Everywhere you look, people are losing their jobs because of the coronavirus outbreak — in the cruise and airline industries, the service industry, the retail and transportation industries. State unemployment sites are crashing because so many people are logging on to try to apply for benefits. But April 1 is just around the corner, and a lot of Americans and families are worried about making rent.

Last week, Joshua Collins, a 26-year-old truck driver and candidate for Washington’s 10th Congressional District, put up a Reddit post with links to more than 50 petitions, one for every state, Washington, D.C., and a few U.S. territories, demanding governors suspend housing costs — including rent, mortgage, and utilities — for at least two months amid the coronavirus crisis. Millions of people have since signed on. While the federal government has taken some steps to protect homeowners, little has been done to protect the millions of renters across the U.S.; Congress has not yet passed an aid package that would provide $1,200 to each adult. But Collins wants Rent Strike 2020 to think much bigger than any one check. He spoke to Teen Vogue about what the movement is all about.

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Editor’s note: This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Teen Vogue: So you're running for Congress, but you have started what seems like also a whole new initiative at the same time. What exactly is the petition for?

JC: So the language in the petition is calling on specifically governors — in a few cases mayors, like with Washington, D.C. — to do what is necessary to suspend the collection of rent, residential mortgages, and utility payments. We want people to not have to worry about those particular bills for at least two full months, and lasting until the end of this crisis. Originally I just did it for my own state, Washington. And it blew up so quickly that we decided to just do it in all 50 states.

Now if you're familiar with the Yellow Vest movement in France, the way that movement actually started was very similar. They chose yellow vests because everyone had one in their car. Like the yellow vest, everyone has a white sheet that they don't use, right? So people have just been hanging white sheets outside their window. That actually started out in Montreal as a symbol of the rent strike movement, and now we're seeing it in the United States as well.

The Yellow Vest movement, they got 1 million petition signatures over the course of what I'm fairly certain was a few weeks. Now 1 million people in a country with 70 million people is like 1.5% of the country or something, right? It's the equivalent of 5 million people in the United States. So we're 40% of the way to that proportion.

TV: How many people have engaged with those petitions collectively?

JC: Two million. Almost all of that was in the span of three days.

TV: What do you think is driving this massive engagement?

JC: It's really completely reasonable. If you're a regular person in America, and you are a renter — you're a customer service worker, maybe — you feel like two months isn't that much to ask, right? Two months without rent, and you know you could probably survive this and it would relieve a lot of your anxieties.

And I feel like, if and when that demand is not met, that's when people will be moved towards action; people will start to see that even the most reasonable demands won't be met by the landlord class or the mortgage companies without action on our part.

TV: Why do you think canceling housing costs is a necessity right now?

JC: Because people have very little money right now. People have their hours cut, or have been laid off entirely. And if you collect unemployment — if you're even able to get on unemployment — it's only a small portion of what you made before. People were already living paycheck to paycheck.

And that on top of that, if someone is doing some sort of payment plan for rent, I don't want someone to come out of this with an insurmountable amount of debt they can never pay off, right? If the student loan crisis has taught us anything, it's that even if it's only like $5,000 to $10,000, it might take a lifetime to pay off.

TV: You're running as a socialist. How does the socialist response to the coronavirus crisis differ from what's currently on offer?

JC: Trying to play both sides is not going to work out. I think we need to have a socialist response that says the people who matter are the people, and corporations and banks should not be our primary concern. I think we need to make sure that we are doing everything we can to not only stop this virus from advancing, but also making sure that people are taken care of during that time, and not put the burden of this entire crisis on the working class.

TV: Are you expecting governors on a broad scale to cancel rents and housing costs?

JC: We're gonna prepare for the worst and hope for the best. We are going to be prepared for governors to take zero action and for the federal government to take almost no action, and prepare for what needs to happen in the absence of their action. If the petitions do succeed in getting the collection of rent, mortgage, utility payments suspended entirely, then, in that case, a lot of our work will be done for us, but given the history, we can’t assume that.

TV: Typically in workplace strikes, the action is actively taken on by a workforce. In this case, this is hundreds of thousands, potentially millions, of people who functionally will not be able to pay rent at all. So what do you think is the qualitative difference between people not being able to pay rent and a rent strike?

JC: Organizing on the local level and demanding things together. Right now, a lot of people already can't pay their rent. Their rent might even be due before the first, and they're being expected to pay half rent, under the condition that they agree to pay it all back at the end of this crisis. If this lasts six months, and your rent is $1,000 a month or $2,000 a month, you're talking about basically a full car loan on top of your regular bills.

So the difference is whether or not we are going to stand up against them and say, ‘No, we're not going to go into thousands of dollars in debt per person, and we’re going to stand in solidarity with each other.’ Even if you are someone who can just barely make rent, you stand in solidarity with those who just flat-out can’t. We demand that no one goes into debt, no one goes bankrupt.

It's the same as a regular strike in that way — it's the difference between ‘everyone gets fired’ or the workers standing in solidarity and winning their demands.

TV: How do people organize a rent strike right now in a moment where nobody can be within six feet of each other and gatherings are banned? How do people keep unity and morale high when there can be no picket line?

JC: Online coordination is important; I don't think there's ever been a more crucial time for organizing online. If you take necessary precautions, you can make and distribute flyers and organize by building. We’re helping support tenant organizing efforts in Olympia right now and printed 1,000 flyers. Anything you can do to distribute information safely.

We need a massive outpouring of support. We need an outpouring of solidarity; we’d like to see solidarity messages and videos from all over. That’s what I hope becomes an element of a national movement. What makes people feel safer is the knowledge that we’re stronger standing together.

Anyone who's interested in helping, they can start by contacting us at the website rentstrike2020.org.

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