, but I've seen really cool stuff that people have done with car protests in California against Gavin Newsom over there.

I also think there's just a structural challenge that we are a little bit behind the April. I guess that's what happens in any really intense moment. Are super in flux. But not every building is going to be as great as Nix and be ready to organize. straight to a rent strike from not having a tenant association at all. A lot of buildings, you know, like most, in most cases, I would say you need to have been building a tenant association, building trust between tenants, like developing political education for tenants over a longer period of time to, like, build the trust and necessary

to do an action like rent strike. And this moment is causing a lot more people to be down, but it still is, you know, somewhere we're like, wow, I wish, or like, this is why when there's not a crisis, you should also be organizing a tenant association, even if it's boring, because you're going to need that infrastructure someday. And it makes it a little bit harder not to have it. Yeah, I know Lena has to leave because of a time restraint. Is there anything that you would want to say, but before you sign off, Lena? I think that it's mostly been said. We have to pressure Cuomo to cancel rents. We need to educate people and let's

them know that Cuomo and the and the politicians immediately relieved their donor base of having to pay their mortgage and having to pay property tax and now they need to relieve their don't they are their voter base because we need to then like register massive amounts of people and push for them to vote this governor out yeah Well, thank you so much, Lena, for your time. I really appreciate it. Okay, thank you. Bye now.

Okay, so I still have Nick and Charlie. Let's just move on. The question I want to ask next is, how do you, I'm going to kind of combine two questions because we're talking about Cuomo. So maybe you can talk about what some of the challenges of targeting Cuomo are exactly, and then maybe you can talk a little bit about how to mitigate rent strike risks, because it can be a risky endeavor to undertake. Yeah.

I just want to talk about, targeting Cuomo specifically like it's it's very hard to target politicians who have this kind of this like favor of hegemony for them like there's been this really weird like fetishization of Cuomo as this like counter figure to Trump like this like very well articulatable put together competent straightforward like you know straight to the point kind of guy he doesn't fuck around he's he's ready to take on you know big government he doesn't care if they sue him or this or that which is just all a facade like he's he's like one of the shiftyest democrats like or republicans who pretends to be a democrat um and he has a lot of people tricked um and it's really hard to educate

people to vote him out um i think i think like the best way to target quomo is to build up enough collective power, enough tenant power, enough worker power to enforce our demands on him. Not to like appease him or even appease the system that elected him is just build up power to oppose him and to build up legitimacy for a counterpower to like what he represents, which is the state that is has systemically denied and systematically provided lack for millions of people who are going to be affected or possibly die because of this crisis that he's exacerbated. Yeah, 100% agreed on that. I think that a lot of people don't connect actually what he has done

and how he has ruled New York with an Iron Fist for now three terms with like what's going on in their day-to-day lives. And, you know, people are suffering because of how, you know, he wouldn't pass new rent laws for many years. They're suffering because he's kind of. cutting funding to literally every sector of government imaginable. And they feel that, but they don't connect it with Cuomo because that's never on TV. That's never talked about.

So I think one of the most important things that we've been trying to work on, I mean, is building counter-narratives to that as well. I think, like Nick said, that happens in organizations and tenant associations, in, you know, neighborhood-wide tenants unions. when people are sharing their stories and realizing, like, oh, wow, like, this is not just, like, disconnected from everything else. This is, like, there's a cause and the fact, and it starts with this person and more broadly, this political system that, you know, runs on real estate money. And there's some really cool projects out there right now. We are working on, like, a story map for New York State mapping everyone who's going on rent strike, struggling with rent across public housing, rent-stabilized housing, manufactured homes. There's also a national anti-eviction mapping project effort to do the same thing,

which is to, yeah, just try and change these narratives that are kind of set in stone on TV and in more mainstream media to allow people to actually connect their real-life experience with what's happening politically, as opposed to being basically galsit. Yeah, and I think that's really important that we kind of act proactively instead of reactively in a sense. Like, we don't just want to wait for millions of people to die in New York City and be like, ha-ha, we told you so. Look at how shitty Cuomo is what we want to do and what we are doing right now with a lot of mutual aid networks that have existed for a long time, but now are getting a lot more shine because, you know, the nonprofit industrial complex, the NGOization. of mutual aid has kind of gotten to the forefront. But, you know, what mutual aid does,

it shows to the masses that the masses are really the ones that care for them, that it's your neighbor that really cares for you. So if it was, you know, after this crisis is over, and you will remember that, you know, it was your neighbor or it was a neighbor from a boroughway who rode his bicycle down to your local grocery store and got you some groceries or picked up your medicine, and it wasn't Cuomo or it wasn't things that Cuomo enacted

because they're just denying or just systemically avoiding those people, those disabled people, those elderly people who are, you know, dying right now, they're going to remember that. And then so when this is over, we have that counter-narrative. We have the counter-narrative of what was actually happening in their material realities, is that their neighbors were helping them. It wasn't New York State. New York State is a failed state. Every state is a failed state under capitalism.

So we have that, like, proof. We have the legitimacy that the people power actually created, and we have the illegitimacy of the state that failed them. And so that's also very important for the counter narrative and to keep stock of that. Yeah, and I think that speaks to mitigating, your second part of your question about mitigating risk of rent strikes. The most important thing in a rent strike is to have, like, rock solid solidarity with everyone else in your building and a broader tenant movement. as well. The worst thing that could happen is the tenants who can pay get peeled off and decide, you know what, I'm kind of scared. I'm just going to pay my rent. I'm going to cash out. And then, you know, the numbers of the tenant association are rolled down. And eventually the few or however

money can't pay are fucked over. So I think things like mutual aid projects are important for many, many reasons, especially building the solidarity within the building, so people have each other's backs and they're going to, like, stay a part of the action. Yeah. And I think also another carrot at the end of the stick for people who can afford to pay rent now is just the reality that this crisis is, quote, unquote, unprecedented, but also that it's unpredictable. and the lasting effect and the reoccurring effect of a pandemic like this, it's impossible to predict.

So those people who might feel comfortable paying now in a month or two or three, they might get laid off or they might whittle away at their savings and they probably would wish, damn, I wish I didn't pay that rent in April. I wish I wasn't a scab in April. I wish I didn't, you know, didn't assume that I would be okay like I always do. I think a lot of people, especially in like the professional managerial class or the petty bourgeoisie or just upper middle class people, however they want to quantify themselves, they're starting to realize that they're very precarious as well. That especially under a moment like this that are going to keep happening because of climate change, they're going to keep happening because of, you know, forced migration and stuff like that. They are also on the side of the binary that is not the ruling class. They're on the side of the binary that is expendable. They're on the side of the binary that needs to look out for one another and not like, you know, expect to be okay and fine and I'll eventually be a millionaire or a billionaire or whatever.

It's like it's definitely, anecdotally, it's brought a lot of those people in my complex or my building. It's brought a lot of those people that you would assume they would be like, oh, fuck, I don't want to deal with these radicals. They're like, a lot of them are like, damn, I'm scared too. because in a month or two, I don't want to just be whittling away at my savings. Like they have it, but they don't want to give it away. And I think that's provided a lot of solidarity for us. Absolutely, yeah, wonderfully said. And I think we are seeing just broadly across the country during this crisis,

we're seeing the proletarianization of a bunch of small business owners and that petty bourgeois substrata in our society. And those people, you know, who could maybe a few weeks ago think of themselves as above the rabble, above the working class, are either being forced right back down into it or at least have the prospect of being forced right back down into it, you know, pull back the illusions that many of them might have arbored. And we even saw that the support going out to small businesses by the government in the last stimulus package actually just got devoured by big corporations and huge corporate change and hedge fund managers, et cetera, because of the lack of limitations

and restrictions put on those things. So those small business loans that were supposed to go out and help small businesses actually aren't even doing that. And so there's an opportunity there to say the least. But let's go ahead and move on. And I want to ask just like when the smoke clears, when the quarantine ends, what are some of the possible outcomes for New York City broadly and just any outcomes that you can talk about? What do you think are the likely possibilities that will happen after quarantine ends? Well, one option is what I mentioned earlier, the quote from Joe Strasbourg, the president of the Rent Stabilization Association, which is there's going to be mass eviction cases brought in housing court.

People are going to be put into debt for years trying to pay back rent while trying to keep up with whatever their current rent is, or there's going to be a resurgent or, I mean, a continued resurgence in the movement that will be able to mitigate that in some way. And I think what's dangerous is, like Nick talked about the NGOization of a lot of housing movements. I think that's real. And I think I've seen some places where people are being like, well, maybe we could be

okay with, you know, not canceling rent, but everyone just gets extra time to pay it back. You get two extra months to pay your back rent, which, again, will not happen. People will not be able to financially make that work. and we'll actually keep all the same, you know, structures in place when it comes to housing. Landlord power won't have been challenged by having to still pay them back. So it's either like let the system go as it is now with potentially a time delay or not and everyone gets mass evicted or do something that actively challenges landlord power. And I think that means building tennis associations, even if you're building can't go on rent strike.

if you start organizing a tenant association now, that will be like an immeasurable help to the tenant movement down the line. Like Nick said, this was not going to be the first crisis. This is going to happen more. And we're going to want tenant associations for that. And we're also part of a broad campaign for a homes guarantee, which is a platform to do a lot of things, including like building, you know, hundreds of thousands of units of democratically controlled. public housing basically refund or like fully fund nica the new york's public existing public

housing which has been totally just fucked by democratic and republican administrations for which is trying to be privatized right now and and is and is facing a privatization push um again that started under obama um but it's certainly being continued by the trump administration and fully supported by uh governor quomo so i think like the answer is pushing for this rent cancellation now and like they said when you are like with someone in the in the foxhole and hopefully we're building structures and our tenant associations and tenant unions that's going to last after this crisis and will allow us to keep pushing specifically to decrease and fight landlord power wherever it exists yeah i 100% agree with what charlie's

is saying i mean i think particularly just what are the outcomes after the quarantine in terms of like the revolutionary situation. It's like this rent strike, this, this action of solidarity, it opens up or bridges to a lot of a lot more wins in the fight for housing rights and the fight for human rights and the fight for workers' rights. And when I say wider solidarity, I mean you're building connections, you're rooting yourself deeper into your community, into the needs of those people in your community. You're organizing mutual aid.

You're materializing, like, real people power, real grassroots power, a real democratization of people's lives. You're showing them. You're showing yourself and you're being taught how these things can actually happen. You're expanding this aperture of imagination past the limitations of capitalist realism. And you can go from a rent strike to legitimizing collectivist solutions to problems. and to delegitimizing a failed capitalist state that doesn't serve us to begin with. So I think, yeah, this fight is for right now

and also for right now alleviating the extra burden that this crisis is saddled on us. But it's also to help uplift the many who have always been left behind by the system and to continue to support them. It's a great way to remind people that, you know, it's not us that's giving up on you or it's not us who has been leaving behind.

It's the state. it's like that that meme of the like look the earth is healing itself it's a human problem it's like no humans don't want to see poor people die humans don't want to see people evicted humans don't want to see homeless people capitalists do because capitalists see you as expendable capitalists see you only for as much as you can profit them and if you can't pay your rent then you can't give them a profit and so you can die that's literally what's it about and we just want to remind people that you have power that we have power as a collective, you know, it's giving them the stick and saying, like, you know, hit the capitalist

piñata and see, see all the rewards that fall out of its old husk and then we're here to reap those rewards. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So anybody listening to this, they want to get involved, they want to help. What can people do right now to help in this fight? And then just generally, where can people find you and your organization online? Yeah. So we are a New York State Coalition for the most part. So this answer will be relevant to New York. If you're not in New York, I'm sure there's someone doing that work in your area. On the statewide demands, we have a pledge to sign at bit.ly slash can't pay May. Basically signing that is saying either my building is not, is going on rent truck and not paying or I'm individually withholding my rent. I think that's important,

one, because there's so many people who won't be able to pay otherwise and turning that from like an isolated, almost shameful thing into like an expression of power. And it's like, hey, even if my building isn't organized, I'm actively choosing. Like, I'm not giving you my money. I'm connected with the state my movement is powerful. And it's also really important for us to be able to know where people are striking, know where people are withholding so we can provide them with resources from mutual aid to legal support down the line to just, you know, getting people connected to these broader

structure is challenging um you know real estate capital so yeah that that bitly is great and you can follow the statewide movement at um on twitter at uh housing for number four all and why we're called housing justice for all you just google that you should come up and then i don't know nick maybe you probably could give a better um you know thing on on within your building and what people can do word yeah i mean we don't necessarily have instagram that's a uh it's a contentious topic we're trying to move some of the older people to let us you know spread the word that way because i think it's very important that's a great way to build coalition with people to let people know what you're doing and move people to action to show solidarity with you but

doesn't matter we're not looking for followers right now but what you can do is for mutual aid specifically nyc against covid 19 is a or nyc united against covid 19 is a great resource i think They have Twitter and Instagram, but also they created a document with, like, the most comprehensive list of mutual aid and solidarity efforts going on right now. All very trusted community organizations, like, very – I don't think there's any, like, nonprofit, kind of, like, suspect, unvetted, like, AstroTurf organization, so that's very good. I know it's going down the organization and the website. they have a very large, comprehensive list of mutual aid efforts going on across the world, specifically in the West. But yeah, for folks who want to tap in with us, FreedomArtsmovement.com, you can follow us. Hopefully, Taputans Association will come out with some shit soon.

But, yeah, I would say, you know, organize with your community, try to build some rooted relationships. I know it's very hard right now, but I'm sure you have in your phone and your contact list, someone that you met at the grocery store you forgot about checking with them say hey what's going on i know you're probably struggling you know send them some resources ask them to send that text message to someone else you know that lives on your block and then eventually you'll create a good network and you guys can organize together you guys can plan things for the future you guys can root yourself in the community so i think that's very important um yeah just keep fighting and and there's definitely uh a red on the horizon

Oh, yeah. One more resource is a great rent strike tenant organizing guide at bit.ly slash rent strike n. Y. Wonderful. I will put all of that as much as I can in the show notes so people can find that as easy as possible. Thank you both for coming on in such short notice. I know we just planned this and then two hours later we're on the phone. It's not the easiest thing to pull off, but I really appreciate you coming on and helping inform my audience about what you're doing and then how they can get involved themselves. So thank you so much. Thanks for having us on. You never die of it. You're so bad at it. You're so bad at it. You're just trying to. You're so doubted. You're just trying to. You're so tired of it. You're not careless. You're left to kiss. You think it's endless and less and less and less. Doesn't bother us, I know what you know about it, no you not know about it. We need to stop ready.

You need to sit tight. You want to get to say, oh, uh, oh, uh. Set, set that crown on the ground and a set set that ground on the ground and a set set that ground on the ground and a set set that ground on the ground and a set set that ground on the ground and a set set that ground on the ground and a You know, to stop that's back to see that track, to hear that someone in the back tap. You have everything, be able to be able to be, ending, end up, end up. Oh, you're never back though, you're downed now. smash your face in the back to tell. Because for the value is never as a clue.

You're going to have to, have to, have to. Set, set that crown on the ground and a set set that ground on the ground and a set set set that ground on the ground and a set set that ground on the ground and a set set that ground on the ground and a set set that ground on the ground and a set set that ground on the ground and a I'm going to be able to be. Thank you. And so. I'm going to be able to be. I'm sorry.

I don't know what I'm going to be able to see. I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm going to be. I'm sorry. Thank you. I'm going to be. But I can't know what I'm going to be.

But I could sneak in a question here about Leninism and how. it motivates you to get involved or what you take from from leninism broadly if you want to if you want to do something like that just to balance it out yeah I don't want to I don't want to piss off anyone who who might who might criticize my take on Leninism in my party or like my people I don't want to

I don't know but I can speak on just kind of how like maybe some of the misconceptions of like Leninism or the misconceptions of like how communists would approach the situation because I feel like a lot of of anarchists think they kind of have a monopoly on mutual aid or think they kind of have a monopoly on direct action but really like it's a lot of these like socialist parties and like socialist workers movements who are like are are adding some centralism to the to the disconnected mutual aid groups like there's a lot of mutual aid going on in new york city right now but

there's a lot of there's a lot of expending of energy and and resources that if centralized could be much more effective into reaching more people. And I think that's what a problem we had, Freedom Arts Movement, and created this kind of like decentralized network

of volunteers and this kind of like decentralized network of people asking and we kind of had to like direct people. We had direct volunteers to people asking and it was kind of, it was just kind of it was effective but it wasn't as productive as it should have been. And then since then we have consolidated

with a group called Community Care NYC with a comrade, a comrade of mine, Calvin, from We Keep Us Safe Collective, actually started with a group of friends just to, like, create this very, like, well-structured administrative system to, like, do intake, to create, like, a phone number where there's a bunch of people on the line to answer calls and to intake people's requests and to dispatch it out to volunteers. we consolidated all our volunteers and all our asks with them now they have like close to like 300 volunteers and they're doing like deliveries and we're starting to do mutual aid funds so we can do like we can send out just care packages and stuff but yeah like I think I think I think the big difference between Leninists or or MLs

or Maoist or whatever and anarchist is the idea of centralism democratic centralism and I don't think I think it's, I think, and especially for a situation like this, the situation that's going to happen again and again, it's very important to be centralized. It's very important to have an effective structure that can provide for people in need, and it doesn't require, you know, all these different individual hubs in these communities, because one hub might be full of slackers or one hub might be full of people who are getting shit done. and one have might be full of people who want to do stuff but aren't organized. And so what centralism does, it allows there to be a protocol, a practice that is, that is, that is unique, but ubiquitous throughout. And so that provides a level of service and a level of care and a level of security that isn't compromised by the individual, the individual principle or discipline of a specific. sex. So I think, yeah, I think Leninism or centralism or whatever provides a very crucial,

um, it provides a very crucial, uh, I don't know, uh, practice to, to, to it all. It provides a very crucial, like, um, discipline. Yeah. So I, so, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what Leninism would say about the, about mutual aid or, or this moment or what, or maybe say, I don't know what Leninism has provided me for this moment, I just know what we're doing right now as Leninists, and it's very, it's very essential. And I would urge a lot of, a lot of disparate mutual aid campaigns in New York City to definitely coalesce. Like, we need to do way more communication. We need to share our resources. We need to share the knowledge that we've been, that we've been coming across by doing stuff, by fucking

up and by succeeding. I think it's very important to centralize in this moment because we have a centralized state that's trying to kill us, so we need a centralized body that is trying to save us. Yeah, I literally could not agree more. And an extrapolation of that basic argument about centralization is the need for a disciplined, organized communist party to really help lead and connect these disparate struggles. Decentralism is fine insofar as it goes, but it has its limitations that can only get so far. And when we look at coronavirus and just the global dimensions of it, it's really a dress rehearsal for the global dimensions of climate change and the oncoming catastrophe of that. And so to really insist sort of dogmatically on decentralization for its own sake when you're

facing not only an enemy that's hyper-organized and centralized, but crises and problems that are global in scope, I think it eventually will become a hindrance. And so it's just important to think through those implications. Yep, and I just want to preface all this with these thoughts and ideas are not representative of housing justice for all. This is a very freedom arts movement-based conversation right now. Beautiful.