July, 16 2024, 01:25pm EDT
Tenant Organizing Delivers Big Step Forward with Rent Cap Plan from Biden/Harris
Unprecedented Action from President Biden Contrasts Sharply With Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda, Which Will Harm Renters
People’s Action today applauded President Biden’s announcement of a plan to cap rents for tenants living in corporate-owned properties and to invest in public housing as part of a package of reforms aimed at getting housing costs under control for poor and working-class families. The announcement comes after years of tenant organizing by People’s Action’s Homes Guarantee campaign and allies, which have focused on federal action to address ever-increasing housing costs and regulate the rent.
“Biden’s rent cap plan is a big step toward our vision of a country where everyone has a safe, accessible, sustainable, and permanently affordable home–a Homes Guarantee,” People’s Action Campaigns Director Sondra Youdelman said. “Greedy corporate landlords are driving up costs for working class people of every race, gender, and background–and when we organize together, we can win.”
Organizing Gets the Goods
Over the past three years, People’s Action’s Homes Guarantee campaign, the organization’s state-based member groups, and grassroots leaders have pushed for federal action to regulate the rent and condition federal backing of mortgages for rental properties on price hike restrictions and otherwise protect tenants. Key moments include:
- A “Tenant Takeover” in Washington, D.C., in Nov. 2023 with more than 100 tenant leaders, which included meetings with public officials and a press conference with congressional leaders, calling for rent regulations and presenting President Biden with a draft executive order. Tenants also took direct nonviolent action to fight back against corporate landlord Starwood Capital. View photos from the Tenant Takeover here and live-streams here.
- A massive tenant response organized by the campaign to an FHFA Request for Input on tenant protections including: the submission of over 2,400 comments by tenants and allies; a canvass in which tenants knocked 5,165 doors, the formation of five new tenant unions, and the submission of a comment and letter signed by 317 housing justice organizations.
- Site visits organized by the campaign between FHFA Director Sandra Thompson and tenants in federally-backed mortgages, along with a memo making the case for rent regulations to address the rental supply gap.
- A protest outside the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the lobbyists of the biggest corporate landlords in the country, the National Multifamily Housing Council, in July 2024, demanding an end to excessive rent hikes and for the FHFA to regulate the rent and protect tenants.
- A memo shared by the campaign with the White House in 2022 from 200+ legal partners and housing justice and tenant-led organizations, urging actions to curb rent inflation.
- Historic organizing since 2021 to bring delegations of tenants to engage with the FHFA, FTC, CFPB, Treasury, Congress, White House, and corporate landlords. The campaign organized a groundswell of support for the FHFA to regulate rent including Sen. Majority Leader Schumer, 17 U.S. Senators on the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, Ranking Member Maxine Waters and other U.S. Representatives on the Financial Services Committee; 32 leading economists; 143 academics; 73 climate researchers; and more than 70 local elected officials.
The Stakes in 2024
“Organizing is how we make big change in this country, and voting sets the table,” People’s Action Executive Director Sulma Arias said. “We have a set of additional protections for which we are organizing under the Biden/Harris administration in our People’s Platform, and we will get there by organizing renters, unhoused people, and low-income home owners. By contrast, under Project 2025, Trump wants to be our greedy landlord-in-chief and raise costs for renters so his corporate donors can make more profit.”
Project 2025 calls for gutting government programs designed to get costs down for working-class people, including the $35 billion Biden/Harris Housing Supply Fund, which supports construction of affordable housing.
Biden’s full list of reforms includes rent caps, calling on state and local governments to build affordable housing, repurposing federal land for affordable housing unit construction, and to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to rehabilitate distressed housing, build more affordable housing, and revitalize neighborhoods across the country. The plan also calls on state and local governments to invest in public housing. President Biden also recently announced new protections requiring notice for tenants when leases end and a grace period before imposing late fees.
People's Action builds the power of poor and working people, in rural, suburban, and urban areas to win change through issue campaigns and elections.
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'Harris Voters for Human Rights' Work to Defeat Trump—and Fight for an End to Gaza Genocide
"To voters who can't yet entrust Harris with their votes because of the genocide, the fascist Trump will make it even worse for the people of Gaza, and you can trust us to fight to push Harris to end it if we put her in office together."
Nov 05, 2024
Warning that a victory for Republican nominee Donald Trump would bring even greater catastrophe for Palestinians, a coalition of progressive organizers and activists is vowing to both back Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in Tuesday's election and engage in nonviolent civil disobedience at the White House to demand an end to U.S. complicity in Israel's assault on Gaza.
The coalition, dubbed "Harris Voters for Human Rights," declares in a pledge shared with Common Dreams that "we are fighting to end the horror in Gaza AND defeat fascism."
"We believe Trump will be even worse for Palestinians," the pledge states, echoing the sentiment expressed by Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim community leaders in Arizona and elsewhere. "We know he will be a disaster for women, working families, immigrants, democracy, and life on planet Earth. Whatever the VP says or not, know this: You can count on the Harris coalition base to fight for Palestinian human rights."
While the coalition is pushing for a Harris victory, organizers said they intend to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience at the White House on November 12 "regardless of the election result"—unless a cease-fire deal is reached or an arms embargo against Israel is implemented by that date.
"To Biden and Harris, we—your voters—will escalate our pressure to end our complicity in this horror," said Kai Newkirk, a founder of the coalition and co-chair of the Arizona Democratic Party Progressive Council. "To our fellow Harris voters who support Palestinian human rights, put your body where your mouth is. To voters who can't yet entrust Harris with their votes because of the genocide, the fascist Trump will make it even worse for the people of Gaza, and you can trust us to fight to push Harris to end it if we put her in office together."
The planned protest date marks the end of the 30-day period in which the Biden administration told Israel to take "urgent and sustained actions" to improve humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip or face a possible cut-off of U.S. military support.
In the weeks since the administration issued its notice, Israeli forces have continued their relentless bombardment of Gaza—particularly the northern part of the enclave—and the country's lawmakers have moved to ban the United Nations agency primarily responsible for administering humanitarian aid in the territory. Experts, human rights groups, and progressive lawmakers have argued that U.S. law requires an arms embargo against Israel, given its repeated obstruction of American humanitarian assistance.
The "Harris Voters for Human Rights" coalition is "calling on Biden and Harris to uphold U.S. law, which Israel is violating egregiously in Gaza, where it has killed tens of thousands of civilians, mostly women, children, and the elderly," and "decimated" the enclave's infrastructure.
The effort comes as Harris and Trump made their final pitches to the U.S. public ahead of Election Day, with the candidates in a dead heat in battleground states that will decide the outcome of the high-stakes race.
"As president," Harris said during a campaign rally in Michigan on Sunday, "I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, to bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, ensure Israel is secure, and ensure the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, freedom, security, and self-determination."
Alan Minsky, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America, said in a statement Monday that "the first essential step is defeating Trump."
"He has made clear his intention to ruthlessly suppress pro-Palestinian demonstrations, making a mockery of our right to free speech while undermining the foundations of our democracy," said Minsky. "To prevent this, we need as many Democrats as possible to join our pledge. That will send a powerful message to dismayed voters who've lost faith in our party; and it will push Biden and Harris to do more to win them back."
"A public pledge to uphold our laws without exception would inspire hundreds of thousands of voters who may otherwise refuse to cast their ballots for her," Minsky added. "In the meantime, we will try to lead by example and inspire them to vote to empower the Democratic base that won't stop fighting until Kamala Harris delivers as president."
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Who Should Pay for Climate Damage? Majority of the World Agrees: Big Oil
"As governments debate how to finance climate action, they can be confident that making polluters pay is not only fair, but also far more popular and effective than placing the burden on ordinary citizens."
Nov 04, 2024
A multinational survey commissioned by Greenpeace International and published Monday revealed that a majority of respondents favor making fossil fuel companies pay for being the main cause of the climate emergency.
Greenpeace International's Stop Drilling, Start Paying campaign commissioned the strategic insight agency Opinium Research to survey 8,000 adults in eight countries—Australia, Argentina, France, Morocco, Philippines, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States—ahead of this month's United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan.
"Asked about who should bear the most responsibility for climate change impacts, the most popular option across all eight countries in the survey was making oil and gas companies pay, with high-emitting countries and global elites ranked second and third," Greenpeace International said in a summary of the survey, adding that "60% of all surveyed countries see a link between profits of the oil and gas industry and rising energy prices."
The survey also found that two-thirds or more of respondents are angry about Big Oil CEOs getting huge bonuses even as their products exacerbate the planetary emergency; fossil fuel expansion; industry disinformation; and the "historic and ongoing role of oil and gas companies in conflict, war, and human rights violations."
Eight in 10 respondents said they were worried about climate change. However, more than twice as many people surveyed in the Global South said the climate emergency has personally affected them than respondents in the Global North.
According to Greenpeace International:
Imposing a fair climate damages tax on extraction of fossil fuels by OECD countries—proposed by the charity Stamp Out Poverty and supported by 100 NGOs, including Greenpeace International—is one example of a tax on big polluters. This could generate $900 billion by 2030... This would be key for annual climate-related loss and damage costs, estimated to be between $290-$580 billion by 2030 in low-income countries, as well as for reducing the emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases and adapting to the impacts of the climate crisis in all countries.
"This research shows how taxing the wealthy polluters-in-chief—companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell, Total, Equinor, and Eni—has become a mainstream solution among people, cutting across borders and income levels," said Stop Drilling, Start Paying co-chair Abdoulaye Diallo. "As governments debate how to finance climate action, they can be confident that making polluters pay is not only fair, but also far more popular and effective than placing the burden on ordinary citizens for a crisis for which they bear little or no responsibility."
The Opinium survey was published on the same day that Amnesty International called on the richer countries most responsible for the climate emergency to "fully pay for the catastrophic loss of homes and damage to livelihoods" in Africa.
"African people have contributed the least to climate change, yet from Somalia to Senegal, Chad to Madagascar, we are suffering a terrible toll of this global emergency which has driven millions of people from their homes," said Samira Daoud, Amnesty's regional director for West and Central Africa. "It's time for the countries who caused all this devastation to pay up so African people can adapt to the climate change catastrophe."
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Erasing 'Any Sign of Life,' Israeli Demolition Teams Razing Entire Villages in Lebanon
"This is a scorched-earth policy, a violation of the Geneva Conventions," said one reporter.
Nov 04, 2024
As the death toll from Israel's 13-month assault on Lebanon passed 3,000, satellite imagery analyses published by multiple media outlets in recent days revealed that nearly a quarter of all buildings in 25 municipalities in the southern part of the Mideastern country have been destroyed or damaged in a ferocious campaign that has left entire villages in ruins.
Satellite photos examined by The Washington Post, Reuters, and the Financial Times showed vast destruction caused by Israeli bombing and controlled demolitions of towns and villages, many of whose residents are among the more than 1.2 million people forcibly displaced by the war.
"There are beautiful old homes, hundreds of years old," Meiss al-Jabal Mayor Abdulmonem Choukeir toldReuters. "Thousands of artillery shells have hit the town, hundreds of air strikes. Who knows what will still be standing at the end?"
Meiss al-Jabal native Fatima Ghoul toldThe Washington Post that "everything has been reduced to rubble" in the town of 8,000 inhabitants. Footage circulating on social media Monday showed large portions of the village, which has been inhabited for many hundreds of years, turned to dust in a simultaneous series of demolition explosions.
According to the Post:
Satellite imagery from Kfar Kila shows freshly turned soil where olive groves once stood, suggesting a clearance operation by Israeli forces. Dozens of crushed buildings line the town's main road. The destruction is most intense near the Israeli border. The village centers in nearby Ayta al-Shab, Mhaibib and Ramyeh have also been decimated, the imagery reveals.
Videos published on social media show a series of controlled explosions in at least 11 villages. In a video published to X on October 22, half a dozen buildings fall in an instant after an explosion, covering the 400-year-old village of Ayta al-Shab in dust clouds and debris. In drone footage published online the next day, an Israeli flag flies over the town—now reduced to a sea of broken trees and collapsed concrete.
In one video verified by the Post, IDF troops cheer the demolition of a mosque in the village of Dharya, with one soldier exalting, "What a moment!" while others break out in religious song.
Religious and culturally important buildings are protected under international law. Scorched-earth tactics and disproportionate attacks are war crimes under international law.
"Even if civilians are not inside, those types of buildings don't lose their protection," former U.S. Department of Defense attorney Sarah Harrison told the Post.
A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces claimed the IDF was obliterating Lebanese towns and villages because Hezbollah—the political and paramilitary group based in Lebanon—is turning "civilian villages into fortified combat zones." Hezbollah denied the accusation.
Retired Lebanese Armed Forces Gen. Akram Kamal Srawi told the Financial Times that "there are two reasons Israel is using this detonations strategy."
The first reason, he claimed, is that the IDF is clearing the way for a possible deeper invasion of Lebanon.
"The second is that Israel has adopted a scorched earth strategy in order to wage psychological warfare on Hezbollah's base people by televising these detonations and weaken support for the group—which will never work," he added.
Israel began attacking Lebanon at almost the same time it launched its war on Gaza in response to the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Hezbollah has fired at least hundreds of rockets and other projectiles at Israel in a sustained yet measured campaign in solidarity with Gaza, where Israel's bombing, invasion, and siege have left more than 155,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and millions more displaced, starved, and sickened in a war that the International Court of Justice is investigating for possible genocide. At least scores of Israelis have been killed or wounded by Hezbollah's cross-border attacks.
In addition to the at least 3,002 people killed by Israel's onslaught, Lebanon's Health Ministry says that more than 13,000 others have been injured. The ministry does not distinguish between Hezbollah fighters and civilians. Critics say neither does the IDF.
"We're a family of artists, my father is well-known, and our home was a known cultural home," Lebanon Philharmonic Orchestra conductor Lubnan Baalbaki told Reuters after viewing satellite images confirming the destruction of his family home.
"If you have such high-level intelligence that you can target specific military figures, then you know what's in that house," Baalbaki added. "It was an art house. We are all artists. The aim is to erase any sign of life."
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