Rent is Theft sticker

Description

From the Rent is theft website;

The goal of this publication is to demonstrate the insidious robbery perpetrated against the working class via the rent and real estate arrangements. It’s worth noting that these arrangements are but one facet of a monster that conspires every day to wrap its slimy tentacles around our throats to imprison us and squeeze from us our labor and livelihood. From Wall St to third world sweat shops, from Brooklyn gentrification to apartheid in the Middle East, the forces of capital seek to conquer the world for the sake of profit. Those who pay rent, those who work to produce and move the goods in our society for menial compensation, we are but pawns in a global neo-liberal chess game. And those who can no longer afford their rent, whose backs have been broken by years of labor, those who are no longer of use to the bankers and barons are thrown to the wayside, discarded as readily as the high end cell-phones and fashion accoutrements that are no longer “in”.

That’s us: the pawns, the mules, the collateral damage. However, if we the publishers honestly believed our fates were sealed, that there was no changing this arrangement, we wouldn’t have bothered making this publication. It’s true that each of us is a caged animal. But we are not caged kittens, impotent to affect our incarceration. No, we are tigers. We can thrash and tear, should our anger inspire enough. We can strike fear, should our hearts embolden enough. The chains that bind us are thick, but not impenetrable.

The hope of this publication is that it acts as a call-to-action. We have provided some information with which to arm your mind. It is up to you to arm your heart. It’s true that alone we are weak, but in every eviction notice served, every convict sentenced, every family torn apart by poverty, there are potential comrades in our fight against state and capital.

There will be those that extol the virtues of piecemeal victories; slow reforms; working within the system. We hope the articles in these pages will make it clear that the system cannot be changed from the inside. The very structure of our society is made to control and imprison us. Talking the Rent Guidelines Board down to a 1% rent increase is a victory for the landlords; a rent freeze is a stalemate. If rent is truly theft — as we have sought to demonstrate in these pages — then agreeing to pay any amount for rent is consenting to robbery of ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and our class.

We instead call for a permanent rent strike. We demand a world in which land, housing and industry are communalized. There are those that will say our demands are “unrealistic”. But, to be realistic in this world is to accept a caste system in which our very humanity is a commodity to be bought and sold. To reject our place in society is to demand the “impossible”, which we, and countless revolutionaries before us have done proudly. In capitalist society there are many prisons, and being “realistic” is one of them. Demand the “impossible”.

A 7.5 cm x 10.5 cm laminated sticker