Capitalist housing markets cannot, and will never, meet the basic right of people to shelter. Housing development should be racially and income integrated, environmentally friendly, permanently affordable, and off of the private market.
The last year has been one of big efforts, many setbacks, and lessons learned for the Lexington Tenants Union. This year, we plan to win.
Neoliberalism, as defined by David Harvey in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, is “a theory of political and economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.”
What is a tenant? A “tenant” is anyone who does not ultimately control their own housing. This includes people who rent, are houseless, or whose bank owns the loan for their home.
The Housing Branch’s goal is to build up the Lexington Tenants Union (“LTU” for short), an organ of power for tenants and others who do not control their housing in Lexington. This is an organization for renters that is separate from the DSA but that our members are working to grow. We want to grow a citywide union to help neighbors connect, understand their rights, and collectively bargain for better...
The cat was poised firmly outside the mousehole. His mousehole. Though the cat received regular meals of cat food and was by no ways a hungry or desperate animal, by custom of cats the mice inside were his caloric safety net. In order to avoid a full scale invasion, the mice sacrificed one of their children to the cat on the first of every month. This mousehole was six or...
