I'm in Parkdale where tenants are fighting back against
a rent increase here.
They're threatening to withhold their rent starting tomorrow
if the property management doesn't back down.
Residents living at this building here near King and Dufferin say they
shouldn't be forced to pay more rent.
They, along with tenants at other buildings owned by the same management
company say they're going on a rent strike.
It could be the biggest one
Parkdale has ever seen.
Hundreds of residents in Parkdale have refused to pay rent
fighting back against rent increases in their neighbourhood.
Now tonight they plan to take their action
to the next level.
They are now planning to expand by doubling
the number of buildings participating in the rent strike - from six, to twelve
next month.
Well the rent strike here in Parkdale hit a new level today,
as residents set their sights on the decision-maker.
They stormed the hallways of the Tribunal
demanding the property manager, Metcap, scrap the above guideline rent increases
for the entire neighborhood.
The two sides are now sitting down to talk and could be close to an agreement.
For these tenants, getting to sit across the table from corporate giants
is vindicating, after months of fear and criticism over their tactics.
What once seemed like an impossible task
has now empowered an entire community.
They hope that others across the city
can see them as an example that no corporation
is too big to take on.
One of the reasons why I picked Parkdale as a neighborhood,
because there was a great community aspect.
So it just kind of feels less like you're alone in a big city.
There's quite a few people that I see riding their bikes,
taking their kids to school...
it's just a very welcoming community, and I really enjoy that.
When I first moved here I was a little bit afraid,
because Parkdale has a bad rep. But I soon learned that it's one of the safest
neighborhoods in this city.
You know, I like the fact that Parkdale
is sort of close to everything.
So, you know, we got the Gardiner right here
so it's easy access to get onto the freeways and highways,
but yet we're still in the heart of downtown.
You know, downtown is really only five minutes, ten minutes away.
I like living by the lake. And that cool breeze in the summertime.
I used to live in the North End of Toronto, and neighbors weren't as friendly.
You know, more well-to-do and keeping to themselves.
Parkdale has a large low-income tenant population.
We have a ton of high-rise apartment buildings,
and the most part they're folks that have lived in the neighborhood
for a very long time.
People know me in Parkdale, and I could go anywhere
and everybody's friendly.
They're helpful, that's why I love Parkdale.
90% of the 20,000 people that live in this neighborhood are renters
and of them, a higher-than-average proportion are paying over 50% of their wages
to rent directly.
It's a community that is used to working-class struggles.
People know that we need to work together, and we need to kind of get on the same page
if we're going to see changes in our neighborhood.
For decades Parkdale has been a neighbourhood
where a struggle has taken place, between working-class, poor tenants
and their landlords, or their bosses... or the government.
It's a friendly neighborhood, and people look out for one another.
I met my first neighbor on the day I moved in.
He just said "welcome to the neighborhood," and gave me a magnet
that I still have on my fridge, and that's just one of the things
that I've loved about Parkdale since day one.
It's a nice place to live.
Parkdale is really diverse
and it's really welcoming to lots of different folks who are able to start families
and stay in the neighborhood for a very long time.
People feel really supported
and there's a lot of community services that are really in tune
with the different communities that they're serving.
There are over 20 primary languages spoken in
the neighborhood, and it has a high number of new arrivals
from other countries to Canada, living here.
As a refugee, I've been living in other
countries, like Nepal and India, and I've never had this sense of belonging.
And this sense of belonging... that's a comfort zone for a new immigrant,
so that you don't get lost in a new country and new culture.
Although we Tibetan people came
here as refugees, scattered across Canada,
a majority of people are staying in the Parkdale area.
First impressions can often be deceiving
- especially if you're visiting Parkdale for the first time.
Gritty, often in-your-face... this neighborhood is now on the gentrification fast-track.
How could it not be?
Look where it is.
People have talked about Parkdale facing gentrification for maybe... 20 years now.
And I think the word 'gentrification' can sometimes make
that process a little unclear for people, when the process
itself is very clear in our neighborhood. It's a process of displacement.
It is mostly a phenomenon of force - of economic and physical force, exerted on
working-class people, that destroys working-class lives.
And working-class neighbourhoods.
Rents are increasing and if they increase too much rent,
we cannot afford it.
Landlords trying to kick out tenants
so that they can get new tenants,
from which they can get more money.
The landlord tries to get that tenant out,
so that they can do very surface-level renovations on the unit.
Give them new appliances, a new coat of paint ... and then they can jack up the rent
sometimes 50%, and get a new sort of tenant into the building.
So not the working-class tenants that live in Parkdale,
not the immigrant families that live in Parkdale,
but generally young, professional, well-off white tenants.
And also the state plays into it as well
deportations have gutted this neighbourhood in a lot of really severe ways.
Up until only recently, this had been a neighborhood in which a large number of
Roma and Sin Ti Hungarian and Czech refugees came.
And through the concerted effort of the state, they were systematically removed from this
neighborhood and deported back to really deplorable conditions.
There's large parts of our community that are missing.
We Tibetans have been living here for
almost now 15-20 years, so it seems that this gentrification is disintegrating
the social vibrancy in Parkdale.... so that's really disheartening to see that.
Parkdale is a poor neighborhood and everybody helps each other,
but the other people moving into this area they're acting differently,
like they are more important than you
... and you've been living here a long time.
Different kinds of local spots closing...
They've put in a Starbucks... that's changed.
The banks are moving out ... that's not a good thing.
I know the CIBC closed down, and I believe the intent
is to put up some condo complexes there.
We have two condo projects moving in, and that's just the beginning.
That's the thin edge of a very thick wedge, I think.
So yeah... I think it's a real issue for Parkdale, is gentrification.
Liberty Village is just across Dufferin... and it's moving in this direction.
My name is Casie Stewart. I'm a Toronto-based lifestyle blogger
and today I'm in Liberty Village, one my favorite hoods,
and I'm going to show you around!
Liberty Villlllllage... wee!
Let's get a coffee... and a latte!
Liberty Village is kind of a created community.
It was a lot of old warehouses in the neighborhood that have slowly turned
into a huge condo development.
Another version of condo land, essentially.
It is not, like, single-family homes ... it is not large apartment buildings,
it is very intentionally-designed professional development
that is designed in a way to keep homeless people out.
Brewpubs and bistros ... and that kind of environment.
Your 24-hour Metro...
expensive nail salons and waxing facilities...
... and here's the spot if you wanna get a mani-pedi on a Sunday with your bestie.
They wanted to make this a Liberty Village West...
but it's not Liberty Village West. It's Parkdale.
When I say I see Liberty Village coming to Parkdale, I see things being more expensive.
I see more and more changes in terms of the gentrification
and the types of people that are moving into the neighborhood
that may not care about the neighborhood as much as we'd like them to.
For a lot of people in Toronto, or even people who heard about the rent strike
outside of Toronto, it seemed like it started very suddenly.
That it was this huge struggle
of hundreds of working-class tenants that just
popped out of thin air.
But the reality is that it didn't pop out of thin air.
I had seen fliers kind of going about, either on lamp posts, or flyers in my building,
or just kind of... there's a bit of a buzz just happening.
I wasn't sure exactly what it was,
but I knew that I wanted to learn more about it so I reached out to
Parkdale Organize and then that's kind of where the ball started rolling.
I heard about Parkdale Organize, somebody put a flyer on my door
so that's how I first got involved.
Parkdale Organize has really done a good job.
The group Parkdale Organize says they don't know just yet what their next project will be.
For now they're taking a much deserved break after months of organizing.
Parkdale Organize is a group of people who have come together to organize in
our neighborhood, and people who are hoping to build the working-class power
in the neighborhood, so that we can take control of the place that we live.
A handful of people came together to try and put an organization to the struggles
that people in the neighborhood had been facing.
Working-class people face a myriad of
individual struggles within the neighborhood.
The idea was to collectively, through solidarity
and direct action, deal with those issues.
Before the rent strike, Parkdale Organize had been
around for maybe three or four years, and we had been organizing building by building,
knocking on doors in places where people had been facing
rent increases, disrepair, pest problems ... and telling people that the thing that
they needed to do was get together with their neighbors and confront their
landlord directly.
We had organized, at first slowly, in a few buildings and it
was always a hard sell.
Who are you people?
Why are you knocking on my door? What is it that you want me to do?
And we started to have successes.
Initially, struggles around a major new player in the
real estate market, Akelius, which is a real estate fund based in Scandinavia
that bought up a bunch of buildings up and down the boulevards in Parkdale.
Tenants at a Parkdale apartment building are fighting back against their property owner.
188 Jameson, they were doing a rent strike.
I know people at 188, where some of my relatives live also.
They had this problem for a few months long before.
Other struggles that had kind of given a bit broader conception of what it is
that working people struggle against in this neighborhood was a worker-initiated
strike over at the Food Terminal - it's a major food hub. The largest in Southern Ontario,
I think the largest in Ontario generally, that employs a lot of tenants in Parkdale.
They went on strike and people from the neighbourhood supported them as well.
Once we had started getting those successes, our organizing became much
easier pitch when we went to people's doors. People had heard of us before.
We started to be able to just buzz up to a random unit in the building and say
"hey we're from Parkdale Organize, we want to come talk to you about something"
and people would always invite us in.
Those campaigns started to put a different idea
out there within the neighbourhood, which was that the struggles that people
find themselves faced with are not individual struggles, and don't need to
be dealt with individually. That organizing around those issues,
not just protesting, not just registering dissent and not just complaining about them
was something that could be done.
So when this situation presented itself,
- when Metcap ridiculously applied for above-guideline rent increases in
several buildings throughout the neighborhood, all at once,
this rent strike... it emerged from all of that previous organizing.
It for sure took the actions of some
brave tenants in those buildings, but it had also taken a lot of
groundwork to get the neighborhood to a point where it was ready
for this type of struggle.
Metcap is one of two large landlords in the neighborhood
- those being Metcap and Akelius.
Brent Merrill is the CEO, now, of Metcap
- also directly owns some of the buildings in the neighborhood.
He's a greedy Pig!
He's not thinking about poor people. He's thinking only about himself.
If they increase, each and every year, the rent... then really, we are facing problems.
I've been here for three years and I've gotten those rent increases year after year.
A lot of the tenants that have been here for a lot longer than I've been,
for decades on top of it, from the stories that they've been telling, they've been
going through those types of things for years and years and years.
It's always been an above-guideline rent increase.
An above-guideline rent increase is an
extra rent increased that landlords are allowed to ask for on top of
the annual provincial guideline.
The Ontario government says landlords are allowed a certain amount.
And when the landlord has done extra work in the building,
if they have done some capital expenditures that cost a lot of money, they're allowed to
pass on these costs to the tenants - to a maximum of nine percent over three years
on top of a guideline amount.
So the idea that things can remain
affordable because of rent control is actually quite a farce.
1% on, let's say a standard $1000 is what... $10, right?
$15 to 1.5 percent?
Whereas now you're asking for 4. So $40 a month?
It may sound trivial in the small run,
but, y'know, for some of the people that live in this area, it's a lot of
blue-collar, working-class people and a lot of people that just came into the country.
So some people have to make decisions about whether they put that
extra money to rent or, you know, spend that money on groceries.
And for some other people it's them staying in the building or not.
It's not just kind of my personal position in it.
It's knowing that an entire neighborhood, and my friends,
and people that I would call family are suffering along with me, because they are
unable to pay their rent for these unrealistic increases.
People have tried to fight these above-guideline rent increases in the past,
but they were never winning. Like the law was not set up for tenants to win.
So they had to come up with a new strategy, if we were going to take on the law
and the landlord.
An opinion had started to form in the neighborhood, that we had
had enough with the treatment that we had faced.
We had had enough of our neighbors being pushed out of our buildings one by one,
month after month, and then we were going to do something about it.
And that the something we were going to do about it was going to involve direct action
and it was not going to be about advocacy, it was not going to be about lobbying,
it was not going to be about raising awareness
- because all of those avenues had failed us.
Rent strike was a tactic that had been discussed by various
tenants during various struggles up until this point,
but a critical mass was kind of achieved
where enough people were talking about it, and enough people felt
confident about the experiences that they had already been through
that they were willing to take it on.
It started with 87 Jameson,
because they were the first ones to go on rent strike.
We decided to hold back the rent for a certain time and see how
he's gonna respond. And he wasn't too happy.
From that, more conversation started in different buildings
around 87 Jameson, like on the same street in the same neighbourhood,
to talk about if there was more people involved in this rent strike,
if there was more people talking to each other and organizing,
then we can be a lot more effective in taking on the landlord.
87 Jameson temporarily called off
their rent strike and initially tenants from that building
and members from Parkdale Organize set out to make contact with other tenants in
other Metcap buildings.
I think the other buildings came on board
because we had people coming organizing lobby meetings.
Learning what they've been going through,
and how what they were suffering through was similar to
what I'd been going through in my own building, or the same thing that I'd seen
other neighbors go through as well. Just the unresponsiveness from Metcap.
For me, personally it was a pest control issue and the lack of follow-up by Metcap
in terms of cockroaches and mice.
I joined the rent strike because of just the way Metcap treats people.
They treat you like a second-class citizen, and I just thought it was time
for a correction in attitude. I was happy to join the rent strike.
And the fact that there's a fantastic community that wanted to organize,
I was just like... it's time.
In March we went to Metcap's corporate head office on Richmond Street.
I think there was about 70 or 80 of us that went down to the landlord's office all together.
They locked us out. They wouldn't take our repair requests.
They phoned the police. They told us we were trespassing.
Come down, and talk to the people that live in the buildings that you are making millions of dollars off of.
Where are you?! Where are you?!
- He's hiding underneath the bed! - Let's go!
- Cowards! - Let's see a face to the bank account that we're filling!
We managed to get up to their front door, and they were behind the glass
laughing at us. That's how they viewed us.
It's not the first time they've been protested,
and they thought this was another flash in the pan... it would just go away.
but this time it didn't go away.
So... tenants in this neighborhood are used to
having meetings in their lobbies, so we just had a meeting in the landlord's lobby
to talk about, like, this was really disrespectful. The landlord doesn't even
want to speak to their own tenants. They're not addressing issues they're
legally required to address. Let's talk about doing a rent strike in the neighbourhood.
We need to decide on what the next steps are, for fighting these
rent increases, and for getting the units fixed up.
We came here today to try to appeal to them as people,
and they wouldn't even address us. So clearly the only thing
that matters is money... so that's probably the direction we're gonna have to go.
We've got to do something, we've got to start. Because they are indifferent to us.
They are disrespectful. They are disregarding our concern.
So we've got to go on a rent strike.
So we came back, tried to think of next steps...
the next step was to follow the same line that 87 was on, and go on the rent strike.
That was a process that involved lots of door-knocking, lots of lobby meetings,
mass meetings - as well as escalating actions of engagement against Metcap.
And the rest is sort of history now.
♫ Let's all go to the lobby let's all go to the lobby
to get ourselves a treat. ♫
The lobby meetings were organized, I believe, by Parkdale Organize.
A few people would show up and talk to us
about what the living conditions were like, and about the rent increases we were facing.
And that way we started to get to know one another
and sort of explore what was happening - and what we could do about it.
I think lobby meetings helped, because they're a time to get opinions from
different people, different tenants, around how to strategize.
A lobby meeting is exactly what it sounds like.
They are among the only public spaces in our buildings
where more than four people can get together
and discuss anything. So a lot of times at the building level,
that's where the meetings take place.
And we all talk about what's going on, and what are our next steps
and what we plan to do. So we've been keeping meeting in the lobby very often.
They took myself just going around the building, letting people know when
the next Lobby meeting will be.
You go around door-to-door, you knock on people's doors,
you have conversations about what's been going on with those people,
what it is that they think about it ... and you set a date for a number
of people to get together from that building and discuss
what it is that they're gonna do about it.
You know, obviously, when they first started, a lot of people were very skeptical.
Like... what is this?
They can be chaotic sometimes.
It's Parkdale. There's a lot of characters and everybody has something to say.
To me, it struck me as being a little bit disorganized at first.
But I thought 'this is worth getting involved in.'
It's become more commonplace
for people in the neighborhood to have lobby meetings.
People started to know our face, so people
would automatically, in the building, start stopping and start saying
"hey what's going on with this? what's the update? what's the word?"
It made me feel I had support going door-to-door and putting out flyers to let people
know what we were all about, and what we were hoping to gain by the rent strike.
Our lobby meeting was just, again, a good way to get our neighbors connected and get
them informed and make sure that they knew that they weren't alone in the situation.
Some decisions get made there. Tasks are divvied up, and then
those tasks are carried out. And then you have another lobby meeting to go over
what's taken place and make further decisions.
Talking to each other, trying to get a consensus.
The important thing is that every tenant get involved... inclusiveness.
No respect? No rent! No reapairs? No rent!
One of the things I enjoyed the most was the march through Parkdale.
Lots of support... horn honking and people waving at us.
The march through Parkdale, which a huge number of people showed up for.
The day we marched.
Meeting in front of the library and standing there with a few of my friends, and taking up space
and being loud, and unapologetic about the fact that we weren't going to tolerate
Metcap's behavior any longer. And getting out into the community and just
marching around and just picking up people as we went along.
There were just so many actions. It kind of took on a life of his own.
Protesting one of the owners in Forest Hill...
Today we're gathered here to go visit Metcap at their home,
since they're always in our homes, saying they're doing repairs when they're not.
This morning a few dozen tenants, they boarded a yellow school bus
and took the protest right to the front doorstep of one of the property owners.
All that you care about is the money to put in your pocket, that's all.
You are getting richer from the tenants. And we are getting poorer and poorer every day.
So stop all your bullshit and listen to us.
We are strong people in Parkdale, and we will show you how powerful we are.
Going to the Tribunal, and everyone showing up there...
Inside court... we had nearly a hundred people.
It was a raucous start at the Landlord and Tenant Tribunal
here at Yonge and St. Clair. Protesters delayed the hearing by
more than an hour, calling for Metcap to give in to their demands.
There was the incident when they tried to run somebody over...
The truck incident with Brent Merrill.
A protest in June saw Metcap CEO, Brent Merrill, narrowly avoid
hitting a protestor outside one of his buildings.
Having seen the video now, I don't know what it would happened if I had gone
under the car as opposed to off to the side.
I really thought at some point he would slow down.
It was really shocking... really shocking.
You always expect the worst from Metcap.
That just blew me away. I mean that was - they just took the cake that day.
They had messed up in a massive way.
Thankfully Kevin was alright... but in that moment
I was just, like... we've got them.
You know, I don't want to make this the centerpiece of what's going on today.
I think that what needs to happen is that they need to recognize that this community is not backing down.
We're not leaving.
Not one person did it. All the buildings.
Not one person... everybody.
That's the highlight more than anything. That the collective will and the collective
strength was being fully accessed in order to carry this out.
And that was a hell of a thing to watch and participate in.
My favorite part of the rent strike
was the way that it seeped into our everyday lives.
You didn't feel as alone in the building as you may have before
... or you knew who was kind of fighting with you.
I think it has been, like, such a positive thing for the neighborhood.
Like, I think neighbors are now way more open to having conversations.
For a lot of us, you know, I didn't really talk to a lot of people in my building before this.
And now it's sort of... it brought people together.
I started running into people on the street that would say hello to me
and ask about the rent strike and it just made for a much closer community
Yeah, it just helped build the community quite a bit, I feel like.
Even those who are not Metcap tenants were asking
"what's going on with Metcap? what's happening now? what's the decision?"
It got pretty normal that there would be an impromptu meeting in
the produce section of the No Frills.
And it was those moments that - they were honestly beautiful for me, because
so often politics are just wiped from our daily lives.
And, y'know, people might go to a protest on a Saturday
you know, somewhere that's like half an hour transit ride from their house.
But this reality of not being able to stand on my balcony,
not being able to go out on the street without meeting someone who was in this struggle with me,
who had been thinking about it all day just like me, who was worrying about it,
who was making plans... and really that feeling that we were in this together.
It was the only time in my life when I had really felt that level of camaraderie
with the people who I lived with, the people I was surrounded by,
and it just added this weight, this content, to both our daily lives and the struggle.
You know, we were all at home thinking 'oh my goodness, what's the next thing I can do?'
'What else can I do to help us win?' - because the stakes were so high.
It was so real.
And people are really curious about what's going on,
and are kind of really hopeful, because they see that the tenants are making
some really huge wins and, like, wondering 'well how can we do this in our building?'
'How can we get involved?'
People want to do something ... and they like what is happening.
Seeing the different people that sort of jumped on board
along with us to show support. So, you know, Queen Victoria - all the teachers there
stood out on the block and made a lot of noise on the corner of King and Jameson,
which was really amazing to see.
Hundreds of residents here in Parkdale are heading into their second month
refusing to pay rent in protest of rent hikes here in Parkdale.
And now they're getting the support of some unlikely allies.
In the heart of South Parkdale, right at the corner of King and Jameson,
is a huge elementary school.
So many of the kids from South Parkdale go to that school.
The Parkdale elementary school is surrounded by 19 buildings owned by Metcap Living.
Five of them are facing rent increases above the provincial maximum.
Conditions of poverty, of displacement
- those are things that are felt most strongly by children.
And the teachers in the schools are very aware of that.
They see it in their students every day.
They see when they're tired. They see when they're hungry.
They see when they have bedbug bites, or when they're afraid that their parents
are going to lose their home.
They see it when students don't show up at the next school year
because they've been displaced from our neighborhood.
Y'know, there were teachers at Parkdale elementary who tried to take action
when Roma students were being deported en masse from the neighborhood.
There were teachers who have talked about the conditions at the school,
who have talked about conditions in the neighborhood,
but it's always a problem when those actions take the form of just advocacy,
or raising awareness.
Often, the worst conditions that we face are things that are very legal... but are wrong.
These above guideline rent increases that have been displacing our neighbours
are absolutely legal.
And what was so amazing about the support that we had from teachers
in the neighborhood, was that they've seen how this legal regime
of above guideline rent increases has stripped our neighborhood of its
working-class qualities. Has forced working-class people out of Parkdale.
And they were willing, in fact enthusiastic, about the opportunity to support
working-class people, the parents of their students, in their formation of
working-class organizations that were capable of taking on the things
that are legal... but wrong.
I'm in Parkdale, where striking tenants
are putting away their protest signs and banners, now that a three-month rent strike
has ended with a negotiated agreement with the landlord.
Working-class people sat down across the table from people that represented
hundreds of millions of dollars in capital ... and didn't budge.
I was there for the negotiation process.
Metcap came, and they had various employees from Metcap.
And one of their main investors showed up.
I think our tenant team really worked well. We had discussions and meetings before
the negotiations, and we we knew what they were up to - and we knew our demands.
We usually had one or two representatives from each building, who'd been involved
in the rent strike all along.
Each of the main buildings that were participating
in the rent strike had a couple of building representatives that kind of
spread information to the rest of the tenants in their building, as well as speak
to all of the tenants in the building to see what people wanted to do moving forward.
At the height there were close to 300 people on the rent strike
and the people at the bargaining table were about 20 of us.
We went in there with very very firm demands. We had to negotiate
Of course, we're not professional negotiators. So it was quite a learning experience, for sure
So Parkdale Community Legal Services worked with those building representatives
through negotiations with the landlord and the investment company.
All in all the negotiation process went really really well
and it was a very good deal for Parkdale.
I would definitely consider this a win.
I think the tenants are really going to want to talk about what the wins were
from these negotiations. Unfortunately the details are confidential.
The numbers are good. So good that Metcap has required
a gag order on the actual specific numbers.
I would say that we won, yes.
And there's a lot of people with smiles on their faces in Parkdale.
I think the biggest and most important result of the rent strike
is that the rent strike has been recognized by those that carried it out
as a tactic, not an end in and of itself. And a tactic that's employed by organizing.
And by organizations that are developed by working-class people.
There is a shift, socially and politically, underway within this neighborhood,
and hopefully outside of the neighborhood as well,
which is that people are capable of doing things that they are otherwise told,
by legal convention and economic mandate, that they cannot do.
Cheers at a Parkdale building as residents mark the end of a long battle.
Sadly, there's no shortage of things for us to organize around.
So the lesson that people should take is not that they should move to Parkdale.
Other neighborhoods can carry out this activity,
and other neighborhoods should carry out this activity.
Different types of problems are there in each and every building.
Gentrification is happening all over the city.
It's not just in Parkdale. So I think it's important that people get the
message that when you stick together - we have a lot more power as a group
than we do as individuals.
I would suggest that anyone who's facing high rent increases
should get together with their neighbors.
Don't go alone. You know, get your neighbours involved.
Be organized. Go as one... go as a unified front.
Get organized. Meet with people in your building.
Meet with people outside your building.
You're more powerful than you think.
A lot of people were really skeptical.
I mean, I remember back in March and even in April when we were starting
to organize the rent strike, like, even some of the main organizers, now, were like
"You guys are nuts. This is never going to work."
"Everyone's going to get evicted."
Nobody in this building wanted to get involved.
I was the only person. Some people told me
"don't rock the boat... it doesn't affect us."
But now that the rent strike's over - and the negotiations,
everybody's just cheering us on, right? This is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Some people are still calling us, and asking us about the rent strike.
Like "oh you all did a great job. How'd you all get started?"
"How'd you all do this? How'd you all do that?"
It makes you feel good that you're making a difference.
I'm happy it worked out very well.
I'm emboldened by this strike. I think people are really
- now even if the strike happens next time, I think more people will join.
Because we had that taste of victory.
There's power in numbers. And we had a loud voice,
and our voice was heard.
That's what people in the neighborhood have learned
from this experience - is that, while there are individual working-class
people that are commendable, the strength and authority that is latent within the working-class
generally, is something that no other social force can actually touch.
And it just has to be organized.
and that organization takes a lot of work.
The lesson to take is do the work.
Do the organizing, carry out the action,
win the day... and prepare for the next day.