By Tara Raghuveer, The Appeal. September 7, 2020 | Educate!

Above photo: Protestors demonstrate during a ‘No Evictions, No Police’ national day of action protest on September 1, 2020 in New York City.

Tenants and progressive leaders who cried out for a national action must now grapple with two truths.

This eviction moratorium will save lives, but everything about it is a page out of Trump’s re-election playbook.

On Tuesday, when the rent was due once again and as 43 million Americans braced for possible eviction, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a nationwide eviction moratorium that will run from Friday through Dec. 31. 

This eviction moratorium, unlike the one under the CARES Act policy that expired in late July, appears to apply to all rental units nationwide. Now, regardless of whether they receive federal funding or financing, landlords may not evict their tenants based on their inability to pay the rent. 

The order applies wherever there is not a more protective state moratorium in effect, like in Missouri and Alabama, where the governors never issued statewide eviction protections. But it does not override any jurisdictions that provide the same or greater protections for tenants. 

The CDC order responds to months of outcry from organizers, tenants, and policymakers, taking a decisive stance: ending evictions is a public health imperative. The order reads: “In the context of a pandemic, eviction moratoria—like quarantine, isolation, and social distancing—can be an effective public health measure utilized to prevent the spread of communicable disease.” 

In order to benefit from this protection, tenants will have to declare their inability to pay to their landlord, using a form provided by the CDC (and included in the text of Tuesday’s order). Tenants are eligible to make this declaration if they earn less than $99,000 annually or less than $198,000 as a household, were not required to report income in 2019, or received a stimulus check. 

The CDC’s national eviction moratorium may keep millions of tenants in their homes until the new year, and in turn it could save untold numbers of lives as COVID-19 remains an active threat. But, of course, it’s not so simple.

Several caveats limit the moratorium’s potential reach..

Facebook event: https://bit.ly/33hlm2p

1075 Burns Street, Detroit – 12 NOON

Indian Village is a historic district in the city of Detroit. The neighborhood name was chosen to give it a distinct character, not to honor any former village or Indigenous people. Join us on September 12th to increase awareness and have respectful conversations with people to encourage the neighborhood to change the name in a good way.

We ask that all people attending please wear masks, we will have hand sanitizer and sanitizing wipes available but if you can bring your own that would be wonderful! Migwech!

Facebook event: https://bit.ly/33hlm2p

Enough is enough. The community and the Acevedo family deserve JUSTICE for Joel Avecedo. Support the movement for Black and Brown Lives in Milwaukee and help us make our demands for reform clear. We will rally until we see change and justice.

WHAT: Join us for a community rally at the Milwaukee Police Association (6310 W Bluemound Rd, Milwaukee)

WHEN: The rally starts at 4:30 pm.

WHY: The community demands justice for Joel Acevedo’s death in April of this year. Michael Mattioli, a Milwaukee police officer killed Joel by applying a 10-minute chokehold and has not been held accountable. Recently he resigned in lieu of an impending investigation into his culpability. He can now retain his pension. Our community deserves answers and justice.

Guest Speakers: Members of the Acevedo Family, Christine Neumann-Ortiz from Voces de la Frontera, and Liz Brown from Justice Wisconsin.

Your safety is important. Please bring PPE and stay socially distanced.

Milwaukee Area Labor Council

“Talking about race is hard. It can be controversial. But we’re the Labor Movement. We don’t walk away from a fight. We can’t avoid a conversation on race and injustice and inequality because its hard. That’s not who we are.” -Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO

Join the Milwaukee Area Labor Council for a 2 hour conversation on identifying the different ways people feel judged and discriminated against and why it’s important for us as the Labor Movement to become active Allies in the struggle for racial and economic justice.Sign up links can be found in the Facebook event. Sign up today! Space is limited. Wednesday, September 23- https://www.facebook.com/events/764062137780263Tuesday, October 13- https://www.facebook.com/events/651138755523507

Please share with your friends and local unions! Contact jay@milwaukeelabor.org or emily@milwaukeelabor.org with any questions.

Milwaukee Area Labor Council

Graduate Employees’ Organization 3550

Dear GEO members and supporters,

Tonight, in a historic move, GEO membership voted to reject management’s latest offer. That means we are still on strike – and still hitting the picket line. We appreciate the hundreds and hundreds of picketers who showed up for our first two days of striking – and welcome the hundreds more who will join us. On Thursday, we will be joined by U-M’s Residential Advisors who announced their strike yesterday! When you see them, on and off the picket lines, give them all the solidarity for standing up against a very powerful employer.

Join the next picket shift! Come to the Diag (Central) or Tower (North) for any of the following shifts: 8-11 am, 11am -2 pm, or 2pm-5pm. You will be assigned your picket location on the spot. 

Supplies: We’d love to have more megaphones, batteries for megaphones, chalk, savory food/fresh food, and drinks other than water/gatorade. If you can’t drop anything off, contribute to our Strike Fund – and share it with others. The more we raise the longer we fight. 

The love and solidarity GEO has received is incredible and demonstrates how much our fight is a fight for all workers on campus. We are moved by the outpouring of support for our struggle and look forward to continuing to fight alongside you. An injury to one is an injury to all. 

In solidarity,

Erin, Lucy, and Kathleen

Graduate Employees’ Organization 3550

Hosted by Milwaukee Area Labor Council

Join us on Sunday, September 20 at 4 pm on the corner of 4th street (Vel Phillips) and Michigan in downtown Milwaukee.

We call on all workers to join a socially distanced rally and march to stop Trump and extend benefits for working people NOW.Stand with essential and frontline workers speaking out about working conditions under Trump’s pandemic, economic crisis, and the fight for racial justice.

Essential Workers are everywhere. They are the nurse that holds your loved ones hand in the ICU, the UPS and USPS drivers who are delivering countless packages, the grocery store worker keeping the shelves stocked with the essentials, and the checker who rings you up. They are the social worker that inspects your child’s daycare to keep it safe and the bus drivers who takes you to work or the doctor.

Join us on Sunday, September 20 at 4 pm on the corner of 4th street (Vel Phillips) and Michigan in downtown Milwaukee

Photo: Wisconsin Bail Out The People Movement

Madison’s 2021 Capital Budget ($162 million) is being discussed tonight while our communities are facing evictions, unemployment, and poverty. Register to speak to demand they #InvestInCommunity.Today and tomorrow at 4:30pm.Attend the Budget Hearings online.Register to speak on item #22: http://bit.ly/speakMBWatch online: http://bit.ly/watchMB—

“We have demanded for years that our state seriously invest in the safety and well-being of our Black and Southeast Asian communities. Now, we demand that the empty statements of solidarity be withheld in favor of concrete action to address the very conditions that are preventing us from achieving it. The city of Madison will be finalizing its budget for 2021 over the next few months, and we demand that the police budget be used to ensure that our neighbors and families are able to keep their homes. We demand that the integrity of our community resources be maintained. We demand that the state invest meaningfully in the lives of its citizens, not police inflicted deaths.” – Freedom Inc’s 8/31/20 Statement

TAA – Graduate Worker Union of UW-Madison

Issued September 2, 2020:

Today is the start of the most bizarre, upside-down, shameful semester we’ve ever seen at UW, set amidst a global pandemic and a mass uprising against anti-Black state violence. We hope that everyone has individually made their working and learning situations as safe as possible.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has abdicated any sense of responsibility to the well-being of its students, workers, and those under its supervision, going as far as to require students to sign pledges releasing the university from liability for student well-being. This university is now—and has been for a while—a business first; it is responsible primarily to its debtors, and we are all its source of revenue.

Marginalized and underrepresented students will shoulder the disproportionate burden of these twin crises of COVID-19 and systemic racism, compounded by administrators’ refusal to offer anything other than austerity. Put simply, UW is failing all of us, failing this community, and failing the state of Wisconsin.

To combat this feeling of powerlessness, Madison needs to get organized. We are stronger together. One way to do that is through building a union culture at UW and in Madison. There’s a reason that Wisconsin legislators went after public sector unions in 2011’s Act 10 battle (https://projects.jsonline.com/news/2016/11/27/for-unions-in-wisconsin-fast-and-hard-fall-since-act-10.html#).

Public sector unions have the power to imagine and democratically enact a different type of university and education system guided by our community’s needs and collective capabilities. As a labor union, we believe changing institutions starts with community control and empowering workers to govern our own workplaces.

How would this semester be different if the teaching assistants, research assistants, foodservice workers, housefellows, custodial staff, building trades workers, adjuncts, athletes, faculty, and administrative staff could run the university as a unified body? If workers were in control of our workplaces, would we reopen campus and bring tens of thousands of people into town during a pandemic? Would there be furloughs? Would tuition have risen across the board? Would administrators be making $150,000+? Would head coaches be making $4 million while athletes go unpaid? Or would there be better safety protocols? Income continuation and hazard pay for essential student and campus workers? Deep and sustained investments in ensuring the success of BIPOC students and other students of color?

The state legislature eliminated any meaningful shared governance in 2015 with Act 55—it’s purely a ceremonial advisory role now. What is required is collective action. Together, we can shut down the university until administrators come to the table.If you are seeing this, and you work at UW, get tapped into your unions. AFSCME Local 171 and AFSCME Local 2412, Building and Construction Trades, United Faculty and Academic Staff, and the TAA.If you are a housefellow, a dining hall worker, an athlete, or other student worker and you want to learn more about organizing to change your working conditions, contact us. Solidarity to everyone right now.

We love you and will fight alongside you.[Image description: At the top of the image, a large fish chases a small group of disorganized fish. Below this is the phrase “Organize!”. Below the phrase, the small group of fish has grown and has come together to chase after the same large fish.]