Thread on the imperative for radicals and housing advocates in so-called British Columbia to support #rentstrike or #keepyourrent or #rentsuspension or whatever you want to call a spontaneous, mass refusal of rent payments to our bloodsucking landlords (1/22)
Today's BC NDP government announcement about "supports" to "vulnerable people" is a big middle finger to those of us most vulnerable to death by COVID-19. (2/22)
Their $1,000 top up is only for people who qualify for EI, leaving out sex workers and everyone who depends on informal & criminalized economies; anyone unemployed & starving on welfare, disability, or pension; & temporary foreign workers & non-status workers (3/22)
Premier Horgan saying "no one will be evicted for COVID" is hard to swallow because he did NOT say "we're stopping evictions." He did say that evictions already underway will not be stopped. So while vague about stopping evictions he was clear about continuing them. (4/22)
The Province also rolled out a $1,000 fine for people who violate the government's "distancing" orders. While they used the spectacle of beer pong parties to sell this new carceral tool, it will be used against the poor who Horgan is starving in the streets (5/22)
In the face of this cynical neglect & attack on Indigenous & working class communities that will be evicted and made and kept homeless by COVID-19, it makes sense that the spirit of resistance is rising. And good. The clearest expression of this resistance is #RENTSTRIKE (6/22)
Some tenant organizations have been seeding hesitation and warning people against "spontaneous" rent strikes, saying there needs to be more organization and their organizations aren't ready. We think this badly misunderstands the moment and sells out the poor (7/22)
The clearest example of this tendency, which feels like sour grapes, and is, frankly, incoherent and self-contradictory is this thread from @phillysocialist organizer Tim Horras (8/22)
The Vancouver Tenants Union made a similar complaint on instagram (9/22) 
We think there are 2 basic problems with the advice from these different comrades: 1) the self-activity of oppressed people is the social force, not organizations. An effective revolutionary organization will support the most radical tendencies in that mov't (10/22)
and will help give longer term and more conscious political direction to the spontaneous forces that emerge in such a historical moment of cleavage with bourgeois ideology, but to try to police that movement is a bureaucratic, conservative impulse; and (11/22)
2) The idea that a strike is impossible but for a default strike by those who simply can't pay is to abandon the poorest renters to eviction. Instead, let's encourage others to refuse to pay alongside the poor, so our poverty is indistinguishable within our collectivity (12/22)
We think a rent strike *must* be organized, but that does not mean it cannot be spontaneous, or ride the historical winds of spontaneity that emerge suddenly in a bourgeois crisis of authority, like the one we're in (13/22)
A rent strike is a collective action that is and must be done all together. If you withhold rent alone you will be evicted because landlords are scum. Unlike Ontario, the BC Residential Tenant Act has no provision for withholding rent, not even for building repair. (14/22)
But COVID-19 has created a political crisis that our working class & Indigenous communities MUST NOT BEAR. A rent strike is possible today when it was not yesterday because of this crisis, not because of any law permitting it but because of the absence of law (15/22)
A rent strike must be organized collectively, to draw the contradictions between landlord greed & human need clearly to the surface, as a social problem, not an individual failing. One person refusing rent is evicted, one whole building refusing to pay rent is an event (16/22)
Here are some resources that exist *in other legal jurisdictions* to help think through a rent strike in your building or community. We are working on a rent strike toolkit for BC, considering the awful tenancy laws we have here. (17/22)
"How to organize a rent strike" by the @LATenantsUnion in Los Angeles (18/22)
docs.google.com/document/d/167…
docs.google.com/document/d/167…
Rent suspension and rent forgiveness by @TANCBay (in the San Francisco Bay Area (19/22)
Parkdale Organize's "Keep your rent / Landlords keep your distance" campaign materials are excellent; by @ParkdaleOrg in Ontario (20/22)
keepyourrent.com
keepyourrent.com
If you want help thinking through organizing a rent strike in your building, hit us up with a DM. We are focused on organizing with unhoused people so are not offering to take on rent strike organizing but communities do not need anyone's permission to organize & resist! (21/22)
If you strike your building; or if you're on your own & can't pay your rent; or are squatting a single empty apartment & the sheriff comes to evict you? We will show up & defend your home. The wonderful thing about this moment is that thousands of others feel the same way. (x)
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