Freelizabeth

“This city is the world’s greatest experiment in human cooperation. And there are those who want to tear it down and sell it out. Trump from the outside, affordability crisis from the inside”

-Zohran Mamdani

Canvass in Elizabeth

Over the weekend members of Union County DSA knocked doors in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Home to the only ICE jail in operation (at the time of this writing) in the state, and where developers and landlords in 2022 weakened rent control, Elizabeth is a key city in the working class struggle against Trump and the affordability crisis.

It’s why Votes for All NJ is pressing forward in Elizabeth with a plan to link the economic demands workers have with the demands for more democracy in a time when fascism rears its head. To restore a novel dollar amount rent cap on Elizabeth’s rent control ordinance, and restore noncitizen (and for those 16-17 years old) voting for local elections.

For 30 years the Elizabeth Detention Center has lived in one of the city’s industrial zones, away from busy streets and people’s every day lives. For 30 years, however, immigrant workers have been held there, and some, like Boubacar Bah, a 52 year old tailor from Guinea, died there.

As ICE raids and the deportation machine persist at the hands of Trump and DHS, it’s on neighbors across immigration status to join together and fight back with a political solution like universal voting rights, to fight Trump, the courts who may want to stop us, and the far-right’s attack on immigrants and all workers.

In conversations with residents, organizers remarked on mentions about "groceries and rent” being the top issues in Elizabeth. In other words: every day life has become unattainable.

Linking these fights means uniting the working class, as tenants and workers of the world.