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One word came to mind Monday when Lukas Carbone learned that a group of landlords was hosting a party the next day to celebrate the end of a pandemic-related moratorium on evictions in Berkeley, Calif.
“It’s just disgusting seeing the ways in which these groups of landlords were celebrating being able to evict people, being able to put people out on the street,” he told The Washington Post.
Carbone, an organizer with the Berkeley chapter of the Tenant and Neighborhood Councils, decided to crash the party to “send a message that … we’re not going to take evictions lying down.”
On Sept. 1, the city’s eviction moratorium lapsed after protecting tenants since the early days of the pandemic. The Berkeley Property Owners Association had long criticized the moratorium as enabling tenants to freeload, and to ring in its demise, it invited its members to a party “Celebrating the End of the Eviction Moratorium.” For $20, landlords could enjoy drinks, appetizers and a couple of hours of mingling with their fellow “housing providers” at a pub across the street from the University of California at Berkeley.
In a statement, the association said the city of Berkeley was among the last in the country to lift its eviction moratorium, which “caused severe financial hardship for small family-owned businesses.”
“We make no qualms about celebrating the end of the eviction moratorium,” association executive director Krista Gulbransen told Berkeleyside. “We are celebrating the end of the tenants who could have paid rent, and chose not to.”
Around 5 p.m., a half-hour before the association’s mixer was scheduled to start, Carbone, 20, arrived outside the pub and watched as protesters amassed, he told The Post. By 5:30 p.m., they were at “full force” — about 100 people from various tenants’ groups. Protesters heckled and booed as attendees walked past. Once the landlords were inside, protesters spent about 1½ hours marching and yelling anti-eviction and pro-tenant chants.
Around 7 p.m., they marched into the pub, Carbone said. They had a cake with “Hey landlords, get a real job” written on it that they wanted to deliver. Once inside, they found a couple dozen landlords gathered at a patio. Protesters surrounded the periphery and yelled chants such as “Parasite!” “Get a job!” and “Eat cake!” repeatedly.
Carbone said he watched a landlord slap a protester in the face, starting an altercation that others quickly broke up. Soon after, another landlord allegedly punched a different protester in the head. The first protester broke their wrist during the melee, Carbone said.
A few minutes after entering, Carbone and others decided to leave in an attempt to de-escalate things, he said.
The landlords offered a much different account of what happened. In a statement, the association said that “a large group of aggressive dissidents” crashed its party. Once inside, they allegedly threw food, stood on tables and chairs, made threats and physically assaulted the association’s members. Video captured one landlord being punched, according to the statement. Gulbransen, the association’s executive director, was allegedly shoved to the ground, according to the association’s statement.
“We condemn the actions of hostile dissidents who disrupted a private gathering at a local restaurant to intimidate, harass, and physically assault our members who are law-abiding small business owners,” the association said in the statement. “Their protest … included language celebrating mass killing of landlords, celebrations by guillotine, and references to landlords as parasites.”
The association also criticized police officers who were standing guard outside. When an association member called for their help, police refused to go inside and remove the “agitators,” according to the association. An officer allegedly said that it was “political so [they] did not want to get involved.”
In a statement, Berkeley police said officers were outside the restaurant throughout the evening to keep an eye on the protest. Early on, officers watched protesters yell, beat drums, and hold signs and banners but did not intervene.
Later, they saw the protesters enter the pub where, unbeknownst to them, multiple fights broke out, police said. At the scene, no one asked for help, and the protesters eventually left. Afterward, someone contacted police to report a battery, a claim that’s still being investigated. Police did not say whether the person was a landlord or a protester.
On Wednesday, three Berkeley City Council members denounced the violence that broke out at the party, calling it “deeply disturbing, and antithetical to Berkeley’s values.”
They also criticized the rationale for the party, saying that “hosting a party at a pub to celebrate the end of the eviction moratorium may be seen as callous and insensitive to the thousands of Alameda County residents facing housing precarity or homelessness.”
Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/14/berkeley-landlord-party-eviction-protesters/