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Preface
At last, Chicago’s tenants are waking up from their long, crazy nightmare about “tenants rights” and are replacing that dream with something real: tenant unions. Amid the excitement of the current period and encouraged by the signs of life, some have proclaimed that Chicago is on the verge of a “tenant summer.” No doubt, we share their enthusiasm.
It has to be admitted, however, that our tenants are quite late to this fight. In many of the major and mid-sized cities in our country, the tenant union movement seems to have already taken root. The same appears true in Europe. But here in Chicago, it is still in its infancy. On the other hand, our organization, the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance, has just begun its sixth year of life. During the period that separates our birth from the present day, we have learned hard lessons and transformed our work dramatically trying to bring this moment into existence. While certainly not mature, our organization is no tyke, either. With respect to the certain trends and peculiarities that have arisen from our organizing conditions, we have been hardened against some, and made sympathetic to others. Our time in the struggle has been adequate enough to provide us this, if nothing else.
Therefore, we hope it is easy to understand how half a decade spent in the process of organizational construction under Chicago’s particular conditions could have resulted in the strongly-felt ideas which now loom over our activity like huge nimbostratus clouds. As a frenzy of fresh seeds are being planted in the ground, we hope our urgency to release some of these ideas from the atmosphere above the so-called housing justice movement appears seasonable and maybe even precipitates stronger growth. In any case, we aim to help break up the skies that badly cloud our movement
This little book is addressed to both left-wing activists in general, anti-imperialists, those in the housing-centric social justice organizations, and, of course, those who are veterans of or are just entering the tenant union movement, including our own membership. It responds to numerous questions that have been posed to us over the years and offers a positive vision of where our struggle is at, where we believe it should go, and why. Although we would never suggest that our organization could look exactly like one in another place, we know from experience that tenant organizations in other locations have similar problems and similar questions. We hope therefore that comrades in the tenant movement in different parts of the world might also find this book helpful or at least stimulating.
We also recognize that it is likely unavoidable that this circulates beyond our intended audience and for this we want to warn the reader that it is very specific to our context and is based directly on the concrete problems that our organization is facing at the time of writing. We are aware that it is different from other works recently made available on tenant unionism, and may not carry the same appeal. We attribute this to its specificity and its function as an organizational document.
The development of a cloud into rain waters the earth just as it clears the sky, making way for the warm light of the sun. If we fail to break up the clouds over the movement, without a period of transition and growth, the summer will never come. With that in mind, we want to contest the idea of the tenant summer with another—that of the tenant spring.
- ACTA, Spring 2025