People Post is a space for opinion pieces, letters to the editor and guest submissions from members of the Long Beach community. The following is an op-ed submitted by Andrew Guy, an organizer with the Long Beach chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Long Beach Post.

In a recent op-ed published in the Long Beach Post, the author mistakenly characterizes a local renters’ rights group, Long Beach Residents Empowered (LiBRE), as a socialist organization. LiBRE is not a socialist organization, and the author’s confusion was likely caused by the presence of members of the Long Beach chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) at the rally LiBRE helped Plymouth West tenants organize.


 

A similar confusion is present throughout the piece, and in the same spirit of solidarity that motivated our members to help protest the eviction of a Long Beach senior from the bed bug-infested property, Long Beach’s socialists are happy to assist with the education called for in the title of the author’s op-ed.

The author states community organizers are trying to create an “artificial” division between tenants and landlords, but as socialists we know that this division is anything but artificial. The relationship between tenants and landlords is by its nature exploitative. Shelter is a basic necessity for human survival, and those who own property exploit this need by extracting rent from those who do not.

The degree of exploitation may vary. Some landlords, for instance, might charge a relatively reasonable rent and keep their buildings habitable, while others might turn their elderly tenants out onto the street if they are physically unable to move their furniture for exterminators. The foundation of the relationship, however, remains the same: a person wealthy enough to own property forces a person of lesser means to pay him under threat of homelessness.

Under capitalism, this sort of exploitation is routine.

If a person needs medical care to live, they will need to pay the insurance companies that control its provision to get it. When a family needs to eat, they will either pay or go hungry. If someone wishes to live in a community where they can breathe clean air and drink unpolluted water, they had better hope they have enough cash to pay for the privilege.

Because we must earn money to buy these necessities from the people who own them, most of us spend the bulk of the one life we have working, away from our loved ones and deprived of the chance to reach our full potential. Even worse, we do this to make even more money for a handful of people who have more wealth than all the rest of us combined.

The author of the recent op-ed defines empowerment as “having been given the power to make choices relevant to one’s situation”. Under this definition, if the average Long Beach resident were to take an honest look at life under capitalism, they would likely be surprised to see how little power they actually have.

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Friendly relations between landlords and tenants aren’t enough to protect residents. We need to shift power away from property owners and into the hands of the people who are the source of their wealth. As the tenants of Plymouth West and their allies at LiBRE demonstrated this week, though, power is never given by the people who have it– it must be taken.

By coming together in solidarity and standing up against their landlord in an action the author dismisses as political theater, these seniors empowered themselves to draw attention to their cause, shame their building’s owners, and stop the unjust eviction of their neighbor. If they hadn’t done so, she would have suffered the same fate as another tenant evicted days earlier under similar circumstances.

Solidarity is powerful. The person who wrote the memorandum that the Plymouth West tenant was forced to sign to remain in her home agrees—he included language meant to forbid her from working with groups like LiBRE in the future.

As the author of the recent op-ed mentioned, 60 percent of Long Beach residents are renters. In a city without tenant protections like rent control or just cause evictions, each of us as individuals are at the mercy of our landlords, living under the same risk of being turned out of our homes as these seniors are.

We can decide it doesn’t need to be this way, though. We can stand together the way the tenants of Plymouth West did. If we choose to, we can empower ourselves to make Long Beach a city that works for all of us, and not just a wealthy few.