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housing crisis
In the Fight Against Trump and Vance for Free Speech and the Truth, Be Like Mary Lupien
Lupien's viral interruption of JD Vance's speech falsely blaming immigrants for the U.S. housing crisis wasn't just important because it corrected a falsehood; she was defending the fundamental right to challenge power.
Mar 14, 2025
What happens when free speech is only free for those in power? JD Vance and the Trump administration claim to champion the First Amendment, but in practice, their version of free speech comes with a condition: It protects those who uphold their agenda and punishes those who challenge it.
This was on full display at the National League of Cities conference when Vance, now vice president, blamed the housing crisis on undocumented immigrants. "You see a very consistent relationship between a massive increase in immigration and a massive increase in housing prices," Vance argued. According to him, the rising cost of housing wasn't due to corporate greed or predatory real estate practices, but to migrants. It was a textbook case of scapegoating—shifting blame onto the powerless to distract from the true culprits.
Enter Mary Lupien, a Rochester, New York city councilmember and mayoral candidate, who wasn't having it. In a moment of raw defiance, she interrupted Vance's speech, cutting through the lies with a simple truth:
Vance and his allies claim to be warriors for free expression, yet their administration is actively working to silence those who challenge their narrative.
"We're competing against corporations, not immigrants. Give us back our funding!"
It was a flash of courage in a political landscape where too many sit silently while bad-faith actors rewrite reality.
Lupien, a progressive leader and longtime advocate for social justice, has represented Rochester's East District on City Council since January 2020. A resident of the Beechwood neighborhood, she has built her career around economic justice, housing rights, and community empowerment. Even those who don't align with her politically cannot deny her commitment, bravery, and willingness to challenge power.
Her advocacy has consistently centered on issues of housing insecurity, systemic inequality, and corporate accountability. And while some might dismiss her tactics as disruptive, history favors those who refuse to stay silent in the face of injustice.
Scapegoating is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Governments throughout history have blamed the most vulnerable groups—immigrants, minorities, the poor—to divert attention from systemic failures. It's a strategy designed to stoke fear, deepen divisions, and deflect accountability.
Vance's rhetoric is a classic example. Instead of addressing the real causes of America's housing crisis—corporate landlords, speculative real estate, stagnant wages, and decades of underinvestment in affordable housing—he chose to point the finger at immigrants.
Lupien's response was a direct rejection of this deceitful narrative. She reminded the room, and the nation, that the real enemies of affordable housing are not desperate families seeking a better life but corporations and policies designed to prioritize profit over people.
JD Vance and the Trump administration love to talk about free speech—until it's used against them. Their version of free speech is selective: It defends those who reinforce their ideology while crushing those who dissent.
Look no further than the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and legal U.S. resident, who was detained by federal immigration officials after helping lead student protests at Columbia University against the war in Gaza. President Donald Trump called Khalil's apprehension the "first arrest of many" in his administration's crackdown on campus opposition. Though a federal judge has temporarily blocked his deportation, the message was clear: Speak out against power, and you will pay the price.
The hypocrisy is glaring. Vance and his allies claim to be warriors for free expression, yet their administration is actively working to silence those who challenge their narrative. Khalil's arrest wasn't about enforcing immigration laws—it was about punishing dissent.
This is what makes Lupien's defiance so important. She wasn't just correcting a falsehood; she was defending the fundamental right to challenge power. In an era where dissent is increasingly met with retaliation, her voice was an act of resistance.
George Orwell once wrote:
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
Lupien exercised that right—not for personal gain, not for applause, but because someone had to.
There will be those who call Lupien's interruption disrespectful. There will be cynics who claim she was chasing a viral moment to boost her mayoral campaign. But both arguments ignore the stakes.
Trump's agenda isn't just about silencing opposition—it's about annihilating it. His administration has worked tirelessly to discredit institutions, suppress dissent, and consolidate power. Any act of civil disobedience that disrupts this effort—no matter how small—is an essential defense of democracy.
Moments like this come and go in the 24-hour news cycle. In a few days, most people will forget. But the slow erosion of democracy doesn't happen overnight—it happens in the moments when people choose to stay silent instead of speaking out.
Lupien made her choice. Will the rest of us?
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Government-Funded Landlord Trump Hypocritically Attacks Government Spending
The Trump real estate fortune was built by hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies and huge tax breaks, none of which are available to the working people Trump is hurting with his current attacks.
Feb 04, 2025
President Donald Trump is making good on his promised threat to “dismantle Government bureaucracy” and “cut wasteful expenditures,” issuing orders to choke off the funding pipeline for federal grants and assistance programs.
The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
Because government spending, particularly the generous big-landlord benefits baked into U.S. law and tax policy, forms the very foundation of Trump’s own wealth. The Trump real estate fortune was built by hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies and huge tax breaks, none of which are available to the working people Trump is hurting with his current attacks.
Trump became wealthy the traditional American way: he was born into it. As most thoroughly described in Samuel Stein’s excellent 2019 book, Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State, Donald’s father Fred’s real estate empire began with Brooklyn and Queens housing developments financed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). For some of those Trump developments, the path was literally cleared by government demolition of existing homes and buildings. Fred Trump’s appetite for government funding was so voracious that he was investigated by the Senate Banking Committee for defrauding post-World War II government housing programs by lying about the costs of his projects.
That was not the only investigation targeting Fred Trump’s government-funded properties. His Maryland buildings were so decrepit and his ignoring of the residents’ pleas for help and city orders to repair so blatant that the elder Trump was actually arrested in 1976 for operating a “slum property.” A U.S. Department of Justice discrimination lawsuit during the same era showed that the Trump properties systematically blocked Black prospective renters, using racist practices like attaching to their applications a paper bearing a big letter “C”—for Colored—so they could be rejected out of hand.
Fred Trump’s appetite for government funding was so voracious that he was investigated by the Senate Banking Committee for defrauding post-World War II government housing programs by lying about the costs of his projects.
That federal housing discrimination lawsuit, filed in 1973, did not just name Fred Trump. It also included the company’s president, his 27-year-old son Donald.
Donald Trump soon followed in his father’s footsteps by exploiting government programs to develop his buildings. The benefits included an unprecedented 40-year tax abatement, funding that was designed to support low-income neighborhoods, sweetheart deals to privatize public land, and government bonds used to finance his developments. “Donald Trump is probably worse than any other developer in his relentless pursuit of every single dime of taxpayer subsidies he can get his paws on,” a New York deputy mayor told the New York Times in 2016.
For example, the famous Trump Tower benefited from over $163 million in tax abatements provided by New York politicians whose campaigns Trump helped fund. That money was part of what the Timesestimated was nearly a billion dollars Trump received in government grants and tax breaks for his New York properties alone, not counting the government benefits for his properties in Florida, Nevada, and Atlantic City. "Donald Trump's business wouldn't be possible but for major government subsidies,” Timothy O'Brien, author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald, toldNPR.
Trump’s dependence on government funding is more than matched by the taxpayer dollars hoovered up by his designated government waste czar Elon Musk. As CNN has reported, the world’s richest person reached his status thanks to government loans and contracts that propped up Tesla and SpaceX in their vulnerable beginning stages. Musk still rakes in billions of dollars from government contracts and government-mandated payments to Tesla by other automakers.
“The foundation for Musk’s financial success has been the U.S. government,” tech analyst Daniel Ives told CNN.
We know that the Trump-Musk attacks on federal government programs are deeply harmful to vulnerable people, devoted civil servants, and communities and organizations trying to make the world a better place. Less well known is that Trump and Musk both owe their fortunes and careers to the very government spending they demonize now. They used government programs to climb to great heights, and now are intent on pulling up the ladder behind them.
Former Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson once said that a hypocrite politician is one who cuts down a redwood tree, then stands on its stump to deliver a speech about conservation. When the wealthy and powerful Donald Trump mounts his attacks on government programs, he does so while standing on a platform built by government largesse.Keep ReadingShow Less
Will Defeating the Oligarchs Be Easy? Of Course Not
If there was ever a moment when progressives needed to communicate our vision to the people of our country, this is that time. Despair is not an option.
Dec 31, 2024
As we enter this new year, it’s important to reflect upon the reality that we are living in a pivotal and volatile moment in American history. Within that context our job is not only to understand what’s happening all around us, but to determine the best way forward to create a nation and world that benefits all people, not just the wealthy and powerful few.
And right now, the defining issue of our time is that we are moving rapidly toward an oligarchic and authoritarian society in which billionaires not only dominate our economic life, but the information we consume and our politics as well.
Today, we have more income and wealth inequality than we’ve ever had.
Today, we have more concentration of ownership than we’ve ever had.
Today, we have more corporate control of the media than we’ve ever had.
Today, we have more billionaire money buying elections than ever before.
Today, we have a president-elect who is a pathological liar, who has little regard for the rule of law, who is suing media outlets that criticize him and threatening to jail his political opponents.
A manifestation of the current moment is the rise of Elon Musk, and all that he stands for.
Within the last two years alone Mr. Musk, the richest man in the world, has used his wealth to purchase the largest media platform on the internet, spent hundreds of millions of dollars to elect a president and give Republicans control of the House and Senate, was nominated to fill an unelected, non-confirmable position in charge of making huge budget cuts, succeeded in getting Congress to abandon a bill he didn't like, and then threatened to unseat elected officials if they did not follow his orders to shut down the government during the holidays. He is also forging alliances with autocrats throughout the world, and supporting a far-right party in the coming German elections.
But it’s not just Musk. Billionaire owners of two major newspapers overrode their editorial boards' decisions to endorse Kamala Harris, while many others are kissing Trump’s ring by making large donations to his inauguration committee slush fund.
In the midst of all this, a simple question must be asked. What do Musk, Bezos and the other billionaires want? What is motivating them? What kind of nation and world are they trying to create? While it would take a book to answer that question, let me jot down a few obvious observations.
They do not believe in democracy—the right of ordinary people to control their own futures. They firmly believe that the rich and powerful should determine the future. Left alone, they will dominate both major political parties and, through their media ownership, control the flow of information.
They do not accept what most major religions, in one form or another, have historically taught us to be ethical behavior: to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. They believe that greed, and the accumulation of wealth and power is a virtue, and that the strong should dominate the weak.
Their vision is one where the government serves the rich at the expense of working families and the poor. It is a vision where breaking unions and exploiting workers is good, making huge profits off human illness is good, monopolization of the economy and the media is good, racism, sexism and xenophobia is good, producing carbon emissions and destroying our planet is good, providing tax cuts for the richest Americans is good, making money by putting poor people into prisons is good, and on and on it goes...
That is what the oligarchs want.
We, as progressives, have a vision that is radically different.
Can we create an economic system based on the principles of justice, not greed? Yes, we can.
Can we transform a rigged and corrupt political system and create a vibrant democracy based on one person, one vote? Yes, we can.
Can we make health care a human right as we establish a system designed to keep us healthy and extend our life expectancy, not one based on the profit needs of insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry? Yes, we can.
Can we, in the wealthiest country on earth, provide free quality public education and job training for all from child care to graduate school? Yes, we can.
Can we combat climate change and protect the very habitability of our planet for future generations, and create millions of jobs in the process? Yes, we can.
Can we make certain that artificial intelligence and other exploding technologies are used to improve the quality of life for working people, and not just make the billionaire class even richer. Yes, we can.
And even though we are not going to succeed in achieving that vision in the immediate future with Trump as president and Republicans controlling Congress, it is important that vision be maintained and we continue to fight for it.
As part of that effort, we’ve got a lot of strategizing and work in front of us. For example, how do we effectively communicate our ideas to the vast majority of Americans who are with us, even while the billionaire class of this country controls so much of the media.
How do we leverage our collective power to elect progressives to local, state and federal positions while a small number of billionaires and their super-PACs are buying elections.
How do we mobilize the working class around the day to day issues which impact their lives: building the trade union movement, health care, housing, education, family based agriculture and so much more.
How do we fight back, on a day to day basis, against the reactionary policies of the Trump administration?
Will this effort be easy? No, of course it will not.
Can it be done? We have no choice.
If there was ever a moment when progressives needed to communicate our vision to the people of our country, this is that time. Despair is not an option. We are fighting not only for ourselves. We are fighting for our kids and future generations, and for the well-being of the planet.
Thank you for standing with me in that fight. Let’s go forward together.
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