Organizer José Sanchez on Housing Inequity: "Our Leaders Aren't Doing Nearly Enough to Rescue Us"

PS: You've spoken about the vicious cycle that comes out of non-English-speaking renters not knowing their rights as tenants; landlords leveraging the threat of ICE and federal deportation (and actually working with ICE) against the undocumented to get away with unsafe, unhealthy living conditions; and how that systemically condemns Latinx people to cheaper pools of labor with less job security. How have inequalities particularly related to Black and Latinx people grown due to COVID-19?

JS: Oh, so many. Seems like by every measure, every indicator, every cleavage and fault line: it's all being exacerbated by this crisis. It makes sense that Black and Latino people would be disproportionately impacted by this pandemic and the ensuing economic collapse. We're shuffled into these shitty jobs; into shitty, polluted neighborhoods choked by fumes from cars and factories; shitty and overcrowded housing, and no one can afford to see a doctor when they need to . . .

PS: . . . and for those who can afford care, the health inequities are staggering still.

JS: And, who are the essential workers? The folks bagging our groceries, delivering our food, taking care of the elderly and infirm? Who are warehoused, cheek by jowl, in our prisons and concentration i.e. "detention" camps? It's us. It's been us. Capital has no use in actually taking care of us.

PS: You're running for Central Brooklyn DSA's Housing Works Organizing Committee. Could you tell me about the work of the committee on behalf of the housing-insecure right now, especially working-class BIPOC?

JS: Well, the group has done a lot both as a working group and as a part of the larger NYC chapter of the DSA. Alongside coalition partners such as Housing Justice For All, Ridgewood Tenants Union, and the Crown Heights Tenants Union, they're fighting to cancel rent entirely instead of kicking the can down the road, which is what the current eviction moratorium does: both Cuomo's and Trump's.

There have also been electoral victories throughout the city thanks to the DSA, such as Jabari Brisport and Phara Souffrant-Forrest, two Black, Afro-Caribbean [native] Brooklynites. Phara was arrested last year in the fight for strengthened rent stabilization laws and other pro-tenant legislation. There've been actions at housing court in downtown Brooklyn, and the eviction defense at 1214 Dean Street is also a preview of the sort of militant work we're gonna have to ratchet up. The landlords are out for blood.

PS: In April, you told The New York Times: "We did not pay April rent and we plan on not paying on the first of the month. I've put the money away in case things get worse."

By most accounts, things have gotten worse for New Yorkers: no rent freeze, the end of unemployment benefits, the end of the city's eviction moratorium readily approaching on Oct. 1.

JS: Seems that the Trump administration via the CDC announced a nationwide eviction moratorium just [last] Tuesday. It has expanded relief to tens of millions of more renters than what the CARES Act enacted, and it's quite the swipe at the Democrats. It's been astounding to see the sort of state intervention into the so-called "free market" that Republican congresspeople, governors, and even the president himself are contemplating and implementing. Even still, though, it all hasn't gone far enough. The eviction moratoria passed by the White House and even Democratic officeholders such as Gov. Cuomo don't cancel rent obligations. So really, millions and millions of tenants are gonna be racking up debts that they'll have to pay back to their landlords eventually. But, how in the hell are they gonna pay back thousands and thousands of dollars at the "end" — or at least, abatement — of this public health crisis in times of historic joblessness, precarity, and hunger?

So, we know that our leaders aren't doing nearly enough to rescue us. Yet, there is a historic opening. We're also living through the biggest uprising the country has ever seen, far eclipsing the Women's March, Occupy, or even the civil rights-era protests. We've never lived through a period of revolt this intense, this militant, this widespread, and this prolonged. We gotta take advantage of the pressure elites, big business, and landlords are under in these times of unrest, pandemic, and depression.

PS: How would you advise those looking to organize around their own housing insecurity right now?

JS: My first piece of advice when it comes to housing and tenant organizing is this: talk to your neighbors. Talk to all the people that pay rent to the same landlord. Find out who else pays rent to your landlord, and start talking to them as well. What we used to find out who our landlord is, what else they own, their history of code violations, and other legal and financial stuff, was Who Owns What in NYC. Start talking about what issues y'all have in common, get everyone's contact information, [and] set up a meeting.

After Christmas and before New Year's the whole building lost water, so I knocked on everyone's door to get people's perspectives, email addresses, and numbers. The water came on shortly after, yet we didn't want that or something worse to happen again. Besides, there were other issues we wanted to act on. But, we didn't have the leverage as individual units to pressure the landlord into doing it. So, we set up meetings, did a 311 blitz, sent a letter of demands, and planned an escalation strategy. We even talked about delving into city records to see if we were being overcharged. We talked about going to court.

Then the pandemic hit. Not everyone was on board with a rent strike, and some people eventually were compelled to move out of the city entirely. Yet, we already had the relationships built to get nearly half of the building on strike for a brief amount of time. But, it was enough to pressure the landlord into forgiving rent and renewing leases.

PS: You talk about the importance of knowledge and arming yourself with it. As a Black Puerto Rican scholar, how does your scholarship tie into your investment in organizing?

JS: I frequently feel really powerless, overwhelmed, depressed, infuriated, and, frankly, despairing. I guess I look to the past for examples of people who felt the same, faced worse circumstances; were enslaved, enserfed, incarcerated, immiserated, addicted, violated, debilitated, massacred, and so forth. Yet, they survived, they thrived, they fought back, and sometimes they won. You have to spend however long you have on this earth scrambling, clawing at, and maintaining some dignity. Life's too precious and fragile of a gift not to fight for that.

PS: That reminds of the quote from James Baldwin, "You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read."

JS: I suppose it's easier to be inspired in that way when it comes to people that resemble you, or at least that's probably the attraction for me. I also want to make sense of why they were oppressed, and perhaps the whys and hows of their circumstances could illuminate my own? I mostly think that it does.

PS: In conversations about prison abolition and restorative justice, housing represents a material solution to one major inequity that instigates police brutality and drives the for-profit prison-industrial complex: the criminalization of poverty. Does new attention around Black Lives Matter and racial injustice internationally give you hope that issues concerning the movement for economic justice will enter the public consciousness too?

JS: I certainly hope so! For me, so much of the rhetoric that liberals propagate surrounding issues of race entirely divorce class and capitalism from the mix. I'm a socialist, a card-carrying member of the DSA, and Marx is an inspiration of mine. Yet, so is Cedric Robinson, Du Bois, and Angela Davis. You can't get rid of racism and white supremacy without getting rid of capitalism. Same goes for other sorts of "identity-based" oppressions like sexism and transphobia. We can't expect that getting a few Black billionaires, police chiefs, or even a First Family [will] save us from what Robinson called "racial capitalism." Never has there been a period when capitalism and racism weren't conjoined at the hip.