“Solidarity requires that one entire into the situation of those with whom one is solidary; it is a radical posture…the oppressor is in solidarity with the oppressed only when he stops regarding the oppressed as an abstract category and sees them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice, cheated in the sale of their labor–when he stops making pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures and risks an act of love.” - Paolo Freire
You’ll never regret risking an act of love. I appreciate the example you’re setting.
I’m looking forward to some spirited & creative & fun & scary anti-eviction action coming up in the near term future. As I’ve said, I’m ready to dance with the robocops. I was going to do a thread here brainstorming such… but have decided against that idea, because of how this thread was treated.
Two things to remember:
Millions of people who never heard of a rent strike before now have, and a lot of those have participated actively, or by circumstances. When people get a “taste” of not having a “lord” over them… they naturally want to taste some more.
The regularization of renting folk collectively bargaining with the landlords would be a huge win for civil society.
What benefit is there for the landlord? Are they not able to collect judgments for the full amount from delinquent tenants or conduct work-outs to get more than 25%?
Commercial landlords should be incredibly open to renegotiating leases or other concessions. It won’t be enough to save a lot of them, but better something than nothing is what they should be after. One of the things that will make this easier on residential landlords is that they can hold judgements for a long time over people. Businesses just shut down. Just open a new corporation.
LOL no. Capitalism “creates” the same kinda wasteful and foolish “urban planning” of commercial buildings as residential buildings. Speculators hoard this shit too.
And… forgone opportunity costs are not “losses”.
If a landlord had bought my beach house, and had 0% occupancy during my tenure (and it cost him 2x what I have paid in PMI), that landlord would have netted a cool ~$500,000 profit. Rent is just the violently extracted gravy.
One funny thing about building stuff is you need to actually pay for the materials. Unless maybe all the materials suppliers decide to organize and donate all the shit to the builders.
That’s a historical quote from the Spanish Revolution of 1936. The funny thing about history is we don’t need to play your stupid little “In your little Communist paradise…” game with it. We can just look shit up.
I didn’t say I would goggle that shit for you. I only asked you if you wanted me to. From your apparent attitude, I don’t feel you are in a learning space right now. So no, I won’t be googling that for you at this time. Maybe later.
If you were actually interested in learning, you why wouldn’t you just google this shit yourself?
Ok, well then I’ll continue to assume that in fact workers need to somehow obtain the materials and nobody is giving them away for free. So builders aint building shit on their own most likely.
A catchy name might be Habitat for Humanity. Oh wait, they already exist and my family already donates to them despite us being apparently evil scumbags.
It’s certainly an assumption I would make if I didn’t actually know the historical answer. But here’s the thing… I don’t need to make any assumptions at all, because I do in fact know the historical answer.
And here’s the thing, we’re not talking ancient history here. We’re talking Spain in the 1930s. Like, I’m pretty sure they still played soccer during the Spanish Revolution. I’d imagine we could google Real Madrid, or whatever teams they had 90 years ago, and find scores. Just like we could google any other mundane facts of live.
But you still don’t want to put even that tiny amount of effort into learning anything new at all. Instead, you are proudly proclaiming that you’d rather “assume” than “know”. Bizarre.
Anyway, part of my transition from being a horizontal to being a typical SoCal liberal here on UnStuck… is that I’m trying to make a conscious effort not to be such an asshole.
So to that end, I went ahead and did google a little something for you.
Even if you have zero interest in the Spanish Revolution, you should read G.Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia (Full text: George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia). If are interested in learning about the Spanish Revolution, this is the place to start. If you are at all curious what inspired G.Orwell to write Animal Farm and 1984 this autobiographical story is why. If you enjoy well written English, Homage to Catalonia is routinely included on lists of GOATs.
