It’s a Wednesday night in Brooklyn Center, and the tenants of Sonder Point are convened in a communal space on the first floor. The air conditioning system in the room is malfunctioning, so the door is wide open. The room isn’t the only thing that’s simmering.
Anger has long been acknowledged as a tool for achieving justice. Famous ancient philosopher Aristotle was one of the first to acknowledge the power of the emotion, writing that anger was an “impulse” against injustice (SOURCE). This perspective, however, is not confined to ancient times. In 2018, journalist, activist, and author Soraya Chemaly published her book Rage Becomes Her, in which she stated that “[a]nger… is a way to actively make change and confront challenges” (SOURCE). And the tenants of Sonder Point are doing just that - using their frustrations to drive change.
A tenant council or organization is a gathering of residents of a particular complex that focuses on improving the quality of life for those residents and their neighbors. These groups often meet on weekly or monthly schedules to discuss issues and strategies. Sometimes, these meetings involve planning for the next tenant action. Tenant actions can include, but are not limited to, petitioning building management, staging protests, testifying to the city council, and engaging in a rent escrow process.
At Sonder Point, anger brings residents to tenant council meetings, and solidarity keeps them there. At their monthly meetings, tenants discuss rent hikes, a lack of management accountability, blocked rent portals, safety issues, and, more recently, money orders. The last of these was particularly troublesome considering the building’s history of using money orders to steal money from tenants (SOURCE). Longer-established tenants needed no invitation to vehemently denounce money orders as valid forms of payment and warn their newer neighbors against the dangers of the returning practice.
These meetings culminated in action just the other month when residents testified during the Public Comments session of a Brooklyn Center City Council meeting. Despite donning neon signs demanding answers and having written two strong speeches, the tenants walked away disappointed, without much closure, and their speeches cut short (SOURCE).
The residents have been meeting for years now but remain ever low on funds. Regardless, at the meeting after the City Council speeches, treasurer Miss Mary handmade labels for the water bottles and attached them to each bottle herself. They read “Sonder Point Resident Council” on the front, and on the back, there was a series of affirmations.
This small gesture was infinitely meaningful to the people of the council, especially considering the low state of morale following the City Council meeting. In the 2012 documentary United in Anger: A History of ACT UP, the importance of community was explained to be its ability to create a refuge from the intensity of the outside world and allow members of like-minded communities to revel in each others’ company and strength (SOURCE). The Sonder Point tenant association has spent years cultivating that kind of safe space, and the water bottle label as a symbol of that reaffirmed tenants’ feelings of camaraderie enough to facilitate a more emotional discussion of their frustrations immediately following.
Beyond the water bottle, the tenant council is involved in making sure tenants feel connected to each other and their community by putting what little funds they have towards cards for those in grief and gifts for those celebrating birthdays. At each meeting, no matter the urgency of the subject at hand, tenant leaders always take the time to announce and explicitly welcome those who are attending for the first time with a round of applause.
And that’s the beauty of a tenant organization, isn’t it? Having a sense of community so pervasive that you can have heated, helpful, constructive conversations with the only people who understand exactly what you’re going through is essential to tenant wellbeing.
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Whether you’re interested in learning more about resident councils or in volunteering to support ACER’s work with tenants organizing through door knocks and tabling at apartment events, contact ACER at info@acerinc.org.
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