Friday, January 29 @ 5:00 PM
Lugar Plaza (Corner of Washington & Delaware)
On Jan. 29-31, people in cities and towns across the country will fight to cancel the rents, stop the evictions, and end the foreclosures by making the banks pay! This is one of several national days of action coordinated by Cancel the Rents.
In Indianapolis, the local branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (a steering-committee member of ANSWER) is organizing a speak out and street meeting at Lugar Plaza on Friday, Jan. 29 @ 5:00 pm. Everyone is welcome to attend, and we will adhere to all safety protocols. Join us to demand:
- Cancel the Rents and Mortgages!
- No evictions!
- No foreclosures!
- House the homeless in vacant housing!
The $600 stimulus check is not enough. One-third of people are struggling to pay their bills and are unable to catch up with rent. The eviction moratoriums nationally and locally have stopped millions of evictions but rent debt is still piling up. The looming eviction crisis will hit oppressed communities, already unevenly affected by the pandemic, the hardest. Big landlords are abusing loopholes and filing eviction lawsuits against families regardless of the moratoriums. Additionally, the official eviction moratorium is set to expire on January 31st.
Despite all their claims to the contrary the government can immediately cancel rents and mortgages, house the homeless and stop evictions. Yet they choose to bail out the corporations and the banks. The money is there to give the people what they need to survive this pandemic. The money is there to help people keep their homes without accumulating debt. We must and can build the movement to defend our communities and stop all evictions and foreclosures.
The patchwork of city and state moratoriums on evictions are not enough. In a few months when these moratoriums are lifted and the rents come due — we will still not have the money! Massive testing and personal protective equipment are still not available, despite the great productive capacity of the United States. In December 2019, when COVID-19 presented in China, the United States was warned that we would be affected. Instead of using the next two months to prepare, Trump and the U.S. government ignored public health experts, even ridiculing them. Now, due to this lack of preparedness, the United States has become the epicenter of the pandemic.
More than 300,000 people in the United States have died and more than 7 million have gotten ill. People are being evicted from their homes while at the same time the COVID-19 pandemic is surging and we are being told to “stay home!” There is no end to the health and economic crisis in the near future. Tens of millions of people have lost their jobs since March with millions more jobless to come. We are in the worst depression since the 1930s, and it’s getting worse.
