As a membership delegate for the South-East Queensland Union of Renters I first
met David at a talk the union held in Moorooka. I didn't get much of a chance totalk to David then, but my comrades did. All I really remember was the woman hewas with telling us during the Q and A that David needed union support. ----David informed one of my fellow delegates that he was a disability pensionerliving in public housing, and that he was in the midst of a long battle with theDepartment of Housing who seemed determined to evict him. David came to our nextmeeting and filled us in on what had been happening. About his long runningdispute with the department, and their apparent determination to send him backinto homelessness. One thing he said during the meeting particularly stuck in mymind.When you finally get into public housing they tell you that it was worth the waitbecause now you have a home for life...but that is a lie... now they are takingmy home away from me.By this time David had joined the union, and our members took part in an emailwriting campaign encouraging the department to rescind their eviction. This waseffective for a time, but only briefly. Midway through June, David was issued aneviction notice. Police soon visited David at his home to inform him that theyhad every intention of forcefully throwing him and his possessions onto thestreet and gave him a date and time for doing so: Friday the 17th of June at 10am.At the time they likely thought this would be a routine eviction. Rock up,violently toss someone out of their home and onto the street, back to thecop-shop by lunchtime. How wrong they'd be.Soon after the eviction was announced Greens state MP, Michael Berkman, who hadbeen working with David for a number of years announced a resistance rally for9am on morning of the eviction. At this point the union began to mobilise itsmembers and networks in preparation for a fight.By 7:30am the crowd had already begun to gather. First there were comrades fromthe Electrical Trade Union (ETU), repaying solidarity shown by SEQUR members on arecent picket at the University of Queensland. They were soon joined by a mass ofSEQUR members, who were quick to spring into action in order to prepare defensivepositions for a confrontation with police.SEQUR Members preparing for the days eventsBy the time the police arrived they were confronted by a crowd they stood littlechance at overcoming. Time continued to tick on and the crowd continued to grow -by 11 up to 90 people had taken up positions in David's front yard and werebeginning to spill out onto the street. Along with SEQUR the crowd saw members ofthe ETU, AMWU (Australian Manufacturing Workers Union), RAFFWU (Retail & FastFood Workers Union), BRA (Brisbane Renters Alliance) and even a number of Greenspoliticians.By 1pm we found out that at least for the day we had won. While we were ensuringthe police couldn't take away David's home, David fought for himself in theSupreme Court of Queensland and won a temporary reprieve. The court ruled thatthe warrant of eviction could not be enforced until 3pm on Monday, with thewarrant itself expiring at 6pm of the same day. The date and time of a new battlehad been drawn.A section of the crowd on day one of the struggle staring down the very out oftheir depth suburban policeThe weekend saw a flurry of activity as the union, along with different groupsbegan to organise their forces for Monday. Our display of collective force hadkept David in his home once and was our best chance for doing so again.So over the weekend some members of the union busied themselves with calling,texting and talking to as many people as they could about Monday. Others spenttheir time plotting our logistics and strategy for the day. But most impressivewas the members, along with their fellow community members that spent the weekendat Davids, helping him clean his unit and yard, to turn his unit back into a homeafter months of the department trying to strip it away.If any four days could encapsulate the meaning of the term solidarity then theflurry of activity from Friday through to Monday was it.By the time 3pm Monday came around and the warrant became active again close to100 tenant unionists and community members were gathered outside David's yard. Ifthe State government had hoped that their attempts at evicting David would gomore smoothly the second time around then they were sorely disappointed.David addressing the crowd after the Friday eviction was haltedSo obvious was the collective power that we had gathered in David's front-yardthe State government and police force again threw their hands up for the day andgave up, allowing the warrant to expire. At least temporarily, the organisedforce of a mass of people had won out against the power of the state. David wouldbe remaining in his home.What this means more long term is that now the process of evicting David muststart from scratch and make its way through the layers of bureaucracy that is theQueensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT) system.At this stage it is still uncertain what the outcome of the tribunal process willbe. However, since the beginning of the struggle SEQUR, BRA and other actors havebeen working with David to help him clean his property and remedy the Departmentof Housings complaints. We believe that the department's excuses for evictingDavid no longer remain valid and no further eviction notice should be issued. Butwe know we can never rely on tribunals for justice.If another eviction notice is given then we've shown that we can fight and thatwe can win. If the state government wants to continue to pursue David then theyare going to be confronted by a movement that is only growing in capacity andexperience.The Queensland State government knows as well as we do that whether or not thisfight ends here it has signified a monumental shift in the tenants struggle inthis state. An anti-eviction mobilisation like this hasn't happened in Brisbanein at least a generation. They are only going to become more frequent and morevital as our housing crisis escalates.We now know that when we fight against evictions we can win. That we can keeppeople in their homes by our own collective action. That is an incrediblypowerful lesson to have learnt.But this is only a starting point. While David may be safe for now across thecity there would have been dozens of evictions happening at the same time that wewere unable to stop.The reality is that the tenants movement in Brisbane is still new. SEQUR itselfis still not even a year old. This is a first step but far from the final step.Tenants can best defend ourselves when we are organised together into acollective force - that is when we act together as a union.250 members is a good start for a year of union efforts, but it is far frombringing together all the tenants in Brisbane. We are far from having the powerin numbers that we need to ensure that Brisbane is an eviction-free city.If you are a tenant, or support tenant rights, then join the union. And if you'rea worker then make sure to join your bloody labour union too. Our unions are ourfighting organisations and they are where we are strong, they are where we candefend ourselves and where we can actually win victories and improve our conditions.Conditions are continuing to deteriorate for workers and renters acrossAustralia. Our politicians, bosses and landlords aren't going to improve thingsfor us. If we want to see our wages increase, our rents go down or a single stepof progress on the climate crisis, then we're going to have to fight for ourselves.A single fight might seem small but every fight is a battle in the wider classstruggle. Every battle teaches us how to fight bigger and better next time. Everyfight is a step in the growth of working class power and towards socialism.https://www.acmeanjin.org/articles/how-we-stopped-an-eviction_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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