Image: 'Cancel Rent' banners hanging out of apartment windows.

Dear Comrade,

We are in a moment of severe crisis for working-class people around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately affecting people of color and “essential workers” who aren’t able to work from home. Others have lost jobs and income, leaving them unable to pay rent and purchase basic necessities as unemployment systems struggle with unprecedented demand. Each day the scale of the disaster seems to grow worse, and it has become clear that the effects of the pandemic will be long-lasting.

We need to address this crisis now. Will you join us for the first meeting of the DC Tenants Union Organizing Working Group tomorrow, May 23, at 4pm? See meeting details below:

Join Zoom meeting online: bit.ly/dctu523

Password: tenants

By phone: dial 929-436-2866, enter 834 3252 1745 #

There will be consecutive Spanish interpretation!

Desperation has driven millions to organize: labor and rent strikes around the United States have demonstrated the vitality of working-class resistance. Tenant organizing is one of our few weapons in this fight, and Stomp Out Slumlords (SOS) and the DC Tenants Union (DCTU) have been on its frontlines in DC. SOS has gone from taking part in some half a dozen active organizing drives earlier this year to triple that number now, especially through our work within the DCTU. We've rallied thousands of Washingtonians with organizing drives, petitions, and phone zaps. People who’ve never been drawn to grassroots organizing have flooded hotlines and called their neighbors, offered mutual aid, and pulled together socially-distanced protests. We are supporting 10 buildings on rent strike, with an equal number poised to escalate. There is no question that the pandemic has politicized ordinary people in DC, especially around questions of housing.

If you care about building working-class power in the city and you have some free time—now is the time to show up. The limit to this work is not tenant appetite for organizing, but the number of organizers we have. You are ALL capable of doing this work—you just need to want to. We are here to support you, but it is impossible for us right now to work in all the buildings that have reached out to us. We need you.

Will you join us for the first meeting of the DCTU Organizing Working Group, tomorrow at 4pm? Here's the Zoom link to join. Password: tenants

We want to reach more buildings and strengthen existing tenant associations, and we can't do it without you. Join our first meeting to get plugged in to our work—from initial contact and conference calls to demand letters and rent strikes—and strategize with us about how to advance our struggles in individual buildings. Some of us have been doing this for years and some of us just started eight weeks ago, but we're all learning together.

Please respond directly to this email with any questions. You can also receive more updates from the DC Tenants Union by signing up here.

In solidarity,

Stomp Out Slumlords


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