The Montreal Autonomous Tenants’ Union is facing state and corporate repression and needs international support. A large Montreal landlord attacked a Montreal tenant during a petition delivery and held another tenant hostage at knife point, threatening to cut them into “a million pieces.” The landlord was caught on video smiling waving their knife through their window while the tenant was trapped inside.

An excellent French journalistic investigation has since exposed many of the companies practices in large detail, including their harassment, injunction proceedings, and lawsuit used to try and silence the union. The union remains strong despite the repression!

We have copied an excerpt from the GoFundMe – donate if you can – written by SLAM, explaining their current situation in their mobilization against the Cucurull real estate family:

After beating a court injunction, our union is calling for renewed solidarity in organizing against the Cucurull family, a group of major local landlords. Our tenants’ union initially called for support after a delivery of a petition to the offices of the Cucurulls turned sour. The Cucurulls have spent tens of thousands of dollars to secure injunctions stopping our union from publically releasing information on their actions. All public information on the company was ordered to be taken down, picket lines could not move forward, and our legal fundraiser was taken off of public pages.

A recent victory over parts of the injunction allows union members to once again speak publicly about the company. Not only have the Cucurulls still not provided an action plan for tenants’ demands listed in their petition, but a $380,000 lawsuit targetting the union has been initiated by the real estate family. Tenants request compensation for the Cucurulls’ actions during the petition delivery at their office, and an action plan for repairs, respect, and smaller rent increases.

The Cucurulls run as many as 29 buildings and up to 446 units. The real estate family has been involved in hundreds of cases in the housing tribunal in the past two decades. In 2019, their offices were subject to an occupation by tenants condemning long-time residents being evicted so the companies could raise rents. The family attempted to use injunction proceedings to secure the de facto eviction of one tenant who participated in the recent petition delivery, but failed.

This legal and solidarity fund has been set up to assist tenants in the union facing court proceedings initiated by the Cucurulls.

Join our regular Friday picket lines outside of their offices at 5301 Parc, donate what you can, and organize tenants in your building to build tenant power on our streets and in our neighbourhoods! A better city will grow from solidarity and community! Solidarity in each and every struggle with landlords!

Donate! Share! Unionize your building!

An open letter was signed by about 20 local, national, and international organizations. It published by the collective Premiere Ligne, called “La justice fait taire les locataires! – Communiqué.” The letter explores the reprehensible actions of the landlords, Ian Cucurull & Martha Cucurull, against members of the SLAM delivering an innocent petition. Hair was pulled, a SLAM member was choked, a tenant of the landlord was trapped in the landlord’s office as the landlord, on video, smiled out their window, waving a knife.

The police, not charging the landlords, have chosen to target tenants involved in the petition delivery with such charges as extortion (for organizing for demands), harassment (for generating continued public pressure against the landlord) and breaking and entering (for visiting the landlord’s office collectively). Other details on the later court injunction, which included a failed attempt at a “de facto” eviction of a tenant, are explored above in the Gofundme text.

As for some reflections on the need for a movement response and continued solidarity with Montreal’s tenant union:

1) Tenant unions are new in Montreal. The state and landlord’s response today to tenants organizing on a basis of collective action will determine their future responses. If tenants organizing together and taking action together using pretty traditional tactics is criminal or worthy of court injunctions, and we allow that to go uncontested, we lose one of our most useful strategies to confront the housing crisis. Essentially, tenants’ right to organize publicly is being challenged here. Will that challenge succeed?

2) Relatedly, we can only assume that landlord organizations like CORPIQ and other landlords may be watching these situations and taking key lessons. Will this intensive repression – including a $380,000 lawsuit, court injunctions, thousands in legal fees, criminal charges and police investigation – lead to defeat or victory?

3) An opportunity has presented itself for organizing against a major local landlord. This is a public campaign at a moment of intensifying public concern with housing relations and the relationship of power between renters and landlords. As a popular movement, let’s organize where the class tensions and antagonisms, the failures of our courts and police, are clearest to people outside of our movement. Anyone knows when learning about this situation that a serious injustice is being committed.

4) Finally, these strategies of repression should never be tolerated by our movement, against any of our members. Solidarity, today, is a call to action against the Cucurulls and their companies: Immopolis and Topo Immobilier!

Here is where you can find more information on keeping up with SLAM’s activities or find their events.

Note: The above message is a sign of solidarity, that was not done with the permission or knowledge of SLAM.

LA Tenants Union Response To Evicted Tenant Suicide In Hollywood

November 10, 2022, Los Angeles

We are heartbroken and outraged by the news of a tenant in Hollywood who tragically took their own life in the face of losing their home when 2 sheriff officers, a building manager, and a locksmith showed up at their door to forcibly evict them. Sheriffs called LAPD, they spent 6 hours preparing for a standoff, making no attempt to contact the tenant. Sheriffs referred to the tenant as a “suspect”, mobilized a multi-million dollar militarized presence into the neighborhood, evacuated neighbors, and created a stage to criminalize the eviction victim.

We don’t know the details, we don’t know the victim. However, according to the news there was a rent increase a couple of months ago.  We know and understand the violence of eviction. We experience the outrageous rent increases and know the stories of landlords and corporations manipulating,  threatening, and harassing tenants into self eviction. We attend court proceedings where tenants, without attorneys, confront cold-hearted and abusive judges and landlords. We witness evictions that escalate into 5150s where the Sheriffs could use their discretion and leave a vulnerable person in their home, but instead terrorize tenants and the entire neighborhood. The story becomes reduced to “a tenant in crisis.”  More accurately, they are the victims of a crisis perpetuated by the city government, by the landlords, by the courts, and by the police state. People are afraid of living in the streets and being criminalized by rules like 41.18, prohibiting people from existing in public spaces. Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, people couldn’t afford their rents, and so-called affordable housing is not affordable or accessible to the poorest tenants. Tenants know that if they are evicted, there will be nowhere for them to go.

The tenant who died today was not a suspect. Living in their home was not a crime. The crisis forced them into a position where they felt they needed to choose to take their own life as opposed to living a life without shelter. The blame for this loss of life lies with the state who has made it illegal to live on the street; who refuses to provide protections for tenants in danger of losing their housing; and who contract out their armed forces to landlords criminalizing tenants who can’t pay rents that are based on arbitrary and speculative markets.

There are thousands of empty apartments and empty lots in Los Angeles, where people without homes could live. Outside of emergency protections there is no help for senior citizens, the sick and disabled, and the unemployed who cannot pay rent. But more importantly there is no leadership from the city to boldly confront the problem. There is no more time for business as usual.

We blame this death on the Sheriffs, the city government, greedy landlords and corporations that live off our wages. We blame the media that refuses to question the nature of the crisis and continues promoting already failed solutions. We blame this death on the system that continues to produce this violence without seriously looking for a solution.  

For the tenants of Los Angeles we have the following message: The right to housing is universal. Nobody should be pushed out of their home and into the street. This is not an isolated situation. Thousands of families are in danger of eviction, every day across the city. We must come together and organize as tenants in our buildings and as members of our neighborhoods.  We must protect each other and organize to build the power to defend our homes together. 

We Will Protect Each Other, We Will Defend Our Homes Together!!