Racist attacks, housing crisis spur Blacks to organize in N.Y. America

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forcibly evicted from her home. The long-awaited trial was a sham in which Bumpurs was characterized as the aggressor rather than the victim.

Her only "crime" was picking up a knife in self-defense against the armed assault on her home by rifle-wielding policemen.

For the hundreds in the courthouse who shouted "we say guilty," the verdict came as no surprise. Racist attacks against Blacks, both by white mobs and police officers, have been steadily increasing in recent years, but the perpetrators of these crimes are seldom, if ever, convicted.

The outrage of the community, however, is not confined to racist murder. Bumpurs had a right to a home-as does everyone. This right was violated forcibly, as it is for hundreds on a daily basis.

The fact that these issues did not come up in the Bumpurs trial was no accident. To have raised them would have been to indict the system that both condones racist murders of Blacks and condemns thousands to dilapidated housing and homelessness.

Housing crisis deepens

Through tax breaks and its land-use policy, New York City gives real-estate developers the go-ahead to build luxury housing and accelerate the gentrification of neighborhoods. At the same time, less profitable dwellings in poor and working-class neighborhoods are permitted to deteriorate--and are frequently abandoned.

In the last 15 years, some 310,000 units in the city have been lost to abandonment, arson for profit, and disinvestment by banks and insurance companies. Mean. while, construction of low-income housing with federal funds has come to a virtual standstill.

The rental housing that is available is increasingly unaffordable. In the 1970s, rent rose 179 percent faster than income. Currently, two-thirds of the poorest New Yorkers pay more than 40 percent of their income for rent.

The situation is even worse for tenants on welfare, whose monthly shelter allowances are woefully inadequate to cover actual rental costs, forcing them to use limited food money for rent or to fall into arrears.

In this context, landlords are driven by profit to seek the eviction of thousands of tenants each year.

In New York, landlords have the right to sue to recover possession of rental property if a tenant defaults in paying as little as $1 of his or her monthly rent. They can sue to evict tenants for no reason at all if the property is not rent-controlled. These landlords are provided with a specialized Housing Court with expedited procedures ir which to do so.

Nearly 400,000 eviction proceedings were initiated by landlords last year alone, and 100,000 tenants were actually evicted by this process from 1981 to 1985. These statistics do not even account for the numbers of tenants who are harassed into vacating their apartments or are simply locked out.

With no affordable apartments available, people are forced to crowd into apartments Brenda Bishop is a tenants rights lawyer in New York City. ly, eviction watches may be coordinated with building-wide and neighborhood-wide rent strikes.

A call to "Organize!"

The Sullivan acquittal, while ending a two-and-a-half year battle in the courts, is likely to add to the momentum behind the growing movement for justice in the Black community. Outside the courthouse could be heard the call "Don't mourn, organize!"

This movement has already been galvanized by the Howard Beach attack. Significantly, a march against racist attacks on Jan. 21, which was associated with the Day of Mourning and Outrage, began at a notorious welfare hotel-the Martinique. Protestors wanted to dramatize the problem of homelessness and the lack of affordable housing in the Black community.

One of the key organizers of that march, the National African Youth Student Alliance, has been successful in organizing young people from the hotel into the At a recent forum on racially motivated violence held in Harlem, NAYSA leader Lisa Williamson called for the organization of tenant patrols as part of a larger self-defense effort in the Black community [see accompanying story].

The emergence of this militancy is a positive and encouraging sign. that and things got worse for us."

In the view of another speaker, the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, "The missing ingredient is unity." But what kind of unity? Lisa Williamson, a leader of the National African Youth Students Association answered: "Unity with principles, for the goals and interests of Blacks."

But this is far from being achieved. "The current Black leadership is the weakest leadership of any kind-white or Black," the Rev. Calvin Butts of the Abyssinian Baptist Church said. He added, "It's time to change the leadership and elect new people."

However, unlike Malcolm X, who said, "We should in no way identify with either party or sell ourselves to either party," the question remained open as to whom to vote for. Without any clear alternative, a call "to vote" is an implicit call to vote for the Democratic Party—whether the candidate be Jesse Jackson or Gary Hart.

Nevertheless, "things are happening," as Lisa Williamson put it. The mob violence in Howard Beach has galvanized peopleespecially the youth-into action against racist attacks.

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