Mitchell’s guest today is running for Congress from the 12th District in NYC, Pete Harrison. The following is a brief description of himself and a bit of his agenda. We’ll be discussing his platform and what he is intending to accomplish if elected.
I’ve lived in New York’s 12th Congressional District since I moved to the city in 2006.
I wanted to change the world by writing the Great American Novel. I soon realized that changing the housing laws at home in NY would have a much bigger impact on people’s lives.
It all started when I moved to Stuyvesant Town in 2009 and my apartment suddenly became rent-stabilized as part of a lawsuit. My rent went down by $1100 – but the harassment went up. I had to fight two eviction notices in housing court, resist sudden rent hikes, and endure all kinds of pressure from my landlord to leave. When I learned my neighbors were also being pushed around, I joined the tenants association to help organize our buildings against a series of bad corporate landlords.
Losing one’s home to a toxic bureaucracy wasn’t totally unfamiliar to me, however. My mother’s childhood home in Bay Ridge was torn down by Robert Moses to build the Verrazano Bridge.
I knew I had to do everything I could to help other tenants fight unfair laws and bad landlords.
I got my Masters in Urban Planning at Columbia University, studying tenant organizing and community land trusts (while supporting myself as a bartender and racking up an ungodly amount of student debt.) After grad school, I started a tenant-organizing app called Homebody. Our company was built on the public benefit model, in which shareholders own the company as well as its assets, instead of enriching investors.
Both at school and while organizing tenants for the Albany rent law renewal fights of 2011, 2015 and 2019, I saw how housing and economic development are at the root of so much injustice in our country. It’s what brought me down to Occupy Wall Street, to march with Black Lives Matter, and to attend the Women’s March in DC. It’s why I joined the Democratic Socialists of America, and proudly knocked on doors for Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Julia Salazar, Cynthia Nixon, Jumaane Williams, and Tiffany Cabán.
Economic justice, racial justice, and climate justice are the same fight.
As a senior housing advisor for Data for Progress and lead writer on the 2020 “Homes for All” report,
I’ve consulted on housing policy plans for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Center for Popular Democracy, and the Homes Guarantee.
As the Program Director for the CUNY Startup Accelerator (until the funding was cut by Governor Cuomo), and professor in Information Technology Systems at the Baruch’s Zicklin School of Business, I’ve become involved in the fight for public education funding.
Mitchell Rabin is the Founder, President and CEO of A Better World Promotions & Media, with a background in psychology stress management, acupuncture and social entrepreneurship. He is a counselor, and executive coach all as a means of educating and inspiring clients and students alike to lead others by modeling humane, eco-sensitive and integrity-based values. He has been a consultant to business leaders and CEOs of green and health-oriented start-ups over the past 25 years. He is an impassioned environmentalist and social entrepreneur using media, the cultural arts & business as agents for change. www.abetterworld.tv www.mitchellrabin.com
