Member Statements on PCR04: Make Stomp Out Slumlords a Chapter Priority Campaign for 2025

Member Statements
1

Statement IN FAVOR

Joe R.

I’m writing a member statement IN FAVOR of granting Stomp Out Slumlords priority campaign status in 2025.

When I was moving to DC and started looking into the Metro DC chapter of DSA, SOS was the first campaign I found because they have waged public fights and written extensive reports on what they’ve learned through years of struggle. Although tenant unionism has not garnered the same amount of attention as the resurgent labor movement, some of the most exciting and fruitful organizing happening in the country has been done by groups like SOS (e.g., Kansas City Tenants Union, Louisville Tenants Union, Los Angeles Tenants Union, etc.) Within the chapter, SOS is far and away the most successful in terms of base building, establishing years-long organizing relationships with low income, mixed status, and multiracial tenants. In addition to the material gains tenants see in their buildings and lives, SOS regularly supports other chapter formations, such as tenant canvasses for Janeese Lewis George, the History of Tenant Rights: DC Walking Tour, mobilizing to preserve important rights and protections such as rent stabilization and the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), and building support for social housing. Housing, like labor, has profound impacts on the working class, and we should prioritize the kinds of arduous, long-term organizing and powerbuilding that SOS has a proven track record of doing. It’s also one of the strongest issues for our chapter and organization, as well as our most popular elected officials and socialists more broadly (e.g., the Austrian Communist Party, which was basically non-existent for decades and has once again become a political force after years of mobilizing around housing issues). SOS also has significant recurring costs and it has shown to actually need and use. It would be a mistake for the chapter to discontinue this support on the heels of recent victories and as SOS prepares to launch the Washington Area Tenants Union.

Please vote YES to grant SOS priority campaign status in 2025!

In solidarity

Joe R

2

Statement IN FAVOR

Paul C.

Support for Resolution PCR04: Make Stomp Out Slumlords a Chapter Priority Campaign for 2025

Through this document I formally register my support for the above resolution.

SOS is where I perform the bulk of my organizing effort because I believe in the particular power of tenant organizing to build dual power and has particularly strong unity of ends and means for several reasons:

  1. It provides material benefits like lower rents, preservation of affordable housing, and remediation of adverse building conditions to tenants such as myself
  2. The means in which it provides these benefits if through fomenting solidarity among tenants and providing an outlet for that solidarity
  3. A strong union or Co-Op provides a democratic model through which tenants can learn through experience how to organize and interact with each other in a solidaritous and coequal manner
  4. The tenant organizing taking place at SOS is inherently evangelistic for the socialist cause, in its basic tactics of canvassing, petitioning, and protesting all locally where people live, which creates an immediate and visceral connection between the personal and the political
  5. Tenants who are part of unions can continue to use and develop their political potency, continuing to activism in support of their fellow tenants across the DMV, of related causes such as workers unions or those further afield, or finally though local electoral politics or other political protest or direct action

In conclusion, please pass the above resolution!

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Statement IN FAVOR

Nicole Z.

I urge members of the MDC DSA chapter to vote in favor of Stomp Out Slumlords as a priority campaign.

I’ve been a leader in the Montgomery County branch since 2020, including two terms as branch chair from 2021 to 2023 and branch steering from 2021 to 2024. I was a core organizer in the successful campaign to win rent stabilization in Montgomery County. Since this past summer, I’ve been a member of the Stomp Out Slumlords Coordinating Committee.

Overall, I’d say SOS has one of the strongest organizing records in DSA, holding landlords accountable, getting large settlements for tenants living in hazardous conditions and even helping tenants buy their own building. I’m also excited by the plans to formally launch a Washington Area Tenants Union in 2025, bringing together organized tenants across the region to take on landlords together.

As the Montgomery County representative to the SOS coordinating committee, though, I want to highlight that this priority campaign includes our efforts to pass rent stabilization in the city of Rockville, MD. In 2024, we’ve held five renter canvasses in Rockville, one wheatpasting event and turned out tenants and DSA members to Rockville Mayor and Council Hearings to testify in support of rent stabilization. We’re seeing real momentum in this campaign – around 70 rent stabilization supporters came to the November council and mayor “housing stability” discussion to demand rent stabilization and Rockville residents are joining DSA because of our efforts. The Montgomery County branch voted unanimously in our December meeting to make Rockville rent stabilization a priority branch campaign in 2025. In order to keep up this campaign, we will need funds from the chapter for printing, signs and more.

Thank you for supporting our organizing and participating in our chapter democracy!

4

Statement IN FAVOR

Stephanie B.

As one of the founding members of Stomp Out Slumlords, I’m so proud of the growth we’ve seen both as a chapter and as a working group since 2017. Today Stomp Out Slumlords has 70 dedicated volunteers working weekly for tenant power in DC; in 2017 we had maybe a dozen to start. I struggled to organize our first building in 2017; today, we are organizing with dozens of buildings, and have previously organized rent strikes and protests with dozens more. Hundreds upon hundreds of working-class Washingtonians have participated in our socialist political movement, many for the first time in their lives. Our record of winning rent strikes, forcing landlords to come to the table, and protecting tenants’ rights speaks to the efficacy of our working group, and our consistent use of our entire priority fund speaks to our dedication (and our need).

Our maturation since first becoming a priority campaign four years ago is a testament to how crucial this funding is to our continued growth, especially as we look to launch the first regional tenants union in the Metro DC area: the Washington Area Tenants Union, encompassing the District and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs. As an autonomous tenants union, we are completely free from the influence (and strings) of nonprofits. But this means we are also our only source of financial support, making this year’s bid for priority campaign status crucial to the continued growth of the tenant movement.

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Statement IN FAVOR

Carl R.

Comrades, please vote FOR Stomp Out Slumlords to receive priority campaign status. SOS remains one of the strongest DSA campaigns in the country, building working class consciousness and fighting the capitalist class directly through the chapter. If we want to continue taking the fight to landlords across the district and building the power necessary to win things, we should support SOS.

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Statement IN FAVOR

Katlyn C.

I’m Katlyn C. She/her, I’ve been a tenant organizer with Stomp Out Slumlords in Virginia. I’m asking folks to vote to make stomp out slumlords as a priority campaign.

I stay really excited about the work that SOS does because it’s bringing socialism to the people, like literally meeting people where they are, in their homes, talking to them about class and power. This year, we’ve convened an organizing committee composed of tenant leaders in buildings we’ve organized and long-time organizers to navigate the transition from our current model to building the Washington Area Tenants Union! We’re building a tenants union to organize renters to think of themselves as a class with the power to change all our conditions for the better. Renters make up the majority of households in the DMV definitely in DC, definitely in Arlington where I organize, and in Alexandria where I live, but it sure as heck doesn’t feel like the policy is conducted that way. We want to make the tenants union a force to be feared.

This priority campaign funding allows SOS to pay for canvas literature for our monthly anti-eviction canvasses. These are important because they provide people some steps to prevent their eviction. For our work, it helps us find new leads for buildings that might be organisable, and it’s also a source of new potential organizers that we can recruit and train. It’s also great for the chapter because it’s a designated monthly event on the calendar, a lot of the time we get people who are DSA curious or new to DSA, and it’s an opportunity for them to meet people and get more deeply involved, even if they don’t go on to become building organizers. They’ve also been awesome for getting students from local universities plugged into DSA.

This priority campaign has also been so essential in helping us pay for translators who provide simultaneous translation for Spanish speaking tenants at our DMV wide Stomp Out Slumlords meetings. These keep our meetings inclusive and more efficient and help us build solidarity across all of the buildings we are organizing.

This year, I’m looking forward to building the Washington Area Tenants Union to build political power for the working class, to partner with Community Builders to plan events that build community across buildings. We also plan to convene a convention of regional tenants unions to inaugurate the Washington Area Tenants Union.

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Statement IN FAVOR

Doug T.

I’m excited for SOS’s plan this coming year to help stand up the Washington Area Tenants Union (WATU). Over the past few years, I’ve been inspired by organizations like the Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU) and Connecticut Tenants Union (CTTU). These regional tenant unions, similar to labor unions, are dues funded, membership based organizations. These tenant unions seek to organize renters and buildings across their region in the tenant struggle.

It’s expected that WATU will be an independent organization from the chapter. So why do I think DSA should be putting so much resources into creating it? Well, imagine if DSA helped organize a labor union. That union would ultimately belong to the workers, not the external organizers. I see WATU the same way - as an external union in which DSA, as socialists, should take an interest in aiding its success and political development.

The tenants in this struggle acutely experience the brutality of the capitalist housing system. The commodification of our means to shelter transforms, what should be a universal human right, into a site of profit extraction and racialized proletarian misery. And with “the tenant” as an emergent identity of the working class, I believe it’s imperative socialists engage in this struggle.

I also think this new organization will force our existing tenant organizing efforts to move in a more democratic direction, for one, by having tenants elect the organization’s leadership, but also by making space for some tenant leaders, who came to this movement outside of DSA, to begin to exercise more strategic and political leadership in our long term project to build tenant power.

But bringing this whole new organization into being will require resources. Holding a convention, conducting events/actions, and standing up a dues collection system all require printing, translation, room rentals, and volunteers. MDC-DSA should make it a priority to support SOS in the coming year in our efforts to establish a Washington Area Tenants Union.

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Statement IN FAVOR

Evan S.

Over the past seven years since it first began organizing, Stomp Out Slumlords has become an invaluable part of the Metro DC DSA chapter and the regional tenants’ movement. We’ve collectively organized a cross-class and multiracial coalition of tenants from all over the District, Montgomery County Maryland, and Northern Virginia, all while bringing in new members to SOS and DSA. We’ve won long fought struggles during property sales, successfully organized against tenant rights rollbacks in the District, and helped pass rent control in Montgomery County. SOS has also run a monthly anti-eviction canvas for years, ensuring tenants across the city know their rights and have access to legal services.

These wins not only benefit the area’s tenants, but also the chapter itself. SOS actions, canvasses, and meetings are a significant draw for scores of people new to DSA or interested in organizing each year. Our events in turn bring more people into the chapter or provide an accessible point of entry for existing members looking to deepen their involvement, all the while raising DSA’s local profile in the news and among the community. Similarly, our work with other DSA groups has mutually benefited the movement. Our growing relationships with YDSA chapters at AU and GWU have turned out dozens of students to our canvasses and protests and our collaboration with the Social Housing working group has promoted social housing as a viable policy solution for DC’s housing crisis.

However, these activities do have monetary costs, including printing for thousands of canvassing flyers and pamphlets, venues for large meetings, travel for representing SOS at tenant organizing conferences, and art supplies for protests and banner drops. Individuals within SOS try to cover the costs of what they can and chip in where possible, but all together these expenses are far too great for us to support out of our own pockets. Nowhere is this need more evident than in our consistent track record of putting to use most, if not all, of our allocated priority campaign funds in years past for the previously mentioned efforts. As a coordinating committee member of and a longtime organizer with Stomp Out Slumlords, I strongly urge you to vote to make SOS a priority campaign for the upcoming year.

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Statement IN FAVOR

Andrew S.

I support designating Stomp Out Slumlords (SOS) as a priority campaign. Tenant organizing is something that anyone can get involved in. Even if you aren’t a renter, you can still contribute to SOS in a number of tasks on a variety of fronts at many levels of involvement. Some want to organize tenants (form relationships with people in the community and take on a struggle against a landlord) or mobilize tenants for a legislative effort (e.g. TOPA, social housing, anti-eviction protections, legal defense, etc.) or pitch in occasionally by joining a monthly anti-eviction canvass or partner with other groups for political education (reading groups, walking tours, documentary film screenings, etc.). Organizing where we live - which is where we spend about half our day - is a fundamental aspect of building a socialist movement and SOS takes on many (a growing number!) of ways to fight for tenants’ rights. And with the beginnings of a regional tenant union, SOS is continuing to assert its dynamism! Tenants, organizers, and tenant-organizers would all agree that putting housing issues among the top campaigns that our Chapter pursues is as vital as ever.

10

Statement IN FAVOR

Aparna R.

Hi all, I’m encourage you to vote yes to make Stomp Out Slumlords a priority campaign. I actually came to DSA4 years ago through SOS when I was dealing with my own housing issues.

SOS provides easy avenues for new members to get involved with monthly anti eviction canvasses and also builds our working class base and power in the region through our longer term organizing in buildings. We’re also one of the only working groups that actively goes and talks to people at their homes. This means we’re reaching people who otherwise would have never heard of DSA rather than self-selecting groups of people who explicitly come to DSA events.

As part of my statement, I want to highlight two incredible wins that SOS had this year:

  1. Earlier this spring, developers and landlords were trying to gut the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, a vital right we have in DC to allow tenants to have a say in what happens to their homes if the building is sold. Specifically, they were trying to work with the Mayor to get it in her proposed budget and trying to lobby Councilmembers on it ahead of time. We caught wind of what was happening, and quickly mobilized to organize 1) a political education walking tour on the impact TOPA has had on DC and 2) a rally outside the Wilson Building to let the Mayor and the Council know that we knew the Mayor was planning to try to take TOPA away from thousands of residents. When the Mayor’s budget did drop, there was nothing about TOPA — we scared the developers and real estate lobbyists enough to leave TOPA alone and we won. This was an important win to protect tenants rights, but it also informed our need to grow as a political force in the region to regularly contest landlord and developer power, and why we’re trying to grow a Washington Area Tenants Union.

  2. Marbury Plaza is a building in Ward 8, which is a predominantly working class and Black part of the city. Tenants at Marbury had been organizing with SOS for 4 years around a rent strike to protest inhumane living conditions. It had been a long fight with a lot of ups and downs, but this year a new buyer bought the building. In the agreement with the new buyer, through years of organizing,the tenants won things like some direct cash payments, agreements around repairs around the building, and back rent forgiveness for tenants with rent balances. For tenants who had been withholding rent for years, that amounted to tens of thousands of dollars forgiven.

SOS is a great example of a campaign that wins things that materially improve people’s lives, that provides opportunities to recruit and engage new members, and that is building a militant tenant movement. These are all the things we look for when it comes to campaigns we want to invest in, and I’m really proud that SOS is a priority for DSA.

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Statement IN FAVOR

Nate M.

I encourage MDCDSA members to vote for the Stomp Out Slumlords priority campaign proposal. Housing is a core material interest for working people in the DC area and nationwide, and an area in which our chapter has set a good example for others to follow. As mentioned at convention, it has also been a gateway into the chapter for some current members and is an ideal way to engage potential new members while helping working people address their housing needs. As socialists, we need to keep fighting for housing as the human right that it is and make it known that it is a priority for us.