Struggles for Housing
This collection contains materials related to various localized struggles for housing and against displacement, poor housing conditions, eviction, and gentrification. The contents primarily consist of of different periodicals with features focused on housing struggles. Many of the materials in this collection are represented on an interactive timeline highlighting key moments in various housing struggles from 1965-1977 using primary sources from the Freedom Archives' collection as well as additional research. While predominately focused on the San Francisco Bay Area we have attempted to display the political unity and tactical resource sharing that was happening on a national level.
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=1r_RM7kBRZlTrjNqTmZWNZY4Kj1Z8KGOip6zeE2ulX0Y&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650
Documents
Rising Up Angry
Publisher: Rising Up AngryDate: 12/1972Call Number: Volume Number: Vol. 4-8Format: PeriodicalCollection: Struggles for Housing
Articles include: Editorial on Methadone; lead poisoning and its effects; Cover Story - People's Housing Tribunal - police violence against La Raza; anti-personnel weapons in Viet Nam; poor working conditions; cancerous hormone in meats; antiwar GIs.
By No Means...Homeless Perspectives: A News and Opinion Monthly
A periodical of homeless perspectives on varying socio-political issues and experiences such as food injustice, police violence, and more.
Pamoja Venceremos
Publisher: Bay Area Revolutionary News ServiceCall Number: Volume Number: Vol. 2-10Format: PeriodicalCollection: Struggles for Housing
Articles include: From South City to Viet Nam - Bring the War Home; Oakland Blockage, Lessons Learned; extensive local anti-war coverage of demonstrations and actions; Housing Crisis; VietNam will Win; Coca Cola Strike; People's Doc - Emergency Treatment; more.
Who's Moving: A Look at the Neighborhoods
Call Number: Collection: Struggles for Housing
A look at displacement and housing rights struggles across San Francisco put together by the Housing Rights Study Group. Highlighting strategies to resist displacement neighborhood by neighborhood using first person narratives from activists and residents.
Our Land Tierra Nuestra
Publisher: The Valentines Day Committee for Housing JusticeDate: 5/1986Call Number: Format: PeriodicalCollection: Struggles for Housing
The Magazine for Those Who Refuse to Move. Bulk in English with some Spanish throughout. This issue covers news of housing struggles in New York City with an emphasis on evictions, squatting, and displacement on native lands. It also documents people's resistance to housing injustice through demonstrations and actions and features a story on the bulldozing of the Garden of Eden in the Lower East Side, a reclaimed vacant lot which was transformed into a community garden with fruit and nut trees, herbs, flowers, and other plants.
T.O.R.C.H Pamphlet
A pamphlet created by organizers from the organization Tenants on Radical Changes in Housing, a tenants rights collective active during the 1970s city-wide renters strike that was particularly focused on mobilizing and organizing Black, working class tenets in the South, West and Flatland areas of Berkeley. Lays out common landlord abuses that tenants faced like unsafe unit conditions and lack of repairs to sudden evictions, and the need for collective action through legal support and other forms of mutual aid.
Tenants Against America
A fold-out pamphlet created by the Berkeley Tenants Union in retrospect of the 1970 month-long city-wide renters strike. Lays out the U.S. government and educational institutions--specifically the University of California, Berkeley--investments in warfare to maintain political-economic control abroad, and the connections between violence in Vietnam and renters experiences of discriminatory housing systems within domestic borders. Touches on the shortcomings of white organizers efforts at cross-class and cross-racial solidarity, and the need for transformed strategies going forwards.
The Great Berkeley Renters Strike
A two-sided flyer produced by the BTU which explained the reasons for the city-wide renters strike, the strategies and goals for the action, and what legal repercussions participants could face, and the necessity of community-based legal aid. Materials like this were most likely distributed to people who were known or possible renters across central and South Berkeley, beginning at the end of 1969 leading up to the formal strike in February of 1970.
Tenants Rising
Publisher: Berkeley Tenants UnionDate: 1/1970Call Number: Volume Number: Vol. 7 No. 7Format: PeriodicalCollection: Struggles for Housing
Volume 7 of Tenants Rising, a publication produced by the Berkeley Tenants Union to communicate the struggle of building tenant power across the city to the general public. Many of the BTU's organizers were involved in the preceding of radical student movements. In this issue of the periodical, building and defending the People's Park is framed as key context for the fight to build local tenants power. Organizers utilized this form of media reflected on the goals of the organizers collective, published landlord abuses across the city, and included important logistical details for the upcoming strike for participants and supporters.
San Francisco Bay Guardian, 1970
Publisher: San Francisco Bay GuardianDate: 4/17/1970Call Number: Volume Number: Vol. 4 No. 3Format: PeriodicalCollection: Struggles for Housing
Leftist publication based in San Francisco that reported on developments in housing politics and tenant collective direct actions across the Bay Area, from San Francisco to San Jose to Berkeley. This issue includes critiques of the Yerba Buena redevelopment plan, and UC Berkeley's connections to the private utility lobby in California.