Cea Weaver

Cea Weaver has worked as a tenant organizer, campaign researcher, and housing policy advocate in New York State for over ten years. She is from Rochester, New York and holds a Masters Degree in Urban Planning from NYU.

Right to the City Transatlantic Roundtable

Right to the City Transatlantic Roundtable 22 Nov. 2019.

This year the discussant will focus on a comparative analysis of housing movements in Berlin, Vancouver, and New York City.

In recent years, both cities have been rocked by rising rents, increased displacement, and gentrification. Much of these changes have been linked to increased speculation of housing as well as weakening of tenant protections.

In response, activists and left policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic have developed creative movements that seek to protect existing affordable housing, while attempting to expand housing stocks. This is has taken the form of expanding rent control laws, the municipalization of housing stock, and challenging technological firms’ takeover of city owned land. These strategies have been augmented by a vibrant, robust movements that have amplified the voices of tenants against finance capital, while connecting the dots between housing, healthcare, and immigration to secure a vital sense of what is the right to the city.

This roundtable will allow for a deepening of shared analysis through case studies, field trips, and mapping exercises.

Participants

• Christian Petermann, Urban Strategy Department (Office of Katrin Lompscher)
• Helge Peters, Oxford University
• Derrick O'Keefe, tenant organizer/Left Municipal movements
• Ryan Alcoff, Rochester Tenants Union/Right to the City Coalition
• Dominic Moulden, ONE DC/Right to the City Coalition
• Oksana Mironova, Community Service Society of New York
• Cea Weaver, Democratic Socialists of America/Housing 4 All
• Susanne Blakely, Right to Counsel NYC
• Akilah Browne, New Economy Project
• Hillary Caldwell, City University of New York
• Kazembe Balagun Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—New York Office
• Andreas Gunther, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—New York Office

Socialist Majority slate

New York City Democratic Socialists of America 2019 Socialist Majority slate for DSA national convention delegates.

A. Sen, Aaron Taube, Abdullah Younus, Abi Hassen, Adam E. Leeds, Andrea Guinn, Bianca Cunningham, Bruce Griffiths Cea Weaver, Charles Lenchner, Daniel Cheng, Daniel Lynch, Danya Lagos, Devin McManus, Emma Caterine, Frank Llewellyn, Itzhak Epstein, Jacob Appel, Jad Joseph, James O., Joe Demanuelle-Hall, John Schneider, Julian Graham, Jared Watson, Jasmin Oppenheimer, Jenny Zhang, Kevin Bohlmann, Leanna Ballester, Maia Rosenberg, Matthew Bond, Matthew Thomas, Michael Cavadias, Michael Kinnucan, Miriam Bensman, Nate Treadwell, Noah Weston, Osman Chaudhary, Paul Swartz, Phillip Henken, Renee Greene Levitt, Renee Paradis, Sam Lewis, Stephen Maples, Susan Kang, Tyler Curtis, Tiffany Gong.

Socialist Majority Caucus

DSA's Socialist Majority Caucus signatories list as of April 25 2019 included Cea Weaver of New York City Democratic Socialists of America.

2018 NYC DSA leaders

Congratulations to our newly elected New York City Democratic Socialists of America Steering Committee: Bianca Cunningham and Abdullah Younus (Co-Chairs), Joe Demanuelle-Hall (Secretary), Tiffany Gong

(Treasurer), Leslie Fine (Membership Coordinator), and Cea Weaver (Working Group Coordinator).

Endorsing Cynthia Nixon and Jumaane Williams

The Case for Endorsing Cynthia Nixon and Jumaane Williams (And How To Do It Strategically) was a letter Drafted by: Danya Lagos (CBK/Labor), and circulated among New York Democratic Socialists of America members in July 2018.[1]

CoSigners, as of July 23 2018 were: Cea Weaver.

New New York DSA Facebook group

Members of the New New York City Democratic Socialists of America Public Facebook Group, as of June 27, 2018 included Cea Weaver.

Fighting Landlords; Strategic Canvassing against Capitalism

In August 2018, Jimmy Tobias from The Nation quoted Allison Hrabar as a participant in the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America campaign: "Stomp Out Slumlords", which would fight landlords who want to evict their tenants. Their vision "is to make dignified housing a universal human right, rather than a commodity, just as Medicare for All proponents hope to do with health care." “We decided to go to the courthouse and pull all of the dockets and start canvassing tenants facing eviction,” says Margaret McLaughlin, the chair of the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America chapter. “The court system is mostly working right now as a conveyor belt to evict people,” says Allison Hrabar, a member of the chapter’s steering committee. “We are throwing a wrench in that system.”

Other Democratic Socialists of America members quoted in the article were Jen Snyder, an organizer with San Francisco Democratic Socialists of America who explained that the movement to focus on housing is strategic: She was quoted as saying: "When we talk about building a movement, we’re talking about getting the most amount of people to see that capitalism is working directly against their best interests. And housing is a damn good way to talk about that.” The San Francisco Democratic Socialists of America claims to have been pivotal in the success of a recent ballot initiative that passed in San Francisco that "establishes a universal right to legal counsel for tenants facing eviction."

“DSA members were the vast majority of the canvassers and door knockers,” says SF DSA’s Jen Snyder, who was the campaign manager for Proposition F. “We were the main driving volunteer force, we were the campaign staff, the campaign office was the DSA office.”

It’s "also a powerful way to organize a political base," explains Cea Weaver, a member of New York City Democratic Socialists of America’s steering committee as well as its housing working group. “As socialists, our goal is to build working-class power—whether at the polls, in our homes, or in our workplaces. New York tenants are a millions-strong constituency that cuts across lines of race, class, gender, and age. Many of us may vote as workers, students, or parents, but if we unite as tenants, we represent an unstoppable political force.”

From the article:

"The Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America started sending out 10 to 20 volunteer canvassers each weekend to do long days of door-knocking at rental units across the city. They hit roughly 200 doors on any given weekend, encouraging tenants to defend themselves from eviction."

According to an "operations manual," their "strategy is to make it as difficult as possible to wield eviction as a weapon by raising the costs of evicting a tenant and flooding the channels that permit and carry out evictions."

From their manual:

"A DSA working group in Washington, D.C. has identified a strategic chokepoint that will allow us to effectively challenge the city’s landlords: landlord-tenant court, the institution responsible for evictions. The power and profit of landlords always depends on eviction: housing can only be a commodity as long as owners have the right to deny shelter to people who do not pay. Our strategy is to make it as difficult as possible to wield eviction as a weapon by raising the costs of evicting a tenant and flooding the channels that permit and carry out evictions. Poor tenants have the latent power to clog the machinery of displacement, and we have developed a program to unlock that power."

NYC DSA Car Caucus

Members of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America DSA Car Caucus closed Facebook group, as of October 26, 2017 included Cea Weaver.

The People's Forum

Bianca Cunningham February 1 2019:

Gang Gang🌹🌹 — with Jay Thompson, Clarence Adams, Leslie Fine, Joe D-Hall, Abdullah Younus, Patrick T. Shepherd, Mary Clinton, Sam Lewis, Ella Mahony, Ryan Bruckenthal, Cea Weaver, Dana Steer, Nina Svirsky, Ben Bennett, Jia Lee, Katie Halper, Kelly Gilbert, Trevor Taylor, Zyad Hammad and Zelig Stern at The People's Forum.