Tenants and Workers United

TWU first organized in the mid-1980s in response to the scheduled mass evictions of thousands of low-income renters in the Arlandria neighborhood of Alexandria. Wrongly assuming that residents would simply leave their homes to make way for gentrification, developers sought legal and illegal means to force people out. But the tenants stayed, they studied, and they organized. Together, we won a class-action lawsuit, staving off the evictions and giving us an incentive to keep organizing.