I think of the horizon of the tenants' struggle as rent abolition. This is partly bc that horizon is immanent to rent strikes & expropriations, & partly bc the rent relation (landownership) is integral to heteropatriarchy, capital, settler-colonialism, white supremacy, ableism.

I hardly need to say why rent abolition is immanent to our movements' tactics since it's already in the demands people are making in their strikes & expropriations—rent suspension, rent forgiveness, homes for all now. But movement orgs don't always make those other connections.

We know, & we need to act like we know, that people stay living with partners that harm & oppress them bc they cannot afford rent on their own, & bc their families have abandoned them.

We know, & need to act like we know, that the land rented to tenants was expropriated from indigenous peoples, & used in plantations & policed political economies, as means to criminalize, kill, & super-exploit racialized people, through rent payments, contract law, evictions.

We know, & need to act like we know, that homeownership has been integral to making & keeping parts of the proletariat white, or allegiant to whiteness, & that landownership has been integral to the accumulation & concentration of some sectors of capital.

We know, & need to act like we know, that landlordism & rent have forced many tenants to live in housing that makes them sick or sicker, that has made the risk of losing housing if they fight for better housing too great to seem worth it.

The tenants movement unfolding before us today is in many respects better positioned to make good on the promises & rationales for rent abolition than the tenants movement behind us. As a new militancy & mass scale comes to the movement, internal struggles at these points grow.

How do we support new tenant councils & the unions they are a part of in developing solutions & accountability processes that fight to get members out of violent & oppressive homes, without leaving people unhoused or abandoned, or, in this moment, exposing them to infection.

How do we support councils in conveying decolonial, prison abolitionist anti-racist principles & practices among their members? What do these include beyond implementing community security measures that don't rely on the police, & building a path for indigenous land repatriation?

How do tenants build solidarity with proletarians that own their own homes, against their tendency to see their interests aligned with landlords, starting from the recognition that people will be protective of the wealth, & often whiteness, homeownership has granted & preserved?

How do we make the homes disabled & chronically ill tenants live in safer & more comfortable for them, given that landlords have refused to do this? How do we assure that our movement spaces don't isolate or make sicker disabled tenants?

Seeing some of criticisms levelled at tenants orgs for not having a sufficiently decolonial orientation, e.g., should not lead us to defensiveness. We will & should expect criticism for all that we don't yet have answers to. And this should deepen our resolve for rent abolition.