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ableism
Renters in Philly Say: ‘Fighting Together We Are Stronger!’
The Philadelphia renters are part of a growing tenants’ rights movement, with advocacy that centers on the government support provided to irresponsible corporate landlords.
Jun 08, 2024
Tyrone Jones had good reasons for pulling on a bright gold Renters United Philadelphia t-shirt and delivering a petition to the corporate headquarters of Odin Properties last week. Jones is a tenant of Odin’s, one of the largest property owners in Philadelphia and the landlord for 10,000 rental units across multiple states, and he has been living through difficult conditions.
Jones uses a wheelchair, and only one of the four entrances to his building is accessible. Even at that entrance, the ramp is so narrow that he can barely fit through. The lock to the door to the building is hard to reach from the chair, the double doors of the elevator nearly impossible to navigate.
Leaks coming through Jones’ ceiling went unrepaired so long that the ceiling caved in. Now, mold has developed. The closest exit from his apartment has steep stairs Jones cannot descend. “God forbid if there is a fire on the side where the ramp is,” Jones says. “I couldn’t get out of this building at all.” A short video of Jones showing his building and apartment has been posted online by Renters United Philadelphia here.
Among the other renters joining Jones at Odin headquarters was Lori Peterson. Also an Odin renter, Peterson explains that the rodent problem in her apartment is so bad that bugs crawl on her while she sleeps. Cockroaches drop into any pot or pan of food while she is cooking. “They say they do pest control regularly, but they don’t,” she says. The front door to Peterson’s building has a hole where the doorknob should be, she too has leaks in her apartment, and she recently found a dead mouse on top of a dress in her closet.
The petition the Odin renters delivered was signed by over 450 people and states in part, “In neighborhoods across Philadelphia, particularly in Black working-class areas, Odin Properties has allowed its buildings to fall into disrepair... These unsafe living conditions are a direct assault on our dignity and well-being, exacerbating the housing crisis and fueling displacement.”
The petition calls for the problems to be fixed by July 17, along with a freeze on rent and evictions during the repair period and rent rebates for those who lived through poor conditions. The renters also call on the City of Philadelphia to inspect all of Odin rental properties and severely penalize all landlords whose properties violate housing codes.
The tenants point out that Odin is receiving generous government subsidies, with the Philadelphia Housing Authority paying the rent for many of the Odin units that are in the worst condition. The City of Philadelphia has even promoted its partnership with Odin, which receives reimbursement from low-income housing vouchers. “We are asking the city to light a fire under Odin’s behind, to be honest with you,” Peterson says.
Odin Property did not respond to a request for comment.
The Philadelphia renters are part of a growing tenants’ rights movement, which includes strong tenant union presence in places like Louisville, Kansas City, and Connecticut. Much of the advocacy centers on the government support provided to corporate landlords like Odin through direct subsidies or federal housing loan support .
On the way home from delivering the petition, Peterson received a call from Odin staff, asking for a meeting. Management was waiting for Jones at his building, asking to look at his apartment problems. No repairs have happened yet, so the renters have a plan to escalate the confrontation on July 18 if their demands are not met.
“I have at least a little hope,” Jones says. “When we are fighting together, we are stronger.”
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Fighting Back Against Texas’s Voter Suppression Law
While SB1 is one of many antidemocracy laws enacted by 19 states in the year after the 2020 election, it stands out for its sheer number of restrictive and discriminatory provisions, which largely target Latino and Black voters.
Sep 17, 2023
Trial began Monday in a major federal lawsuit challenging a wide-ranging and discriminatory voter suppression law Texas enacted in 2021. The Brennan Center, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and our other co-counsel represent a wide swath of Texans, including election administrators, community groups, civil rights and voting organizations, and faith-based groups. Over the course of the trial, we will show how Senate Bill 1 violates the Constitution, the Voting Rights Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
While SB1 is one of many antidemocracy laws enacted by 19 states in the year after the 2020 election, it stands out for its sheer number of restrictive and discriminatory provisions, which largely target Latino and Black voters. This is likely the only challenge to such an extensive restrictive voting law that will go to trial between now and the 2024 election.
Among its host of restrictive provisions, the law establishes onerous new rules for voting by mail and curbs voter outreach activities. It also hinders voting assistance for people with language barriers or disabilities and restricts election officials’ and judges’ ability to protect voters from harassment by poll watchers. Like the dozens of restrictive state voting laws that have been enacted nationwide in the last three years, SB1’s proponents claim that it is intended to fight voter fraud. Indeed, its myriad provisions appear to respond directly to baseless claims peddled by Donald Trump and his fellow election deniers about the security of mail-in voting and election administration.
In a state that was already the toughest in the nation to register and vote, Texans now have an even harder time staying on the voter rolls, casting their ballots, and ensuring their ballots are counted.
Yet Texas has never found evidence of widespread fraud—and not for lack of trying. Without the pretext of making elections more secure, SB1 is simply an unconstitutional effort to suppress eligible voters in marginalized communities. It seems no coincidence that after people of color surged in turnout in Texas’s 2018 and 2020 elections, the legislature passed a law that restricts methods of voting favored by Black and Latino voters and impairs voter assistance to those with limited English proficiency or limited literacy.
The plaintiffs in the case, LUPE v. Texas, can attest to the various ways SB1 has created obstacles to the ballot box that infringe on the constitutional right to vote. Voters of color have been disproportionately impacted by these burdens, violating their right to equal protection, the 15th Amendment’s protection against race-based disenfranchisement, and the Voting Rights Act. Our plaintiffs’ anecdotal experiences are backed by state voting records in the wake of the law’s enactment. Brennan Center research shows that just a single provision—which has recently been blocked by a judge—led to massive disenfranchisement with major racial disparities in Texas’s 2022 primaries.
The law’s new rules for mail-in voting required people to write the last four digits of their driver’s license number or social security number on their mail ballot application and mail ballot envelope. Officials had to reject an application or ballot if the number provided didn’t match the number on file in a voter’s registration record, even if that person was eligible to vote. These mismatches weren’t always the result of someone writing the number incorrectly but rather providing a correct number that didn’t coincide with the ID they used when they registered to vote—which could have been more than a decade ago. Tens of thousands of applications and mail ballots were tossed solely for having a missing or mismatched ID number, and nonwhite voters were at least 30% more likely than white voters to have their application or mail ballot rejected. A significant portion of those prevented from voting by mail ultimately didn’t vote at all.
Similarly, the law curtails the ability of people with disabilities or with limited English or literacy skills to get help voting, denying them the equal voting access and assistance they’re entitled to under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Voting Rights Act. In particular, SB1 imposes new requirements and penalties for voter assisters that have deterred volunteers from aiding voters at the polls. It also makes it a crime to compensate or receive compensation for helping people vote by mail, which prohibits civic organizations from supporting community members who have trouble filling out the forms. Several witnesses will speak to how these provisions made it difficult for them to secure the help they needed to vote in the 2022 election.
Voters aren’t the only ones struggling under SB1. The law also targets election officials and poll workers, who are already facing a torrent of threats, harassment, and abuse. One provision makes it a crime for poll workers to “take any action” that would make a partisan poll watcher’s observation “not reasonably effective.” This unconstitutionally vague directive gives poll workers no clear sense of what they can and can’t do to stop poll watchers from harassing or intimidating voters, leaving poll workers fearful of being prosecuted just for doing their jobs. In the face of this uncertainty, some experienced poll workers have declined to sign up for future elections.
The heavy burdens that Texas’s law imposes at every stage of voting are becoming increasingly apparent. In a state that was already the toughest in the nation to register and vote, Texans now have an even harder time staying on the voter rolls, casting their ballots, and ensuring their ballots are counted. And in the two years since SB1’s enactment, state legislators around the country have continued to push legislation aimed at restricting voting access for Black, Latino, and vulnerable voters and making elections more susceptible to partisan meddling. Leaving these unconstitutional voter suppression measures unchallenged can only serve to spur further attacks on the freedom to vote in Texas and beyond.
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No, the ADA Did Not Fix Ableism in America
Disabled people have waited and struggled for decades for another round of legislative and cultural justice—and we are fervently organizing for it with renewed energy.
Jul 31, 2023
Every year in July, like clockwork, many Americans repeat the myth that one law passed three decades ago—the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA,—cured America of ableism.
I’m not just talking about former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) saying that “under the ADA, we are all winners” in 1990. Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) tweeted two years ago in celebration of the ADA’s “equal access and opportunity for all,” and Minnesota State Rep. Liz Lee said last year that the ADA “ensured that all people deserve equal respect and treatment in all aspects of life.”
Many disabled people can also rattle off stories about bosses and colleagues telling them how the ADA fixed ableism.
“ADA is only the beginning. It is not a solution. Rather, it is an essential foundation on which solutions will be constructed.”
The truth: the ADA, passed on July 26, 1990, isn’t enough to defeat ableism—and it never has been. Disabled people have waited and struggled for decades for another round of legislative and cultural justice—and we are fervently organizing for it with renewed energy.
The ADA established crucial protections for many people with disabilities, but always provided the most protection for those with time and money, especially the means to hire a lawyer. Accommodations in schools and workplaces, accessibility in businesses and on public transportation, and the overall right to exist in public spaces has increased exponentially since the ADA was passed, but it is still spotty and unequal across the United States and often dependent on your disability and access to wealth.
The frequent necessity of hiring a lawyer to access ADA protections has restricted many benefits of the law to the most privileged disabled people from the very beginning.
The ADA was never supposed to be the end. As Justin Dart, Jr., considered by some to be a father of the ADA, said when it was passed: “ADA is only the beginning. It is not a solution. Rather, it is an essential foundation on which solutions will be constructed.”
The ADA mirrored the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in many ways and was a win for disability rights activists because it promised basic protections against discrimination that didn’t exist before. But just as the Civil Rights Act fails to adequately protect Black Americans and other people of color from things like racial bias, voting restrictions, violence at the hands of law enforcement, or wage and wealth gaps established through decades of government-backed plunder, the ADA also falls short.
This is why I recently co-founded an organization called New Disabled South. Our mission is to fight for liberation, justice, and fundamental rights for all disabled people in the South—and in doing so, all disabled people across the country.
It’s a big fight, because disabled people in the South are under attack—and the ADA isn’t enough to protect us. So we are fighting to expose the depth of the problems and for brand new legislative solutions. We are fighting against impossible voting barriers, like the restriction of access to absentee ballots and the criminalization of assisting disabled voters.
Our main struggle and campaign is to pass five disabled voting bills of rights over the next five years in state legislatures across the South.
These disabled voting bills of rights will protect disabled voters’ legal right to vote. We need these protections because without them we simply can’t access the polls in the ways voters should be able to easily access the polls. Given our physical restrictions, that means we need a low administrative burden right to vote by mail, to accessible polling locations, to get assistance with our ballots, and to drive-through voting—all methods of voting under attack across the South.
We have also seen extreme state violence against disabled people across the South, particularly over the past decade with high-profile cases like Ethan Saylor, Sandra Bland, Tanisha Anderson, and the fatal shooting of Magdiel Sanchez.
Those tragedies unfortunately aren’t exceptions. Nearly half of people killed by police in the United States have a disability—and these are frequently disabled people of color. Meanwhile, 55% of Black disabled men have been arrested at least once by the time they are 28, and 40% of the current prison population is disabled. Police, prisons and courts are a disability justice issue because they are hurting disabled people.
That’s why at New Disabled South we are also fighting to end such criminalization with targeted campaigns and grassroots organizing to educate disabled people around the harms of policing and to mobilize our communities to dismantle these systems. The ADA doesn’t address the dire need for systemic changes in how we are treated by cops, courts, jails, or prisons.
Our people, across every single issue you care about, need you to care about disability—because at the margins of every issue you care about you will find us.
Poverty in the disabled community, especially across the South, hasn’t been solved by the ADA. Despite supposed equal access to jobs and housing—our people are living in poverty at twice the rate of non-disabled people. And we are seeing disabled people forced out of communities and into nursing homes, at all ages. A staggering 655,000 people are on state waiting lists to receive Medicaid waivers to receive care in their homes, and parents with disabled children are often separated from their kids or forced to live in poverty because they themselves have to stay home and provide critical care. We are fighting across every single one of our states to end this inhumane backlog, investing nearly $100,000 in ad campaigns calling on state leaders to fund waiver slots. We won’t stop until every single Southern disabled person waiting to come home is home.
Everything progressives fight for is bound up in disability. Racism, environmental injustice, climate change, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, capitalism, colonialism, xenophobia—all of these are disabling forces. Our people, across every single issue you care about, need you to care about disability—because at the margins of every issue you care about you will find us.
The ADA simply doesn’t account for our multi-issue lives. We need you to be on our side.
It’s time for our political and cultural leaders to do better for disabled people. Let’s stop racist police and courts and prisons from killing Black disabled people, let’s fight for our right to vote, and let’s ensure our people come home and can afford our bills. Let’s allow all disabled people to live and thrive.
The time is now to make the lives of all disabled people better. If you’re celebrating the ADA this month, transform your celebration into action for a better future for disabled people. The ADA isn’t enough, it never was, and we need more.
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