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Almost three decades ago, I filmed the Rodney King riots as Los Angeles burned. During that time, I had two jobs: one at a South-Central grocery store and the other at a retail store in affluent Culver City. I remember the mayhem when our South Central store was looted, but the Culver City store was protected by a National Guardsman at the front door.

Today, nothing has changed as we protest George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks’s unjust murders: police have dedicated themselves to protecting rich neighborhoods and corporate business while our neighborhoods are neglected. Meanwhile, during COVID-19, many of us cannot make rent.

I’ve lived in South-Central Los Angeles for my whole life. I’m a mother of five and a grandmother of six. In this pandemic, we are unable to pay our rent and are terrified of police brutality should they come to our neighborhoods and assist to evict us. And we are not alone.

Black people are being disproportionately killed by COVID-19 and the police. When eviction moratoriums begin to expire, and police work with landlords to take us from our homes, our community will alarmingly be even more susceptible to police brutality and COVID-19. Our fight right now is in the streets, but it cannot end there. Cancelling the rent is even more important at this time. How can we shelter-in-place from coronavirus or police brutality with the threat of cops dragging us out of our homes?

I’m currently living with my mother in a building owned by Regency Management — which changed from PAMA Management after their harmful practices were revealed. Three years ago, my apartment complex, Baldwin Village, was deemed a “nuisance” by the city, a tool officials used in an attempt to push us out of our homes and speed up gentrification.

We fought back and won — temporarily. It shouldn’t take a legal fight to ensure that my neighbors and my family can remain in our homes for the time being.

Mayor Garcetti deciding to cut at least $1 million from the LAPD budget is a good start. But it’s not nearly enough of the $1.86 Billion. We need to defund the police and invest in programs that actually keep us safe. Invest in Community Land trusts to secure an equitable future.

Further, the corporate landlords could improve our living conditions and ensure we don’t lose our homes during this unprecedented time — a recent report from Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE) shows that they are currently sitting on at least $470 billion.

These corporate bad actors, billionaires with ties to one another and Donald Trump, and whose property is protected by the police, have been found to have fraudulently foreclosed on mortgage holders, pushed excessive fees on families and tenants, and driven families out of their homes through predatory tactics for years.

Corporate landlords who have extracted from Black communities for decades now must pay back what they have stolen. They are the looters. That’s why I am joining housing justice organizers across the country in a campaign called “We Strike Together,” withholding rent payments en masse for the duration of the pandemic. As we mourn George Floyd, and protect our community from COVID-19 and the police, we need rent cancellation now more than ever. So we’re demanding that state and federal governments cancel rent and additionally hold corporate landlords accountable to #MakeThemPay their fair share.

Elected officials can make it happen by defunding the police and redistributing funds back to our communities, and also by forcing corporate landlords to pay for the cancellation of rent, mortgages and utilities, at least for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. Or even better: for good.

A tenant group in Minneapolis recently gained ownership of their apartment complex from their landlord. Victories like this show community control is possible on a smaller scale. It’s time to make it happen everywhere.

The quickest way to protect our community in this moment is to defund the police, hold corporate landlords accountable and use that money to guarantee housing for all. It would protect us from violent evictions and begin to unravel the racism knitted into the core of our society. Join our fight now.

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Zerita Jones is an organizer with L.A. Tenants Union (Baldwin-Crenshaw-Leimert Local) and Vice Chairperson of Liberty Community Land Trust.

Zerita Jones

Writing since February 2022 · 1 story contributed