Politicians in Washington and around the country refused to act as the stock market crash took an increasing toll on the livelihood of average workers. Instead of using the United States’ vast treasury to feed, clothe and house the millions of unemployed, the capitalist politicians resorted to vain tokenism and extolled “upright” citizens to donate to local charities and show sympathy toward the poor.
The Communist Party USA, whose program then included struggling for a socialist revolution, spearheaded an effort to organize the unemployed and fight back against the injustices incurred during the depression. Communists organized Unemployed Councils and led a vigorous struggle for a moratorium on evictions and direct aid to the dispossessed. The councils called marches and rallies and frequently occupied the offices of government agencies.
Two of the most effective tactics employed by the councils were
eviction resistance and rent strikes. Rent strikes required a high degree of organization among tenants to secure widespread participation and to form committees to articulate demands and negotiate with landlords.
Seven rent strikes were successfully organized in New York City during the last nine months of 1931 and many more occurred in New York and around the country throughout the decade.
Eviction resistance involved council militants physically moving the furniture of evicted tenants back into their apartments. Crowds would often gather and, under the direction of the Communist-led Unemployed Councils, workers would battle the police dispatched to enforce the eviction. Thousands of organized incidents of eviction resistance occurred throughout the Great Depression.
The Great Rent Strike War of 1932
One such incident to gain notoriety was
the Battle of the Bronx and is detailed in Mark Naison’s “From eviction resistance to rent control: tenant activism in the Great Depression” (in “The Tenant Movement in New York City, 1904-1984”).
Naison points to a quiet section of the Bronx as the starting point for the Great Rent Strike War of 1932. There
the Unemployed Councils led rent strikes at three different large apartment buildings in the early part of January.
The majority of tenants in each building withheld their rent and demanded a moratorium on evictions, reductions in rent prices and recognition of the tenants’ committee for bargaining purposes. Landlords responded with widespread evictions, especially targeted toward those leading the strike. Judges quickly approved the eviction notices.
The evictions were met with strong resistance when police and marshals attempted to force tenants from the buildings.
Hundreds of protestors fought the police hand-to-hand and with sticks and stones when the officers would attempt to remove furniture from the buildings.
The outnumbered police barely held their line while waiting for reinforcements as the crowds battled them under the direction of Communist Party organizers.
Reports from the New York Times indicate the women, who outnumbered the men, were the most militant, were more likely to battle the police and took the most arrests. In each case, huge numbers of foot and mounted police, marshals and moving men had to be dispatched. The capitalist court system assisted the landlords in attempting to break the strike by approving mass evictions and ordering injunctions against picketing.
The landlords’ counteroffensive won them a temporary reprieve, but by the winter of 1932-1933 the communists had strengthened the Unemployed Councils and a new firestorm of rent strikes spread across New York City and around the country.
Organizers called hunger marches and sit-ins at state capitols, town halls, relief bureaus and on Washington.
The strikes, eviction battles and hunger marches proved a stunning success for unemployed workers. Landlords often agreed to significant reductions in rent and to slow the pace of evictions. Agencies such as the Home Relief Bureau were forced by the sit-ins and hunger strikes to dispense funds to the protestors for rent payment.
Rent control and public housing: a lasting legacy...
The unemployed workers’ movement had a lasting impact beyond the temporary victories obtained from landlords and relief agencies. The Unemployed Councils’ militancy forced the national and state governments to enact serious housing reforms, the twin pillars of which were rent control and public housing...
After almost a decade of rent strikes and eviction resistance, Congress passed the United States Housing Act of 1937. The act established a public housing program under the direction of the U.S. Housing Authority to provide loans to local agencies for the construction of low-rent housing. The USHA was the predecessor of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is supposed to ensure affordable housing today.
Rent controls were another response forced on the government by the militant demands for affordable housing...Right-wing attacks on these programs have been consistent throughout the decades. In the 1980s a vociferous conservative assault on progressive welfare programs ensued in the U.S. under the Reagan regime. As a result, many of the progressive elements of the housing legislation were watered down or removed...
However, there are signs that it is not just the crisis in capitalism that is repeating itself, but also the struggle against its inhumane tendency to force millions of families into homelessness during economic downturns.
In Massachusetts, a movement to stop evictions began in earnest at the start of the new year. Tenant activists, trade unionists, anti-war organizers and progressive local politicians joined together and successfully faced down a constable sent to enforce the eviction of a mother and children from their home.
In Detroit, the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice, Detroit City Task Force and the United Community Housing Coalition have embarked on a campaign for a moratorium on new home foreclosures. Protestors rallied on Jan. 29 to pressure Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm during her annual State of the State Address.
As the mortgage crisis spreads, so will the movement for a moratorium. If this movement gains the sense of urgency, militancy and mass support that the Unemployed Councils of the 1930s did, then people’s history can repeat itself too.
http://www.workers.org/2008/us/anti-eviction_struggles_0221/
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