Red Clydeside was the era of political radicalism in Glasgow, Scotland, and areas around the city, on the banks of the River Clyde, such as Clydebank, Greenock, Dumbarton and Paisley, from the 1910s until the early 1930s. Red Clydeside is a significant part of the history of the labour movement in Britain as a whole, and Scotland in particular.
Clara Lemlich Shavelson was a leader of the Uprising of 20,000, the massive strike of shirtwaist workers in New York's garment industry in 1909, where she spoke in Yiddish and called for action. Later blacklisted from the industry for her labor union work, she became a member of the Communist Party USA and a consumer activist. In her last years as a nursing home resident she helped to organize the staff.
A rent strike is a method of protest commonly employed against large landlords. In a rent strike, a group of tenants come together and agree to refuse to pay their rent en masse until a specific list of demands is met by the landlord. This can be a useful tactic of final resort for use against intransigent landlords, but carries the risk of eviction and lowered credit scores in some cases.
The New York shirtwaist strike of 1909, also known as the Uprising of the 20,000, was a labour strike primarily involving Jewish women working in New York shirtwaist factories. It was the largest strike by female American workers up to that date. Led by Clara Lemlich and the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and supported by the National Women's Trade Union League of America (NWTUL), the strike began in November 1909.
Pauline M. Newman was an American labor activist. She is best remembered as the first female general organizer of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) and for six decades of work as the education director of the ILGWU Health Center.
United Workers Cooperatives, also known as Allerton Coops, is a historic apartment building complex located at 2700–2870 Bronx Park East in Allerton, Bronx, New York City. The complex includes three contributing buildings and five contributing structures. The Tudor Revival style buildings were built during two construction campaigns, 1926–1927 and 1927–1929 by the United Workers' Association. The buildings feature half timbered gables, horizontal half-timbered bands topped with sloping slate roofs, corbelled and crenellated towers, and picturesque chimneys.
Janet Freeman was an American community organizer and activist for tenant's rights in New York City's lower Manhattan. On June 20, 2013, the corner of Elizabeth Street and Kenmare Street was co-named "Janet Freeman Way" by the New York City Council in her memory and to commemorate her activism on behalf of the community. According to NYC Streets in its listing of street names and their honorees, "Janet Freeman was a community organizer and tenant advocate. She founded the Croman Tenants Association; the Coalition to Protect Public Housing and Section 8; and Co-op Watch, to prevent evictions through phony conversions. She started campaigns to organize tenants against aggressive landlords, phony demolitions, and harassment in and around Chinatown and Little Italy."
Ella Donovan was a prominent figure and a full-time organiser in the Stepney Tenants Defence League, a communist led grassroots organisation that organised Rent Strikes in the 1930s. She taught tenants how to organise, determine their legal rights and collectively fight landlords.
The Crown Heights Tenant Union (CHTU) is a tenants union created in October 2013 to unify old and new tenants against the gentrification of the neighborhood of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York City. The CHTU has pushed for local collective bargaining agreements between tenants and landlords to be written into the deeds of buildings that would regulate rent increases and codify repair and renovation standards. They also assist individual tenants, educating them on their rights and how to enforce them, lobby in Albany for better rent laws, and participate in direct action, targeting predatory equity real-estate companies they believe to be involved in illegal evictions and harassment tactics.
Glasgow Women's Housing Association (GWHA) was established in Glasgow, Scotland, in mid-1914 by the Independent Labour Party Housing Committee launched by Andrew McBride in 1913 and the Women's Labour League in reaction to the increasing rent prices and overcrowding exacerbated by the advent of the First World War.
Eviction in the United States refers to the pattern of tenant removal by landlords in the United States. In an eviction process, landlords forcibly remove tenants from their place of residence and reclaim the property. Landlords may decide to evict tenants who have failed to pay rent, violated lease terms, or possess an expired lease. Landlords may also choose not to renew a tenant's lease, however, this does not constitute an eviction. In the United States, eviction procedures, landlord rights, and tenant protections vary by state and locality. Historically, the United States has seen changes in domestic eviction rates during periods of major socio-political and economic turmoil—including the Great Depression, the 2008 Recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic. High eviction rates are driven by affordable housing shortages and rising housing costs. Across the United States, low-income and disadvantaged neighborhoods have disproportionately higher eviction rates. Certain demographics—including low income renters, Black and Hispanic renters, women, and people with children—are also at a greater risk of eviction. Additionally, eviction filings remain on renters' public records. This can make it more difficult for renters to access future housing, since most landlords will not rent to a tenant with a history of eviction. Eviction and housing instability are also linked to many negative health and life outcomes, including homelessness, poverty, and poor mental and physical health.
The Metropolitan Council on Housing is a tenant rights organization in New York City founded in 1959. As the oldest and largest tenants' organization in the city," it has focused on issues including rent regulation and affordable public housing.
Frances Axler Goldin was a housing rights activist and literary agent in New York City. She was a founding member of the Metropolitan Council on Housing and the Cooper Square Committee. Beginning in 1959, she led a successful campaign to defeat an urban renewal plan of Robert Moses, which would have replaced historic, affordable housing with a freeway in the Lower East Side. For decades, Goldin was associated with the Lower East Side, where she was a neighborhood preservationist and community figure. The 175 Essex Building of Essex Crossing is named in her honor, and she was profiled in the documentary It Took 50 Years.
Cancel rent is a slogan and tenant rights movement in the United States, which advocates for the cancellation of rental payments and suspension of mortgage payments during the coronavirus pandemic. Activists and organizations have also presented other demands, which include the cancellation of housing-related expenses, cancellation of late fees for housing payments, the establishment of a landlord hardship fund, an increase in emergency housing, and an eviction moratorium. The movement was triggered by the economic impact of the pandemic, in which mass business closures and employee layoffs resulted in financial insecurity for many Americans. Tenants faced a range of issues, including the inability to pay rent, harassment or intimidation from landlords, and potential eviction. This situation put tenants at risk of damaged credit ratings, food insecurity, and homelessness. Consequently, activists, tenants rights organizations, and some politicians have called for the cancellation of rent.
Marcela Mitaynes is a Peruvian-American politician and tenant organizer. She is a member of the New York State Assembly, representing the 51st district as a Democrat. Mitaynes is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
The Tenants' Strike or Broom Strike of 1907 was a popular movement against the rise in rents in tenant houses in the city of Buenos Aires and other Argentine cities, popularly called conventillos. The strike began in August 1907, it lasted approximately 3 months and more than one hundred tenants participated in the movement, with thirty-two thousand workers on strike. It had a significant presence of anarchist and socialist activists.
A tenants union, also known as a tenants association, is a group of tenants that collectively organize to improve the conditions of their housing and mutually educate about their rights as renters. Groups may also lobby local officials to change housing policies or address homelessness. As of 2018, in the United States, two states and D.C provide significant rights to tenant unions, and twenty-nine other states provide legal protections to tenant union organizing.
The 1918-1920 New York City rent strikes were some of the most significant tenant mobilizations against landlords in New York City history. Prior to the strikes, a housing shortage caused by World War I exacerbated tenant conditions, with the construction industry being redirected to war time efforts. In addition, the new defense jobs available attracted thousands of new families to the city, further driving property vacancy rates down. Under these conditions overcrowding, poor conditions, frequent raising of rents and speculation by landlords were common. These long term circumstances, and a nationwide coal shortage, which culminated in a dangerous heating crisis for tenants, would become the catalysts for the subsequent organizing and wave of rent strikes across the city.
The 1904 New York City rent strike was the first mass rent strike in New York City. It took place in the Lower East Side in the Spring of 1904, spreading to 2,000 families across 800 tenements and lasting nearly a month. The strike was a response to proposed rent increases amid a housing shortage. It was primarily organized by local Jewish immigrant women with organizational strategies and language learned from the 1902 kosher meat boycott and the history of labor organizing in the area. Tenant organizers, socialists, and local labor unions united as the New York Protective Rent Association; women who had initially organized the strike such as Bertha Liebson were removed from leadership positions. The strike was successful in the short term, halting the majority of proposed rent increases for the following year. However, landlords began raising rents again a year later, leading to the 1907 New York City Rent Strike.
The 1915 Glasgow rent strikes were a series of tenant mobilizations by Glasgow, Scotland tenants opposing rent increases by landlords, who raised rents following a housing shortage.
