re:verb E72: Tenant Organizing and the Cult of Property Values (w/ Luke Melonakos-Harrison)

12:26PM Sep 20, 2022

Speakers:

Alex Helberg

Calvin Pollak

Luke Melonakos-Harrison

Keywords:

landlord

people

tenant

organizing

tenants

connecticut

pandemic

unions

power

building

rent

union

housing

eviction

ways

city

labor union

terms

reverb

agencies

Hello, everybody and welcome to another episode of reverb. My name is Alex Helberg. And I'm joined on the mic as always by my co host and CO producer Calvin Pollak. How's it going, Calvin?

Doing good, Alex, how are you?

I'm doing very well. I'm especially excited today, because we have a guest in the podcast with us. We are joined today by Luke Melonakos-Harrison, who is a Masters student in Yale University's Divinity School, a tenant union organizer with the Connecticut Tenants Union and the Connecticut Democratic Socialists of America, and an aspiring Methodist pastor. He writes and teaches on liberationist Christianity, resistance to white Christian supremacy, and building a mass movement for democratic socialism. Luke, thank you so much for being with us.

It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

We are talking today about tenant unions and tenant organizing. So I understand that you are involved in a lot of tenant organizing in the state of Connecticut, could you tell us a little bit about what the organizing work that you do really involves? So what brought you to it? And why do you feel it's so important?

Yeah, so I got involved with this coming up on two years, my first entrance into Senate organizing was actually a legislative campaign that we ran in Connecticut, on the tenants, right to legal counsel and eviction proceedings, which sort of kick started our efforts, in a lot of ways. We were kind of seizing the moment, at that point, in the pandemic, when sort of popular consciousness around eviction was high, the legislature was perhaps slightly more amenable to taking action on avec on eviction, then, you know, their moments. And, you know, I was new to DSA in 2020, sort of coming out of the summer of the BLM uprisings, and just really looking to get involved somewhere. And so I sort of jumped into this campaign, never having really done anything like it before, and kind of got got hooked on on the organizing. And I think what was so captivating about it was that it was really drilled into me by by kind of older organizers in the chapter that it had to be a grassroots movement, it had to be about building a base, if we got the law passed, but didn't increase our capacity. That wasn't really a win, as much as you know, even if we failed to get the law passed, but got a whole bunch of new tenant leaders and grew our chapter. And that paradigm shift was really impactful. So we came out of that legislative campaign last summer, and shifted towards really organizing tenant unions. So over the past year, we've learned a lot, had a lot of successes, a lot of failures, you know, I know more about 10 unions organizing than I even knew to ask questions about a year ago, there's just you learn things through the struggle that you don't, you can't figure out until you're in it. So at this point, we've got, you know, a handful of strong tenant unions that are active, we've got kind of another circle of different apartment buildings that are in various stages of trying to get organized, or they had a group and then it kind of fizzled, you know, so there's a variety of stages that people are at, but I'm extremely proud of the work we've been able to do, and the tenant leaders who have taken really courageous steps and put themselves out there and, and gotten some wins out of it.

That's amazing. Luke, thank you so much for summarizing kind of the context around the work that you all were doing for legal rights to counsel and then building towards this, this new stage of the struggle with tenant union organizing, I think that a lot of our listeners will be more familiar with the concept of a labor union than attending. And so we've done at least two or three episodes in the past that have touched on union organizing, but like in your mind, what differentiates a tenant Union from a labor union, what do they have in common? And what sort of new things have you learned about how union organizing is central to left organizing more generally, in the process of doing this tenant union work?

I think what they have in common is that it's a area of class antagonism. It's the tenant class against the landlord class. And those lines are clear in the struggle as it is in the workplace. One of the big ways that it's different is that labor unions are just so much more codified and the structures are, you know, there's so much more infrastructure around them. Tenant unions usually have little to no sort of for legal infrastructure to them, on the books in Connecticut, there's like one line in one law that says your landlord can't evict you within six months of joining a tenants Union. It doesn't say anything about what attendants union is it like that's the only line in terms of like legal structure around tenant unions. The benefit of that is that it's kind of like a wide open playing field. And you know, concretely, one of the ways we've been able to take advantage of that openness and lack of infrastructure is here in New Haven, Connecticut, we propose legislation to allow tenant unions to negotiate or deal collectively with what we have in Connecticut called fair rent Commission's, which is a piece of legislation, we were kind of able to make up from scratch because again, nothing really existed to define them. So the city council here is going to vote on that next month. But I think that's one of the biggest ways it's different is it's, it's, it's a lot more fluid. I mean, in our experience, it usually starts with some small group of leaders in an apartment complex, deciding that they want to do this circulating a petition getting people to a meeting, getting people to sign off on the list of demands, presenting those demands to the landlord, and then when the landlord inevitably does not follow through trying to think of a bunch of creative ways to escalate from there and put pressure on the landlord. And that's taken a number of different forms, you know. So, again, the parallel to labor union organizing is that it's, it's a class struggle. It's about building power from below and exerting power up the pyramid, if you will, towards the landlord and the city. But it's just, it's a lot less defined in terms of what that looks like. So takes a lot of creativity and flexibility. I'll definitely say that.

I think that's fascinating. I really, I want to return to that point about when there are when there is a lack of legislation on the books, there's a lack of legislative or legal precedent for some of this stuff, how you go through that kind of creative work of defining it. But before we get into that you had mentioned kind of the early stages of tenant union organizing involves tenants coming together kind of realizing that they are part of a renter class, right, developing that sense of consciousness among them. So in your experience, at least in in Connecticut, what are the kinds of issues that have brought neighbors together to kind of realize that they are a part of that class distinct to themselves, it's been

a number of things, I think, probably the most common has been landlord negligence. So just people's homes falling into disrepair. And you know, just landlords that you can't get a hold of, when you're just you're dealing with your broken plumbing or whatever, for months on end, and you just get fed up, that's probably been the most common thing. But also, landlord abuse has been a common factor harassment and intimidation, various forms of retaliation and just kind of punishing people for speaking up, that has certainly agitated a lot of our tenant union leaders. And also, the looming rent increases has actually been one of the most effective things in terms of the organizing just because when you get a new landlord that raises everybody's rent all at once. And everybody at the same time feels this sense of impending threat, the sense of like, we're all going through this together. And this is clearly an external force that is sort of imposing this upon us is very salient when it's a situation like that a rent hike, but But it's been all three, rent increases, apartments falling into disrepair, and abusive behavior from landlords have been the factors, I think in terms again, in terms of the organizing the thing that helps those realizations come out and for people to kind of look around and realize that they are in a class has just been meetings where people get to tell their stories, and just very human interactions, where somebody is saying, Oh, that happened to me too. And then you get a whole group of people saying, that happened to me too. And that's where sparks start to fly, in terms of people realizing that they are not going through something alone.

I thought it was interesting that earlier you mentioned the pandemic as kind of raising consciousness around evictions and these housing issues. I'm wondering how much that has affected the solidarity that you're able to seize or, or, or witness out in, you know, in these communities because, you know, this podcast, we've done a lot of episodes during the pandemic and we've talked a lot about the different ways that the pandemic has reshaped space and place like made us realize new places that are newly important to us or realize new inequities within spaces and places. So is that something that's affected the work and has it all been positive? Or have there even been some challenges from the pandemic?

It's a good question. I think it's a little hard to answer. Because on the one hand, the pandemic did open up some new discourses, and open up some new spaces to talk about things, I think it did help a lot of people feel sort of more vindicated or sort of righteously angry in the situation, because the audacity of landlords and employers and all of these other centers of power kind of continuing to extract and abuse despite this global catastrophe that has come up in the organizing. On the other hand, I will say that, you know, in a lot of cases, these problems were deep and profound, long before the pandemic, and people have been coping with them in various ways long before the pandemic, and going home to a place that was just falling apart around you was nothing new for a lot of our folks. So yes, and I think the one way that I that I think it helped us was it just it revealed to a lot of people that these figures in our in our case, landlords that sort of maybe had a better reputation, or could portray themselves more benevolently before the pandemic, like the masks really came off in so many ways,

ironically enough.

Good catch, I didn't even hear that.

We're all we're always thinking about word play, even in serious situations. So I think we also wanted to ask or talk a little bit more about, as you said, you know, getting involved in this kind of organizing coming out of 2020 of the BLM uprisings and just kind of realization that housing especially is, is this intersectional issue that affects some communities more than others, some communities, particularly black, indigenous people of color, queer communities are multiple marginalized, especially when it comes to housing. Could you talk a little bit about how the sort of intersections of things like race, class, gender and sexuality have have affected tenant organizing work here in Connecticut as well?

Yeah, there's, there's so much I could say about this. I mean, so you know, on one level, something that we talked about a lot and run into a lot is just how the I have a have a comrade who has coined this phrase in our lives in my head, the cult of property values, organizes our society, in like every possible way, and is perhaps the chief driver of systemic racism in our society. I mean, you can debate that, but it's hard to identify another kind of force that shapes the places that people are allowed to be the resources that people have access to the futures that people can imagine more than what we call property values. And we talk a lot about how this the whole concept of market based rent, you know, the market is racist, the market has been designed in racist ways and continues to function in extremely racist ways. And that's evident, everywhere you go in America, you look around and you see it, it doesn't take any any degree. It's extremely obvious, but it's masked with this discourse of the market and property values. So cutting through that nonsense, and just being able to call those things out as constructed and maintained to keep certain communities segregated and constrained, has been a big part of the organizing. I think another thing that we've been talking about a lot recently, with all of the all the stuff with the Supreme Court and all of the gender related issues, reproductive rights, and transgender rights and other things. We've been talking about how many intersections there are between housing and gender justice, I mean, if you can't afford to pay rent with one income, that keeps so many people in abusive relationships that they would otherwise try and get out of, it just constrains people's mobility and freedom and ability to take advantage of opportunities or, or just live fuller lives because of how high the rent is. And then other than when you add on top of that things like eviction histories and how landlords can just blacklist you from the sort of mainstream housing market and shunt you into this other alternate housing market where you're going to be scammed every step of the way, because you have an eviction, on your record, is another example of how the system just like segregates people and compounds injustice upon injustice, the experience of going to court and And, you know, watching an eviction ruling come down on someone, I know has been some of the most sort of devastating and radicalizing moments for a lot of our tenant union members to just feel that sense of power imbalance, which, you know, our campaign about right to counsel was to largely to try to address that, because it's just absurd that landlords show up with their lawyers to pressure tenants base, it's like what happens in criminal courts so often as well to like pressure tenants into accepting kind of deals that might be very unfair, the tenant might have a very legitimate case as to why their landlord has broken the lease and all these different ways or who's retaliated against them, etc. But without strong legal support, and the ability to navigate the court system. And without like talking the right way, looking the right way, being the right race, people get vastly unjust judgments passed on them and eviction court. So the intersections are endless. And then, gosh, the disability stuff is like a whole other massive area of intersection where housing and accessibility are deeply intertwined. So that's why housing has become for me, the area of organizing and activism that I've become so passionate about, because there's not a single other issue that I care about, that doesn't intersect with it. The intersections with the prison industrial complex, are massive, the intersections with climate injustice, and our changing climate and how that, you know, changes in weather are going to affect people differently, depending on the types of housing that they have. The intersections are endless. And I feel like housing is just the baseline for every other issue of justice and liberation that I care about. And so I don't feel like I'm leaving anything out by focusing on housing because it touches everything.

Totally, totally. That's so eloquent. Luke, thank you, I was really struck by a concept you introduced near the beginning of what you were just saying, which was what you termed the cult of property values. And I find that so thought provoking, because it makes me think about how the rationality of the economic system is always taken for granted. Right. And when you use a term like cult, it calls to mind the opposite of rationality, like kind of groupthink and dogma and superstition, which I think really, we've seen so much of in economic rhetoric in the past couple of years. And so it made me think about the ways in which you all are doing something quite radical, because you're trying to show that maybe there are multiple rationalities that we need to take into consideration. Maybe tenants coming together to articulate their needs, and their demands, can foster a different kind of rationality that challenges the dominant rationality that they're dealing with from landlords and from courts and from the legal system. And so I guess my question is, what are some challenges that you all have faced in doing this quite radical thing? We one thing that jumped out at me we were reading some coverage of your struggles in Connecticut, in preparation for this episode, and notice that it see and, you know, give us the most up to date information. But it seemed like the tenant union proposal in New Haven is doing quite well, right, in city government. And it struck me that there seems to be some at least at the government level, institutional support for some of what you're doing. And so is it just sort of like easy breezy, where we're organizing these tenant unions and getting no pushback? Or what does the pushback look like? What kind of resistance are you all facing from above?

Yeah, so the latest update is that the tenant union proposal we introduced has been passed out of committee and will be voted on by the full jury and the New Haven board of auditors. Wow, the full blood board of elders early next month. So

awesome. Congratulations. That's amazing. Yeah,

thank you. We're hopeful that that will go through and we can use that as a tool to continue the organizing in the area and also hopefully replicated around the state. I think some of the biggest pushback has just come from landlords don't want to deal with us. I mean, I laugh only because, of course, they don't want to deal with us, but it's gotten nasty. It's absolutely gotten nasty. I mean, one of our, one of our tenant unions in the next town over in Hamden, you know, the landlords have tried to evict there's like a couple who got this whole thing started and you know, first reached out to us to start organizing their property. Landlords trying to evict them they've sent them three different notices to quit this year. With very ridiculous reasons, and each time not been able to carry through the eviction, because they couldn't find a reason good enough. But this one when they actually they, you know, I still think the reason is absolutely ridiculous, but it's gonna go down in court. And that same landlord has tried to pull off so many other retaliation tactics, like they have this relationship with this particular towing company that basically steals people's cars and, you know, tows it, now we're away, and people have lost cars over it, because they couldn't pay it off in time. And then they just auction that thing. And so landlords have a lot of ways to retaliate against people. And it's

that's so rational, such rational behavior.

Right? Right. Yeah, we've been able to protect a lot of people from evictions that probably would have gotten worse, have the union not been there. And I'm glad to report that. But I, you know, it's not all a rosy picture at all. And people are absolutely taking risks when they join unions and put themselves out there. And I think from the organizing perspective, the fear of retaliation, and the fear of having nowhere else to go, if you lose this housing is probably the number one thing that that is an impediment that keeps people from getting involved because people just have such few options. And the legal support is often lacking. And just the there's not a ton of reassurances that we can give people that like, Oh, if they try to evict you, you know, you can immediately like, go call this organization, and they'll take care of it for you like that that kind of infrastructure, isn't there, really. So it's risky. On the government side, I think, at least in New Haven, our our city government has been pretty amenable so far. Partly, I think it's because they know that the stress of housing costs and housing conditions are so widely felt, you know, in New Haven, like in many places, there's a handful of mega landlord, we've gone mega landlords to corporate landlord companies that own a massive amount, if not, like well over the majority of the lower income housing stock. And these are just bad actors that the city is sick of dealing with as well. They rack up complaints with the housing with the health department and things like that. And I think city enforcement is very, very lacking. Well, that's another thing, experience. But I think we've been able to get this tenant union proposal as far as we have the time Haven government because I think they're looking for avenues that don't cost them anything to kind of go after some of these bad actor landlords and support tenants. Now, as as socialists, I'm like, until we get pushback from the government, we're not being radical enough. So we're kind of coasting right now and will up the ante as we go along. But it's all kind of a calculation of analyzing the conditions and then the power and where the power is. So we're continuing to build power so we can pick bigger fights down the road.

Absolutely. That's, that's so inspiring to hear about and I, I mean, that that notion of not really having any ability to rely on municipal governments, in a lot of cases for enforcement, I think is something that really, I mean, it can be seen as a setback or an impediment or like you were saying earlier, you can kind of view that as a an opportunity to put something completely new in this lacuna where there previously was nothing right. I was reading one of the articles from CT insider that was talking about the the Wedgewood courts tenant union up in Bloomfield, a suburb of Hartford, where one of the city councilors Suzette de Beetham brown uses kind of a crass metaphor, but said, If I'm a police officer, and I'm supposed to be protecting you, and I have a gun with no bullets, I can only do so much. If the health district comes out and issues a notice of violation and there are no bullets in the gun, we are at the whim of the management company and the owners, right. So in what ways, I guess, have you and your comrades and fellow organizers tried to bolster this actual enforcement power? Like what are the kinds of you know, whether it's just the definition of attendant union actually getting that codified, you know, ascribing certain rights to that. What was that process like of kind of creating this on the books in different municipalities?

So on the on the code enforcement side, honestly, it's mostly been just trying to, like flood these places with complaints and then keep harassing them until they actually show up having some confrontational meetings with some city agency directors really shedding light on and, you know, I don't I don't want to paint them in an entirely bad light because I also think that they're underfunded and understaffed and you know, it's they were actually looking at every code violation and the City thoroughly and adequately, then they would be, they would be a much bigger agency than they are. So that's a reality as well, but, but also just shining a light on how ineffective and inaccessible these agencies are, as that quote, you quoted demonstrates the health department doesn't even have enforcement powers in Bloomfield, which is just absurd to me in. And that's another intersection with like the prison industrial complex, you think about what you can go to prison for have every single rights stripped away from you be locked in a cage. But landlords can just flagrantly violate the law, tons of laws, dozens of laws, and there's zero enforcement because the law primarily protects property rights more than human rights. And that's just such a such a blatant example of it. So with the tenant union ordinance, something that we're optimistic about is that part of this is like a little bit specific to Connecticut. So I don't want to go on like too deep into the details of how fair rent Commission's operate specifically. But long story short, like many states, Connecticut has a lot of state law prohibiting municipalities from passing rent control, which is terrible. And we are looking forward to fighting that at the state level. In lieu of that we have these like city appointed Commission's that can do individual hearings, if tenants want to put forward a complaint that their rent has been raised unfairly or that their landlord is neglecting the property. Many of these Commission's have been basically defunct, really, New Haven has had like the only active one that's been robust and seem more than like a couple complaints a year, pushing these to actually be pointed and active and able to receive complaints and to use the full scope of their powers is something that we're working on now that tenant union union ordinance is directed towards that. So it allows tenant unions to submit complaints to this fair rent commission, submit evidence collectively, like, you know, all the tenants in this building can share evidence about like what's going on in the building and what the conditions are, speak on each other's behalf, which is another powerful tool. And so that will hopefully help us do two things. One, actually, you know, make this commission and the other city agencies better functioning, and to shine light on how much more severe the problems are, then the city agencies can address even if they're functioning at maximum capacity. So part of it is like, we're going to flood the fair and commissions to show that they're not sufficient, and we need rent control, we need rent stabilization. We're gonna like flood the health department and these other code enforcement agencies to show that these paltry fines of you know, $50 a day on a landlord who's raking in like 10s of 1000s of dollars a month, every month, every month in rent, is just laughable in terms of enforcing housing code. So it's kind of it's trying to improve material conditions now, but also like really raise the bar and demonstrate the gaps in the current system and, you know, push the horizon.

That's strategically brilliant. And I think I mean, just if the media coverage of the tenant unions has been a been any indication, that has been a pretty resounding success, a lot of the stories that are coming out of you know, the New Haven independent, Connecticut insider, some of the independent presses here have really kind of amplified that claim of you know, our city or municipal infrastructure and enforcement is totally unequipped to handle the actual conditions in a lot of these places. So yeah, and

yeah, and I also just want to note that this strategy of drawing from the power of the tenant unions to flood the fair rent Commission's, I love this as a kind of inside outside strategy, like working within the confines of the current system to expose the ways in which those confines are overwhelmingly like stultifying and preventing real radical change. So I just, that's something that we talk a lot about a lot on this show, as well is how do you avoid complacency especially as someone with radical revolutionary politics, doing stuff like what you all are doing with these fair rent Commission's is really inspiring as an example of that.

Yeah. So I think as we're kind of moving a little bit more towards, you know, the proactive steps that you, the tenants, unions and other organizers have been taking, we always kind of like to move towards our conclusion here by thinking more about, you know, practical advice for people in other places that might want to do this themselves, even though you know, this has this conversation has been very specific to Connecticut, I think, necessarily, because I think what you Luke have illustrated is how well you and your For fellow organizers have been able to read the power situation in your different municipalities to actually map out that power, find points of intervention, where can really make the biggest difference? So I mean, I guess just as kind of like in putting it in the most broad possible terms, what advice would you give to somebody who is interested in organizing a tenant union? Who's fed up with, you know, their living conditions with skyrocketing rents? How do you get something like this started? And what are some of the best ways to approach say, for example, organizing conversations with your neighbors?

Yeah, love this question. I want to say, I think doing that power analysis is a vital tool, both kind of as yourself as an individual, when you're just trying to get your head around what the song means. But also, once you do have some interests with other neighbors, like, sitting down and really drawing out, okay, let's understand who our landlord is. Or if we have a management company, who they are, how much money do they have? How many properties do they have? Where do they live? What social networks? Are they a part of? What sort of aspect of their reputation do we do they care about? What are the city agencies that do have power over this landlord? How well are they functioning? Are they sympathetic to us, or not? All those types of power analysis and research to just get the lay of the land of who has power over who who can find do that kind of thing, getting familiar with what protections may or may not be on the books in your city or state, without relying on them too much. Because, again, the enforcement a lot of these things is lacking. But it's good to know and to be able to have that information to share with your neighbors, especially as people I like first getting used to the idea of, of doing something courageous like this. So analyzing your conditions in the power, where the power is really important. Understanding the demographics and the social networks of the people in your building, like, who lives there? How long have they lived here? Somebody who's lived in the same place for 10 years, probably doesn't want to move? I mean, once you've lived in a place long enough, you have your whole life's kind of centered around that place. Like those are the people that you want to get to know, the people who have been there a long time, who may have a sense of investment in the apartment building or the complex. No, I've noticed this again, and again, that in terms of identifying who are the people who are really going to like stick it, stick it out for the long haul and be willing to fight. It's less about who says the right things in the first conversation are the things that I perceive as kind of like politically astute. And it's much more about what kind of ties do they have to the community? What kind of personal sense of investment do they have in the place? Do they know other people in the building, like if if you have a neighbor who knows their neighbors, that's the person you want to get to know. Because that kind of relational capital and ability to move others and persuade others and influence others is the number one most important thing. So figuring out who lives around you, and like, who has sway who's somebody that others listen to? And respect, if, if they showed up at your meeting and said, You know, I think this is a good idea. If you can get a couple people like that in the room that other people will kind of nod along with, that's where your power is going to come from. And so on that note as well, I think the biggest factor in our unions that have gotten the biggest wins, and I've been successful was the strength of relationships between tenants in the tenant union, did they really trust each other, because when you go out and take these risks, you you know, you stormed into property manager's office and like a slap down a petition, and your face is right there, and they know who you are. When you take a risk like that you need to know that the other people around you are gonna back you up. And so building relationships of trust, and just like in any situation, it's about vulnerability, it's about sharing your own story. It's about just being real and authentic in your conversations with people. And just like doing things that get people talking. I think in the beginning of this, we underestimated the importance of social events, or just like not even always formal events, but just creating spaces where people are talking to each other. The capitalists have so much power over us largely because they're so isolated from each other. And so anything that we can do to facilitate community and just people realizing that they have more in common that they have been what they have different, can't be overstated in terms of its importance of organizing. So I guess maybe really, practically, if somebody wanted to organize, attending in their building, start just chatting with people around you. Put yourself out there and get into conversations with your neighbors ask people how long they've lived there. Ask people what they've noticed over time, how is the building changed? How are they coping with the cost of rent or the inability to get repairs done, start informally, and just kind of get a feel for where people are at what they're going through, and how willing they might be to fight with you, and then build from there and tap into people's relationships. It's like, okay, I chatted with my neighbor, he's lived here 10 years, he knows the person above him, can he get that person to come down and the three of us will chat? And then can we maybe set up another meeting, or another time to check in where we bring a couple more people with us. And we start organically building these kinds of relationships. That's a recipe for strong relationships, a strong sense of solidarity and the kind of trust that you need to then go out and take a real risk, like confronting and I can say more, but I think honestly, that's the number one thing I want to say is that the relationships are really key.

That's, I mean, yeah, that resonates so deeply with what I've heard from so many more organizers, I think, even just coming out of something like, you know, the COVID 19 pandemic, where everyone was more isolated, more, you know, alienated and atomized than they were before. The power of Yeah, like you said, just building relationships, even if it's something as seemingly anodyne as like, yeah, you know, having a cookout outside your building, if you have the space to do that, right, like something that allows people to come together, get to know one another, and actually build those kinds of trusting relationships that you know that in the 21st century, it felt like weren't possible before, that we're constantly kind of led to believe just isn't possible anymore. It's really inspiring to hear that that's that that's something that tenant unions here in Connecticut have been able to do.

Yeah, it is possible. People want to connect. I mean, we're all lonely. Yeah,

that's true. Well, I think it's Calvin, did you have any other any other questions? You wanted to ask her anything to add?

Not at all. Is there anything that you want to plug that people can publicize or help out with?

Definitely. Follow CT Tenants Union on Twitter, share our stuff, our posts on there, you know, follow central CT DSA on Twitter as well. And you know, we every once in a while, we'll do a call to action on that Twitter account for CT Tenants Union. And so that comes across your timeline, and it's telling you to call a phone number or something like that, or donate to GoFundMe, you know, please participate.

Absolutely. Yeah. And even if you're not in Connecticut, you listening right now, I mean, the the CT tenants union Twitter page is a really, really good resource, just to hear about, you know, tactically and strategically what tenants unions in the state are doing, and how they're going about doing this kind of radical organizing work. So wonderful. Well, thank you once again, to Luke Melonokos-Harrison for being with us here today. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We here at reverb are going to be signing off, but we will be back with more episodes again soon. All right. Take care everybody. Bye bye. Bye. Our show today was produced by Alex Helberg and Calvin Pollack with editing work by Alex regroups. CO producers at large are Ben Williams. So he was Zack and Mike louder. You can subscribe to reverb and leave us a review on Apple, podcasts Stitcher, Android or wherever you listen to podcasts, check out our website at WWW dot reverb cass.com. You can also like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter where our handle is at reverb cast. That's r e v e r b underscore c a s t if you've enjoyed our show and want to help amplify more of our public scholarship work, please consider leaving us a five star review on your podcast platform of choice and tell a friend about us. We sincerely appreciate the support of our listeners. Thanks so much for tuning in.