Workers Can Organize to End Evictions

Louisiana Movement for Workers Councils leads anti-eviction march on Sept. 8.

By Ashlee Pintos

While politicians and the big business media promise that a coming COVID-19 vaccine will magically fix the economic crisis, over 12 million renters around the country will owe an average of $5,850 in back rent by January 1. In Orleans parish alone, some 30,000 households are vulnerable to evictions, and thousands more are on the brink of foreclosure. Even before COVID, working people have been struggling to make ends meet as rent prices and property taxes have skyrocketed as a result of gentrification. Now, millions of us are unemployed or have had our hours and wages cut and we’ve received little to no help with our mounting debts.

This issue is shaking the core of the entire country, with thousands of households in almost every large city facing possible evictions. the Democratic and Republican parties can agree on a trillion dollar war budget, but they can’t agree on relief for workers in some of our most desperate hours. Our only way out of this crisis is to organize ourselves, independent of the two parties of Wall Street and the Pentagon. this has taken a heavy toll on us workers but we must take heart at our massive numbers: would they dare to evict us if we banded together?

The Louisiana Movement for Workers Councils is an effort to unite all working people, employed and unemployed, to demand that the state and federal government provide us with what we need to survive this crisis, using our tax dollars. Looking back on the history of social security, food stamps, and unemployment insurance, we know that it has always been the struggle of the masses that has forced those in power to concede to our demands.

Time and time again, government officials cry that their hands are tied, that they cannot call a moratorium on evictions or provide extended unemployment insurance. But we are organizing to push back against the State Legislature that has given over $150 million in tax breaks to oil companies amid a pandemic. We’re organizing to demand that the Mayor and local politicians, whose sights are set on making New Orleans “the number one city to do business,” use their emergency powers to halt evictions and foreclosures. It is only our solidarity with one another that can keep us in our homes and win the relief we need.

Workers Voice Socialist Movement

We are workers, employed and unemployed, youth, students, and seniors. We are multi-racial and multi-national and organize for the unity of the working class. We are funded by and for workers, for the liberation of all workers and oppressed people.

We organize for jobs and higher wages, against racism, women’s, and LGBTQ oppression, and for solidarity with immigrants. We organize for community schools, lower rents, and food on our tables. We organize for workers’ power so that everything will one day be removed from the capitalists’ private ownership.

We oppose the Pentagon, which is looting our tax dollars and handing them over to war-profiteering private companies, while social programs are gutted. We oppose war for empire which is pursued only to lower our wages and plunder the world’s resources while destroying the environment. We reject the monopoly media who feed us lie after lie.

The labor of workers produces enormous wealth here in Louisiana, the U.S. and the world– so much wealth that everyone could have housing, meaningful jobs, education, healthcare, and genuine equality. But this wealth is stolen and privately owned by the capitalist class for their greed and profit. We believe that we, the workers of the world, can unite in revolution to overcome capitalism and build a better world.

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