LENNOX, CA, October 25—Tonight, fifteen tenant organizers, led by the Lennox-Inglewood Tenants’ Union (LITU), confronted a racist and abusive landlord at her house. With the mostly Latin immigrant tenants backing him up, a LITU member handed the owner a letter demanding that her harassment of the five tenants who live on the property stop immediately. The letter also listed the repairs that she has failed to make and told her that, from now on, LITU will be monitoring everything that happens between her and the tenants.
CHALLENGE readers will remember that Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members have been actively working within LITU. We have consistently raised the need for solidarity between workers— locally, nationally and internationally. At a recent tenants’ meeting, a PLP member talked about and distributed an article from CHALLENGE describing the struggle led by our comrades in Kentucky against slumlords and the criminalization of homelessness. Our member pointed out that working class people facing displacement around the world have the same interests- to be rid of all these racist and abusive landlords. This can only happen when we build an international working class movement for communism to build a world where housing, no longer being a commodity bought, rented, and sold to make someone rich, will be safe, plenty, and free for all because we will abolish the profit system that creates housing crises.
Working class tenants on the move
This action was organized on short notice. It came out of the continuing work that LITU has done to organize a separate 40-apartment complex in Lennox. With LITU’s assistance, tenants there have formed a Tenants’ Association (TA) that has regular meetings, collects dues, plans united actions against the scumlord at that building, organizes court support for tenants who face eviction, and plans and holds socials. Several of the active tenants there have told their friends, who don’t live at the complex, about LITU’s militancy and consistency. A number of those friends have attended the regular TA meetings and have spoken about their own struggles where they live. The TA has heard these tenants out and agreed to back them up. That is what led to this action.
Racist housing conditions
The atrocious conditions that the tenants we supported tonight have been subjected to are typical of what LITU sees in apartments where Black and Latin immigrant workers live. Mold in the bathroom, toilet and bathtub leaks, holes in the walls and floor, and roach and mouse infestation are only some of those conditions. When one of the tenants reported a gas leak to the Fire Department, the racist landlord appeared at the tenant’s work site, yelling at her in front of her customers.
When LITU confronted the landlord, she first refused to accept the letter and went inside her house at the rear of the property. A few minutes later, she came outside, took the letter but did not read it, accusing the tenants who live there of lying about how she treats them. She then repeatedly denied that she was still the property owner but insisted that the tenants continue paying rent to her. We told her she had no right to any rent money. As her husband pulled her inside the house, we loudly chanted “los inquilinos unidos, jamás seran vencidos” (“The tenants, united, will never be defeated”).
The struggle continues
Afterwards, we celebrated this victory for solidarity in the front yard of one tenant’s apartment. As expected, the landlord called the cops. However, we had a plan on how to deal with that eventuality, and our police liaison, backed up by the tenants, made it clear to the cops that there was no basis to detain or arrest anyone. The cops returned later, after most of us had left. However, the tenants told the cops that they know what their rights are. The cops told the tenants that, in the future, they would personally deliver any letter they had for the landlord!! Of course, this was total BS, and the cops knew it.
Under capitalism, working class tenants pay huge rents for rattrap apartments. Bourgeois law protects private property, the profits of the owners and the banks who are behind them. Homelessness stalks the working class as rents squeeze our low wages. Under communism, rents would be abolished. Housing would be shared according to need. That is a world worth fighting for. Join PLP to bring that world about.
