Alderman Mell’s Campaign Uses Anti-Union Rhetoric to Attack Organized Tenants
On Monday, 33rd Ward Ald. Deb Mell’s campaign shared a page “debunking” some of the major criticisms of her circulating in the neighborhood. On this page she also attacks vulnerable tenants who’ve organized with ATU and asked for her advocacy.
Roughly half the page is dedicated to addressing criticism, which Autonomous Tenants Union has been expressing since long before election season, of her treatment of low-income tenants in the 33rd Ward and of her positions on affordable housing and gentrification. ATU is disappointed that in one of these blurbs, Mell refers to working class youth, elderly, and immigrant tenants who’ve organized with ATU as “fringe groups,” saying that tenant unions “exploit tenants for political gain.”
Deb Mell isn’t used to having her way challenged. This isn’t surprising given that she began her political career by running unopposed as a first-time candidate thanks to then-machine boss Joe Berrios, and that she inherited her current job as 33rd Ward Alderman from her father through an appointment by Rahm Emanuel.
Deb Mell’s vacant seat at the Albany Park Town Hall on Housing, Gentrification, and Displacement
It also might explain why, despite declaring herself “an advocate for affordable housing” during her re-election campaign, she was the only 33rd Ward candidate to skip the Albany Park Town Hall on Housing, Gentrification & Displacement hosted by ATU, Albany Park Defense Network (APDN), and Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD) in February. But now, after placing second in the first round of the 33rd Ward aldermanic race and being forced to a runoff, Mell is lashing out at the grassroots housing movement she had previously been content to ignore.
This election season, Mell has attempted to reinvent herself as a champion of affordable housing by talking the talk. In rapidly gentrifying Albany Park, she has been presented with plenty of opportunities to walk the walk — and declined. When asked to intervene on behalf of tenants facing eviction, her responses have ranged from sending her chief of staff to “mediate” negotiations (while privately conferring with the landlord ahead of time), to claiming that there was nothing she could do (but refusing to take a public stand), to completely ignoring tenants asking for her support.
Now, Mell has tried to defend her utter lack of support for tenants in her ward by smearing ATU and the tenant unions we’ve helped organize as “fringe groups… that exploit tenants for political gain.” ATU is an all-volunteer organization whose members help each other get housing conditions issues addressed and fight for much-needed relocation assistance or extra time in the face of eviction. Nothing scares a machine politician more than an organized community with the confidence to stop settling for scraps and assert their right to collective self-determination and a dignified life.
Mell calls this “exploitation” because she cannot imagine a world where working class people self-organize to challenge power and improve the material conditions of their lives. She believes that the demand for community-controlled housing is a fantasy, and — ignoring the tangible victories we have won together — assumes that fighting with our neighbors in solidarity must be some sort of cheap trick.
The alderman claims that she “regularly assists residents” facing eviction, but referring to unionized tenants’ requests for support, says she won’t “negotiate with fringe groups.” Tellingly, Mell seems to imply that when it comes to tenants facing mass eviction, she is on the opposite end of the bargaining table.
Deb Mell’s alternative facts
Despite touting some union endorsements to argue that she’s a candidate for the working class, Mell pulls the same trick as countless landlords that ATU has encountered: refusing to meet with unionized tenants who know they are stronger together, claiming instead she would intervene in eviction for individual residents. What’s more, the cliche that unions exploit members for “political gain” is a conservative talking point that bosses invariably roll out whenever they fear their workers will begin to organize in their own interests.
It’s a mindset that reflects her immense privilege as a member of Chicago’s ruling class by birthright, someone who has never had to organize to survive and who seeks to preserve the status quo. What she cites as achievements — tweaks to a fundamentally ineffectual affordable housing requirements ordinance (ARO), and eviction protections that only extend to a fraction of tenants whose landlords were foreclosed on — mostly just serve as a way to save face as a displacement crisis grips her ward.
Meanwhile, real exploitation rages on, courtesy of landlords and developers who cash rent checks from tenants of neglected buildings until the day comes when they can put those tenants on the street to make way for basic renovations, doubled rents, and wealthier, whiter replacements. And the developers responsible have nothing but praise for Mell.
In October 2014, Ron Abrams’ Silver Property Group Ltd. purchased the building at 3001 W Lawrence Ave and moved to evict every single tenant living there. Mell brags that “that corner of Albany Park is thriving like never before,” but the dozens of working-class and immigrant tenants who were rooted there before Abrams swooped in and doubled rents weren’t able to benefit from it.
Mell tries to have it both ways, taking credit for the storytelling nonprofit and cafe that moved into the building while washing her hands of any responsibility for the wholesale displacement of low-income and immigrant families who called it home. She claims she “has never assisted with an eviction,” and it’s true that in the most literal sense she’s never accompanied a sheriff to throw a family’s possessions out to the curb, but nobody has made such an accusation.
But as for the claim that “the alderman was very involved as [Silver Property Group] purchased and worked to vacate the tenants from the property,” that’s not us talking — that’s a direct quote from Ron Abrams himself, in a letter he wrote to the Cook County Assessor’s Office arguing for a property tax appeal for a multi-unit building at 3119 W Lawrence, which he purchased and vacated just like 3001 W Lawrence around the same time.
Abrams clearly valued Mell’s involvement, to the tune of $3,300 in campaign donations from himself, his company, and his business partner. Abrams is far from the only developer to see Deb Mell as a worthwhile investment, which is why over $150,000 has flowed from the real estate industry into her campaign.
Letter obtained from the Cook County Assessor's Office
Until it became politically unpopular to do so, Mell was happy to return that glowing praise. As detailed by ATU previously, she supported Silver’s Lawrence Avenue projects with a PR blitz which included the racially coded language of “problem buildings” and “gangs” to justify the displacement of 60 households across the two buildings (language that’s still being echoed in her assertion that the corner is now “thriving”).
According to her “facts” page, “Deb had no say in [Silver Property] Group receiving a facade rebate,” but not only was the claim that Mell herself granted the rebate never made, the fact remains she was all too happy to appear in a photo op with Ron Abrams receiving the check.
Deb Mell with Ron Abrams of Silver Property Group
The photo was taken in front a building she knew had been forcibly vacated, and posted online only a few days after another group of tenants at Sunnyside Manor, a couple blocks south, received their 30-day notices from Silver. An elected official who jumps at the chance to give public support to a rich developer (and donor) who lives in the suburbs, but won’t do the same for her own constituents under threat of displacement, has no right to call herself an “advocate for the cause of affordable housing.”
While Mell has been flooding the ward with mailers touting her hollow housing bona fides, the activists and tenants she’s lashed out at have kept up the fight against displacement. Last year, when another large chunk of the ward’s dwindling affordable housing stock was snapped up by a large developer evicting dozens of working-class residents and increase rents, Mell opted to outright ignore their requests for help while both of her opponents made public statements of support of the tenants and their union.
It is simply laughable for Mell to accuse tenant organizations of exploiting tenants while she rakes in developer cash and ignores tenants in crisis who have the audacity to organize, then comes around every 4 years for our votes.
Through organizing and direct action, tenants under threat of eviction across the 33rd Ward have been able to secure sorely needed time and assistance for a less traumatic transition, and win settlements that developers never would’ve conceded to otherwise. Together, we can fight and win without (and in spite of) politicians like Mell who talk a big game about the grassroots but side with big money when the chips are down. Maybe that’s why they’re so afraid of us.
