California is an interesting state. At this point in time, it's supposed to be
a blue state. But it produced Ronald Reagan as governor, and then president. It
has passed some very undesirable legislation in its time. The thing is, the
Republican Party has always presented itself as the party of American Business
while the Democratic Party has always presented itself as the party of The
People. So each party has a cultural tradition which means that the Republicans
have been comfortable doing more extreme things in foreign and domestic policy,
openly, while the Democrats have been more cautious in the appearance of what
they are doing. That changes in wartime. It was FDR who put Japanese Americans
in concentration camps. It was Truman who dropped atom bombs on Japan. It was
Obama who began drone assassinations of young men in countries that the US
found troublesome, and who had an American citizen and his 16 year old son
killed in that manner without benefit of trial.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, August 22, 2020 12:23 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: An illegal eviction during a pandemic?
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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