Rent Strike 2020
What’s at Stake?
Beginning on April 1st, 2020, many Americans were be unable to pay their rent, mortgage, loans, or utility bills in the context of the pandemic and global recession. The president has so far spent $2.5 trillion in bailing out the stock market and large corporations, and nothing to bail out the working class.
Without a massive stimulus package, freeze on rent, utilities, and mortgage collection, millions of people will lose their jobs and homes. Real unemployment in the US is 21% and climbing by the day as more workers permanently lose their jobs. Up to 28 million renters could be evicted from their homes by October. We have to start organizing right now, turn our collective desperation to collective power, and force our government to enact a bailout for regular people, not Wall Street.
Our Demands
Rent Strike 2020 started when a simple petition to freeze rent, utilities and mortgage payments and collected over 2 million signatures within 48 hours. The creators of the petition (Joshua Collins, and Rose Caucus) realized that this is a revolutionary moment and immediately passed it off to organizers who could build this into a movement that will be able to deliver a win for regular people.
We have put together a comprehensive set of immediate demands that we are calling the People’s Bailout. Our goal is to win these demands for the working class by building a mass movement. We hope to partner with local tenants unions, labor unions, immigrant groups, prison reform and abolition groups, and left and socialist elected officials who share our movement strategy and vision. Following are our initial set of of demands:
Freeze all rent, mortgage, and utility payments or we will carry out a rent strike!
Freeze all student, medical, car and consumer debt and interest during the ongoing pandemic and recession.
Immediately reinstate all emergency eviction bans!
Tax big business and the rich, not regular people, to pay for the crisis!
House all unsheltered people to protect their health and safety, and public health at-large!