Tenant Power in Times of Crisis with Rae Baker and the Chicago Union of Tenants

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Join us for a conversation about tenant organising to celebrate the publication of Dispatches from the Threshold, edited by Rae Baker and Alexander Ferrer. Housing insecurity turned catastrophic during the COVID-19 pandemic, exposing the cruelty of threadbare tenant protections and state hostility toward unhoused people made worse by mass unemployment, a public health crisis, and racist police violence. Since 2020, tenants have successfully fought back against evictions and encampment policing, pushed their governments to extend and fortify eviction moratoria, strengthened tenants’ rights and protections for unhoused people, and thought beyond strategies that primarily appease landlords and lenders. At the same time, the urgent work of stemming immediate eviction, displacement, and surveillance has sat in tension with long-haul movement work and cross-movement organizing. Members of Chicago Union of Tenants and Rae will host a post-Pilsen tenant social at Monochrome Brewing after this event. Rae Baker is a geographer and longtime housing justice organizer who has mobilized for eviction defense, tax foreclosure prevention, and tenant rights. They are the co-editor and co-author of Dispatches from the Threshold. Loren Pullum began their tenant organizing in Ann Arbor, Michigan with Ann Arbor Tenants Union and the Trash the Junk Fees campaign. After being priced out of the area, they relocated to Chicagoland, and continue the fight for tenants' rights to safe and affordable housing here with the Chicago Union of Tenants.