On 8/22/20, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
When I say that I'm voting for Joe Biden, I need to make it clear that
I have only slightly more confidence in his leadership than I do for
the destructive behavior of our current Emperor. The problem is that
the majority of Americans do not control enough wealth to "own" their
own Political Party, like the Democrats and Republicans do. So we are
urged to vote, but in truth we have no one to vote for. Still,
stories like this one do drive me to vote, if only to eject the
current masquerader leading our nation into ruin. A vote for Joe
still requires that we roll up our sleeves and offer our time and
energy toward changing the system. Of course I personally believe
that capitalism and democracy are incompatible. But that's a
conversation we can get into once we get the Foxes out of the Hen
House.
Carl Jarvis, yelling "The sky really is falling in".
On 8/21/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
An illegal eviction during a pandemic?
You never think these things will happen to you personally - until they
do.
Yasha Levine
Aug 22
Earlier this week, Evgenia and I found out that our landlord in Los
Angeles
is trying to illegally boot us from our apartment - even as an unchecked
pandemic still rages through the city.
We've been paying rent on time and have been good tenants. And we just
found
out last month that Evgenia's pregnant. The landlord even congratulated
us
on our "future baby," only to threaten us and to scheme to push us out on
the street very next day. And the nice and caring guy that he is, he's
given
us less than two weeks to collect our shit and get out. Kicking out a
pregnant woman during a pandemic - what a pal!
We can't read his thoughts, but a far as we can tell he's doing this out
of
pure greed. We live in a rent-controlled apartment, and it's very likely
that he wants us out so that he can massively jack up the rent.
We're in the middle of a pandemic with record unemployment and a housing
catastrophe. Huge swaths of the economy are shut down. People are going
hungry. Millions haven't been able to make rent. By some estimates, 40
percent of renter households nationally haven't paid in full and are at a
risk of eviction. In some states, that number is much higher. Our
governments - from the federal to the local - aren't doing anything to
address the problem. People are abandoning their apartments, and rents
are
falling for the first time in decades. Our neighborhood in LA is flooded
with empty rentals, and more "For Rent" signs are going up everyday.
The ship is sinking and yet landlords are still doing their thing.
Yasha Levine @yashalevine
Gotta say @theLAndmagazine is great - and has great art. Thanks to
@EvgeniaKovda for turning me on to it.
August 21st 2020
6 Retweets20 Likes
In LA and all over the country, even with a patchwork of weak eviction
moratoriums in place, landlords are finding ways to harass and push
people
out on the street. Just the other day, some asshole landlord in San
Antonio
posted a threatening smiley face fake eviction letter, hoping to scare a
mother of two into abandoning her apartment because she's behind on rent
-
only to backtrack when the story went viral. This kind of thing is
happening
all over the place.
So Evgenia and I are not alone.
What makes our case particularly bizarre is that, even though we've been
hurting financially, we've been paying rent in full and on time all
through
the pandemic. I repeat: We've been paying rent on time. And yet this guy
is
still trying to boot us out of the apartment - just because he thinks he
can
make a bit more money? It's cruel and fucked up. It's also illegal.
America is careening into a massive economic and social disaster. So it's
nice to see that landlords like ours are still living up to their
parasitic
reputations. They're doing their part to make the crisis even worse. Are
you?
Anyway, it's been a hectic and stressful few days. I'm angry and outraged
at
what's happening. I want to say a lot more - and, as the situation
develops,
I will. For now I just want to say thank you for supporting my work. It
means a lot.
-Yasha Levine
PS: Even at the very start the COVID lockdown back in March, it was
obvious
that evictions were going to be a serious problem. Evgenia and I even
joined
early protests in front of LA's mayor Eric Garcetti's office to push the
city to do something about the mass evictions that were just around the
corner. Little did we know that it was going to touch us personally like
this.
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