On Election Day two weeks ago, Missouri was not on the list of states progressives were paying attention to – but it should have been, because it was the site of an unprecedented ballot initiative victory won by a working class tenant union. In this episode, we'll hear about how KC Tenants went from ten people sitting around a borrowed conference room in February 2019, to an organization of 4,300 dues-paying members who have won at least five citywide campaigns that have radically transformed conditions for hundreds of thousands of the city’s renters. We’ll hear about their first campaign to radically reshape the city’s municipal election, without spending a dime on partisan electoral engagement (13:35); the debate inside the organization (42:12) that led to the disruption of 919 eviction hearings in a single month (47:15); how they built a culture of nurturing reflection during the pandemic (52:30); and how “ruthlessness about basebuilding” has helped them succeed.
Check out a writeup on this campaign at our website and at The Forge.
Tara Raghuveer is the Housing Campaign Director at People’s Action. She is also the Founder/Director of KC Tenants, where she organizes poor and working class tenants in Kansas City, and the Kansas City Eviction Project, a multi-year research project on evictions in the Kansas City metro area.
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