NeoliberalDON'T Part 2: NYC Slumlord V Southern White Lesbian
If you think I was mad at my slumlord, you ain't seen nothing compared to how I feel about charter school's long-con of education.
In this post: Today, I talk about Soraya Chemalay's writing on the power of women's anger and continue my slumlord saga.
Last week: Toxic mold ate my NYC apartment, a diatribe on deregulation/ neoliberal ideology writ large/ how this directly relates to public education in the U.S.
Next week: A phone transcript between a fairly angry lesbian (me) and J da Slumlord (JDS), a reflection on Rage Becomes Her
oh hey, y'all,
To make a long story short, my gf and I moved into a rent-stabilized building in June. Two weeks later, we have a massive water leak that was never fixed. Flash forward to now, we have a soaking wet closet with a beautiful colony of black mold populating it. aka NYC slumlord vs white southern lesbian. Lez see who won...
We began this story with the discovery that my landlord was a top 5 slumlord in NYC, and that we had toxic black mold (plus other molds) as a result of an unresolved plumbing leak. After my initial conversation with Jimmy, it became clear he would sooner hell froze over than admit that the apartment needed far more work than a 80 year old guy plastering over black mold.
I decided to make as much noise as possible, to hopefully rouse my landlord into fixing the issue appropriately. I talked to tenant’s rights associations, tenant-lawyer helplines, and as many people as I could who had to deal with a supreme level of nyc bullshittery, and then I realized, hate the player, but play their game.
After the following conversation (below), I realized that I was going to need to throw the f down legally and somewhat hysterically if this landlord was going to take me seriously.
If he was going to make thinly veiled threats at me, I’d send him a works-cited page legal report of why he should not fuck with me. I fliered the entire building with how to get help forcing a landlord to fix and update new york city apartments. I called 311 every. goddamn. day.
It only took 6 more days, and on the final day of Christmas, I had my landlord right where I wanted him. He called, conciliatory and apologetic after a legally-cited email from yours truly, and said he would give me whatever I wanted. This is not how I thought this story would end, but I'm taking it as a good omen for 2022.
This rigor, and this razor-pointed rage, I fear, is the only possible way to move forward on a path to educational equity and educational reparations in this country. Because bullies only respond in kind.
“The importance and visibility of women's collective anger can't be overstated. This anger takes determination, thoughtfulness, and work. It means respecting our own anger and being willing to respect the anger of other women.”
-Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger.
NSFS: Not Safe for School, your snark-filled antidote to racism and corruption in education. Follow @postphdtheblog on Twitter and @allisonharbin_postphd on Instagram