"We Make Our Community By Defending It" - Tracy Rosenthal on the Homeless Industrial Complex, Housing and Tenant Union Organizing

In this conversation we interview Tracy Rosenthal who is a co-founder of the Los Angeles Tenants Union. Their book, Abolish Rent, written with Leonardo Vilchis, is forthcoming from Verso. 

We talk to Tracy about their recent piece “Inside LA’s Homeless Industrial Complex” which discusses the aftermath of LA’s Echo Park encampment from 2020, and current trends in social control with respect to unhoused people in Los Angeles. Tracy examines the relationship between police and ostensibly social service oriented nonprofit organizations in developing new forms of carceral containment, under the auspices of so-called interim housing. 

We also talk a bit about some of the organizing that unhoused folks are undertaking in response to these trends. As well as the work Tracy and others are doing with the LA Tenants Union and the Autonomous Tenants Union Network. 

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Articles discussed in the episode: 

“Inside LA’s Homeless Industrial Complex”

"101 Notes On The LA Tenants Union"

Tenant Organizing: LA Tenants Union and the Autonomous Tenants Union Network.