It is sickening to remember that the genocide in Gaza has continued for 3 years now. While war against the U.S. empire continues in West Asia, the genocide of Palestinians throughout isreal has continued. As of 31 August, 1,320 people have been killed in Gaza since the October 2025 ceasefire and another 4,385 injuries were recorded, according to the Gaza Government Media Office. The “Yellow Line” area continues to expand from the border of the Gaza Strip. The area between the border and the yellow line where isrealis have destroyed the land to fire rifles and drive military vehicles.

Armed resistance to the isreali military has not wavered. isreal still cannot complete any military objectives that it set 3 years ago, but they still keep vital supplies from reaching Gaza. The people there are still struggling. Furthermore, all armed resistance has escalated against the imperialist war being executed by the United States, isreal and their allies. We can see this is the start of cracks in the war machine of the United States. Ansarallah in Yemen is regularly defeating Saudi forces on the battlefield and destroying Saudi oil infrastructure. US air and naval bases are also being hit by Iran regularly, and the US military admits the cost to rebuild will be enormous. The Palestinian resistance has reignited a fierce fight against US imperialist allies in the region, a defensive fight that has not seen many mistakes. ★

Monika Ertl has something to teach us. It’s the importance of rebellion.

Che Guevara died in Bolivia where he had travelled from his home country of Cuba to fight against the dictatorship of Rene Barrientos. This came on the heels of his guerrilla campaign in the eastern Congo, which he fought against the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, the Belgian government, and the CIA as one of the more than quarter million troops that the Cubans committed to defend Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. More Cubans per capita fought in Africa, for Africans and against colonialism, than Americans fought in Vietnam. If the Congolese and Cubans had succeeded, we might be hearing about Congolese AI models and the threat of the US being outcompeted by Africa today; people do not know how close Africa came to being a center of world socialism, and in that, a world power.

But in the long run Africa’s enemies succeeded, launched an orgy of violence, and threw Che out. Back in Cuba, Che did not rest content with this defeat and quickly redeployed, this time to Bolivia, on an ill-fated journey where everything went wrong. He was captured in late 1967, photographed standing next to a CIA officer, mutilated, and executed.

This is where Monika enters the story. Like Che, her story is bound up with United States imperialism. When World War II ended, the US helped hundreds of Nazis flee to South America, if not thousands. When Nazi Germany was defeated and France wanted to arrest and execute the men who had tortured and murdered their loved ones, the US protected them. The US was in bed with the Nazis; and if the Jews, socialists, gays, Roma, disabled people etc. of Europe were their first victims, their second victims would be the workers and peasants of South America. The US helped the authors of the Holocaust escape. And the authors of the Holocaust, in turn, participated in indigenous genocide in the Americas, and the repression of Black and working-class people, via the anticommunist struggle of the 1900s.

Monika’s father was one such man. He was a minor figure in film history, a Nazi artist. He fled Europe and settled in Bolivia, where he lived among other former Nazis. Monika grew up in this crowd; a charmed youth with both a big house and a yard. For a time, she even had a Nazi husband: all settled in.

But then everything changed. Like so many people who died for the cause and were murdered with American help, we don’t know much about her ideological development. But at some point in the 1950s she left her Nazi husband and went to Europe. In Europe, she met left-wing Germans and avenged Che Guevara by killing the man who cut off Che’s hands during his execution. He was Bolivian colonel Roberto Quintanilla. He invited Monika into his office when she claimed to be a German who wanted to be a tourist in Bolivia; he thought it was obviously a good thing to have an attractive young girl in his office and he invited her in. She pulled out a gun and shot him. She then went to Bolivia, where she joined the ELN guerrillas. When attempting to kidnap Klaus Barbie, a Gestapo torturer who had personally killed scores of Jews and socialists in Lyon, she was killed.

It is easy to be absorbed by the drama of Monika’s later actions. She assassinated an assassin, became a revolutionary fighter, and was killed when attempting to capture one of the most infamous Nazis of all time. But the point we want to make about her is more ordinary. All of that happened later: first, she abandoned the only world she had ever known.

Rebellion is everywhere; it is marketed in capitalism; but these marketing images are only that, images. Considered as an emotional feeling, rebellion is necessarily disorienting. It involves a strike against some outside authority, the rejection of an oppressive way of life, and most importantly, it causes uncertainty.

Rebellion is, in short, a collision with an authority that produces uncertainty. It is always personal, it always comes with personal terror because the rebel rejects the rules that come from another person, the authority figure. A rebel rejects the predictability that life has under those rules, its guarantee of a certain future (not that such a future is painless; it is often painful, and this is why rebellion occurs). Rebellion involves a strike, a statement to hostile authority, and this is a new creation. The rebel invites the reaction of the authority and is unsure how the authority will respond, who will win the ensuing struggle, hence the personal terror of rebellion. But the rebel chooses life, freedom, and her inner self-determination against compliance, putting up with things, being silent, and harboring inner pain. Monika could have been an unhappy Nazi housewife; she would have had every comfort in doing so; just like her father did until he died peacefully.

But she rebelled and must have felt terror. The terror when she left her husband, terror when she joined the underground revolutionary cause, terror when she killed Che’s killer. But she was able to face it anyway and create: and so she lives not as a Nazi housewife, but as a hero. She now belongs as a part of something we think is sacred and full of spiritual grace—that is, fighting back.

We should all be like Monika Ertl. We should not be afraid to take irreversible acts. We should not be afraid to start fights against what we have always gritted our teeth and gotten along with. We should not be afraid to take action that creates an uncertain future. For us, in ACTA, we see this as a lesson. We must take the candle of our rebellion, the flame that lets us see that the oppression of landlords and the abuse of our homes belongs to the same system against which Che and Monika fought. We must take his flame and touch it to the gasoline. That’s what Che and Mon did and they did it for one thing: the triumph of the revolution and the self-rule of the working people of the world and the final end of oppression everywhere. Let us make their goal ours, and their courage too. ★

In Babylon, USA, having an addiction or dependency of some sort is not rare at all. It’s part of the system. This is a country that is constantly starting meaningless and destructive wars with other nations, cutting healthcare for the people who need it the most, and brutalizing the dignified Afrikan and Latin people who do the essential work to keep our world running. The American system of capitalism and imperialism is based around addiction and dependency - both on the part of the oppressor and on the part of the oppressed.

Many people who are addicted have tried to get free. But it’s very difficult to do it alone, and society mostly places the pressure to change on people as individuals. People need collective space to express their frustration, rage and despair. People need places to talk together and hear our problems out. People need space to figure out how to direct our energy towards overthrowing the oppressors that keep us in slum conditions, with barely livable wages, and with bullshit education and media!

I will make a suggestion: one of the best ways to overcome addiction and dependency is to form or join a revolutionary organization. This could be a union - one that ACTA helps you start in your building!

Addictions and dependencies are based around trapped energy. They are repetitive habits that keep our energy circulating in a loop. But we need that energy to be liberated! Not pushed down and repressed, not denied, and not sunk into money for the liquor store owners or landlords. Revolutionary organizing directs your energy towards a better future for yourself and your community.

When you join an organization, you will immediately need to find ways to work together as a collective. You and your neighbors will begin to think about the world strategically, and find effective methods of solving the problems that you are facing together. You will need to learn constantly. You will need to communicate, and yes, to study, more than you ever have in your life. You may find this is your first time giving a speech in front of local media, your first time writing an article for Tenants Talk, your first time giving criticism and self-criticism. All of these challenges will give you boosts of energy and encouragement, and increase your level of commitment and connection to the people around you.

I’m not saying you’ll stop smoking or leave your shitty boyfriend the day after you join the struggle. But the longer you stay committed, the less desire you will have to stay with these stuck habits. You will be struggling not only for your own sense of control and dignity, but the power of all working people to control their destiny! And you will have many many people who stand by you and support you through the challenges, so that you don’t have to face this system alone. ★

On Thursday, August 6, 2026, landlords from around the city gathered in a fancy Ravenswood Avenue event space for the Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance’s (NBOA) 14th Annual Summer Soiree. At the same time, a group of housing organizers were preparing to march from just down the street, ready to surprise the party goers with disruptive chants and demands for tenant rights. What happens when a bunch of landlords and professionals in the real estate industry get together? What do they celebrate? And how do they react when their event gets interrupted by a loud protest right outside? Tenants Talk took to the streets this month to find out for ourselves!

First, though, let’s take a look at the NBOA itself: a group of 11 smaller neighborhood building owner associations across the city, the alliance is essentially Chicago’s landlord lobby. NBOA operates a Political Action Committee (the NBOAPAC) dedicated to maintaining “market based housing policy” in the city. In reality, members of the NBOA contribute money to the PAC so that landlords can influence elections in favor of keeping housing as profitable as possible, and tenant protections to a minimum. Put another way, landlords in this alliance not only own spare housing to make passive income, but also use that income (your rent money) to make sure their housing stock remains profitable.

The NBOA website features an elaborate ‘Advocacy’ page, which lists all the supposedly pro-tenant legislature they oppose, and details how they strive to keep the market fair. They have lobbied against all of the tenant legislation we’ve covered in Tenants Talk, including the Protecting Renters Ordinance and the Northwest Side Preservation ordinance, and their main position is that tenant protections make housing more expensive. The former president of the NBOA claimed in an interview posted to their Facebook page, “You can’t make housing more affordable by making it more expensive to provide housing.” We agree — why not get rid of landlords all together?

ACTA also happens to know some members of the NBOA pretty well. Imran Khan is listed as a ‘friend’ of the soiree, meaning he donated thousands of dollars as a sponsor of the event. John Pagone and Erik Hubbard of Villa Capital are undoubtedly members. We also spotted famous slumlord Drew Millard that night, but more on that later!

Leading up to the start of the soiree, things were fairly calm outside the Artifact Events ballroom entrance. Security workers talked to each other on walkie talkies about various logistics, and valet workers greeted guests as they handed off keys to their luxury cars. It became clear quite quickly which people walking by were headed into the big event. The landlord class has a real look to it: crisp yet ill-fitting suits, slightly-too-slicked-back hair, and darting eyes that don’t land steadily on anyone perceived to not own property. Most of them likely don’t live in the city, and were perhaps frightened of the crimes that might befall them on a night out in one of Chicago’s deadliest neighborhoods, Ravenswood.

While many landlords ignored our request to ask them a few questions for our story about the soiree, we got a chance to interview a few before the event and protest started. The first person we talked to was a residential landlord who described the event as a chance to meet fellow business owners, and said he was sure everyone inside was opposed to PRO even though it became clear he had a very limited understanding of what the ordinance actually entailed. “You know, it’s like meeting your neighbors,” he said before stepping inside, really summing up the atmosphere of the soiree. It is a chance for residents of Park Ridge, Lake Forest, Winnetka, to actually meet their neighbors. Their massive yards and private drives don’t always make it easy for them to meet the other people in their suburbs who profit off rental units in Chicago.

The next guy we talked to told us he wasn’t actually a landlord, but had been invited by his friend in software. We persisted in asking him a few questions about the event, and he didn’t seem to know what was going on. In fact, many people throughout the night said they weren’t sure what the event was supposed to be celebrating. When we asked the software guy’s friend about PRO, he laughed. “I haven’t rented in over 20 years!” he said, maybe hoping to impress us? He couldn’t have been older than 40, though I’m also not sure what kind of botox he might have access to. These were the kinds of people attending the huge landlord lobby party. Landlords and homeowners, titans of the real estate industry who haven’t themselves rented in decades, or maybe ever.

While more fancy cars and men in suits arrived, you could begin to hear the faint echo of people chanting. About 20 members of ONE Northside, Metropolitan Tenants Organization, and the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs began marching down Ravenswood Avenue toward the soiree. “What do we want? Just Cause! When do we want it? Now!” they chanted through megaphones as they formed an impasse to the valet line just outside the main ballroom. While things had been fairly calm and uneventful, everything fully devolved once the protesters arrived. Landlords immediately came outside in the dozens to film, sneer at, and blatantly harass the crowd of organizers. One man walked directly into the protest and began pushing people’s signs. “There’s a hundred of them!” another yelled into his phone.

With more landlords outside the event space, we had a chance to ask more direct questions about what the attendees thought about the protest. A few very angry landlords gave some memorable tidbits for us without too much prompting. “They’re probably hired by Brandon Johnson, who’s hopefully gonna lose the election!” a landlord surmised about the protesters. “I’ll take a video so I don’t rent to any of these people.” Another fired up landlord couldn’t believe we would ask him about how many buildings he owned. “Why would I tell you that? That’s private information you know,” he told us. “I bet next you’re going to ask me another personal question.”

One ‘nice guy’ landlord talked with us for a while, providing a face to some of the advocacy NBOA stands for. We asked him what he thought of the protesters, and whether he thought tenants deserved to form tenant unions in their buildings. He said of course they do, but that there are already a lot of tenant protections in place in Chicago, “way too many,” in fact. “All these protections just drive up the cost of housing,” he explained while we listened patiently, and described how these kinds of tenant movements are happening in big cities all over the country and driving up rent for everyone. This is the landlord lobby line: tenants are actually responsible for housing becoming less and less affordable. The people that actually use homes are the reason the sellers have to charge so much. Hm.

Of course this is wrong. Throughout the event, we heard genuinely horrific things. A woman walking past us sneered, “If you don’t support the landlords, you’ll end up on the street,” while others mocked the protesters and swore at them. The event reached its climax when a visibly intoxicated Drew Millard came out to confront the crowd, pushing his way manically through to the point where a cop had to hold him back. While many guests claimed they weren’t really sure what the soiree was supposed to celebrate, it seems very clear to us. Property owners rely on us as tenants to make them wealthy, to provide them with Maseratis and Bentleys to valet outside of soirees where they can meet their landlord neighbors. They also rely on never having to confront the people sending them rent checks. When they’re actually face to face with tenants pushing back on all of this, they lose their minds. They become red in the face and have to be restrained.

The annual NBOA soiree is just a glimpse into how the landlord class thinks and behaves, into how they relate to the source of their profits. The landlords in Chicago have their alliance, but we have one too. Get involved with ACTA and help us make the landlords scared! ★

In ACTA, the doorstep is a school of sorts. Some of the most educational moments I’ve had as an organizer have happened at the doorstep of people’s apartments, chatting with tenants about their living conditions. These conversations shed light on the problems that tenants deal with as people who don’t control their housing, but also often the broader effects of the for-profit housing industry on their neighborhoods and family life. In between grievances about broken windows and high rent, we end up talking about the kids.

I’ve met a lot of parents, a lot of mothers. And one of their greatest concerns is the effects of oppression on their children. They talk about gun violence and drugs and how young people don’t have things to do. Too many mothers have told me they don’t let their kids use the parks or even their own front yards—meanwhile they’re stuck inside an apartment that’s clocking 86 degrees because they can’t afford to run an AC unit.

Many working class parents understand the causal relationship between unsafe neighborhoods and poverty. It is a lack of access to money that forces a life of criminality and violence onto young people. What is less commonly understood is that the bosses with their below-subsistence wages and the slumlords with their ‘cheap rent’ are directly responsible for creating these pockets of underemployed households full of people who often can’t go on living without turning to petty crime, illegal economies, and violence.

In Chicago, black and brown working class families form the basis of what Marxists understand as the reserve army of labor, where a permanent pool of chronically unemployed and under-unemployed people serve a vital role in the capitalist economy. It is the existence of this mass of precarious workers competing for jobs that allows bosses to keep wages low in the first place. For as long as there is a substantial population of underemployed people, the low-wage workers that start demanding raises or safer working conditions can simply be replaced. Worker resistance is also suppressed with the understanding that they are ‘lucky’ to even have a job.

The struggle to escape the reserve army of labor can become all-consuming for working-class parents, to the point where other aspects of parenting fall to the side, such as making time to talk to each other and learn things together. The most intuitive solution for parents living under the ideological influence of capitalism is to take it upon themselves as individuals. It’s the parent’s responsibility to get a better job. It’s the parent’s responsibility to get their family out of the neighborhood. The problem is understood as a personal one, and the solution is personal too: do better to financially support your children so you can afford the rent in that safer part of town. The pressure on parents to work their way out of the problem so that their kids can have a better life is immense. But chasing financial stability places the lower tiers of working class families in an often inescapable grind, forcing them to neglect other essential aspects of parenthood beyond material support. When parents get fixated on advancing to a higher economic class for the sake of their families, their communities suffer a loss as well because those who share the same issues, and who would benefit most from standing together, are only focused on getting out.

Below are three stories of real parents from working class backgrounds affecting the lives of their children in profound ways, despite their lives being characterized by intense oppression. Their names are Konstanin, Haywood, and Anay. Some of them I know from books, and one of them I’m lucky to call a comrade. Despite the distant historical context for some of these examples, they are worthy of our attention, for there is a spark in each of them that transcends that distance.

Konstanin and Nadya Talk about Injustice

Nadya was born in Saint Petersburg Russia in 1869. Her father was a military officer and her mother home-schooled the children of wealthy people. As a single child, her parents had neither a house nor land, and after their marriage they often had to borrow money for food.

Nadya grew up in a socially turbulent time, when Russia was experiencing profound economic change brought on by a working-class movement to overthrow the monarchy and with it capitalism as a system. And while both of her parents worked with great energy to support their family, her father Konstanin also participated in the revolutionary movement in his own ways. Most importantly, he did not shield her from this part of his life despite her young age.

In the autobiography Nadya wrote as an adult, she describes her childhood as one greatly influenced by her father and the conversations they would have about the world around them. Konstanin was a pretty normal guy—he supported the revolution but also had various odd jobs. For Konstanin, it was important that Nadya develop a sense of the world as it was, unshielded from the realities of oppression in their country.

Nadya’s father was eventually dismissed from service as a military officer for his political activity, and landed a job as a factory inspector. Konstanin would talk to his daughter about his work life, sharing stories of his time at the Howard Factory and how the workers there were very exploited. These discussions developed in her feelings of deep empathy for the workers who were complete strangers to her. They also spoke about his feelings towards landlords. One day while visiting one of the estates that her mother worked for, Nadya and her father were attacked by peasants who worked there and mistook them to be the family of the landlord. Nadya recalls the memory decades later in her book:

“Father didn’t hold it against them. He said he understood their age-old hatred for the landlords and added that the latter fully deserved it.”

Konstanin’s willingness to express his sense of justice for the peasants and the lower tiers of the working class became a lesson for young Nadya who looked to her father for moral guidance. As a very young person, Nadya came to favor a vision of a world that was much like her fathers—a world owned and controlled by the working people rather than landlord greed. It was these formative conversations with her father that enabled Nadya to fight for this vision in adulthood, as she became a prolific teacher and leader of the Russian revolution.

Nadya describes her father as a man who ‘could not tolerate injustice.’ What’s an injustice that you observe in your neighborhood or workplace that you could discuss with your child?

Haywood and Harry Remember the Past

Harry was born in Nebraska in 1898 to former slaves Haywood and Harriet. It was a period of immense structural change in the economic and political life of the country, where black people endured the transition from chattel slavery to the subjugation of wage-work. Harry’s mother worked full time for a wealthy white family while his father found a job in a meat-packing plant.

Harry described his father as someone who was a bit timid but very intelligent. With no formal schooling, he had taught himself to read and write and was a prodigious reader. Haywood loved to read about African history— everything from ancient Egypt to stories of black soldiers in the Civil war. His specialty was the Haitian Revolution and Toussaint L’Ouverture. And after 10-12 hour days of hauling meat into trucks each day, Haywood found it in himself to tell stories to his children in the evenings.

Harry recalled his father’s great lectures, as he would pace back and forth, talking emphatically about battles from the pages of black history that weren’t taught in school.

“It was through my father that I entered the world of books. I developed an unquenchable thirst to learn about people and their history. I remember going to the town library when I was nine or ten and asking, “Do you have a history of the world for children?””

Despite his occupation as a meat-packer working in the absolute lowest levels of wage-work available to black Americans, Haywood refused to be imprisoned by nihilism. He continued to grow his brain and his mind outside of work, and he shared this journey with his three children. Harry inherited his father’s attitude towards learning about the world around him, which led him to pursue a life of activism in his early 20’s as a member of the Young Communist League. Harry’s advanced skills in reading and writing allowed him to develop the theory of the party in adulthood, as he contributed greatly to the political strategy around race and class. He became one of the first black members of the Communist Party.

What’s something from the history of the working-class struggle that you’d like to learn more about with your child? How might you begin?

Anay and Derick Open up their Apartment

Derick was born in Chicago, and his mother Anay migrated here from Mexico in 2001 when she was just 18. As a single mom, Anay splits her time as a cashier and a cleaner, and Derick, has a job at a grocery store.

Today, working class migrants are living through an intensified period of state-sanctioned violence. Along with this, the inflation of basic commodities brought on by imperialist wars abroad paired with a completely unregulated, for-profit housing industry has increased the cost of living to dangerous levels in the city, forcing the Latin-American working class into a state of extreme precariousness.

Up until last year, Anay had lived in a small apartment in Buena Park for many years, where she raised Derick and her two other children. Despite slumlord negligence and a laundry list of maintenance issues, she painted her walls emerald green and filled it with memories. As of 2025, it was one of the last strongholds of Mexican tenants in the neighborhood.

Last year, when a development-hungry landlord came to her and her neighbors with $500 rent increases, Anay was understandably distraught. But she didn’t pack up her things. She knocked on her neighbors’ doors and convinced them to brave a coordinated rent strike instead. Anay became a leader of the FIBC tenant union, despite having no experience with unions or leadership roles. She opened up her apartment to ACTA’s organizers and held weekly meetings in the living room of their apartment.

The meetings that took place in Anay’s apartment meant that Derick was exposed to the life of the union whether he liked it or not — the struggle was happening right there in his living room. It was a seemingly small decision to open up her home to her neighbors in this way. But the location of the meetings allowed her family to attach themselves to the organizing activity of the adults who were engaged in an historic act of collective struggle. Derick recently described his initial experience listening to these meetings as one full of doubt, unsure that it would amount to much. But Anay’s persistence and Derick’s patience proved effective. A lively press rally outside the apartment building attended by many of ACTA’s militant organizers is what ultimately drew Derick into the struggle on his own accord.

Derick graduated high school last year, and is now a member of ACTA. In between his shifts at work and caring for his younger siblings, he participates in studies on tenant organizing and socialism. He also writes for this paper you’re reading! It is through ACTA that Derick has rediscovered his passion for writing—something that he had lost in high school, ironically enough.

The story of Anay and Derick is an example of how organizing a tenant union in your building can be a truly revolutionary form of working-class parenting and ultimately an act of teaching. A space that was once characterized by private family life transformed into a political space for strategizing against landlord greed. Derick is now the youngest member of ACTA, and the organization is infinitely stronger for it.

What kind of impression would you give your children if you tried organizing a tenant union in your building? ★

Being a renter is being in a struggle against the landlord, one that is disproportionately bent towards the favor of the landlord. Once a union has been formed in a building they must bring the fight to the landlord. The first volley in the conflict must be a declaration that enough is enough. At heart the demand letter is built to accomplish this. The use of the demand letter is to represent collective grievance and a glimpse of union power. It is by dint of the unions collective approach to finding problems and solutions that give the demand letter teeth.

In practice, the demand letter is a collection of issues that affect the union and building. The form is built around outlining the issues and what the union is seeking as a solution. Take a broken elevator as an example. It’s a problem that affects the whole building. It’s solution is to get it fixed by a professional. Landlords do not care to fix this maintenance issue as it reduces their overall profit. Their incentive is to ignore the broken elevator and the hardship placed on tenants. This is true for any issues that tenants face.

To build a demand letter, start by bringing your neighbors together to outline issues. Be open to what an issue is. The goal is to exhaust the individual points of grievance that exist within the apartment and the building as a whole. As these points are collected, common issues will become clear. To motivate your neighbors to chime in come equipped with questions. Start from the general and move to the specific. Ask if anyone has seen a cockroach in their apartment. Then ask how often. Then ask if they’ve ever had to buy and pay out of pocket for bug repellent. End it by asking if the landlord has reimbursed them for the bug repellent. Do this for any issue that is mentioned. Keep track of what is shared.

Having a collection of issues isn’t enough. You must ratify them with the union. As a group, reduce that list to issues many face, meaning if multiple tenants deal with rats, write that down.

Once the letter is written outlining the issues and solutions- send it. Send it by all available channels. Deliver it to the office, email it, send via post, and text it. Anything. Be as thorough as possible to eliminate any chance that the landlords will ignore it.

You do not have to do this process alone. ACTA will help organize your building in order to send a demand letter. When you are ready, reach out. Together we’ll send the first volley. ★

Several buses depart Lima, Peru, in the early morning, carrying five-hundred local volunteers deep into the desert. They stop nowhere remarkable. Organizers hand a shovel and white button-up to each disembarking passenger, pointing them toward a sand dune. The volunteers stand in a straight line, shoulder-to-shoulder, surrounding the dune. It’s not long until the assault begins. For fifteen minutes, they grit their teeth in the hot April sun as they grind their tools against the sand. A voice calls out: “Continue shoveling until the end!” Weakened eyes snap back to the task at hand, and the march hastens. Out of nowhere, hundreds of blades hit the desert floor in unison, and the mass of people erupts applause. Some scream in celebration, others hug strangers. Together, five-hundred volunteers had moved the sand dune ten centimeters, or just under four inches.

The architect of this performance, Francis Alÿs, made When Faith Moves Mountains to criticize the regression of Latin American politics in the late 20th century, despite widespread organizing by leftists across the region. While this contradiction can easily be attributed to the weight of imperial aggression, within the heart of empire, Alÿs’s “maximum effort, minimum result” approach is the modus operandi of the nation’s so-called progressive elements. Just look at Illinois’s Lift the Ban Coalition, who have spent the past nine years down in Springfield, begging politicians for tenants rights that will not be enforced, and allow voters to create ballot measures that could be held up in court for years. With the organizational might of 37 of the state’s biggest nonprofits and unions, their proposed bill has yet to make it out of committee.

These reformist groups and coalitions are championed by designated 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofits, married to a wholly ineffective, ahistorical theory of change. Despite this, much of America considers these activist organizations a pillar of democracy, a people’s check on power, and a bulwark against fascism. As the past few years have demonstrated time and time again, the fruits of these nonprofits are not a healing salve, but a snake oil rubbed into capitalist decay until the disease is obscured by another rash. In their submission to the bourgeois state at the point of formation, activist nonprofits cannot, will not, and have no interest in overturning the capitalist system. Their struggle can only amount to the performance of class warfare.

Within the nonprofit, this faux militanting weighs heavy on the dormant revolutionary, whose dreams of a better world are picked apart by the distance between pointless, short-term campaigns and long-term, abstract ideals. It doesn’t take long until the dormant revolutionary is whittled down to an object, a body. There is nothing more beautiful to the nonprofit than a body: bodies can hold signs, they can make calls, and they can parrot policy proposals, but more important than any of that political stuff, bodies mean grants. The nonprofit, in its subscription to capitalist dynamics, follows a funny sort of market logic, with survival being the name of the game. In a moment’s notice the nonprofit will surrender their values if it means maintaining funding sources and relationships that contribute to its continuation. They are essentially sects, who are placed on a pedestal in their “denial of profit,” while their staff’s salary is paid for by the labor of dormant revolutionaries, who volunteer their bodies to move a sand dune ten centimeters.

How much longer can we lie through our teeth, praising activist nonprofits while working and oppressed people endure daily violence at work, at home, and on their commute between the two? The Black Panther Party did not drive down to the capitol to appeal to the governor’s alleged conscience, MOVE did not wait for the city’s Department of Housing to finally break ground on a Green Social Housing development, and the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña certainly did not mobilize around the Protecting Renters Ordinance to support a re-election campaign. The long march of reform has spent a century spinning in circles, and all they have to show for it is a fistful of sand, slipping through their fingers. The revolution, on the other hand, has moved mountain after mountain — many right here in Chicago — and we intend to keep shoveling until liberation, then onward to the realm of freedom. ★

I am a revolutionary because I am a member of a revolutionary organization. Before that, I was a kid who believed in the capacity of and the necessity for both society and individual people to change for the better. Some people think that the older you get, the more fixed your worldview becomes, that naive ideas about changing the world are left behind. But this doesn’t have to be the case. I have not given up those ideas, in fact they are no longer just ideas. ACTA has transformed my desire for change into principles, strategy, and methods for criticism. I have set aside some of my naive ideas, but it was only so I could reach for the tools necessary for my part in the revolutionary struggle.

My mom came from a farming town. Everything was dusty, even the ideas. Especially when it came to how a woman should be. She didn’t want to be condemned to a life of serving men. She went and found work in a nearby city, met my dad, and they moved to Portland, OR, where I was born.

Early on, my mom taught me to think of other people. One time at the grocery store, I got distracted by the bright velvety flowers. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. “They’re so beautiful,” I told my mom. She pushed the cart down the aisle, away from the flowers, “I bet the people who grew them don’t think so.” She could tell I was confused, “The flowers at the grocery store aren’t like the ones people grow in their garden. The people who grow these plant them in long rows and work all day in the hot sun. A big old bouquet at the grocery store only costs $5 because the person who grew the flowers got paid like dirt.” I hadn’t really ever thought about how things we bought at the grocery store made their way there. Later at home, I looked at my doll and wondered how many hands she’d passed through before she made her way to mine.

I spent middle school and high school in a cloud of frustration. The middle school I went to was between a rich white neighborhood that I lived in, and a working class neighborhood that had Black, Mexican, and Vietnamese families. At school, my classmates would say, “These teachers are racist!” I looked around and noticed that the white kids got a second chance, the benefit of the doubt, a prescription for adderall. The kids who weren’t white got hit with detention, locker searches, in-school suspensions. The teachers were responsible for that! And it was those same teachers who spoke as if racism was a thing of the past…

I started really hating all the teachers. They looked to me like a bunch of hypocrites and cowards. I made up my mind! I wasn’t going to learn anything they wanted to teach me. I didn’t consider if that was a good idea or even possible.

As I started high school, Trump was elected. I would walk home from school with my friends past flimsy yard signs protesting Trump. One strong gust of wind and their attempt at solidarity would collapse. I knew there was real struggle going on elsewhere in the world, but it felt so distant. I was becoming more aware that the comfort my family lived in wasn’t some coincidence or even the result of my parents’ hard work, but rather a product of a whole international system of exploitation and oppression called capitalism. I was angry and frustrated, but I still didn’t know what to do.

At the end of my senior year, Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd and the whole world was a witness to his final words. I cried for a long time in my bedroom, then hugged my mom and went to join my city in the streets. We marched through the Albina neighborhood. In the 1970s the city seized the land and bulldozed Black families’ homes to expand the hospital. Decades later, I looked around at empty lots. We made our way to the “Justice” Center where the cops were waiting for us. I felt relief at being around other people driven to action, but I wondered what would come from this. Above the clouds of tear gas, a man on the megaphone said what I was thinking, “When’s it gonna change?”

During these years, I had lived with a difficult shame. It was becoming hard to ignore. I was consumed by this unshakable feeling that I was supposed to be a boy. Now that I knew the word for what I was–transgender–it made it even scarier. I withdrew from the world. I wanted to be away from everyone who knew me, so I ran away to art school in Chicago. But, isolation was just as painful there. I quickly realized that if I wanted to have meaningful relationships, I would have to change. I started taking hormones and figuring out what it means to be a man.

As I became present in the world again, I took notice of my environment. Art school felt like escapism. Here, all the world’s problems were just material for making art, not something to try seriously to solve.

Then in 2023, my last year of college, Palestinian resistance fighters launched the Al-Aqsa Flood operation against the zionist occupation. I had very little understanding of the history of Palestinian resistance to zionism. What I knew was that any group of people resisting genocide were the bravest people in the world and that they must be leading the charge of freedom from oppression. Nothing was more important than that. But around me, classes continued as normal. In November, on my way to school I would read about the latest zionist terror. On the train, I read about the siege on Al-Shifa Hospital, the murder of the medical staff, the zionist’s destruction of medical supplies, and the death of premature babies. I thought about the pain of being unable to protect your family. In class, everyone was talking about their end of semester projects. That familiar anger swelled inside me.

The only place on campus I felt ok was at my library job. A coworker, now a close friend, had been a student organizer at their previous university. They put up posters for a meeting around the school. We began to organize with other students to force the university to stop accepting blood money, profits from the weapons manufacturing industry that have made the genocide possible. But it was hard for us to focus our eyes and our hands into a singular force. People had different ideas about what our objectives should be and how we should get there.

From early on, we worked with an organization of anti-imperialists. They had a campaign targeting the Art Institute’s relationship to the Crowns, an elite Chicago family who make their money from their stake in General Dynamics. I figured if I joined I would better understand what it was that we were up against. I was out on street corners multiple nights a week talking about Palestine to anyone who would stop. I was so grateful to feel like I was really struggling against this system that makes people disposable, that it was hard to notice if what we were doing was working.

During this time, someone in the organization who I really admired introduced me to ACTA. She told me that some ACTA members were running a course on Marx and that I should take it. I didn’t really know much about Marx, but a lot of the new people I was around thought he was important. I decided it was time to learn something. It was unlike any class I had ever taken. In school, teachers were resigned to the way things are. These teachers were committed to class struggle and revolutionary change!

In October, I will turn 25 and I will have been a member of ACTA for two years. Within the past two years I’ve devoted a lot of time to a group called the Young Questioneers. We focus on developing education that advances the class consciousness of working class youth and helps them to find their place in the revolutionary tenant movement. What I have had to learn, and am still learning, is that a revolutionary is someone not only dedicated to class struggle and all the endless work and joy that comes with it, but someone dedicated to the transformation of their own and other’s consciousness. A revolutionary is a special kind of teacher and a special kind of student. They work with their comrades to really understand their present circumstances, so they know what to change and how to change it. I am still trying my hardest to become the kind of revolutionary that we need. I know that I can. You can, too. Come pick up your corner of the red banner. Let’s continue the struggle, comrade. ★

Hassan: The time has come for young people across Chicago to join the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance! ACTA already has a division that focuses specifically on working with youth - the Young Questioneers. Youth are tenants too, and they have just as much of an interest in fighting for people’s control over housing as the older generation does. Young people work in the house and at jobs to support their families’ ability to have a stable place to live. Some young people are directly involved in ongoing union struggles against landlords, giving speeches, making banners, and creating protest art. Youth are currently doing this to support Fuerzas Activas de la Damen’s strike against the landlord Imran Khan. Others are involved in the broader struggle under the banner of ACTA, studying revolutionary theory and making content for Tenants Talk.

Derick: Let me introduce myself. I am a young member of ACTA named Derick, and I’ve been working with ACTA for a year now. I was in the tenant union Fuerzas Inquilinos Broadway and Cuyler (FIBC), which worked closely with ACTA. Within this time frame, not only have I received the opportunity to meet a group of exceptional people I probably would never have crossed paths with, but I have also rekindled a forgotten interest in writing. I have produced content for ACTA and participated in rallies and protests. There have been times when I’ve been uncertain about my place in the organization, but this doesn’t hinder my desire to learn and develop further within it. I believe if it were not for FIBC, I would not be here working with them today.

This article will make our case as to why youth should join ACTA to create social and political change.

Derick: The process of introduction to the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance will not be the same for everyone. For me, I would say it came relatively organically. As someone who was impacted by a landlord who aimed to evict not only my family but numerous other tenants who’ve lived there for decades, for the mere wish to line his pocket with more money. I will admit, when I first heard of ACTA, I was very wary of trusting these people and their claims of “building tenant unions to fight against landlord dominance.” I had little to no interest in partaking in this. But in due time, curiosity got the better of me, and I listened to their thought process and their strategies, and I wanted to see more of what ACTA could do. From the rallies, strikes, and protests, these were all learning opportunities for me.

I know I’ve had my fair share of skepticism of ACTA when I first heard about them. Trusting a group of organizers with your landlord problems is a big decision. There’s the time commitment of union struggle, and financial and legal risks that come along with deciding to strike. When BSTA, another tenant union who was facing the same landlord at the time, left flyers on our doors, encouraging us to reach out to ACTA. I wasn’t convinced in the slightest. An organization claiming to help tenants form unions to fight landlords was unheard of, and quite frankly, incredibly ambitious. I tried to do my own research that same day on ACTA and found nothing on past work or achievements. This lack of credibility made trusting them, in my eyes, difficult. But trust is a risk that must be taken.

It wasn’t until they hosted a rally outside my home that I decided to hear them out. When I saw the crowd of people outside, gathered together for the same cause, I was in awe. Shortly after this event came my first protest, not only with ACTA but in general. This day marked my interest in working with ACTA. Seeing them come to the aid of my neighbors time and again, and the willingness to teach them through weekly meetings that I personally sat through a couple of times. This influence by them caused neighbors to come together and form bonds with one another; this unity is truly inspiring. I know that some might be scared or put off by the idea of fighting landlords and their exploitation of tenants, but ACTA and YQ will be there to help every step of the way.

Hassan: I am an organizer in YQ, which is ACTA’s youth division. The Young Questioneers’ goal is to develop young tenants’ revolutionary consciousness and bring them into ACTA. We do this by organizing educational activities with youth, such as reading groups, where we discuss local and international events. But YQ also considers activities such as strikes, rallies, and protests to be educational as well. Some people view rallies only as an activity where people show up to raise their voices about an ongoing injustice to create pressure for change. But YQ sees more than that. Tenants, including young tenants, are the ones that produce ACTA rallies: they make the banners, signage, speeches, and puppets. The audience for these rallies is not only landlords and the corporate media. These rallies are for all tenants in Chicago, who learn from the example set by leading tenants and youth. In this way, tenants who are not in ACTA yet come a step closer to forming unions and joining the wider struggle.

Derick: Before our fight came to an end, I was reached out to by a member of ACTA under the division of YQ. They extended an invitation to work on an activity page for ACTA’s newspaper: Tenants Talk. I was a bit hesitant, but I agreed nonetheless. This session was insightful into how work gets done within ACTA. The organization’s meetings are punctual and well put together, which is considerate of tenants’ time and helps us accomplish our goals. It was not long after that I started doing weekly one-on-one sessions based on the notion of building political consciousness.

Hassan: Tenants Talk, the paper you are reading right now, is fully written and produced by tenants. ACTA works to make this newspaper educational for tenants to read. But it is just as educational to write for it! This article was written collaboratively: by a YQ member, and a young member of ACTA. Writing together helped us reflect on our activity in the organization over time. If you want to join ACTA or give us feedback, please call our phone number, which is on the front cover! We hope that this article has inspired you to fight for our cause. ★

Let us make our positions clear.

The All-Chicago Tenant Alliance and our newspaper, Tenants Talk, do not agree with the capitalist system, so naturally we don’t agree with the housing system as it currently stands. All debates about housing in capitalism come down to the question of rent. The tenants want the rent to go down, but the landlords say it won’t go down as long as building and managing apartments is expensive. Because they own the buildings legally, any management costs that landlords have are passed on to the tenants as rent and fees. The landlords are absolutely correct about all of this.

With the left-wing democrats and progressives, we agree that this state of affairs needs to change, but the progressive alternative to this state of affairs always ends in government intervention, not in social revolution. The progressives want the government to legally disable the landlords’ ability to pass these costs on to us, to legally restrict landlords’ ability to raise the rent, to legally require a percentage of units to remain affordable, to raise their taxes, etc.

The progressive solution stops short of calling for the end of this government—not surprising given that progressives do not have a coherent theory of the capitalist system. This confusion or total absence of theory results in two relevant characteristics that contradict one another:

1. Progressives do not act according to an understanding of the foundations of society nor how it develops. The consequence of this is that they can not have a scientific attitude toward social change.

2. Progressives believe that the government is a tool for changing the conditions of society. Despite being unable to say how society works, they inevitably believe that the government can be used for change.

The consequence of this is that policy is viewed as the primary instrument of social change and, insofar as progressives can be called organizers, progressives subordinate all efforts to influencing policy in general. This belief takes the form of electoral dogmatism. That is, an unfounded belief in their ideas about policy and an avoidant attitude toward the evidence that policy continually fails to have its intended effect and, when it does, policy is consistently reversed in unforeseen (unforeseen to them, that is) ways. They can’t explain this, nor do they care to explain this because, for the most part, progressive organizing for policy change is a career or a volunteering hobby.As opposed to this, ACTA does have a theory of the total system. We do act according to an understanding of the foundations of society, which we know to be the productive (economic) activity of mankind at any given time. We know this foundation has to be studied scientifically in an attempt to comprehend how and why things continue or do not continue to occur.

As opposed to this, ACTA does have a theory of the total system. We do act according to an understanding of the foundations of society, which we know to be the productive (economic) activity of mankind at any given time. We know this foundation has to be studied scientifically in an attempt to comprehend how and why things continue or do not continue to occur.

For instance, the relation between the landlord and tenant pertains to the basic productive and reproductive activity of society. These foundational relations have to be revolutionized. Our theory begins from these premises and that is why our organizing is focused squarely on the organization of tenants against landlords. We literally want to seize housing out of the hands of the landlord minority who own it, hold it in our own hands and defend it with our own hands, we are the people who live in the houses.

We do not believe that the government can be used to fundamentally change society. We believe it is an instrument in the hands of the capitalist class for their political dictatorship. Insofar as government policy does affect the direction of society, the changes are never foundational change and therefore policy acts as a pressure valve to relieve the antagonism between the classes. When it comes to organizing, ACTA subordinates policy issues entirely to the question of foundational, social revolution and places these within our theory of the total system.

The revolutionary organization of tenants implies that the usefulness of owning apartment buildings is going to go down for landlords. That, in general, is our objective. The only course that this can take over the long run is for the smaller landlords to lose their ability to own apartments because they have less ability than big landlords to absorb the rising costs of the revolutionary tenant movement. The inevitable result of this will be for apartment buildings to concentrate in the hands of progressively fewer, but progressively bigger, highly financialized and corporate landlords. This will accelerate the process of monopolization, a process already underway.

The housing monopoly is precisely the basis for the democratic socialization of housing that is needed. Currently, the insane mixture of mom and pop, midsized and large “housing providers” has resulted in an utterly irrational and anarchic mess of a housing system. ACTA, the organization at the head of the revolutionary tenant movement, will intensify the struggle against landlords until only the giant landlords remain. These landlords will convert the operation and construction of housing into one centralized system. It is this system that a mass tenant movement can take possession of and tune up for the greatest social good rather than the greatest rate of profit.

These conditions assume that our movement, the revolutionary tenant movement, grows in proportion in opposition to the entire landlord class. In so many words, while large capitalists monopolize the supply, the revolutionary tenant movement will monopolize the demand. This showdown will inevitably call the government into action and a political crisis will be on hand.

Recently Mayor Brandon Johnson introduced the Protecting Renters Ordinance (PRO), an ordinance that exemplifies the attitude of the progressives: change happens from the top down, starting in the government and moving to the people. Mayor Johnson’s PRO has five main pillars. We’ll review them all in three aspects, what it proposes to do, the likelihood of it passing, and what the effects would be.

• RLTO modernization

• Rental registry

• Bureau of Rental Housing Services (RHS)

• Eviction Counsel Program

• Just cause for eviction and relocation assistance

RLTO modernization

The centerpiece of modernization is a ban on “junk” fees associated with applying for, moving in and moving out of apartments. But as it is currently written, it demands that landlords provide proof that anything that they charge tenants for must have a documented “real cost.”

We expect council members who are in the pocket of landlords to take a hard line against these provisions and anticipate that they will be negotiated out of the final language. One of the ordinance’s other pillars, the Bureau of Rental Housing Services (see below), would likely be the government body that will monitor and regulate these charges. But we are curious how this bureau is going to argue that the landlords cannot bill a tenant $50 for a walk through of the apartment on the basis of it costing the landlord his time. But, let’s assume the bureau can put a leash on landlords in this way, they cannot put a leash on the landlord’s power to recuperate what the anticipated losses will be by simply raising the rent.

However, rent increases can be fought by a tenant union. If PRO can suppress move-in and move-out fees, and if this forces the landlord to seek that lost profit as a monthly rent increase, the tenant with a tenant union is in a better position. We support this measure because it leaves the tenant better off and leads them to their true weapon: their own organizations that use the threat of the rent strike.

Rental registry

The creation of a rental registry has so far been opposed purely because of the cost. As written, some of the expenses of maintaining the registry for the city are passed on to the landlords in the form of a registration fee. Taken at face value, this policy will increase the cost of renting for landlords. It is unlikely to pass, but if it does, the cost will get passed on to the tenant through rent increases.

The benefit of this provision, however, is in how it tears the mask off the faces of the ones who raise the rent. It provides the tenant’s hostility with a concrete object and this is good. If the tenant is in ACTA, it becomes all the more easier to fight the unmasked villain. It has been claimed that the language of the ordinance states that anyone with a 20% ownership stake in an apartment building would have to be identified in the registry. In other words, the millionaires who live in Miami but oppress the tenants in Garfield Park will be identified. There are little negative side effects to this provision, we hope it becomes law.

Bureau of Rental Housing Services (RHS)

The mayor’s office describes the bureau like this:

• Tenant Support Services: Establishes a Hotline and Resource Center, connects tenants with emergency rental & relocation assistance, and provides case review and referral to free Eviction Counseling and legal aid.

• Outreach and Education: Coordinates tenant and landlord rights education campaigns.

• Enforcement, Policy and Advocacy: Provides free proactive compliance guidance for landlords, administers the first Citywide Rental Registry, and enforces RLTO provisions.

This pillar of the ordinance is most dangerous. It is often said, correctly, that the RLTO is effectively useless for tenants because no one in the city forces landlords to comply with the law. The bureau, on the other hand, aims to replace the self-organization of tenants with an organization of city bureaucrats. Should this pass, this is where the progressive, professional activists will likely be put in high paying positions.

Education about tenant rights can and should be conducted by organizers, in the tenants’ own independent organizations in their neighborhoods and apartment buildings. ACTA can and does do this already. Needless to say, we should not organize to teach the landlords and offer them “guidance” about how to do their job. Administration of the Rental registry can be assumed by another state body with little difficulty. Because this threatens to replace tenant self organization with outside agencies, we do not support it.

Eviction Counsel Program

Using the Early Resolution Program in eviction court has the potential to make evictions more expensive in a way that a tenant organization cannot directly do itself. Eviction counsel therefore does not mislead tenants by distracting them from their own self organization but rather compliments it. However, it does require supplementary education about how to leverage eviction court to our advantage, and to promote the idea that eviction court is not difficult to navigate without a lawyer. Both of these things ACTA does and will continue to do.

We support this measure.

Just Cause and Relocation Assistance

In Chicago, landlords can:

• Evict tenants for any reason

• Refuse to renew a tenant’s lease for any reason

• Raise the rent between leases any amount, for any reason

Because evicting tenants using the legal process costs landlords a lot of money and evicting tenants by issuing non-renewals and rent increases costs them no money, it follows that landlords remove tenants using non-renewals or rent increases vastly more often than they remove tenants using legal evictions. Accordingly, even when a landlord might desire to evict a tenant in the middle of their contract, they tend to wait until the end of their contract. Contrary to appearances, lease non-renewals and rent increases are the true form of eviction. The legal eviction process is a secondary, incidental matter.

Therefore any restrictions on the legally permitted reasons for evicting tenants is of little importance, as long as landlords can issue non-renewals and or raise the rent indiscriminately. The ordinance addresses this in a way, because Just Cause aims to limit the reasons for which a landlord can deny lease renewal, as well as legally requiring the landlord to pay relocation assistance in the case that the tenant does not accept a rental increase, but the details are cloudy about the rules. Historically, the Just Cause coalition has always conceded that the law would still let landlords evict or non-renew for many reasons, just not for no reason. These reasons are: non-payment of rent, breaking lease conditions, when the landlord wants a family member to live in the unit instead of the tenant, if the landlord wants to convert it into a condo, when the landlord says the unit needs “significant repair,” demolition, and “other reason.” (!) So, basically, for all the reasons that landlords evict tenants already.

In any case, so long as Just Cause extends to rent increases, the landlords’ lawyers will argue that this is rent control and it will not survive challenges in court even if it does pass. The ban on rent control is state law. Because it is so precarious, the landlord’s aldermen would be wise to offer it as a concession to the progressives in order to get the rental registry removed from the final language of the ordinance.

We do not support this measure.

—

In summary, PRO stands on one strong pillar, two pillars of decent construction, and two pillars that are no good. The landlord class in general, and the small landlords in particular, are already fighting it aggressively. This does not mean that they will nuke the entire package, but they will be able to modify it dramatically. We predict that some RLTO amendments will pass and we expect the eviction counsel program to pass if the progressives can show the conservatives how it will be paid for. Relocation assistance and the rental registry will definitely be eliminated.

Like small-scale capitalists in other industries, Chicago’s small landlords have their own political organization. It is called the Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance (NBOA). This organization exists to pay off politicians using the collective funds of its members who are the mom & pop, small and medium sized landlords. At the end of June, Brandon Johnson officially unveiled the Protecting Renters Ordinance after a promotional buildup in the weeks prior. Coincidentally, after having made no donations to aldermen since November of 2025, in June alone, NBOA slid $1,000 into the pockets of Anthony Beale (9th), Felix Cardona Jr. (31st), Silvana Tabares (23rd), Stephanie Coleman (16th) and Brendan Reilly (42nd). Only in the capitalist system is this kind of activity not considered bribery, it is actually accepted as the normal way of running the government.

If we are to admit that progressives are organizers of a kind, ACTA’s recommendation is that all their efforts are thrown behind the rental registry, even to the expense of the other pillars of the ordinance such as Just Cause.

What does ACTA propose instead of the gradual attempt to reform the system?

It’s not that we want affordable rent, we don’t want rent at all. It’s not that we want housing for free, we want a humble dwelling built and provided to every worker in the world according to a rational plan made by the workers themselves. It should not be “supplied” and “demanded,” these are concepts that belong to capitalism. Insofar as housing should “cost” anything to build, it should cost:

1. What is equal to the builder’s living expenses

2. What is equal to the construction materials

3. What is equal to the wear and tear on the tools by by the construction process

4. A share of a fund for communal goods; schools, hospitals, disaster insurance

There should be no additional considerations for those “costs” like profits, mortgage and interest payments. Insofar as anyone should “own” houses, every worker in society should own housing the way we own oxygen. If I use it, it is mine. If I don’t use it, it is not mine. As for how to make this ideal into a reality, it is simple, if ambitious. The natural trend in the capitalist housing system is for the supply to monopolize, therefore we must counter this trend by monopolizing the demand.

That is to say, ACTA is going to unite every tenant into a single force to combat the landlords as they become a single force armed with the threat of the mass rent strike. This is the path toward lowering the rent at the foundational level: brute economic force. By doing this, housing in general will lose its utility for landlords, landlords in general will lose their reason for being, tenants everywhere will lose their chains. Finally, the housing question will be asked at the political level, not at the meagre level of our sham government, where policy is bought and sold.

Our vision is not only a long term vision, off in the distant future. It is being realized today with great success. There are rent strikes, right now. There are tenant unions marching their demands to improve their apartments to the doorstep of their landlord, right now. It’s all happening, right now. The landlords have their organizations, the progressives have theirs. If you are a tenant, it’s time to join your organization: ACTA. We have a real theory and the organization to put it into practice. ★

On June 10th, 2026, the FBI and local law enforcement, working closely with the University of Michigan conducted violent raids against eight activists, smashing down their doors and waking them with flash grenades and armed officers. The operation took place across multiple state lines, in Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin and involved months of surveillance and monitoring by agents of the US government.

What crime warranted this excessive response? The activists had been involved in a protest campaign against the University of Michigan, demanding that the university no longer invest in israeli companies and corporations assisting the genocide in Palestine.

Why a public university in the midwest of America has financial ties to israel—a nation which rejects human dignity and funds major legal campaigns to force independent institutions around the globe to conform to their zionist line—is no mystery. Money is power, and a portion of the billions of dollars the United States sends to israel each year indirectly floats the over $730 million israel pumps back into manufacturing propaganda to keep people around the world looking the other way. The rest pays out by supercharging the israeli war economy, which American schools can invest in for a quick buck.

Of course, despite being a “democracy” the deeply unpopular funding and support of israel is untouchable at every level of American society, from the federal budget down to the academic institutions like the University of Michigan, which are funded in part by taxpayer money. The average citizen or student understands how powerless we are when it comes to those decisions that happen behind closed doors, such as the decision to interlink American schools and a genocidal state in the middle east. What option do people have except to turn to direct resistance?

When the ruling institutions turn their back on the interests of the people, their legitimacy crumbles. This is why the FBI has so violently and heavy-handedly attacked the Michigan 8, eight activists standing against the corruption of a university funding genocide. These eight activists were abducted unarmed and unaware in their sleep in order to send a message. As the government and its institutions lose their credibility they must increasingly turn to harsher and harsher violence to maintain the absolute rule of the state.

As the state loses control, repression will only grow. Onlookers have two options: either go on with life as usual, hoping that things don’t grow worse, or begin to build connections across the neighborhood, city, and country in order to come out ahead no matter what happens next. Because I choose the second option, I know that any attack on those fighting for the power to take control of our society is an attack on the cause of liberation. Because of this, I support the Michigan 8. If you are tired of israel’s influence in the United States, and think people should be able to stand up against it, I think you should support them too.

Below we include an excerpt from a statement by the Revolutionary Student Union on how to find more information about the Michigan 8:

“The Michigan 8” will need ongoing support. One way that the state wears down defendants is with grueling legal costs in the form of lawyer fees, travel fare for going to court, and mandatory payments for things like ankle monitors and court services. Donate to their legal defense fund here: bit.ly/umlegalfund. Strong community support at court hearings shows the government that behind each individual defendant are thousands of people who stand ten toes down with them – You can stay updated on the 8’s court dates and other news by following @safexmich and @tahrirxmich [on Instagram]. ★

As tenants in Fuerzas Activas de la Damen, a Rogers Park tenant union, fight to stay in their homes, Imran Khan and his fellow owners, Ahsan Sattar (Emaret Capital) and Faria Ibrahim (Hudson Edge Real Estate) have allowed the building conditions to worsen. Recently a tenant in the building awoke to a nightmare situation: rats in the unit had bitten him on the face in his sleep.

The tenant reported waking up to the bites and experienced several lesions on his face. His garden level apartment had been infested with rats for months, but neither the management nor the owners resolved the issue. The infestation culminated in the terrifying attack which has left the tenant concerned for his health and safety in the building.

This kind of neglect has earned Imran Khan the title of “Slumlord.” Don’t let him hear you say it though. The sensitive slumlord is currently suing the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance for “defamation” because ACTA and Tenants Talk weren’t afraid to call things as they are. The lawsuits are only one of many tactics Imran Khan has tried to protect his tarnished image. After his company ARK Management got hit with mountains of bad press, Imran Khan quickly announced “new” management: several fronts called “Chicago Apartment Managers” and “Rogers Park Apartments”. These vaguely named puppet companies have all the same staff and ownership as the last company. The only difference is Khan seems to have forgotten to file the correct paperwork.

As the building issues go unaddressed, Khan and his cronies are currently advertising new units in the buildings, trying to trick uninformed Rogers Park apartment seekers into signing leases for apartments in which he refuses to complete comprehensive repairs. If you know someone looking to rent in Rogers Park, spread the word! Don’t rent from Imran Khan or “Rogers Park Apartments”! ★

With the mayoral race looming in early 2027, Brandon Johnson is nearly up for reelection. In the shadow of the popularity of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has made tenant protections part of his platform and cabinet since day one, Johnson is likely thinking about what will set him apart from the other progressive candidates on the ballot here in Chicago.

It is within this context that we analyze Johnson’s recent proposal for a tenant-focused ordinance. With the “Protecting Renters Ordinance,” the late term mayor claims he will shield Chicago tenants from evictions and predatory landlord tactics while maintaining affordability of rental units. The proposal involves overhauling the Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance (RLTO) to prohibit hidden junk fees, requiring disclosure of algorithmic pricing tools, and creating a Tenant Bill of Rights. The ordinance also includes language about just cause eviction practices and a rental registry that would attempt to combat the proliferation of LLCs and the resulting difficulties with tracking code violations. Fees charged to landlords via the registry would help set up and sustain a new Bureau of Rental Housing Services to enforce tenant protections, which echoes an early Mamdani move.

Should these measures be implemented, the effects could be a positive but small step forward for some base level tenant protections. But we also remain highly skeptical about the ordinance’s ability to pass, the reasoning behind Johnson proposing it so late into his term as mayor, and whether it will actually accomplish its stated goals. Current critics of the proposal in city governance also say the ordinance is a mess of different demands from a long list of Chicago housing nonprofits and is being rushed forward with little chance of passing.

We think it’s very fair to ask: does Brandon Johnson really care about tenants? Let’s not forget that our “progressive” mayor has fully supported the Obama Center development, the 1901 Project, and the Illinois Quantum Park—all massive displacement projects that have and will continue to push more and more tenants out of their homes. The Johson-backed right of first refusal program (which supposedly gives tenants a chance to buy their building if it’s being sold) has so far amounted to nothing, yet he claims it as a victory for tenants. Johnson has shown throughout his tenure that he cowers in the face of gentrification and will not do anything material to protect tenants.

We think this proposal is nothing more than a feather in Johnson’s cap, a way for him to set himself apart from other progressives in the mayoral election, a chance to paint himself as Chicago’s own Mamdani. We won’t hold our breaths waiting for city officials to decide whether tenants rights have a place in city legislation, and you shouldn’t either.

Don’t wait for the politicians to decide whether you deserve to stay in your home. Today, ACTA can tell you who owns your building, and we can help you form a tenant union to fight your landlord regardless of whether the city keeps him in check. Give us a call. ★

Eight years ago, on June 14, 2017, Grenfell Tower, an affordable housing building in West London, caught fire. Seventy-two people, including working class tenants, children, and elderly people, died in the 60 hour-long blaze. Dozens more were injured. Both firefighters and tenants were sickened by toxic smoke released by the building’s cheap materials.

The cheap cladding that covered Grenfell Tower is a key part of what enabled the fire to spread so rapidly. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry of 2024 confirms this. But tenants and their families had been saying this all along: the British state cut corners and reduced funding for social housing, and corporations prioritized profits over tenant safety. This is what led to the disaster.

According to the Inquiry: “Grenfell Tower came to be clad in combustible materials [because of] systematic dishonesty on the part of those who made and sold the rainscreen cladding panels and insulation products.” “They engaged in deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing process, misrepresent data and mislead the market.” Adding to this, privatized certification companies tasked with ensuring safety standards were found to have displayed “an ingrained willingness to accommodate customers instead of insisting on high standards and adherence to a contract that was intended to maintain them.” Cutting corners and misleading the market is characteristic of slumlords, whether they are part of the state or private actors. This applies in London just as much as it does in Chicago.

The emergency response was relatively mismanaged and poorly planned because the British state had been cutting support to the firefighting force for years. According to the Fire Brigades Union, one in five firefighter positions was cut between 2010 and 2024 – amounting to a loss of 12,000 personnel. The union has fought for more investment in public services, pointing to the direct link between underfunding and avoidable disasters like Grenfell.

“The FBU believes that the terrible loss of life at Grenfell Tower was ultimately caused by political decisions made at the highest level,” the union stated in 2019. “For at least 40 years, policies relating to housing, local government, the fire and rescue service, research and other areas have been driven by the agenda of cuts, deregulation and privatisation.”

Grenfell fire also had long-term consequences for the firefighters who responded. Hundreds of firefighters have reported serious health issues since then. Roughly one in four responders have suffered from respiratory conditions, cancer, or other illnesses. “A majority of the 136 firefighters reporting health disorders had not worn respiratory protection at some point during their activities,” the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) noted. “They were unable to follow safety protocols due to the severity of the incident.”

An ACTA member visited the Grenfell memorial in London, which is dedicated to the tenants martyred in the fire. They learned about the building’s history from local tenant organizers and discussed the similarities with the slum conditions in Chicago. There are many lessons to learn from the Grenfell fire, but we can focus on two in particular. First, the struggle of working class tenants against landlord and state oppression is ongoing around the world. Secondly, this struggle is, in many cases, literally life or death.

One solidarity mural at the memorial shows a child from Grenfell playing with a green balloon with a child in Gaza. The message is clear: states like the U.S. and U.K. continue to devalue and destroy the lives of working class children internationally - but the next generations can overturn this reality.

Join the struggle of your fellow tenants, whether they are in Chicago or abroad, and fight for working class control of housing! We can bring about revolutionary change on an international level. But only if we out-organize these profit-hungry enemies of the people. ★

Every week, ACTA members distribute Tenants Talk on the Westside and Northside of Chicago. We have met and interviewed many people just like you, and published your words in the Tenant Grapevine. ACTA also has another publication, called the International Bulletin, which we publish online once a week. In this Bulletin, we have published interviews with comrades around the world who are advancing the revolutionary struggle. This is how ACTA got introduced to Energy Embargo for Palestine, and this is how I ended up distributing Tenants Talk in a new location this month. This spot is a bit further out than from our usual route - actually, it’s across the ocean. London!

When I got to London I met up with Energy Embargo for Palestine, and we distributed the paper together. I asked leaders of different organizations for the messages and questions they had for you: the tenants, workers, and readers of this newspaper in Chicago.

For the Palestinian and Arab readers: What brought you to Chicago? What is your relationship to returning to the homeland? How committed are you to doing this?

Also, would you like to meet me in London? (I can’t come to the U.S.)

• Asmaa from Palestinian Youth Movement

It might not feel like it, but we’re closer to the end of capitalism and imperialism than we have been in hundreds of years.

• Jack from Workers for a Free Palestine

You are part of an international revolutionary struggle. Everything you do in Chicago contributes to progressing the struggle around the world. There is no such thing as an action that’s too small.

• Kimia from Energy Embargo for Palestine

What must happen next?

• Sophy from London Renters Union and Energy Embargo for Palestine

The ‘Basics of Tenant Organizing’ is a running column examining key elements in the process of organizing your neighbors. The first article in this series examined the ‘building group chat’ and its importance in counteracting the divisions sowed by the landlords and laying the initial foundations of a union. The second article explained what the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance is and how tenants can get in contact with organizers who can assist you in organizing your own building. In this article we’ll examine an exciting milestone in any organizing effort: the first building meeting.

Before a meeting is on the cards, you’ll need to get to know your neighbors and the issues they’re dealing with in the building. This is a process of investigation and understanding: Who are your neighbors? What are the problems your neighbors are dealing with? Are they going through the same experiences as you? The only way to find answers to these questions is by talking together. A great place to start is simply by knocking on their door and striking up a conversation about what’s going on. Whether you already know a few people, share a building group chat, or don’t know anyone at all, taking this first step matters. We have knocked on many doors over the years, and in our experience, people welcome a neighbor who is genuinely concerned and wants to hear them out.

While you might find neighbors as motivated as you are, it’s natural to meet people who feel apathetic to the issues that inspired you to begin organizing. It’s important to stay determined and understand the underlying problems behind this, as well as what can be done to fight this feeling. Perhaps the issues that inspired you are not that important to them. It would be good then to find out which issues are. Perhaps they do not understand that something they’re experiencing is an issue. It would be good to help them understand this and why it inspires you to act. Perhaps they share the same issues as you, but it’s hard for them to see how things could change. It’s important to remember that you and your neighbors have legitimate power in the relationship between you all and your landlord, but only if you all work together. Examples of tenant union struggle before you could be inspirational. The recent Chicago rent strikes of Fuerzas Inquilinos de Broadway y Cuyler, Fuerzas Activas de la Damen, the Belden Sawyer Tenant Association are real examples of tenants’ ability to work together and leverage their power against the landlord.

Perhaps your neighbors doubt that others would be interested in meeting and working together. Let’s examine how to fight that feeling through the organization of your first meeting. Here are some key principles that guide our meetings:

• A meeting should feel significant. If a meeting feels ‘skippable’, unfortunately some folks might not attend. The way to make the meeting feel significant is to organize it around something that people will want to contribute to. A discussion on a motivating problem people are dealing with, and a decision around a strategic next step, something that people find important. When you’re speaking with your neighbors in advance of this meeting, listen to things you think might compel them to come to a meeting about.

• A meeting should be well organized. Consider making a clear agenda with the items of discussion and objectives. Allot time for these discussions in order to mitigate the draining feeling of meandering discussion with no clear objective. If people can rely on the meetings to be respectful of their time, they will be more likely to attend. Don’t forget to include time to schedule the next meeting!

• A meeting should be accessible. When speaking to neighbors in advance of a meeting, get to know their general availability in order to schedule it at a time where people can attend and attend with full participation. The meeting should also be held in a location where it is easy for all to get to. A lobby, a laundry room, or even in a courtyard if the weather permits it.

• Find ways to ensure that all are able to participate. Call on individuals, and if nobody volunteers to take on an important task, ask people directly. One’s attendance should feel significant and they should feel welcomed to contribute.

• Consider creating meaningful roles and responsibilities for your neighbors. For example, have someone keep time at the meeting. Perhaps someone can be responsible for checking in on everyone on their floor. Cooperative work is inspiring. If I know that my neighbor agreed to do something and is doing it, I will be more inspired to complete what I agreed to do, or to take on something I otherwise would have not. At the end of the day you’re building the union together.

• At the end of the meeting, agreed upon next steps should be recalled and made clear to all, as well as a clear definition of who is doing what and when work is expected to be completed. If tasks feel too unclear or undefined, people might have a hard time doing them. Consider all the factors of agreed upon steps. Will this person have time to do this? Do they need help? Is the task small enough to be completed by the next meeting?

If you can ensure that meetings will operate like this, you will have a much easier time engaging your neighbors and counting on their attendance. Beyond these basic principles, we encourage you to take a meeting as an opportunity to experiment together. Perhaps you feel that the group needs some inspiration. Or maybe the group needs to educate itself about something. Allotting some time to address this in the meeting creatively is a great way to keep meetings meaningful and push the collective forward.

Naturally, if you would like help with anything described here, the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance is here. Reach out to us by texting (773) 770-5650. ★

Gentrification seems like an inevitable process. Block by block, building by building, apartment by apartment, we are priced out of our homes and replaced by people who can afford what we can no longer. Every place we’ve at one point called ours slowly and surely flips until the entire neighborhood becomes totally monstrous and unrecognizable. Look to Wicker Park, Logan Square, Pilsen: how has this happened? Where does this process begin? What we would call our own displacement, the real estate developer calls “investment in the community.” Over the next 15 years, we will see one of the most extreme examples of this so-called “community investment” at work in the largest development project in the history of the Westside of Chicago: The $7 billion 1901 Project.

When a neighborhood has seen years of disinvestment, whether through racist red-lining legislation or the flight of major industrial, commercial, or public institutions, the people who can afford to live elsewhere find greener pastures, leaving behind only the people who have nowhere else to go. This creates a working class neighborhood, where property value is lower than that in the richer surroundings. As capital investment expands geographically, these disinvested neighborhoods begin to butt shoulders with “up and coming” ones, which for one reason or another, draw the demand of people with greater purchasing power. This happens because a neighborhood sits on a convenient CTA line, or because a trendy coffee shop or music venue opens three blocks over, acting as a beacon for real estate speculators. The working-class neighborhoods close in proximity to these desirable ones draw in transient tenants looking to get close to their fancies and pay cheaper rent than they would living in the desirable neighborhood proper. Landlords in particular identify these working-class neighborhoods in demand and buy up the land and buildings to profit off of these incoming richer tenants. The landlord speculates that what is cheap today could be worth much more tomorrow, or put in more accurate terms, that they can displace the tenants of today and replace them with the richer ones of tomorrow. This sounds like a betting man’s game, but with major headline-making investments, landlords’ luck is made for them. This is the sprawling character of the gentrification process, where desirable investment in one neighborhood ripples waves of displacement around it.

For East Garfield Park, West Garfield Park, and North Lawndale, the dawn of this process can be found in the headline-making 1901 Project. This joint initiative spearheaded by the Reinsdorf family (owners of the Chicago Bulls) and the Wirtz family (owners of the Chicago Blackhawks), seeks to expand the surrounding area around of their co-owned United Center into a mixed-use “campus” including over 1,300 hotel rooms, over 9,500 apartments, a 6,000 person capacity entertainment venue, a public park, and potentially a new Pink Line station.

At the project’s ground-breaking ceremony on June 3rd, Bulls CEO Michael Reinsdorf and Blackhawks CEO Danny Wirtz, along with Mayor Brandon Johnson and a myriad of investors, contractors, and city officials, made their empty promises of a bright future to the people of Chicago’s West Side.

“This project is … a commitment to the people who’ve been here all along. That energy and investment flowing into this campus now flows through the neighborhood and not just around it,” Wirtz said. “We are building with this community and not just near it.” - Danny Wirtz

What community does Wirtz speak of? The tenants of East Garfield Park, West Garfield, and North Lawndale? If the project succeeds, speculative property values in these neighborhoods will rise within the next few years, and that wave of “energy and investment” will wash the working class further toward the outskirts of the city limits. The “people who’ve been here all along” Wirtz mentions, will be the very victims of this so-called community investment!

A recent example of gentrification through headline-making investment can be found in the neighborhoods of Woodlawn and Bronzeville. The $850 million construction of the Obama Presidential Center announced Jackson Park as its chosen location in 2016, and between 2019 to 2026, property values of single family and multifamily homes doubled, increasing far faster than home values across Illinois. Additionally, out-of-state speculative property purchases in 2019 drove the average low-end multifamily building from $60,000/unit to $73,000/unit, boxing out local competitors. While existing homeowners and landlords alike reaped the rewards of increased property values with no effort on their parts, at the brunt end were the tenants, who had no stake in the claim of increased value in their community, being contractually temporary residents of the neighborhoods, and who are now being displaced en masse.

If investments like these cause so much harm, why doesn’t the city stop them? In fact, developments like the Obama Center and the 1901 Project all happen with the active assistance from the city, the so-called representatives of the tenants. The 1901 developers have ensured to the public that this is a privately funded venture, meaning unlike the initial proposal of the Bears stadium development on Lake Shore Drive that would have cost tax-payers $900 million, the people of Chicago will not be footing the $7 billion bill. However, with great excitement at the prospect of increased tourism, Brandon Johnson and his city council approved $54.7 million in tax breaks for the 1901 project’s first phase.

What would you have invested $54.7 million in? Your community’s schools, your roads, your libraries, your grocery stores? “Have no fear dear citizens!”, says our mayor, “The Wirtz and Riensdorf families have answered this question for us! Hotels and a concert venue! Now your neighborhood will finally be comfortable for spendy tourists and big businesses!” The city encourages developments like these not on the condition that they satisfy the needs of those they represent, but on the condition that they satisfy the expansion of commerce.

This favorable tax break to the 1901 gentrifiers also comes at a moment where the Johnson administration seeks to pass a populist yet dead-on-arrival ordinance to protect tenants against landlord terror (see pg 4). The mayor is attempting to arm the community with sticks and landlords with cannons.

Of course our neighborhoods should be invested in. At first glance, it is not unreasonable to be excited at the prospect after years of economic degradation. However, in the system we have today, investments exclusively seem to expand the material wealth of investors rather than improve the community. Don’t be fooled: these “community investments” come with a catch! Communities never reap the benefit of what these investors sow!

In the face of such a ruthless force, with the backing of billions and the cosign of the city, how can tenants defend themselves against this gentrification wave? Gentrification is only “inevitable” if tenants remain isolated and unorganized. Readers of Tenants Talk might be familiar with the story of Fuerzas Activas de la Damen (FAD). This tenant union has been (and is still!) on strike for 10 months after a cabal of investors including Imran Khan, Faria Ibrahim, and Sattar Ahsan bought their building and then signed leases with rent raises of up to $700. FAD’s building is an example of a working-class building in a neighborhood that is slowly going through a gentrification wave, building by building. The neighbors came together, formed clear demands for their stay at a reasonable rate, and most importantly, collectively withheld all rent as a bargaining tactic. So far the union representing 60 units has withheld just under $500,000, a figure so eye-watering that the investors could not ignore it. Now, they’re crawling to the bargaining table, begging for mercy. FAD is living proof that gentrification is a force that can be fought, and that fight can be won.

Tenants of the West Side: when the investors come knocking with the city on their side, organize yourselves into a force to be reckoned with. This is the only way your community can remain your community. If you are interested in stopping gentrification and organizing a formidable tenant union in your building, the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance is here to help. Please contact us at (773) 770-5650 or visit our contact page on our website at chicagotenants.com. ★

Every year a version of this headline warns us of the affordable housing crisis. Article after article, it’s clearly difficult for reporters to pin down why this problem exists. We’re told that this is just the way things are, it’s too complex to be solved and there couldn’t possibly be something specific to do about it. Fingers point to housing costs being dictated by the market. After all, the elusive “market” is a natural phenomenon, unable to be tamed, and something we simply must be subservient to. Maybe we should just stop complaining! Well, it would be a lot easier for everyone if we did.

If we look around, I begin to wonder why is it that housing is this expensive in the first place? An affordable housing crisis insinuates there used to be a time with enough affordable housing, which is laughable to believe for most working class folks these days. And why do we need to beg for CHA to give us more pitiful housing? Most project based housing has 25 year wait times and tenants living there dealing with extremely poor conditions.

Well, a recent article presented the most laughable excuse for all of this: the landlords have to focus on the development of new luxury housing because they can’t bear the costs of creating units for less without government subsidies. Think of the poor landlords!

Their luxury housing projects are purposefully gentrifying our neighborhood, like Garfield Park, to try to catch the skyrocketing profits in the wake of the United Center development. Meanwhile, they look to CHA to subsidize this work with their funding for affordable housing… Why should we allow this to go on?

So, the market isn’t so complex after all. It’s our landlords, and they get to hold our housing hostage knowing they can jack up the rent and squeeze every penny out of us. They think of our housing as their investment, and my home is just another quick cash grab to fund their mansion, vacations, and more apartment buildings that they get to extort money from. Like good tenants, we continue to pay them more and more for housing, because we feel like we have to. What if we could do something about it?

If you’re tired of being pushed around by the whims of your landlord, you probably not the only one. Do your neighbors feel the same way? A collective of our neighbors, fed up with the rent that’s too high, can be a forceful weapon for fighting back against our greedy landlords. Making our housing affordable is possible to do in our own way—we can reclaim our power from the system crushing us. A tenant union is the first step in lifting the weight held over us by landlords. No more waiting for the government and the nonexistent market or kindness of landlords to save us. We can count on each other to demand sustainable change. Will you join us?

✷ “The revolution is not an apple that falls when ripe. You have to make it fall.”- Che Guevara

I believe one of my life’s great pleasures is walking to the park near my apartment after work and spending a few minutes on a bench taking in some sunshine. Little compares to the way the orange glow of early evening tints the petals of magnolia trees in bloom. I believe it is also something that any of my fellow Chicagoans should have the chance to do, among many other conveniences of city living. One would rightly think then, that I believe cities should be more pedestrian-friendly, less car-dependent, and more dedicated to creating new public spaces.

I know I am not alone in thinking this way. Chicago, like many large American cities, has seen a renewed interest in something called “New Urbanism” in the last decade. “New Urbanism” can be generally defined as a movement whose main interest is promoting walkability (being able to make trips to the store, park, work, etc on foot) and reducing reliance on one’s car to do life’s daily tasks. All of this is in service of reducing the cost of housing and improving our health, environment, and safety. As a result of this interest, there has been a significant increase in the number of advocacy groups across the country related to this movement. Though I share many of their ideals, I hesitate to identify myself with these advocacy groups. And no, it is not because I want you to pay more for housing and not because I hate your health, safety, or the environment, dear reader. I do, however, have an issue with how these groups want to achieve their goals and who their methods benefit the most, whether they realize it or not.

It should be said first that for many new urbanists, the shining examples of good design and good living come from the major cities of Europe (and also Tokyo). When they distill what they liked about those places, a few key elements arise. The first is the density of these cities, with much attention paid to fitting more housing on smaller lots. The second is relegating cars to the periphery of urban space. This means eliminating street parking, large car lots, and giving less space to cars on the road. Third is how daily necessities are closer to residential areas rather than strictly separate. They are not wrong in believing these things make life easier and more enjoyable for people living in cities. My issue arises specifically with the urbanist advocacy groups’ approach to solving the housing crisis. This is because their solutions are, at best, temporary, bureaucratic, and serve to enrich greedy developers.

To make a concrete example, one of the primary targets of these groups is zoning regulation. Zoning regulations are the rules that govern what can be done with a piece of land. This means anything from how much of the land the building can occupy, the height of the building, how many families or individuals can live in a building, and how many parking spaces the building has. Zoning might also affect how many different departments need to give their approval for anything that would be done with a piece of empty land or building. Urbanist groups are often uncritically supportive of new rules that would make it easier to build taller, denser buildings or plans to build dense new housing developments. These rule changes that they push for are framed as a way of having more freedom in what occurs by circumventing both arcane legal restrictions like extra reviews from different departments or parking requirements, but also circumventing negative public opinion by ending public comment. The claim that is made is that the more housing there is, the more costs will go down. It does not matter to the new urbanist that the new building is a “”luxury”” building that’s replacing existing homes. The new urbanist celebrates the rising of property values as an increase in local tax revenue. The new urbanist bemoans bureaucratic processes, but proposes a more streamlined and less democratic one. The new urbanist regrets displacement, and so advocates for a few affordable units as a consolation prize. The goal becomes market efficiency instead of quality of life. The fanatical belief in the power of supply reveals the core truth of where the new urbanist and I diverge.

And the funny thing is, supply was never the issue. Chicago, like other large American cities, currently has enough vacant housing for everyone who lives here. In the discussion of changing local rules to create more dense housing, I realize that these advocacy groups view the issue as largely aesthetic and apolitical. It must be put in the most explicit terms, how your city is built is deeply political and, especially in the United States, cannot be separated from capitalism. The city as it is today is a space explicitly manufactured for what the capitalist class needed. Old Chicago developed with industrial production in mind by placing working class housing near factories. The segregationist housing policies of American cities and suburbs are built on the extractive logic of capitalism. Working class people of color were forced by the market to be the buffer between capitalists and polluting industrial sites. Even the development of the CTA can be linked to the need to transport workers to and from their jobs. Car dominance as well, is connected to the oil industry’s ravenous need for profit. The new development that includes residential and service businesses is reflective of the turn the American capitalist economy has taken. Service workers can now live near their jobs, and the luxury units can be sold or rented to the wealthy to enjoy a more metropolitan lifestyle. Freeing the planner to be able to make more changes to zoning regulation ignores the fact that the planner still must operate under the bureaucratic systems of capitalism, and must serve the goal of property values and revenue. These quality of life improvements are allowable to the property developer because they see the new revenue potential. The old landlord benefits from this as well, as he gets to turn the building he bought with your money into a massive profit when the new zoning rules are put in place.

The answer then is not a process that strips the worker of further control over their home. The answer is the end of the landlord, and real control over what happens in our communities. Control means getting a grocery store where you live because the community decided they needed it. Control means a street that is unsafe for children to play would not have to fight against a meter company who owns the right to it. Control means the urban planner becomes an educator in design theory and a community collaborator, rather than an often maligned bureaucrat. The shift in how we think of our city should not be an aesthetic appeal to the beauty of Paris, it should be a political change in who and what the design of our city serves.

The Fordham Towers Tenants Association and Robert Fulton Tenant Association lived under the wretched eye of Karan Singh and Rajmattie Persaud for years. Two years ago, they opened a lawsuit against their slumlords. On May 6th, 2026 the tenants associations publicly announced a massive judgment against the slumlords alongside NYC officials excited to share in their victory. One of the penalties included in the judgement required $900,000 of the slumlord’s money, that would otherwise go to their little vacations and fine wines, go directly into immediate building repairs. The associations forced new management to implement those fixes. Due to their strength and conviction, Singh and Persaud lost ownership of the buildings- Losing their ability to suck the life out of tenants through rents.

Another slumlord, Daneil Ohebshalom, has been indicted with 13 criminal charges for the harassment of rent regulated tenants, endangering the welfare of a child, and many more offences. NYC officials allege that Ohebshalom neglected buildings in order to chase out rent regulated tenants. In order to charge higher rents. A tactic regularly seen in Chicago. NYC is lapping Chicago in using municipal power to extract penalties and criminally charge slumlords. Mayor Brandon Johnson and Cook Country State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke must do the same in Chicago. The question is why don’t they fight landlords?

We can’t wait for the spineless to find courage. ACTA is setting landlords to route already. Join the coming victories—organize your building. Be the next spark of hope to tenants everywhere. ★