The Fight Isn’t Over — We’re Here to Stay.
Miami Workers Center reflections on 2023 Florida Legislative Session
When the deadliest pandemic of our time reached our home state of Florida, our communities, everyday working-class folks, faced chronic unemployment, mass evictions, the tragic loss of family and loved ones, and deeper abandonment by the leadership of the State of Florida.
Floridians have been left to face this pandemic on our own. Care workers, who in Florida are predominantly Black and immigrant women, have been and continue to be on the frontlines caring for our sick, disabled and aging loved ones. Yet many of these workers are misclassified, experience wage theft, and are excluded from labor protections.
In our pro-landlord housing market, where families experienced precarity and crisis, rich investors and corporate landlords see dollar signs. Tenants on fixed incomes and earning unlivable wages were increasingly forced out as these rich property groups bought-out their buildings; families who had lived and raised children and grandchildren in the same unit for years, decades. We saw single mothers of color targeted the most, facing impossible options of enduring abuse or losing their home. Immigrant tenants were and continue to be targeted as well, receiving threats of displacement, deportation, and disinformation about their rights. Rental price gouging forced more and more families under one roof, worsening living conditions. Tenants are the growing majority in Florida, yet are treated as disposable.
In Miami and across Florida, it’s been the leadership of neighbors, mothers, and workers that has kept our communities afloat. At the Miami Workers Center, we are a multiracial, multigenerational, and multinational group of tenants, workers, women and families. What unites us is a shared interest in seeing our communities thrive, not just survive.
Since 2020, we have knocked on thousands of doors, building relationships, connecting people to whatever resources exist, identifying common issues among tenants, and researching potential solutions to them. Tenants held meeting after meeting, recruited other leaders, strategized on how we could achieve more protections, and in May 2022, we won. The Miami-Dade County Tenant Bill of Rights was passed unanimously by the Miami-Dade County Commission, composed of conservative, liberal and independent local elected officials, providing common sense protections from abuse and displacement for renters across our county.
Since then, the stories and unrelenting effort of everyday people fighting for better conditions inspired other tenant organizations in Florida, leading to the passage of 45 ordinances across 35 cities, including St. Pete, Orange County, Broward County, and many others.
We fought for the Tenant Bill of Rights because we believe in housing with dignity, because we believe our families deserve to stay in our homes and neighborhoods, and because we believe as the majority who call Miami home, renters and workers should have a say in the policies that impact us most. It was the first step to leveling the violent power imbalance that leaves millions of families at the mercy of corporate landlords who treat us as line items in their budget rather than human beings.
Today we see the 2023 Florida Legislative Session as a platform of violent, regressive, and authoritative legislation that seeks to humiliate, control, silence, and discourage us from building our collective power. The trifecta of extremist conservative rule is determined to weaponize every tool of white supremacy, patriarchy, and transphobia to pit communities against each other rather than meeting the needs of their constituents. The consequences of all of these draconian bills (HB 1417, SB 1718, HB 1/SB 202, HB 917, SB 300) will have devastating impacts on individuals’ ability to live in dignity, rolling back the rights of renters, workers, immigrants, women, LGBTQ+ people, and children.
Extremist conservative leadership offers no resolution to the real issues millions of Floridians are facing, and instead fuels the flame of social division to keep us from uniting for what we know we all deserve — a state that treats housing as a human right, mobilizes our tax dollars to meet the needs of the majority, and works to empower our communities with rights, protections, and enforcement powers.
We are clear-eyed and know the forces we’re up against don’t give a damn about us. We will not cower in fear or rely on the mercy of the powerful who have shown us who they are. Within our communities are leaders — organizers, strategists, thinkers, artists, caretakers, and architects of justice.
We call on allies and resourced supporters to increase investment in frontline organizations who are developing the leadership of everyday people and building our capacity to fight back against this dangerous wave of conservative power we know will not remain within the borders of Florida if left unchallenged.
We won’t give up Florida, or the South, to a power-hungry, extremist minority. We will continue to cut through fear and intimidation with unbreakable solidarity that transcends race, gender, sexuality, age, ability, or borders.
Our vision for a Miami-Dade County and state of Florida that works for the majority is within our reach, if we are willing to organize and fight for it.
This is our state, our people, our communities. We’re worth fighting for and we are here to stay!
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