2012: BANKING ON VACANCY REPORT RELEASE

Kazembe Balagun: The Vacancy Count felt like such a vanguard issue. It was like, pointing at the vacant houses that exist in the city, is the most intrinsic critique of capitalism that you can do without even telling people that, “This shit's about capitalism.”

And that shit is so slick and so smart that people don't understand they're talking about capitalism. It's like, “Yeah! Look at all of us homeless people and look at all those empty houses. You make that connection.” And folks are like, “Damn!” And I think that was like the pedagogical example of people's actual practical lived experience being dignified and not theorized. That's where I thought that that movement pedagogy felt like it was real. I also felt it was real in terms of the symbolism. I felt having the powder blue shirts and the crow bar as a symbol was this kind of level of visibility around the issue that was just like, yeah!

Jenny Akchin: People would talk about BankingonVacancy and how amazing it was. Like, just that people went and just counted, right? And just did it, because people talk all the time about data, right? “Oh, we need to get this data. Oh, we need to get that data.” And you all just did that! And I think that was really attractive to me at the time, because it was seeing groups that actually do and show up in that way was like really, really cool.