Rent Strike 2020

Beginning on April 1st, 2020, many Americans will be unable to pay their rent, mortgage, loans, or utility bills in the context of the pandemic and global recession. The president has so far spent $2.5 trillion in bailing out the stock market and large corporations, and nothing to bail out the working class. 

Without a massive stimulus package, freeze on rent, utilities, and mortgage collection, millions of people will lose their jobs and homes. Unemployment could reach 30% according to some projections. We have to start organizing right now, turn our collective desperation to collective power, and force our government to enact a bailout for regular people, not Wall Street.

Rent Strike 2020 started when a simple petition to freeze rent, utilities and mortgage payments has collected over 2 million signatures within 48 hours. The creators of the petition (Joshua Collins, and Rose Caucus) realized that this is a revolutionary moment and immediately passed it off to organizers who could build this into a movement that will be able to deliver a win for regular people.

We have put together a comprehensive set of immediate demands that we are calling the People’s Bailout. Our goal is to win these demands for the working class by building a mass movement. We hope to partner with local tenants unions, labor unions, immigrant groups, prison reform and abolition groups, and left and socialist elected officials who share our movement strategy and vision. Following are our initial set of of demands:

• Freeze all rent, mortgage, utility payments or we will carry out a rent strike!

• Freeze all student, medical, car and consumer debt and interest during the ongoing pandemic and recession. Cancel student debt!

• Tax big business and the rich, not regular people, to pay for the crisis.

• House all unsheltered people to protect their health and safety, and public health at-large.

• Suspend all Farm Service Agency payments to ensure that we have an uninterrupted food supply.

• Provide free mass testing and treatment! Authorize the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services to cover all out of pocket expenses so people can get tested and treated without worrying about going bankrupt.

• Medicare for All! Immediately nationalize pharma, healthcare, medical instruments and all providers for an emergency response like Spain did to swiftly respond to the health crisis.

• Give democratic powers to Committees of workers and scientists over the response to the crisis in essential industries – including healthcare, transportation, logistics, grocery.

• Nationalize any industry threatening layoffs that hasn't been bailed out under democratic workers' control.

• End the mass incarceration system & immediately release all immigrants from detention centers to stop the spread of COVID-19 between prisoners and guards.