Goodbye, Tyre

By Leslie D Gregory, PA-C

When Tyre Nichols woke up the morning of the last day of his life, I feel certain that he wasn’t thinking about racism or the chance that it might be his end, though he’d likely had “the talk” from his parents at an early age. He’d pushed it back, seeking peace and joy in a life he shared with friends, family, and his community. To do otherwise would create a constant state of fear, precluding any quality of life, the ability to just get through it all and grow up.

After all, denial is a coping mechanism known too well by people caught in the history of hate that citizenship in America entails. So, we view each devastating incident as its own individual hell. Rinse and repeat. In a few weeks, Tyre Nichols will go the way of Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, Rodney King, ad nauseam.

The problem is the approach of looking at each victim, each perpetrator, in vacuums of misery. Using a trauma-informed frame, we ask, “Who benefits and who’s burdened?” and must take into account the broader picture of sustained racism under “investigation” by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as of 2021.

Studying is important. But when does an issue become a crisis requiring serious remedial action? When does a crisis become an emergency? Whose responsibility is it to finally take the kind of clinical action required in the face of mounting evidence and repeated violence?

Racism has overtaken this country’s narrative, but that’s where it ends. As committees, counties, commissions, and communities around the country begin to recognize the public health crisis of racism, the declarations are largely performative.

Across the country, we who work toward racial equity, toward an end to oppression of any origin, toward the simple yet elusive goal of human equity in all our social relationships, are so hurt when our uncompleted work is revealed in heinous acts as we saw in Memphis. We beg our officials to see this, to prioritize this, and to join with us as we struggle to finally fix the sharp pain of racism in all its manifestations--including Black police killing our own in the predictable yet preventable perversion of internalized oppression.

The owners of apartment complexes, houses, and small properties continue to raise rents, provoking a dangerous imbalance in the lives of those who are forced to rent a place to live, and who barely survive on a salary of misery. A number of people, and even entire families, have been forced to leave their homes to go live in a shelter, others have the street as the only alternative. These are the fateful results of the shortage of everything essential for life —and housing—, despite being a human right, is increasingly through the roof, as the predatory policies of capitalism do not give the poor any respite.

In San Diego, CA, the situation does not look any better as rents have become unaffordable for a worker who earns a minimum wage of $16.25 dollars per hour, that is, $2,600 per month. If we compare what a person earns with the average rent in SD for this 2023, which ranges between $2,024 - $2,525, how will you be able to keep your rent and other essential expenses afloat?

Even if you earn a little more (say $20 per hour), working 40 hrs. per week and after paying the taxes and everything that is removed from each worker’s check, from the payroll. The question is: Both the owners of the rental houses, the politicians and government officials, how the hell do they think that a worker survives these devious attacks of the high cost of rents?

It is totally absurd that they do not realize the great disadvantages, and the inhumane abuses that they commit.

We know that only organization amongst tenants and the fight for dignity and human rights will be able to put a stop to the greedy and ambitious abuses of the owners of the housing to rent. Organizations like THE SAN DIEGO TENANTS UNION, directed by Rafael Bautista and Sandra Galindo, are a clear example of organization and struggle.

Clearly success does not appear overnight, rather it is the result of a great collective effort between tenants and organizers, and this can take a long time. In the same way, they will have to overcome retaliation and hostile confrontations from the owners and their employees (and sadly, from some tenants who want to look good for the owners), who will defend tooth and nail their privilege to continue making money, at their expense. of the need for housing of the families who are squeezed with the cost of their rents.

Losing our fear of the powerful, seeing them as normal people who are no more important than us, adds to the courage, dedication, effort of the tenants and the need for a real change to the policies that protect the abusive practices of the owners.

America seems to have a fascination with Black culture, a fear of Black bodies, and a disregard for Black lives. This bizarre confluence of phenomena further advances mental health challenges to all Americans in the setting of our national identity as pluralistic and equitable.

A law is needed that regulates rents in a fair and equitable manner, for this reason the San Diego Tenants Union has dedicated itself to fighting for that human right, giving a strong fight to Goliath, the giant.

It is admirable how the tenants of the Island Gardens apartment complex have come together - unfortunately few - to demand respect for their right to affordable and healthy housing. They do this not only to protest the high percentage increase in their rents, but also because of the unsanitary conditions in which the units are found, since the owners ignore this problem that affects the way families live.

Island Garden tenants have to face indignant situations in their apartments, such as infestations of cockroaches, mice, bedbugs, humidity, old bathrooms, doors in bad condition, heaters that don’t work, among other bad conditions, and still face an increase of up to 25% in some cases, which was applied from the beginning of January of this 2023.

Thanks to the collective struggle of several tenants, supported by the Director of the Tenants Union, Rafael Bautista, a meeting was achieved with the new owner and Management accepted their mistake and retracted the increase, reducing it to a 9% increase for all tenants who have lived in the building for more than one year. The Union tried to negotiate at 7%, because the units need a lot of repair work, but management would not accept it.

Despite this refusal, the 9% is a great achievement, and with this victory it is very clear that if PEOPLE JOIN WITH THE SAME VOICE to demand a change, and THERE IS A STRIKE where NOBODY pays rent to apply pressure on the owners, great things can be achieved. This has been demonstrated by the tenants who have participated in one way or another, responding to the call of the Tenants Union to stop the abuses of abusive landlords.

We must continue to press until we achieve rent control that protects the poorest families. It is not fair that the existing laws continue to take care of the interests of the elitists who have plenty, and who still squeeze the pockets of the worker. The working class that day by day barely survives in the midst of an unjust society that has been divided by social classes, where the powerful manage the world at will even though they debase the lives of millions, because the privilege they enjoy and that They do not intend to let go, that make them masters of the chess pieces that they move at will —and we are those pieces—... until the giant working class people permit it Sara Garcia, is a writer, author and journalist and is a member of San Diego Tenants United.

When we take all appropriate measures, abide by the rules, and use every sanctioned method to create change using everything from nonviolent protests to voter registration drives, to petitions and speeches, board meetings and volunteering for years toward legislation and still face gaslighting, bait-switching and various methods of obfuscation, can we really claim ignorance and surprise when we again experience heartbreaking violence?

This commentary originally appeared in The Skanner.