Resource Page:
Empowering education on Tenant Organizing
RESOURCE PAGE: EMPOWERING EDUCATION ON Tenant organizing
This resource page was created to support educators who attended our workshop on April 17th, 2021.
Our goal: Help you build classroom resources about tenant organizing that are relevant to your students and your community.
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tenant organizing today:
GuideS to tenant organizing:
Tenant organizing handbook by the Los Angeles Tenants Union
Tactics Zine by the Autonomous Tenants Union
COVID-19 Tenant Organizing Guide By Philadelphia Tenants Union
More organizing resources by ATUN.
Find tenant organizing in your area:
Teaching idea: Invite local tenant organizers
Have you considered contacting tenant organizers in your area and inviting them to present at your school or in your community? Here are some ways to connect community tenant organizing to your classroom:
Project-based learning: Engage students in research and action relating to housing in your school community. Students can research neighborhood history, interview residents and learn about current community organizing from tenant organizers and community members who are engaged in this important work. This project can connect to Social Science, Ethnic Studies or Journalism courses.
Know Your Rights Community Workshop: Provide structured opportunities for students to build a workshop or event that helps serve the needs of tenants in your school community. Students can learn vital skills and information related to accessing housing services or housing rights from local organizers and use what they’ve learned to help provide access to this information to their community.
How have you included tenant organizers in your classes? Let us know!
Tenant organizing in History
Overview:
The Tenant Movement in the US by Peter Drier
The Tenant Movement in NYC 1904-1984 via Libcom
Teaching Idea: Compare & Contrast Historical and Present Day Tenant Organizing
In the 1930s, tenant organizing and resistance to eviction was fierce. Consider comparing tenant organizing during the Great Depression with tenant organizing in your community today.
Activity: Analyze Primary Source (Short Audio & Text):
“I’m Going to Fight Like Hell” Anna Taffler and the Unemployed Councils of the 1930s. via HistoryMatters.GMU
Analyze Anna’s story with students:
Sourcing: Ask students to SOAPSTone this document (identify Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject and Tone).
Contextualization & Close Reading:
Ask: what else can we tell about Anna from this excerpt?
Possible answers: she is a mother, she is an immigrant, students usually comment on personality traits like “strong” or “determined”.
Activity: Compare and Contrast Past & Present Tenant Organizing:
Once you’ve analyzed a document from the 1930s, find information about a current tenant organizing effort to compare. It’s best if this comes from your community.
We recommend this clip about California housing activists Moms for Housing in Oakland via CBS evening News.
Compare and Contrast with Students:
Ask students to identify similarities and differences between the organizers, tactics, message and outcomes of present day housing organizing featured in this segment and Anna Taffler’s story.
Possible answers: mothers, direct action tactics, similar personality traits, more.
For more teaching ideas, see our meeting deck from 4.17.21 here: Empowering Education on Tenant Organizing 4.17.21
Tenant organizing in History: Possible Topics to Teach:
The Landlord as Czar: Pre-World War I Tenant Activity - About the first rent strike in NYC in 1904-07. via TenantNet
Pauline Newman organizes influential New York rent strike via Jewish Women’s Archive.
Tenant Organizing During the Great Depression:
Fighting evictions: The 1930s and now via the Monthly Review
Fighting evictions during the Great Depression by Mark Naison
This Day in Resistance History: The Chicago Eviction Riots via GRIID.org
Primary Source: “I’m Going to Fight Like Hell”: Anna Taffler and the Unemployed Councils of the 1930s text and audio via HistoryMatters at GMU
The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison: in Chapter 13 the narrator participates in a communist-led anti-eviction action (begins page 206).
Tenant Organizing in the 1960s-1970s:
Rent Strikes Aren’t Just About Rent about historic Harlem rent strike in 1964 via JSTOR Daily
Primary Source: Time Magazine on Harlem Rent Strike via TIME
The International Hotel: Evicted From San Francisco History via About the struggle to save a historic Filipino American community home in San Francisco in 1968 via The Culture Trip.
Looking back on Morningside Heights history: How Marie Runyon became a tenant crusader and fierce progressive advocate via Columbia Spectator