Latest / Gimme a Break! / DSA: Fight Mamdani's Privatization! Defend the Projects!

Transcript

DSA: Fight Mamdani's Privatization! Defend the Projects! · Gimme a Break!

0:00
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: Hello.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: Hola those.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: Uh my name is Danilo.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh I am a member of uh the Brooklyn chapter of Who and Tour, Unida por la Independencia.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: Uh we are a grassroots group based in Bushwick, or uh the Brooklyn chapter at least, uh, and we are working with uh Puerto Ricans uh and Puerto Rican youth specifically in Bushwick.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh we have also uh we have also been uh working directly with members of the Hope Gardens Housing Complex, which is the largest housing complex in Bushwick.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh they have gone through the process of Radpack.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: They have been privatized for over five years, and we continue to hear the issues that they are having to live with, which include kind of bogus fines for getting locked out, their unannounced apartment visits, and also just like negligent repairs.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: There is a block on Wilson Ave that the stretch of uh buildings all flood every single time it rains.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: And that's not it.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: In Nov this past November, uh the uh Wavecrest did not pass its uh its public housing or the inspection needed to receive the federal funding from Save Section 8.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: And they tried to pass that off on to the tenants by uh making the residents pay market rate housing for that month.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: James! They only retracted that and said, Oh, it was a mistake when all the tenants had a large town hall and made them change their minds.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: But I think it's important to say that this is not just wave crests, this is an issue with the Rad Pack process overall.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: A private landlord is gonna do private landlord things and they are there to make money, they do not care at all about the the standard of living of the people in uh public housing.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: Um and I think it's just it's important to note that, like, when we transition from the Section 9 public housing to section 8, that is a poverty trap.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: The people in Section 8 can only make 80% AMI.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: It completely disincentivizes people from trying to improve their standard of living.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, they'll lose their public housing or they'll lose those housing vouchers and they have to pay full price.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: This is an issue that particularly impacts our youth, that people are being displaced from Bushwick, from the neighborhoods that their families have been in for generations, and this is something that uh, you know, as the costs skyrocket in the city, we need to be building more public housing, not trying to take away what we already have.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: And just to clarify, you know, I know they like to use a lot of different language for what Radpact is, or it's like, okay, we're gonna give more money, they're gonna be repairs.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: No, any public housing that is managed by a private landlord is not public housing that is housing for profit.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: Save section nine.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
2:50
SPEAKER_02: Woo! Niger says get back, we say fight back! NITES says get back, we say fight back.
2:59
SPEAKER_04: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Gimme a Break, the podcast of the Just Break Already caucus in the DSA.
3:06
SPEAKER_04: The audio you heard at the beginning was of Danilo, a representative of Hoopy, Juventur Unida por la independencia, a youth group that fights for an independent, anti-imperialist, and socialist Puerto Rico.
3:20
SPEAKER_04: And he spoke about the work Hoopy does as part of fighting for residence in NYCHA, which stands for New York City Housing Authority, otherwise known as the Projects.
3:30
SPEAKER_04: His speech was one of many heard at the United Front protest last week outside one of the quote, NYCHA in your neighborhood hearings that the Mamdani administration have been holding.
3:41
SPEAKER_04: So why would there be a protest outside this hearing, which in theory sounds like a good thing to give voice to NYCHA tenants?
3:48
SPEAKER_04: As the flyer building for the rally, which was put out by the Defend the Projects Committee, states, Mamdani has released his comprehensive housing plan.
3:58
SPEAKER_04: Behind all the slick words are his plans to privatize the projects.
4:02
SPEAKER_04: The lie has always been that NYCHA and the city don't have enough money to fix the projects.
4:08
SPEAKER_04: But Mamdani is putting$1.5 billion into private hands and helping them chop up public housing.
4:16
SPEAKER_04: So this is the focus of our episode.
4:18
SPEAKER_04: How our quote socialist mayor is selling out public housing and why the left and the DSA in particular must fight to defend the projects against these attacks.
4:28
SPEAKER_04: Our guests today were instrumental in organizing last week's protest.
4:32
SPEAKER_04: Welcome, Mika.
4:34
SPEAKER_04: Hello.
4:34
SPEAKER_04: Mika is with the Defend the Projects Committee.
4:37
SPEAKER_04: I think the name is pretty self-explanatory.
4:39
SPEAKER_04: And also, welcome Anissa.
4:41
SPEAKER_04: Hello.
4:41
SPEAKER_04: Anissa is with Adolfina, an anti-imperialist women's organization that fights for Puerto Rican independence and women's liberation.
4:49
SPEAKER_04: So I think it would be good to start if you guys want to introduce yourselves.
4:53
SPEAKER_04: What are your groups?
4:54
SPEAKER_04: What do you guys do?
4:56
SPEAKER_03: I'm Mika.
4:57
SPEAKER_03: I'm with the Defend the Projects Committee.
4:59
SPEAKER_03: And uh, like you said before, the name is pretty self-explanatory.
5:02
SPEAKER_03: The group is basically trying to build power amongst the black and Hispanic population, uh, not only in public housing, but also in New York City.
5:12
SPEAKER_03: And uh we would like to actually expand uh this committee, not only with uh tenants from public housing, but tenants from across New York.
5:20
SPEAKER_06: Cool.
5:20
SPEAKER_06: And uh Anisa.
5:22
SPEAKER_06: Hi, I'm Anisa Ramirez.
5:25
SPEAKER_06: As you said, I'm part of Adolfina, Adolfina BK, and I'm also one of the main organizers for tenants against privatization or TAP, which is the coalition of grassroots orgs and mass organizations that put on the speakout outside of the Nights in your neighborhood hearing where we met y'all.
5:45
SPEAKER_06: And TAP actually started as like a campaign within Adolfina that was kind of rooted in our mass work in Williamsburg Houses, which is a public housing complex in our area of work, and has kind of evolved and grown into this coalition that includes Defend the Projects Committee, includes Hoopy, which is the clip from the beginning, and other organizations, tenants and allied unions as well.
6:11
SPEAKER_06: Awesome.
6:11
SPEAKER_06: And where where does the name Adolfina come from?
6:14
SPEAKER_06: We are named after Adolfina Villanueva Asario, who was an Afro-Borico woman who was murdered by the police in 1980 for defending her land in Puerto Rico from displacement.
6:27
SPEAKER_06: The police came to evict her and her family, and they ended up killing her and severely injuring her husband as well.
6:33
SPEAKER_06: And so we are named in her honor.
6:35
SPEAKER_06: And that is why Adolfina as an organization actually fights so hard against displacement.
6:42
SPEAKER_06: That's why we, as an organization, are called to the cause and the fight of privatization in public housing in New York.
6:49
SPEAKER_06: Not only because so many Puerto Rican families live in New York or live in public housing in New York generationally, the migration patterns from Puerto Rico to New York are strongly linked to to public housing.
7:02
SPEAKER_06: But it's just kind of like in our in our blood as Puerto Ricans, as anti-imperialist Puerto Ricans.
7:07
SPEAKER_06: And so, yeah, that's where the name comes from.
7:08
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, thank you.
7:09
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's really important.
7:11
SPEAKER_04: I met you guys at the protest this past Wednesday outside the Ethel Velas uh community center in East Harlem where there was a NYCHA in your neighborhood hearing.
7:21
SPEAKER_04: So maybe you guys could explain why why do a protest outside the hearing?
7:25
SPEAKER_04: What was the hearing about, and why was there a protest outside of it?
7:29
SPEAKER_04: I'd like to give a little backstory to that.
7:32
SPEAKER_03: A couple months ago, Mamdani held uh these hearings called uh rental ripoff hearings, and basically there was a hearing in each of the five boroughs, but he had basically barred NYCHA residents from taking part in these rental ripoff hearings.
7:45
SPEAKER_03: And within a couple hours of announcing that, there was huge backlash from tenant leaders in the projects and tenants themselves.
7:53
SPEAKER_03: In response to that, uh Mamdanny had to cover his ass basically and do these NITRING in neighborhood events.
7:59
SPEAKER_03: Instead of five boroughs, he did three.
8:00
SPEAKER_03: I guess he didn't want to go to Staten Island.
8:03
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
8:04
SPEAKER_03: But basically, the reason why Defend the Projects Committee, along with uh TAP, because the Defend the Projects Committee is in coalition with uh Tenants Against Privatization.
8:14
SPEAKER_03: We wanted to host this speakout and rally and protest outside of the hearings because just like the rental rip-off hearings, this is not doing anything.
8:23
SPEAKER_03: Like NYCHA, the city officials, Mamdani knows exactly what's going on in public housing.
8:29
SPEAKER_03: They know how long it's been defunded, they know how long it's been decaying.
8:34
SPEAKER_03: These hearings are just to blow off steam and make tenants think that the city has their back when they actually don't.
8:42
SPEAKER_03: So, in the middle of having these hearings, he's released a comprehensive housing plan that instead of putting money in Section 9, he's actually put it in the hands of private developers.
8:51
SPEAKER_03: So it would it was basically a speakout to expose who Mamdani really is, showed that he's actually screwing the black and Hispanic masses in New York City and in public housing, and to basically shed light to that while also giving tenants who are live in the projects the ability to speak and say what they feel.
9:08
SPEAKER_03: Um, because for so long, even though these hearings are meant to do that, all tenants can speak.
9:13
SPEAKER_03: They speak to city officials.
9:14
SPEAKER_03: No, these city officials don't care.
9:16
SPEAKER_03: They already have a plan, they've made up their minds, and it's privatizing public housing.
9:20
SPEAKER_03: So this action was in a way not only to expose that, but build confidence in project tenants who want to fight back.
9:27
SPEAKER_03: There is a way to fight back without like looking to uh Mam Dani or begging him to treat us nicer or begging him for money.
9:33
SPEAKER_03: It's real action against what's actually gonna be very detrimental to our lives.
9:38
SPEAKER_04: I remember the rental rip-off hearings, and those were done against like private landlords and you know, the the biggest sunlords.
9:45
SPEAKER_04: And there was just like an obvious like omission, obvious thing that the biggest landlord, a sunlord in New York City is the city, is what Mamdani represents now.
9:55
SPEAKER_04: And uh and so with the rental ripoff hearing, people would go and they would complain about their particular landlords to try to get redress for their concerns.
10:04
SPEAKER_04: But with public housing, the city knows every complaint, every issue because it goes to them and they're responsible.
10:12
SPEAKER_04: There was a lot of anger that there wasn't a venue for public housing residents to complain about the decay and this neglect that's been happening for decades towards public housing.
10:23
SPEAKER_04: What people want is remedies, not just another space to complain.
10:29
SPEAKER_03: The complaints are always coming through in the projects.
10:32
SPEAKER_03: The leaks, the molds, the rats, the roaches, the just the complete decay of the projects is something that's very well known to the city, to the mayor's office, and to every other housing official.
10:44
SPEAKER_03: So this idea that now you're gonna have these Nigerian neighborhoods when you just basically barred us from taking part.
10:50
SPEAKER_03: You're only doing it in response to barring us from the rental rip-off hearings.
10:55
SPEAKER_03: It's so in your face.
10:57
SPEAKER_03: It's so fake, it's so all of this stuff because you say you're giving us a voice, but then telling us that the only way we're gonna get our repairs done is if you privatize the whole thing.
11:07
SPEAKER_03: And that's not a solution whatsoever.
11:10
SPEAKER_03: You know, the idea that you're gonna have public housing with private management, you'll get all the repairs done as if we didn't hear what's been going on in other buildings is just such a slap in the face.
11:19
SPEAKER_03: You're treating these tenants in public housing as if they're idiots.
11:23
SPEAKER_03: We fully understand what's going on.
11:24
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
11:25
SPEAKER_04: In the audio clip of Danilo speaking at the beginning, he talked about projects that Hoopy does work in that's already been privatized, basically, that already has a packed rad in them for a few years and how bad the conditions still are.
11:39
SPEAKER_04: Maybe you guys can explain a little some of the background to the current attacks on public housing.
11:44
SPEAKER_04: Like for listeners who don't know what is section nine versus section eight, what is packed rad?
11:52
SPEAKER_04: Because the city and the Mamdani administration says that these things are social housing or affordable housing, or that they're in the interests of the current tenants of public housing.
12:02
SPEAKER_04: Why is that not true?
12:04
SPEAKER_04: Why are these things actually privatization and not in the interests of the people that live in the projects?
12:11
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I think I can take part of that question.
12:14
SPEAKER_06: I can kind of give some background on what is section nine, what is section eight, what is Radpact as a program, and how does this tie into the attacks on public housing and into the Mamdani administration in particular?
12:28
SPEAKER_06: I do want to speak a little bit on the speakout and on working in public housing that has already been privatized.
12:35
SPEAKER_06: So I think exactly what Mika said, the fakeness of these NYCHA in your neighborhood hearings is really felt by the tenants, I think.
12:46
SPEAKER_06: And I think one of the main reasons why we decided to do a speakout in particular was because the voices of the tenants were not actually being heard.
12:55
SPEAKER_06: And so whether we're inside being heard, you know, inside the hearing being heard or outside, you're gonna hear what we have to say.
13:02
SPEAKER_06: Um, and I think it was also a really opportune space for us to really push forward our demands as tenants, as TAP, as tenants against privatization.
13:13
SPEAKER_06: And so we have a demand around ending Radpact and ending any other form of privatization.
13:20
SPEAKER_06: We have a demand around allowing tenants to actually vote no on privatization within their own complexes, which is not actually being not actually happening in Hope Gardens, where Hoopy and Danilo, they work out of Hope Gardens, they've already been privatized.
13:37
SPEAKER_06: Adolfina and I work out of Williamsburg Houses, which is a neighbor to Hope Gardens.
13:43
SPEAKER_06: They have already been privatized.
13:45
SPEAKER_06: They actually have the same private management company that's running them, which is Wavecrest.
13:49
SPEAKER_06: And particularly in Williamsburg Houses, the majority of the tenants that we work with and have spoken to had no idea that they were supposed to vote for privatization.
13:58
SPEAKER_06: They were never told that.
13:59
SPEAKER_06: They were never given an opportunity to vote.
14:02
SPEAKER_06: The New York City government just decided that this housing complex is going to be privatized and they just pushed it through.
14:07
SPEAKER_06: That's why it's so important for complexes that are in the planning and engagement stage, like De Hostos, really fight for the demand to have the opportunity to say no to this privatization.
14:19
SPEAKER_06: Then we have demands around keeping housing, public housing actually section nine.
14:23
SPEAKER_06: I can get into what does that actually mean in terms of section nine versus section eight.
14:28
SPEAKER_06: And keeping public housing needs to be repaired, not privatized, and no to the demolition of public housing.
14:35
SPEAKER_06: The speakout was a way of voicing those demands that we have like aligned with the tenants that we work together in tap.
14:43
SPEAKER_06: We've aligned on these demands.
14:44
SPEAKER_06: And so kind of making them visible because that's the way that we're actually going to get them met.
14:49
SPEAKER_06: But in terms of the kind of purposely bureaucratic and convoluted terminology and different ways that we think about housing, there is section nine and there is section eight, and then there's the Radpact program.
15:05
SPEAKER_06: Section nine is kind of what we would think of as like traditional public housing, so to speak.
15:11
SPEAKER_06: So in common terms, and just like regular people terms, what that means, it is apartment buildings, it is complexes that were built, that are owned by, maintained, and obstensibly funded by the federal government.
15:27
SPEAKER_06: So that's what section nine is.
15:28
SPEAKER_06: It's like it's an apartment building.
15:30
SPEAKER_06: You can get an apartment in that building, it's public housing, you can stay for as long as you want.
15:36
SPEAKER_06: And ideally, you'd be paying 30% of your income in rent.
15:40
SPEAKER_06: Um at most, at most, exactly.
15:43
SPEAKER_06: And so it will stay affordable because it is owned and maintained and funded by the government.
15:49
SPEAKER_06: That's the idea of section nine.
15:51
SPEAKER_06: Section eight housing is called subsidized housing or voucher-based housing.
15:56
SPEAKER_06: It's kind of interchangeable.
15:58
SPEAKER_06: But the primary difference between section nine and section eight is that section eight is not owned or maintained by the government.
16:08
SPEAKER_06: These are vouchers that either go to the tenant or go to a private landlord that owns an apartment or owns a house.
16:15
SPEAKER_06: You have to be eligible for the voucher to get it.
16:17
SPEAKER_06: There can be income requirements.
16:19
SPEAKER_06: HUD is trying to implement new uh time-based requirements as well.
16:24
SPEAKER_06: So if you get a voucher, you may only be able to have it for two to five years.
16:27
SPEAKER_06: The idea is that you're tied to the voucher.
16:30
SPEAKER_06: You're not necessarily tied to the apartment or the complex.
16:34
SPEAKER_06: And you, as the tenant, again, obstensibly, this is how it's supposed to work, are only supposed to be paying 30% of your income.
16:41
SPEAKER_06: Then the federal government will subsidize the rest of the rent.
16:45
SPEAKER_06: So that's why it's called a subsidy.
16:47
SPEAKER_06: And so that's section nine and section eight.
16:49
SPEAKER_06: When it comes to RAD Pact, this is essentially a program that functions to convert section nine housing or public housing to section eight or voucher-based housing.
17:03
SPEAKER_06: So it's actually two programs that are kind of like mushed together.
17:07
SPEAKER_06: So you have RAD, which is the rental assistance demonstration program.
17:12
SPEAKER_06: That's the federal program.
17:13
SPEAKER_06: This was actually instituted by the Obama administration.
17:17
SPEAKER_06: So if you want to talk about how the Democrats have been fucking over public housing, it does not begin and end.
17:23
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
17:24
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it goes back decades.
17:26
SPEAKER_06: It doesn't start and end with Mam Dani.
17:28
SPEAKER_06: So that is like the federal version.
17:31
SPEAKER_06: And then Pact, which is permanent affordability commitment together, which is kind of a hilarious name because it is not permanent affordability, but uh, that is like the New York specific version.
17:43
SPEAKER_06: So it's basically taking RAD and kind of particularizing it to New York public housing.
17:49
SPEAKER_06: And New York has this very specific RAD Pact program because there is such a concentration of public housing here.
17:56
SPEAKER_06: Actually, New York has the most public housing out of anywhere in the US.
18:00
SPEAKER_06: A second place that has the most public housing is actually Puerto Rico.
18:03
SPEAKER_06: That's also why these fights are linked, these struggles are connected.
18:07
SPEAKER_06: Functionally, what Rad Pact will do, what Rad Pact does is it takes Section 9 housing, public housing, and it converts it to voucher-based housing.
18:17
SPEAKER_06: And so what that means in practice is that these public housing complexes will go from being owned, maintained, daily operated by NYCHA to some private management company coming in, like for Hope Gardens and Williamsburg Houses.
18:33
SPEAKER_06: This is Wavecrest, which has a ton of complaints against it.
18:37
SPEAKER_06: It's a horrible company, it's known to be a horrible company, and yet they allow it to come in and be what they call a rad packed partner and do the daily operations, the maintenance, the collection of rent for these complexes.
18:52
SPEAKER_06: And supposedly NYCHA is still overseeing, they still own the land.
18:57
SPEAKER_06: So the land is still owned by the government.
19:00
SPEAKER_06: And there's like this overseeing process.
19:04
SPEAKER_06: But what we have seen, both Adolfina and Hoopy, in the work that we've done with tenants that have been privatized is that when they have an issue, when they have a maintenance issue, an issue with their rent, they will go to the management office, which is now Wavecrest, it's not NYCHA.
19:20
SPEAKER_06: And they'll say, Hey, I have this issue.
19:21
SPEAKER_06: It's not being resolved.
19:22
SPEAKER_06: What's going on?
19:23
SPEAKER_06: And Wavecrest or whoever the private management company will say, Oh, that's a NYCHA issue.
19:28
SPEAKER_06: You need to call NYCHA.
19:29
SPEAKER_06: And so the tenant will say, Okay, and they'll call NYCHA and they'll say, Hey, I have this issue, da-da-da-da.
19:34
SPEAKER_06: And NYCHA will say, Oh, that's a that's an issue for your private management company.
19:38
SPEAKER_06: Don't contact us.
19:39
SPEAKER_06: Click, and it just goes around and around like that.
19:42
SPEAKER_06: And so they actually weaponize the bureaucracy of the Radpacks program and adding this additional layer of the private management company not only privatizes, not only makes rents go up exponentially, makes eviction notices and actual evictions go up exponentially and maintenance and repairs go down, but it also weaponizes the bureaucracy to even try to get any of this addressed.
20:06
SPEAKER_03: Basically, tenants got bamboozled.
20:08
SPEAKER_03: They were told, oh, the only way to get these repairs done is if you go section eight, right?
20:13
SPEAKER_03: And a lot of tenants at the beginning didn't realize what was happening.
20:17
SPEAKER_03: Oh, we get a voucher, it's federally federally subsidized, and we're gonna get these repairs done.
20:22
SPEAKER_03: Turns out that a lot of these repairs aren't being done.
20:25
SPEAKER_03: And when they're being done, it's like you have walls now made out of paper, basically, where sinks are falling off of bathroom walls, medicine cabinets are falling off the walls, there's leaks, actually, more leaks than they were under public housing.
20:38
SPEAKER_03: And basically, these slumlords like Wavecrest are making so much money off the rent, both off the residents themselves and the federal government, while these repairs are not getting done.
20:51
SPEAKER_03: And the thing is though, when it comes to section eight under PAC, it is not a voucher that goes to the tenant.
20:58
SPEAKER_03: It is a voucher that is tied to the apartment.
21:00
SPEAKER_03: So if you become evicted, or if you're if you are thrown out of your apartment, whatever you want to call it, you can't take that voucher with you.
21:08
SPEAKER_03: That voucher is now tied to the apartment, it is tied to the landlord.
21:12
SPEAKER_03: So now you are left with no subsidy, no apartment, and basically out on your ass in the streets of New York City.
21:19
SPEAKER_04: Right.
21:20
SPEAKER_04: I think Anissa is mentioning the question of being able to vote on these programs, like change converting from Section 9 to Section 8 or doing voting for PACT RAD.
21:30
SPEAKER_04: And so some of the uh buildings have have had votes, correct?
21:34
SPEAKER_04: And like there's and there's been some recent ones where people have overwhelmingly voted against the privatization and against, you know, because what you guys have been describing, there's a number of these buildings that have already gone through this process and it's already very clear what it means.
21:51
SPEAKER_04: It means higher numbers of evictions, the repairs don't get done, even though that was supposed to be the whole basis, right?
21:57
SPEAKER_04: Is that you'll finally get repairs done, but that doesn't happen.
22:00
SPEAKER_04: Either.
22:00
SPEAKER_04: There have been some votes, and when there are, it seems like generally people have voted against it.
22:06
SPEAKER_04: But for these other ones, they're basically ramming it through.
22:09
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
22:10
SPEAKER_03: So basically that's what's happening at the hostos and uh a few other places.
22:14
SPEAKER_03: So the hostos is actually part of something called the Manhattan Bundle.
22:18
SPEAKER_03: And it's about 10 other project buildings that were basically promised on the de Blasio.
22:23
SPEAKER_03: 62,000 units were promised by de Blasio.
22:27
SPEAKER_03: He embraced PACT.
22:29
SPEAKER_03: Once PAC came into New York, he was like, let's go, let's do it.
22:32
SPEAKER_03: So he promised 62,000 units to quote unquote the conversion.
22:37
SPEAKER_03: These 62,000 units were not given the chance to vote.
22:41
SPEAKER_03: So the building I live in is not being given the chance to vote, right?
22:45
SPEAKER_03: It's just being rammed through.
22:46
SPEAKER_03: Or at least that's what they're telling us.
22:48
SPEAKER_03: Now there's other buildings like, and I would I want to give my flowers to the tenant leaders of these buildings, but Coney Island, uh, Stanley Isaacs, and Jacob Reese.
22:58
SPEAKER_03: These three projects in particular were organized, mobilized, and all voted no against the privatization and they won.
23:06
SPEAKER_03: They won against Rad Pact.
23:08
SPEAKER_03: The thing is, though, there's a certain type of blackmail that comes with it because now they're telling these buildings, well, you're not going to get funded for these repairs then.
23:16
SPEAKER_03: So it's basically this whole thing to push the privatization through.
23:19
SPEAKER_03: Now, for us, the reason why tenant leaders and let's say the hostos or other buildings are fighting is because we're kind of refusing to accept a decision that we never made.
23:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
23:31
SPEAKER_03: Adding to the instability to the lives of the black and brown masses in New York City.
23:36
SPEAKER_03: So that's why there's this organizing effort and why uh Defend the Projects Committee has met up with Hootpi, Adolfina, and is part of this coalition to fight against privatization.
23:46
SPEAKER_03: Because they're telling us right now that there's nothing we could do about the situation.
23:50
SPEAKER_03: And we're refusing to take that as an answer because you can't fight.
23:54
SPEAKER_03: It's gonna be one hell of a fight, but you have to fight.
23:57
SPEAKER_03: Because if you don't fight back, they're definitely gonna take it from you.
24:00
SPEAKER_03: So that's where we're at right now, and it's a big organizing effort.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: I see a lot of stuff online from people like in the DSA or sort of in the orbit of it that talk about, oh, it's not really privatization.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: Oh, mom Donnie's got this comprehensive housing plan.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you want to respond to some of that as well.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: Because I I swear when I saw some of this first come out, it was like all over the place.
24:22
SPEAKER_01: All these people like stepping up to the plate to defend what sounds very obviously like privatization from everything you guys have said so far.
24:30
SPEAKER_03: This is not conversion.
24:32
SPEAKER_03: I don't care what nobody says.
24:34
SPEAKER_03: This is privatization.
24:35
SPEAKER_03: The moment that you take tenants out of public housing and put money into private hands and say that now your rent is going to a private company, that every re repair ticket now goes through a private company, it is privatization.
24:51
SPEAKER_03: That's what it is at the end of the day.
24:52
SPEAKER_03: Taking money or having money in the city budget and not putting it into section nine and putting it into section eight is privatization.
25:01
SPEAKER_03: It's a crazy situation because now the black and Hispanic population of public housing is seeing a socialist mayor attacking them, attacking public housing, attacking their stability, and all his, for lack of a better word, groupies, instead of actually standing up for public housing, instead of standing up for the black and brown masses of New York City, are now just siding with him, pushing this lie that it's not privatization, that it's conversion instead of what they should be doing, attacking him for what he's doing to the most oppressed sections of society.
25:32
SPEAKER_03: It is not conversion, it is privatization, and it's going to add to the homeless.
25:37
SPEAKER_03: You want to look at what's happening at the first project buildings that were privatized, it's Ocean Bay.
25:43
SPEAKER_03: Evictions went right through the roof.
25:45
SPEAKER_03: Look at other buildings right down the block from me is Weiss Towers.
25:49
SPEAKER_03: They got privatized and now they have leaks upon leaks.
25:52
SPEAKER_03: The elevators don't work.
25:53
SPEAKER_03: They had three fires during their construction.
25:55
SPEAKER_03: Now they actually have cameras all throughout their buildings where management actually gets to track what tenants are doing and they harass tenants based on that.
26:07
SPEAKER_03: It's not only privatization, but it's the shakeup of people's lives because they want to make it as unbearable as possible.
26:12
SPEAKER_03: And so to either leave or they raise the rent so far up that you wind up being evicted.
26:17
SPEAKER_03: The idea that this is just a conversion is really showing the black and Hispanic masses of public housing that these supposed socialists in the DSA would rather turn their backs on the most vulnerable sections of society rather than offend a bourgeois politician.
26:33
SPEAKER_03: Because that's what Mamdani is.
26:35
SPEAKER_03: He's no socialist and he's no working class mayor.
26:37
SPEAKER_03: He's a bourgeois politician.
26:39
SPEAKER_03: He belongs to the Democratic Party.
26:41
SPEAKER_03: He belongs to real estate.
26:42
SPEAKER_03: That's that's their guy.
26:44
SPEAKER_03: He's not for us.
26:45
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, if you're actually going to fight to defend the projects and to improve the conditions, who you have to fight is the city and is Mamdani.
26:56
SPEAKER_04: And that's because we're literally talking about publicly owned projects.
27:01
SPEAKER_04: There's a whole bigger pressure of the real estate interests.
27:05
SPEAKER_04: And to fight for better, for lower rent and all these things, you have to actually take on the real estate interests.
27:11
SPEAKER_04: And that's not what Mamdani's gonna do in that arena either.
27:15
SPEAKER_04: He's trying to work with them and work deals out with them.
27:18
SPEAKER_04: So that's kind of like the whole approach that he has to this privatization, trying to work out a deal where it looks public.
27:27
SPEAKER_04: It's still city owned land, whatever, but it's really paving the way for it to be totally under private uh management and in private hands.
27:37
SPEAKER_04: Mamdanny was elected fairly recently.
27:40
SPEAKER_04: I think he's only been in office for a few months.
27:43
SPEAKER_04: He was elected on a platform of fighting for affordable housing and freezing the rent for rent-stabilized apartments.
27:51
SPEAKER_04: There was a lot of illusions in him that he's gonna do right by tenants in the city, but that's not really what's happening, obviously.
28:00
SPEAKER_04: And it's the opposite for public housing tenants.
28:03
SPEAKER_04: He's he's literally attacking their homes.
28:05
SPEAKER_04: You mentioned de Blasio, you guys mentioned Obama.
28:09
SPEAKER_04: This is a long-standing uh program of Democratic Party politicians of neglect and trying to destroy public housing through that.
28:20
SPEAKER_04: And that's true across the country as well.
28:23
SPEAKER_04: Obviously, um, Anisa mentioned in Puerto Rico too, and then also locally here in New York, uh, which has been run by the Democrats for decades.
28:32
SPEAKER_04: So maybe you want to speak a little more to why a little more on what you were saying, Mika, about why we actually have to protest what Mom Donnie is doing and why we can't rely on the Democrats to save public housing or to save Section 9.
28:49
SPEAKER_04: And if we can't rely on the Democrats, then what can we rely on?
28:53
SPEAKER_03: This guy campaigned on affordable housing, but is attacking the truest form of affordable housing in New York City, and that's public housing, that's the projects.
29:02
SPEAKER_03: So you attack that, you allow like once public housing goes down in New York City, that's it.
29:08
SPEAKER_03: It's time's up for the rest of public housing throughout the nation, and it's going to actually allow private landlords to do more of what they're already doing, which is just being straight up slumlords, right?
29:18
SPEAKER_03: And this idea, like, let me tell you, for all these things about like how Mamdani's so charismatic, he's actually pretty sleazy and he's slick.
29:27
SPEAKER_03: He's slick on this whole thing of affordable housing, this, this, and that.
29:31
SPEAKER_03: And he's like purposely crushing the projects.
29:34
SPEAKER_03: It's craziness.
29:34
SPEAKER_03: Like Anisa was saying, like I was saying before, it's not just Mamdani.
29:39
SPEAKER_03: It was De Blasio before him.
29:41
SPEAKER_03: It's uh Obama.
29:42
SPEAKER_03: Chicago, too, under Mayor Daly, basically demolished a majority of public housing in Chicago.
29:49
SPEAKER_03: And this is a repeated thing of the Democratic Party.
29:52
SPEAKER_03: That's why it's not just Mamdani or that Mamdani doesn't know any better.
29:55
SPEAKER_03: He doesn't know about what's happening in the project.
29:57
SPEAKER_03: No, he knows.
29:58
SPEAKER_03: The Democrats know what's going on.
30:00
SPEAKER_03: And it's not only Mamdani, other Democratic Party officials in New York City know what's going on and they're backing the privatization.
30:07
SPEAKER_03: So if you want to defend public housing, you have to actually go after the Democratic Party and the Republicans too.
30:13
SPEAKER_03: I mean, the Republicans are nowhere to be found, you know, they want to crush it just like they want to crush every other social program in New York and in the country.
30:20
SPEAKER_03: But like if you really want to take on what the hell is going on with public housing, what's going on with the projects, and what's going on with the daily lives of the black and Hispanic masses, you have to go after Mamdani and you have to go after the Democratic Party.
30:32
SPEAKER_03: Like to think that you're gonna now somehow, some way convince them, appeal to their senses, and to care for the oppressed, that's crazy.
30:41
SPEAKER_03: No, these people are attacking us.
30:43
SPEAKER_03: You cannot save or fight for the projects in a coalition with the people who are actually doing the harm and doing the damage.
30:51
SPEAKER_03: This is one thing that me and Anisa talk about all the time.
30:54
SPEAKER_03: All right, so we can rely on the Democrats.
30:56
SPEAKER_03: Oh, we sure as hell can't rely on the Republicans either.
30:58
SPEAKER_03: So who we got?
30:59
SPEAKER_03: You know, and it's honestly the working class.
31:02
SPEAKER_03: There's two powers that you can rely on.
31:04
SPEAKER_03: Is it gonna be on the politicians who are actually trying to knife us, or is it gonna be the working class who's in the projects?
31:11
SPEAKER_03: Right.
31:12
SPEAKER_03: Because I'm a union member, you know, I'm in 1199.
31:15
SPEAKER_03: You got people here who are in DC 37, TW.
31:18
SPEAKER_03: There's a number of workers here in the projects, right?
31:21
SPEAKER_04: But also the workers in that maintain the projects are unionized, right?
31:26
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, under DC 37, yes.
31:29
SPEAKER_03: Under the Teamsters.
31:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, under the Teamsters.
31:32
SPEAKER_03: Yes, local 237.
31:34
SPEAKER_03: And you know, a lot of these people who maintain maintain the projects actually live in here too.
31:39
SPEAKER_03: So that's honestly who we should be looking looking at too.
31:42
SPEAKER_03: 1199 is right now in the contract negotiations.
31:46
SPEAKER_03: You've had this is like the year of contract battles.
31:49
SPEAKER_03: While that's happening, the working class is getting attacked.
31:51
SPEAKER_03: They're getting attacked by the Democrats.
31:53
SPEAKER_03: I mean, look at Hokol attacking uh the NISNA nurses.
31:56
SPEAKER_03: Right.
31:56
SPEAKER_03: Look at Hokul going after L A R workers, uh, which actually defend the committee, put out a little statement for project tenants and workers in Al Adel R to come together.
32:05
SPEAKER_03: But what did Mamdani say he wanted to stay neutral during the strike?
32:08
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I don't know how do you stay neutral during a strike?
32:11
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's crazy.
32:12
SPEAKER_03: But like the working class is like actively getting attacked.
32:14
SPEAKER_03: And they're getting attacked by who?
32:16
SPEAKER_03: The Democrats.
32:17
SPEAKER_03: The people of the projects are actively getting attacked.
32:19
SPEAKER_03: And who are they getting attacked by?
32:21
SPEAKER_03: The Democrats.
32:22
SPEAKER_03: So it makes more sense for actually tenants in the projects and the working class to come together.
32:27
SPEAKER_03: One thing that me and Nisa are always talking about is like who's actually gonna play a role in that?
32:30
SPEAKER_03: And it is gonna be like the working class tenants of the projects leading this movement forward.
32:35
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
32:35
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think for like a lot of um working class people, that's been a key issue in a lot of the strikes and what's happened is especially in New York City, is nobody can live in New York City anymore.
32:46
SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
32:46
SPEAKER_04: The housing costs are so insane.
32:49
SPEAKER_04: And so then you have like this last bastion of that where workers can live in the city in the projects, and these plans are gonna take that away and make it even worse and force more workers and poor people out of the city.
33:04
SPEAKER_04: Where are they gonna go?
33:05
SPEAKER_04: Where are people gonna go?
33:06
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, exactly.
33:08
SPEAKER_06: And that's also what we're seeing in in the areas that Adolfina and Hoopy work in, in particular in Williamsburg, in Bushwick, and then there's also Hoopy Bronx that works in South Bronx.
33:20
SPEAKER_06: These are all very historically Puerto Rican areas and neighborhoods.
33:25
SPEAKER_06: And like I was saying before, there is a history of migration patterns from Puerto Rico of being displaced.
33:31
SPEAKER_06: We're being displaced from Puerto Rico because it's a colony that the US is extracting from.
33:36
SPEAKER_06: And so people who were kind of considered like excess populations, they were displaced into the US, into mostly New York.
33:45
SPEAKER_06: You know, that's why there's such a large concentration of Puerto Ricans here.
33:49
SPEAKER_06: And they would live in public housing and they would work at factories as seamstresses, cigar factories, sugar factories, the domino sugar factory, right in Williamsburg, right on the riverfront.
34:02
SPEAKER_06: That's where all the Puerto Ricans worked.
34:04
SPEAKER_06: That was where they worked, and this was their community, and this is where they lived.
34:08
SPEAKER_06: And so we're talking about displacement.
34:11
SPEAKER_06: We're talking about direct displacement.
34:13
SPEAKER_06: And for some communities, a second displacement.
34:16
SPEAKER_06: You've already been displaced from Puerto Rico because it's been colonized by the US.
34:21
SPEAKER_06: You came here to try to carve out a life for you and your family, and you've been here and you've built communities for generations, and now you're being displaced again for private interests.
34:32
SPEAKER_06: When we talk about combining these struggles, when we talk about the link between them, this is really what we see.
34:37
SPEAKER_06: This is an imperialist struggle.
34:39
SPEAKER_06: And we see the same strategies and tactics being used to privatize public housing as we see in Puerto Rico with Luma when they privatize the electrical grid, when they displace people, it's all the same.
34:54
SPEAKER_06: And to kind of go back to the question that Edward had a little bit ago about DSA people or people online kind of being like, oh no, it's not privatization, it's a conversion.
35:05
SPEAKER_06: This is propaganda.
35:07
SPEAKER_06: And this is exactly why we had a speakout in particular to raise the voices of tenants and of the organizations that are fighting on behalf of the tenants because we really do need to combat the propaganda that the Mom Donny administration is putting out there.
35:24
SPEAKER_06: We did the speakout at the Manhattan Night Chan Your Neighborhood hearing.
35:28
SPEAKER_06: But before that, I went to the Night Chen Your Neighborhood hearing in Brownsville in Brooklyn.
35:34
SPEAKER_06: And I just went as I pretended to be, you know, a participant.
35:38
SPEAKER_06: I was like doing recon.
35:39
SPEAKER_06: I was just kind of looking to see what is up undercover.
35:44
SPEAKER_06: And so you go in and there's all these little round tables for discussions, and they have these little placards on what is the discussion about.
35:51
SPEAKER_06: And so I was walking around the room, being like, okay, where is the rad pack table?
35:55
SPEAKER_06: I know that there's a Radpack table here.
35:57
SPEAKER_06: Where is it?
35:58
SPEAKER_06: And I couldn't find it at first.
35:59
SPEAKER_06: And then I did a second round, and I was like, this table over here doesn't say rad packed, but it does say modernization.
36:06
SPEAKER_06: And I'm curious about that.
36:08
SPEAKER_06: I have a gut feeling that this actually means rad pack.
36:10
SPEAKER_06: So I sit down at the table and there's a little, a cute little, you know, well-meaning mom donnie representative at the table, and she's asking me who I am and all these questions.
36:20
SPEAKER_06: And because I work closely with Mika, I was, I, and I knew that De Hostos is in this planning and engagement stage.
36:27
SPEAKER_06: I was like, oh, I'm a tenant of De Hostos.
36:29
SPEAKER_06: I'm not actually, but just to this person nobody needs to know that.
36:33
SPEAKER_06: Nobody needs to know that.
36:35
SPEAKER_06: And uh, and I was like, we are in the voting stage, but I just don't understand what any of this means.
36:40
SPEAKER_06: And what she told me was, oh, well, just work with your TA, just work with your tenant association.
36:45
SPEAKER_06: They can explain everything to you.
36:47
SPEAKER_06: And we can get into how compromised these tenant associations are, right?
36:51
SPEAKER_06: But I was like, what if I wanted to vote no?
36:53
SPEAKER_06: What is the process for this?
36:55
SPEAKER_06: And she basically just kept sidestepping my question.
36:58
SPEAKER_06: Why was she doing that?
37:00
SPEAKER_06: Because the hostess isn't given the opportunity to actually vote, but she doesn't want to say that, right?
37:05
SPEAKER_06: So she's not actually giving me an answer.
37:07
SPEAKER_06: I keep pressing her.
37:09
SPEAKER_06: And she's like, Well, the there are these resident committees that will decide what your rad pack partner is.
37:16
SPEAKER_06: So you just have to talk to your TA and find out about your resident committee and da-da-da-da-da.
37:21
SPEAKER_06: But she's just pushing this idea that this is all modernization and you just have to go through your TAs and you don't have to ask any questions, don't ask about the vote, don't worry about it.
37:32
SPEAKER_06: So if you go to these NYCHA hearings and you present yourself as a tenant, what you will be faced with is people who aren't actually answering your questions.
37:42
SPEAKER_06: What they're doing is trying to shove propaganda down your throat.
37:44
SPEAKER_06: And there were these block by block, this report that the Mamdani administration wrote called the block by block report, on every table.
37:52
SPEAKER_06: They were just handing it out like confetti.
37:55
SPEAKER_06: They were everywhere.
37:56
SPEAKER_06: So this is why our demands as TAP, as tenants against privatization, are so important and why we push them.
38:04
SPEAKER_06: Because when we talk about privatization or conversion or modernization or whatever word they want to use for it, that is propaganda.
38:12
SPEAKER_06: What the real word for it is, is privatization, as Mika said.
38:16
SPEAKER_06: When you put it in the hands of a private landlord, that's privatization, baby.
38:21
SPEAKER_06: That's what that is.
38:22
SPEAKER_06: You can call it whatever word you want to call it, that's what that is.
38:25
SPEAKER_06: And using any other word for it and being sneaky and slick about it actually shows you where the Mamdani administration stands on this.
38:33
SPEAKER_06: And where they stand is that they just want to shove propaganda down your throat.
38:36
SPEAKER_06: They don't want to actually fight for you, and they don't want to actually answer your questions, and they don't want you to actually have a vote to have a voice in what happens with your own housing.
38:46
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
38:47
SPEAKER_04: At the rally, there were a number of people that just were went to the hearing or and came out of it and just spoke at the speakout.
38:55
SPEAKER_04: And there was he was like a politician, like a local politician.
38:58
SPEAKER_04: I don't know if he's in the state senate or something.
39:01
SPEAKER_04: But he got on the mic and he described how he was genuinely going to this hearing to find out what this comprehensive plan was.
39:09
SPEAKER_04: And he's a Democrat and he wanted to find out, like genuinely find out.
39:14
SPEAKER_04: And then he came outside and he spoke at the speakout and he just said, We're being bamboozled.
39:20
SPEAKER_04: Like that when he read what it is, that it's not gonna help the tenants in public housing and that it's privatization.
39:28
SPEAKER_03: It seemed like he was someone who's like, because when he was talking, he was saying how he grew up in Empatio, he grew up in that neighborhood.
39:35
SPEAKER_03: He went in genuinely concerned, trying to see what the administration was gonna do to actually get the repairs done.
39:42
SPEAKER_03: Because if I remember correctly, he actually grew up in public housing.
39:45
SPEAKER_04: Yes, yeah, he mentioned that.
39:47
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
39:47
SPEAKER_04: And generations, yeah.
39:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, generations.
39:50
SPEAKER_03: And this is a guy, Puerto Rican, generations in the projects, got out, is still concerned about the situation because he still has family there.
39:58
SPEAKER_03: And he goes in and he understands it to be basically a scam.
40:03
SPEAKER_03: We are being bamboozled.
40:04
SPEAKER_03: That's the thing.
40:05
SPEAKER_03: It's all in your face.
40:06
SPEAKER_03: It's not like this is just happening.
40:08
SPEAKER_03: This has now been almost a decade of privatization, not conversion, privatization, where people have been thrown into the street.
40:16
SPEAKER_03: The evictions under Rad Pact have gone up, right?
40:20
SPEAKER_03: The disrepairs have gone up.
40:22
SPEAKER_03: It's not like an accident.
40:24
SPEAKER_03: It's not like we don't know what's happening.
40:26
SPEAKER_03: The thing is, though, what the Mamdani administration is playing on is this very dire need in the projects to get these repairs done.
40:34
SPEAKER_03: You have people, you know, asthma, cancer, lung disease, heart disease, even mental health issues are all stemming from the fact that these apartments are being left to rot.
40:44
SPEAKER_03: And purposefully so.
40:46
SPEAKER_03: It's programmed, it's the whole thing.
40:48
SPEAKER_03: You let the projects rot, uh, you let it go so bad that you say, now the total cost is so much we can't afford it.
40:54
SPEAKER_03: Now we gotta bring in these private developers.
40:56
SPEAKER_03: Well, I think the number right now to fix all of public housing is$90 billion, which when you say that, you already admit that you're a slum lord.
41:06
SPEAKER_03: There's no way in hell you're gonna say that's the number, and we're the good guys in this situation, and we want the best for people in public housing.
41:13
SPEAKER_03: That's craziness.
41:14
SPEAKER_03: But if you actually talk to tenants in public housing and you ask them what they think about the$90 billion uh price tag that comes with repairing the projects, they're gonna tell you that that's a damn lie.
41:26
SPEAKER_03: There's no way to maintain the projects that cost 90, 90 billion, but they also feel like that's the price tag that they're using as an excuse to bring, to bring in private developers.
41:36
SPEAKER_03: Because at the end of the day, no matter which way you spin it, whether it's 9 million or 90 billion, you want these repairs done, right?
41:43
SPEAKER_03: So now it's only gonna happen through getting Wavecrest then or related company or some other private management corporation to come in and get these repairs done.
41:51
SPEAKER_03: Something one of my neighbors said to me, who's also part of the committee, she's like, there's no way you're gonna bring a private management company in and tell me that this is public housing.
41:59
SPEAKER_03: That's true.
42:00
SPEAKER_03: You cannot say to people, oh, you got this private management company, that's where you give your money to, that's your landlord, but it's still public housing.
42:08
SPEAKER_03: That's that's bullshit.
42:09
SPEAKER_03: It's garbage at the end of the day.
42:10
SPEAKER_03: And like honestly, the way the city treats people in the projects is as if we're a bunch of idiots.
42:16
SPEAKER_03: We know what's going on, right?
42:18
SPEAKER_03: It's just that who's gonna come and help us fight?
42:21
SPEAKER_03: It's not the Democrats, it's gonna be the working class.
42:23
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
42:24
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, a hundred percent.
42:25
SPEAKER_06: And like Miko was saying, the guy at the speakout, you go in there, even if you're just like someone who's curious about it, you're interested, you want to learn more.
42:33
SPEAKER_06: But if you grew up in public housing, if you have the lived experience to know what this is, you see the bold-faced scam of it on the face of it, especially if you're a younger person.
42:44
SPEAKER_06: Something that's also kind of heartbreaking about this entire struggle and fight is that a lot of the tenants that we work with as Adolfina and also Hoopy works with out of Hope Gardens are elderly and they have a lot of these health conditions and they are just desperate to have a home that is safe and dignified and doesn't have all of these repair issues and that they can just like live in and ideally pass down to you know their children or other family members.
43:10
SPEAKER_06: And so all of this propaganda that the Mamdani administration is providing at these at these hearings, these elderly people are the ones that are the most susceptible and vulnerable to it.
43:20
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
43:21
SPEAKER_06: And so that is something that we really do think about as TAP and as Adolfina and Hoopy in particular, because of the populations that we work with and them being more on the elderly side.
43:31
SPEAKER_06: It is a vulnerable population that the Mamdani administration is kind of taking advantage of when you think about it.
43:37
SPEAKER_04: And also to the side of the largely women too, right?
43:41
SPEAKER_04: It's largely women, yes.
43:42
SPEAKER_04: It's largely women who like have raised their families in those homes in very difficult, you know, situations and they want to like be able to die in their home.
43:51
SPEAKER_04: And the the administration is like, no, we're gonna demolish it, but we'll find a place for you, but you're gonna have to move at 80 years old or whatever, you know.
44:00
SPEAKER_06: Absolutely.
44:01
SPEAKER_06: And oftentimes when elderly or disabled tenants are moved, like in Williamsburg houses, which was has already been privatized, when they're moved, it's such an arduous process.
44:14
SPEAKER_06: And they say that they renovate these apartments, which renovation is a very generous word for what they do to these apartments, but they're not moved back all the time to their original apartment that they've been in for 10, 20, 30 years that they raised their children in.
44:28
SPEAKER_06: And oftentimes they're not even moved to like an ADA compliant, disability-friendly apartment that they need if they're disabled or they're elderly and they really have to fight for it.
44:39
SPEAKER_06: There have been multiple times where we have gone to bat for tenants that have not gotten ADA compliant apartments that they need.
44:47
SPEAKER_06: And it's really heartbreaking and it's very, very agitating to see, to see this.
44:53
SPEAKER_06: But part of this mom donnie propaganda that also speaks to what Mika was saying about the$90 billion that it takes to fix all of these issues and the fact that this is a strategic and deliberate disinvestment in public housing.
45:10
SPEAKER_06: This is not an accident.
45:11
SPEAKER_06: This didn't happen overnight.
45:13
SPEAKER_06: And this is not because the people that live in public housing simply don't care about their homes.
45:18
SPEAKER_06: This is a strategic and deliberate disinvestment in public housing over decades by both Democrats and Republicans.
45:24
SPEAKER_06: And so when Mamdani holds these hearings and he has the CEO of NYCHA get up and speak and talk about the historic investment that the Mamdani administration is doing to public housing because they're investing$1.2 billion in public housing.
45:40
SPEAKER_06: It is a bold-faced lie.
45:42
SPEAKER_06: Because, first of all, that amount of money doesn't even touch what they're saying is the amount of money that is needed.
45:48
SPEAKER_06: And number two, that money is going directly into what Mamdani himself calls section eight conversions, which is privatization.
45:57
SPEAKER_06: That is money that could have easily just gone to public housing to section nine to fund these repairs.
46:04
SPEAKER_06: We don't need the secondary step of it being converted to section eight and being privatized.
46:09
SPEAKER_06: Exactly.
46:09
SPEAKER_06: But we actually do if all you care about is private interests.
46:14
SPEAKER_06: Exactly.
46:14
SPEAKER_03: And that's the thing.
46:15
SPEAKER_03: Like the money could have easily gone into section nine, but why didn't it?
46:18
SPEAKER_03: Because he's holding hands with the CEOs of Wavecrest.
46:21
SPEAKER_03: He's all about real estate.
46:22
SPEAKER_03: He does not care about people in public housing.
46:25
SPEAKER_03: He made a commitment to those in real estate.
46:28
SPEAKER_03: He's made a commitment to though to those moguls at the end of the day that he's going to be working with them.
46:33
SPEAKER_03: That's who he's in partnership with.
46:35
SPEAKER_03: That money went straight to their hands.
46:36
SPEAKER_03: Like Anissa was saying, this is not an accident.
46:38
SPEAKER_03: This is completely deliberate.
46:40
SPEAKER_03: So this idea that we can change his mind, no, is it's not going to happen.
46:45
SPEAKER_03: Like you, that's why there needs to be a fight against him in the Democratic Party.
46:48
SPEAKER_03: It's not like, oops, I accidentally put$1.2 billion in the bank account of uh a private real estate developer.
46:57
SPEAKER_03: No, he has a plan when it's to attack public housing.
47:00
SPEAKER_03: But one thing that I wanted to mention is one of the things about these conversions or privatization, once you go on the section eight, you're no longer allowed legacy of your apartment.
47:10
SPEAKER_03: So basically, in public housing, under section nine, we can leave these apartments to our kids, our grandkids, and so on.
47:18
SPEAKER_03: That right gets stripped away from us the moment that we enter section eight.
47:21
SPEAKER_03: And I just want to make this a point.
47:24
SPEAKER_03: The stability of public housing has allowed women to not be put in precarious situations with uh partners or family members.
47:34
SPEAKER_03: They've been, I'm not saying that it hasn't happened, but you know, being able to live in public housing, right?
47:40
SPEAKER_03: True affordable housing has allowed so many women to go to school, to be contributing members of society, to be part of the working class, to raise their families, and then to pass these apartments down to their kids where they could do the same thing, you know?
47:55
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
47:55
SPEAKER_03: And the moment that we go into privatization, that gets stripped from us.
47:59
SPEAKER_03: The fact that we've been able to live in the projects has stopped generations of homelessness.
48:05
SPEAKER_03: The moment that we get in, that's taken away from us.
48:08
SPEAKER_03: That stability, especially for black and Hispanic women, is gold.
48:11
SPEAKER_03: And it's going to be taken away from us if we don't fight back.
48:15
SPEAKER_03: Right.
48:15
SPEAKER_01: I think Mika had mentioned the example of Chicago earlier.
48:19
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's really a good example of like where all of this kind of stuff leads.
48:24
SPEAKER_01: Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in America.
48:28
SPEAKER_01: When they set up public housing in the first place, it was essentially a way to stop the expansion of the black belt in the city, like the south side where the black population lived from moving into where Mayor Daly, the first Mayor Daly, his neighborhood.
48:45
SPEAKER_01: And then you had three, four, five decades where the Democrats basically just completely neglected it.
48:52
SPEAKER_01: And then the answer to all those decades of neglect was well, we might as well just demolish it.
48:58
SPEAKER_01: Um and that's what they did.
49:00
SPEAKER_01: And the people who lost their homes, tens of thousands of people lost their homes.
49:05
SPEAKER_01: Whatever happened to them, the city doesn't know.
49:07
SPEAKER_01: People lost their homes, moved away from Chicago.
49:10
SPEAKER_03: The whole thing with Mayor Daly, actually, he pushed the program of Clinton, which was the Hope Six program.
49:16
SPEAKER_03: And basically, it was another version of urban revitalization, you know, that they were gonna come in, fix all these uh project apartments and disrepair and then uh bring in new apartments or bring in new buildings of mixed income.
49:33
SPEAKER_03: But the thing is, once they demolished it, which uh some of these buildings were actually not even in disrepair, were completely torn down and never rebuilt.
49:41
SPEAKER_03: That was that was led by Clinton, President Clinton, who's considered the first black president in the US, you know?
49:48
SPEAKER_03: It set thousands of black and Hispanics into the street.
49:51
SPEAKER_03: You know, and the thing about this whole privatization mess that's been going on is that they'll track evictions, but they never track where these people go.
49:59
SPEAKER_03: So do they go to another apartment?
50:01
SPEAKER_03: Are they homeless?
50:02
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, no.
50:03
SPEAKER_03: This whole thing doesn't count that because I mean, why would you?
50:06
SPEAKER_03: You don't care.
50:06
SPEAKER_03: It's not about like, oh, is it a better setup for the black and Hispanic masses?
50:10
SPEAKER_03: No, it's a worse-off setup.
50:12
SPEAKER_03: But attaching that to the Democratic Party name is gonna stain them more than they already stained, really.
50:17
SPEAKER_04: I think it's also just this stuff about like, oh, there's no money, there's no money, and it's like we're in Wall Street.
50:22
SPEAKER_04: There's no money for for black and brown and working people.
50:26
SPEAKER_04: They don't want to put money into public housing, into social programs, but there's plenty of money for war, there's plenty of money for the real estate interests are rolling, rolling in dough.
50:37
SPEAKER_04: That's why does momdani is doing what he's doing as the mayor of New York City, whatever that's who he answers to, real estate interests.
50:45
SPEAKER_04: That's really the truth.
50:46
SPEAKER_04: And you have to tell it because you know, there was one guy who spoke at the rally, he was supporting the struggle, and I think he's been involved in it.
50:54
SPEAKER_04: But he mentioned that he was in the DSA and it was like a little embarrassed because the DSA has basically just been backing Mom Donnie on everything.
51:01
SPEAKER_04: That includes like the no more 24 struggle of home health care workers.
51:06
SPEAKER_04: Mom Donnie has opposed getting rid of the 24-hour day.
51:09
SPEAKER_04: He's hiring more cops, all of this.
51:11
SPEAKER_04: It's all connected to the question of uh public housing as well.
51:15
SPEAKER_03: One thing that uh TAP wants to do is actually broaden out this fight and not just leave it to public housing because the whole situation of public housing really you want to take a look at what black oppression and Latino oppression looks like in America.
51:30
SPEAKER_03: Right.
51:30
SPEAKER_03: Look at what's happening here.
51:32
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
51:32
SPEAKER_03: And now that Mamdani wants to set thousands of cops in the street during the summertime, he's gearing up for more attacks on the black and brown population.
51:43
SPEAKER_03: The whole thing of no more 24 being opposed to what's basically slave work, these immigrant women are working 24-hour shifts, only getting paid 13, and are being blackmailed into working these types of dangerous conditions, is being pushed by Mamdani too.
52:01
SPEAKER_03: So this idea that socialist mayor and he's attacking the oppressed and the working class is really making socialism look bad.
52:09
SPEAKER_03: That's what people are seeing right now.
52:11
SPEAKER_03: Oh, this is what socialism means.
52:12
SPEAKER_03: I don't want it.
52:19
SPEAKER_04: Um in the whole country.
52:20
SPEAKER_04: If they're able to get away with this here, it's gonna have a domino effect throughout the country.
52:27
SPEAKER_04: And in uh Los Angeles, where I grew up in Los Angeles, if you can't tell from my accent, there's a a struggle going on like right now as well, a very similar struggle in Chinatown, where the city wants to demolish the William Meade homes and they want to like demolish all these homes and rebuild, quote, mixed income privatized homes in its place.
52:48
SPEAKER_04: And there was actually a protest against this, I think the day after the one that you guys organized here.
52:55
SPEAKER_04: And it's very similar.
52:57
SPEAKER_04: Also in LA, the Democrats also have demolished a lot of public housing in Los Angeles.
53:03
SPEAKER_04: What's left of it is currently under attack.
53:06
SPEAKER_04: And there's also a DSA elected in that district, Ulysses Hernandez, and she has a whole history of selling out tenants to make deals with landlords.
53:15
SPEAKER_04: I read an article where they asked her if she opposed the demolition, and she said, oh, she would ensure that any quote redevelopment guarantees no permanent displacement and that there's more social housing.
53:28
SPEAKER_04: She's not going to oppose the demolition.
53:30
SPEAKER_04: And again, just like in New York, it's privatization.
53:33
SPEAKER_04: They can use words like affordable social housing opportunities, but it's really the same lies, whether it's New York or it's LA, and it's these quote progressive politicians that um claim to be on the side of working people of Latinos, but they're really the source of the problems that are facing like mostly Latino tenants in these um projects in LA.
53:57
SPEAKER_04: And why?
53:58
SPEAKER_04: I mean, because they're in bed with the real estate interest.
54:01
SPEAKER_04: They kind of can get away with it more because they have this image that they're progressive and they're fighting.
54:07
SPEAKER_04: So it's easier for them to sell this as a good thing than it is for somebody who's not a progressive, who doesn't pretend fighting to defend public housing really means fighting these politicians.
54:19
SPEAKER_04: If we have listeners in Los Angeles, people should join that fight too.
54:24
SPEAKER_04: DSA shouldn't be propping up politicians that are failing and betraying us.
54:29
SPEAKER_04: If you're a socialist, you should be fighting for the people, for the oppressed, for the working class, and against these uh interests that are that are ruining our lives.
54:39
SPEAKER_06: Absolutely.
54:40
SPEAKER_06: And this is also talking about the demolition that happened in Chicago, the fights that are happening around demolition and rebuilding, you know, mixed affordability apartments or whatever in LA.
54:53
SPEAKER_06: This is why one of the main demands of TAP is no demolition, because that's actually the ultimate end goal for privatization.
55:02
SPEAKER_06: Here in New York, we have Fulton Elliott Chelsea Houses, which is currently trying to fight not being demolished.
55:09
SPEAKER_06: When you look at that from the perspective of a Mam Dani, that's actually the blueprint.
55:15
SPEAKER_06: What they want to do is one, disinvest, which they've already been doing for decades, two, privatize and squeeze out all the money that you can.
55:23
SPEAKER_06: And then three, demolish and take the very valuable land that's underneath these public houses.
55:29
SPEAKER_06: And so that's why one of our main demands and is no demolition, and that's why we stand in solidarity with the Fulton Elliott Chelsea houses in any fight across the US or in Puerto Rico for demolishing things and building whatever private interests want on that land and basically taking that land and displacing the people from it.
55:50
SPEAKER_06: Because the people that have the vested interest in privatizing and demolishing public housing here in New York or in LA or in Chicago are the same exact people that benefit from the colonial status of Puerto Rico.
56:07
SPEAKER_06: It's the same people, it's the same strategies, it's the same tactics, it's the same fight.
56:11
SPEAKER_06: And so that's why all of these fights and these struggles, especially within the working class, that's why they're all connected.
56:17
SPEAKER_06: And that's why TAP is a coalition of various different organizations that maybe have their own fights, like Adolfina and Hoopy are fighting for the liberation of Puerto Rico, but we also see the reality and the concrete connection between our fight and those of the working class in public housing.
56:36
SPEAKER_03: And just to expose a little more of what's going on in Puerto Rico right now, thousands of Puerto Ricans are without water because there's these uh people called La Junta, they're backed by Wall Street, who have imposed austerity measure after austerity measure, squeezing and bleeding boricuas dry.
56:57
SPEAKER_03: And part of that austerity measure came at the expense of the water system.
57:01
SPEAKER_03: And now you have thousands of people who have not had water or clean water.
57:05
SPEAKER_03: And now what is the Puerto Rican government saying?
57:07
SPEAKER_03: Oh, well, this is why we have to privatize.
57:09
SPEAKER_03: But look at what happened with Luma before it was Prepa, and the system wasn't all that good, but they purposely left it in disrepair, left it open to privatization by Luma.
57:19
SPEAKER_03: And guess what?
57:20
SPEAKER_03: Now you have rolling blackouts throughout Puerto Rico.
57:22
SPEAKER_03: You have people dying in hospitals because all of a sudden the lights go out.
57:26
SPEAKER_03: There's accidents in the street because there's no street traffic lights on.
57:30
SPEAKER_03: And it's and then also attached with the lights is water irrigation.
57:33
SPEAKER_03: So the moment the lights go out, you got no water either.
57:36
SPEAKER_03: So that's why the whole fight of privatization is not just what's happening in New York City, but it's also what's happening in Boricen.
57:42
SPEAKER_03: This is why we want to broaden out the fight, not only for public housing, but for what this ruling class in this country is doing to the black and brown masses here.
57:50
SPEAKER_03: And because of what they're able to do here, what they're able to do in Puerto Rico and the rest of the world.
57:56
SPEAKER_03: So it's really a connected struggle.
57:58
SPEAKER_03: And that here we gotta fight the Mamdanian administration, the Democrats and Republicans, because while the Republicans have a knife to our throat, the Democrats have it in our back, we also have to expand this fight into an actual, I know it seems like a big jump, but still an anti-imperialist struggle too.
58:15
SPEAKER_03: Because what are the ruling classes allowed to do here gives them power to stomp on the rest of the world.
58:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, for sure.
58:22
SPEAKER_01: Well, if we've convinced some DSAers, that would be great.
58:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm curious if we have in this conversation and they want to get in more involved in the fight against privatization, the fight to defend the projects, how could they do that?
58:38
SPEAKER_01: And what do you guys have coming up next?
58:40
SPEAKER_06: So if you're in the DSA and you consider yourself a socialist, the socialist housing is a socialist fight, and we would love to see you as part of our fight.
58:50
SPEAKER_06: And so, TAP, one of the main things that is coming up for us is on July 11th from 3 to 5 p.m.
58:57
SPEAKER_06: at 2504 Broadway in the Upper West Side, we are going to have an open house for TAP.
59:03
SPEAKER_06: So if you are a public housing tenant, if you are just really interested in this fight, if you are an organization, grassroots organization working within New York that wants to be a part of TAP is interested in learning more, that's what this is for.
59:18
SPEAKER_06: It's gonna be all of the information about TAP and the different orgs that make up the coalition of TAP.
59:23
SPEAKER_06: And maybe you can even join and get involved into what we're actually doing.
59:28
SPEAKER_06: If you can't make it on July 11th, we do also have an Instagram at tap underscore ny.
59:35
SPEAKER_06: And if you want to reach out to us if you have any questions or comments or feedback, we have tap ny at proton.me is our email.
59:45
SPEAKER_06: We would love, we would love to hear from you.
59:47
SPEAKER_03: Great.
59:47
SPEAKER_03: Um and I got a little message for DSAyers.
59:51
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
59:52
SPEAKER_03: If I can.
59:52
SPEAKER_03: I'll give a little message.
59:54
SPEAKER_03: If you really consider yourself socialists, you gotta fight like hell against this privatization.
59:59
SPEAKER_03: It's enough of this thing of like you wanna uh make life a little comfortable for your boy mom Donnie, but uh he's attacking the oppressed.
1:00:08
SPEAKER_03: So you want to consider yourself a socialist and you actually want to be a socialist, fight for the oppressed.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_03: Fight to actually break with the Democrats, fight for actually something that's gonna create something that's different from what we have now.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_03: Because if you don't, you're actually an obstacle, right?
1:00:23
SPEAKER_03: You're getting in the way of the fight for the oppressed to liberate themselves.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_03: So you want to be a socialist, fight like hell against the privatization, fight like hell against Mamdani, and do something for the working class.
1:00:33
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and fight in the DSA.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_04: There's a lot of left caucuses, Marxist caucuses, socialists, whatever.
1:00:40
SPEAKER_04: Um, but there's hardly any real fights happening inside the DSA to actually get the DSA to take a stand against privatization and against what what Momdani's administration is doing or planning, what they want to do.
1:00:56
SPEAKER_04: Um are there any more rallies coming up or not yet?
1:00:58
SPEAKER_04: That's maybe that'll be discussed further at the planning meetings or the July 11th meeting.
1:01:04
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I think upcoming events and stuff we'll definitely have on our Instagram, which right now we just started it, so there's like one post.
1:01:12
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_06: But we are getting it up and running.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_06: So anytime we have a tap event or anything like that, it'll definitely be posted on there.
1:01:21
SPEAKER_06: So if you want to follow it to learn more about upcoming events for sure.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_06: But we will also be talking about it at the July 11th meeting.
1:01:28
SPEAKER_06: So you can just come in here and take up a task, get involved, whatever you want to do.
1:01:33
SPEAKER_04: I think I saw this on Instagram that there's a March for Independence at the end of July in the South Bronx.
1:01:39
SPEAKER_06: There is, yes.
1:01:40
SPEAKER_04: That might also be something somewhere we can connect the struggle for defense of public housing to the place for independence.
1:01:47
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, absolutely.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_06: So it's the March for Independence for Puerto Rico.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_06: It is on Saturday, July 18th.
1:01:55
SPEAKER_04: March up la independence, yeah.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_04: 10 years of La Junta, South Bronx, New York.
1:02:00
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
1:02:00
SPEAKER_06: It's also the anniversary of ProMesa or La Junta as well.
1:02:04
SPEAKER_06: And so that's a main, a main uh talking point for the March and is is really the the connection back to like displacement and privatization privatization for sure.
1:02:15
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, great.
1:02:15
SPEAKER_06: Okay, well we'll we'll definitely be there.
1:02:18
SPEAKER_01: That concludes this week's episode of Give Me a Break.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_01: You can follow all of the work of the Just Break Already caucus of the DSA on our social media.
1:02:26
SPEAKER_01: We are at Clean Break Now on X at DSA underscore just break already on Instagram.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_01: You can also find all of our statements, resolutions, petitions, and everything else we've been up to lately at our Linktree, which is linktree.
1:02:44
SPEAKER_01: We welcome all of your comments, feedback, hate mail, whatever you got, send it to us.
1:02:49
SPEAKER_01: Our DMs are always open.
1:02:51
SPEAKER_01: And if you're from a left caucus in the DSA and you want to come on here and tell us we're wrong, have at it.
1:02:56
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna prove you wrong, but feel free.
1:02:59
SPEAKER_01: We'll have a debate.
1:02:59
SPEAKER_01: It'll be great.
1:03:00
SPEAKER_01: So until next time.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, thank thank you, Mika.
1:03:04
SPEAKER_04: Thank you, Anisa.
1:03:05
SPEAKER_04: It's been a really much discussion.
1:03:08
SPEAKER_04: We appreciate it a lot.
1:03:09
SPEAKER_04: Thanks.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_03: I just want to say thank you so much for interviewing us because right now the ones who are like running the whole situation in the projects are the Democrats, and really the left needs to step it up a bit and get involved.
1:03:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:03:21
SPEAKER_03: Because if we continue to have this housing fight attached to the Democratic Party, we're gonna lose it all.
1:03:27
SPEAKER_03: So thank you so much for interviewing us because we feel like our struggle is being completely ignored.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_03: And this is a way to get this out there.
1:03:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_03: Sure.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_03: Agreed.
1:03:37
SPEAKER_06: Thank you guys.