BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD ON ON ON YOUR YOUR YOUR HANDS HANDS HANDS

I can’t shake it off.

I am still haunted by the stories of tenants and people without homes who I talked to on the KC Tenants Crisis Hotline

It was my job, but it was also my passion.

Tenants and working class people had created the Hotline at the beginning of the pandemic when we realized that our elected officials were not fighting for our protections

So, we did it for ourselves

I remember Nathan

and he couldn’t pay his rent for March and April because of a pandemic-related layoff, and his property manager was getting aggressive and threatening eviction when the moratorium expired, and Nathan didn’t qualify for stimulus payments because he couldn’t work legally due to his work permit needing to be renewed, but the immigration courts were closed, and he couldn’t get unemployment benefits, and so he was out of options and trapped, and his family was overseas, and then when he got evicted he ended up living week-to-week in an extended stay hotel, and then all Nathan’s belongings and cat were condensed to a suitcase and backpack, and he had to rely on the mutual aid of our community to pay for his housing, and

I don’t know where he is now.

I remember Big Mike

Sometimes the feeling of powerlessness gets too heavy to bear.

Every morning I woke up grinding my teeth and unable to eat for hours. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was something else I could have done. Was I in some way responsible for someone dying or having to go back to domestic violence?

I still carry the weight of their stories

Organizers help others turn their private pain into public power, to find joy in rebellion and solidarity, and to fight back and win.

But where do organizers go when we are worn out and overwhelmed, when we are oversaturated with trauma?

I picked up my phone and scrolled my contacts down to the Zs. Zac Mueller. Click.

Click.

“Yo, dude, what’s up?”

“Hey, Zac, I can’t fucking take this anymore. Everything about the pandemic is finally getting to me. I can’t handle this pressure It’s too much ”

Zac was one of the people who had brought me into movement work in 2014. I was a student at the University of Missouri - Kansas City. We worked together on the Fight for $15 Movement to organize low wage workers and students to win $15 an hour and union rights.

“What’s going on?”

My feet stepped onto the wooden porch as I opened the black metal storm door. I walked into the backyard; the trees had finally come into bloom. I sat down and squinted up.

It was a beautiful June afternoon. It was mocking me.

“You know we’ve been fighting to win an eviction moratorium since the shut-down began in March? We won a ban on evictions until May 31st, which seemed like a good start Then we flooded the phone lines and sent emails and tweets demanding that this Judge do something –he’s literally the only person in the city who has the power to stop this all happening.

“We just went to his place and had an action - in Kansas City! You know how Kansas City is Actions don’t happen like that, you don’t go to the target's house.

"But we did that!

"People shared testimonies about being homeless He’s religious, so we asked faith leaders to talk about his moral obligation to act.

And you know what he did?