“It’s Time for a Rent Strike”: COVID-19 Rent Strikes and the Absence of State Care

Abstract

COVID-19 unemployed millions of Americans, many of whom already lacked the financial ability to withstand an economic crisis. Mid-quarantine, politicians began to grapple on what protections for renters would stay in place as the assistance bills came to an end. The COVID-19 rent crisis raised significant moral questions to the American populace – namely, that of the State’s responsibility to care for its citizens. This article examines rent strikes in the context of care ethics. Care ethics contends that our actions have moral weight. What we do matters. Rent strikes sit at the intersection of political practice and care ethics. This article contends that rent strikes provided care when the State did not, and that this lack of care highlights the need for solidarity.

Multispecies Alliances Against the Wasteocene: Counter-Narratives and Commoning Practices

“…Covid can be seen as a threat, but we can identify with its agency and power to effect change, and we can also devise more protective and sensible ways of learning to live with rather against and in fear of these relations. Rent strikes were also methods devised by ordinary people to implement strategies of caring for their community members when the state was unwilling or unable to do so (VALENTINE, 2022). The rent strikes also reflect the necessity of countering toxic narratives that link racism, speciesism, and public health with stories -and actions that embody storytelling -that provide alternate visioning of what multispecies justice might look like in the age of the Wasteocene.…”