On Sept. 15, the Los Angeles Human Right to Housing Collective demonstrated outside LA City Hall to demand an immediate rent freeze and the resignation of Councilmember Dennis Zine. The Party for Socialism and Liberation and the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) joined the demonstration in an act of solidarity with tenants—mainly women, children and elderly—who had been viciously attacked by the LAPD under the direct orders of Zine at a May 21 public meeting.
At that meeting, the City Council had referred the question of freezing rent increases back to committee in a refusal to seriously address the needs of tenants.
City Hall and the Los Angeles Housing Authority then carried out a campaign of intimidation and terror against the Housing Collective organizers and the tenants they represent in subsequent meetings where the organizers and tenants continued to advocate for the six-month rent freeze.
Over 30 protesters picketed outside of City Hall during the most recent protest while more than a dozen demonstrators entered a meeting to describe the impact on victims of the brutal LAPD attack, to denounce the use of force in public meetings, and to demand the resignation of Zine. Demonstrators carried signs that read, “We Will Not Be Silenced! Stop Police Abuse in Public Meetings!” and chanted, “A thousand more homes! A thousand less police!”
One organizer with the Housing Collective, Bilal Ali, said: “Zine wants to intimidate us. There is a pattern of criminalizing dissent and criminalizing the fight for human rights, but we will not be intimidated.” Bilal went on to connect the attacks against tenants and residents making public comment in meetings to the recent murder of Manuel Jamines, a Guatemalan day laborer, asserting that it is the role of the LAPD to oppress workers in Los Angeles.
As the capitalist crisis deepens and it becomes more apparent that the capitalist system is failing to provide for the needs of the vast majority of people, workers are forced to struggle. Real and justifiable anger against the failed economic system can grow to potentially revolutionary proportions.
Bourgeois politicians, like Zine, seek to divert this anger into channels they claim are available for the expression of dissent in an attempt to quell militant, independent struggles. But when workers try to use these channels, they face violence and intimidation by the police, whose role is to protect the status quo.
All progressive people should extend solidarity to the LA Human Right to Housing Collective and tenants who are waging a just struggle for affordable housing, and demand the immediate resignation of Dennis Zine.
