Tenant Spring

Tenant Spring is a reflection on the activity of the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance. Since Tenant Spring was written and published in 2025, the rent strikes that ACTA was organizing at the time have ended. In the pages of the book, the rent strike appears in its general theoretical form in chapter three, but all of the other chapters are decorated by it in one way or another. The rent strike was indeed a real problem at the time and this book was written directly in its midst of what turned out to be the longest strike to have happened in Chicago since the 1960s. Nevertheless, it would be reasonable to say that the one-year anniversary of a short pamphlet published by a small tenant organization to little fanfare hardly seems to warrant a “second edition,” let alone a new preface to mark the occasion. And if our principles did not demand that we not only use theory as a guide to action, but also to return our action back to theory, we would agree. However, our principles do demand such a return. Moreover, we feel the lessons of the last year warrant a reiteration of much of what we wrote here. Much of what we ventured speculatively we can now say with confidence. This new edition includes several revisions in order to reflect the changes in the organization over the last year. These have been integrated into the text or added as footnotes depending on the argument being made.