We often begin our meetings with a reflection which helps put our work in context and maybe even provides us with some hope and inspiration. Here we would like to make some of those reflections available for all.

This reflection on crises was read by our Chair of Outreach, Gloria Moreno, and is adapted from Naomi Klein’s writing on environmental crises.

Slavery wasn’t a crisis for British and American elites until abolitionism turned it into one.

Racial discrimination wasn’t a crisis until the civil right movement turned it into one.

Sex discrimination wasn’t a crisis until Feminism turned it into one.

In the very same way, if enough of us stop looking away and decide that Renters Rights and Affordable Housing is a crisis worthy of a Marshall plan level of response, then it will become one, and the political class will have to respond, both by making resources available and by bending the free market rules that have proven so pliable when elite interests are in peril.