Anonymous submission to North Shore

“Words can’t communicate realities like the ones we’re currently experiencing. There can be no words to describe a condition which never existed before, which changes from one moment to the next and which has no known stages or outcomes.” – Yarostan Vochek

The only way Covid-19 is going to be a “great equalizer” is if we use this moment to conjure something entirely new. Alongside beautiful movements of prisoner solidarity and neighborhood mutual aid we are also seeing rent strikes pop up all over the world. And it warms our hearts! We are all so sick of landlords hoarding property while we scramble to find shelter. These smug goons really believe they’re making an “honest living” by sitting a rung above us on the pyramid scheme of capitalism. They genuinely seem to believe they deserve half our paychecks! And now that many of us are being paid $2000 a month to stay home and take care of ourselves, these vultures believe that most of that money should go into their pockets and the rest paid back in taxes at the end of the year. Between the government and our landlords we feel like disemboweled gazelles being gorged on simultaneously by two blood thirsty predators. And so we will use this moment to refuse. To tell our landlords that they don’t get a cent, that it’s their time to feel panic, that this year their investments won’t pay off like they anticipated. For something like this to happen on such a grand scale is truly uncharted territory.

In order to celebrate this joyous space being carved out, we decided to redecorate Hamilton’s City Center with a new banner. Keep Your Rent Hamilton!!! Do it. Keep it. Save it for later, spend it on skittles, burn it, whatever, it’s yours now. Let’s make this year so messy the bureaucrats will need a lifetime to sort out who owes what to who, and hopefully by time they’re done there won’t be a status quo left to return to. It’s scary making our landlords angry, just as it was scary dangling over four lanes of traffic to hang this banner, but seeing how many people are being brave right now makes us brave. Thank you for that.

NS note: Keep Your Rent Hamilton website http://keepyourrenthamilton.com/