Description
Abolish Rent takes aim at one of the foremost engines of inequality and injustice.
Rent drives millions into debt, despair, and onto the streets. The social cost of rent is too damn high. Written for anyone fed up with the permanent housing crisis, complicit politicians, and real estate greed, Abolish Rent dissects our housing system from the perspective of those it immiserates. Through unsparing analysis and striking stories of resistance, it shows us how tenants can, through organizing and collective action, harness our power and win the housing we deserve.
From two co-founders of the largest tenants union in the country, this deeply reported account of the resurgent tenant movement centers poor and working-class people who are fighting back, staying put, and remaking the city in the process. Authors Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis take us to trilingual strategy meetings, raucous marches against gentrification, and daring eviction defenses where immigrants put their lives on the line. These are the seeds of the revolutionary movement we need to make our housing, our cities, and the world our home.
Product Details
| Publisher | Haymarket Books |
| Publish Date | September 24, 2024 |
| Pages | 224 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Paperback / softback |
| EAN/UPC | 9798888902523 |
| Dimensions | 7.4 X 5.2 X 0.7 inches | 0.5 pounds |
About the Author
Tracy Rosenthal is a co-founder of the L.A. Tenants Union whose writing has beenpublished in The New Republic, The Nation, LA Times, and other outlets. Rosenthalis now on rent strike in New York City.
Leonardo Vilchis has been organizing tenants in Boyle Heights for more than thirtyyears. Trained in liberation theology, he co-founded Union de Vecinos in 1996 andthe L.A. Tenants Union in 2015. He lives in Los Angeles.
Reviews
"Refreshingly confident, the authoritative work on tenant unionism in the U.S. today."
-The New Republic
"A thoroughly researched primer and a beautifully articulated guide. Based on a decade of community-based organizing and extending the growing demand for abolition of the prison industrial complex, Abolish Rent is a righteous call to reclaim sovereignty over the shared places we call home. It shows us how the struggle for housing as a human right is more than that: it's a class struggle for land and power, so life can thrive. READ THIS BOOK."
-susan rosenberg, prison and human rights activist
"The American dream of homeownership has turned into a nightmare of landlord and bank profits, unpayable mortgages, sky high rents, evictions, and unnecessary suffering. At once an insightful manifesto for a new housing paradigm that can provide shelter for every human being and a shrewd tactical guide, Abolish Rent can help us build a tenant-powered movement capable of winning the radical change we need. This urgent book is a rousing wake up call that can help snap us out of our collective slumber and into collective action."
-Astra Taylor, cofounder of the Debt Collective and author of The Age of Insecurity
"A spectre is haunting landlords-the spectre of land seizures & rent strikes. Abolish Rent provides clear analysis and vivid stories of Los Angeles grassroots tenants, whose efforts offer a path towards abolishing commodification of land and housing. The authors situate tenant struggles as essential in today's worldwide movement to secure dignity, or as Isabel Garcia of Boyle Heights says in this book: 'We fight because we have to continue living.'"
-Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Abolition Geography, and Craig Gilmore, co-founder of the California Prison Moratorium Project
"This essential book provides a concise history of racist, colonial housing policy and its central role in racial capitalism; an accessible analysis of the injustice and illegitimacy of rent; inspiring accounts of effective tenant resistance; and a crystal clear call for collective action that we can all take up right now. While rents skyrocket, police budgets bloat, wealth consolidates, and global temperatures rise, we need this book. Abolish Rent shows why we don't need more empty declarations of our rights, more policy reforms that keep things the same, or more efforts to appeal to the moral conscience of politicians owned by the rich, we need to abolish landlords and take over where we live."
-Dean Spade, author of Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)
"A riveting polemic and a convincing argument for why our housing system must be radically transformed. Their on-the-ground reporting is sure to persuade anyone angry at how much rent they pay that we all must organize for a better future. Abolish Rent goes deep into the history and theory of housing and provides tangible solutions to our housing crisis, ones that we can all take part in today."
-P.E. Moskowitz, author of How to Kill a City
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