Culture Is a Weapon!

An interview with Lex Rountree

Election Day is here! I cast my vote in the NYC mayoral primaries a few days ago between dropping zines in a few new locations—my first time voting in the city. I hope you’ve made plans to do the same. There’s a lot of buzz around this election, as we’re on the precipice of electing someone who doesn’t suck, which would be rad. It’s easy to get swept up in the Zohran of it all, and I do encourage everyone to do a deep dive on his Wikipedia page (are we all aware he used to rap under the alias Mr. Cardamom?), but I had to dig a little deeper.

To round out my knowledge, I met with Lex Rountree, who I met at Salon Avec Moi a few months ago. She was glittering that night, both energetically and physically (she was covered in green rhinestones and sported a peacock feather halo). Lex is a tenant organizer, sometimes writer, and diva based in Flatbush by way of the Baltimore suburbs. She’s been working in campaigns and social movements since she was 17, and she is currently a field lead with the NYS Tenant Bloc’s Freeze the Rent campaign.

She rolled up on the day of our meeting in rainbow platform sandals and a green, bedazzled FREEZE THE RENT cap. I’m something beyond obsessed. She also gave me a copy of her NYC Mayoral Primary Guide, which is also up on her Substack, Comandante Diva. Keep reading to hear about how she got her start, her thoughts on the mayoral election, and what she’s looking forward to for Pride.

Okay, first of all: happy Juneteenth.

Happy Juneteenth! Happy Prideteenth!

Happy Prideteenth! I love that it’s during Pride Month and always will be.

It’s great.

My friend is actually in town for Juneteenth and wanted to hang out, and I was like…you’re straight. Actually, I’m realizing I never responded to her. I should do that now.

Please!

First question, broadly: what do you do?

I’m an organizer and a tenant leader with the Tenant Bloc, which is the electoral wing of Housing Justice for All, a big alliance of groups across New York State and within the city that are all focused on passing policy, electing candidates, you know, wins that will be beneficial, whether it’s in social housing or tenants’ rights. They were really formative in the 2019 rent laws that passed that helped get rid of the grandfather clause for rent stabilization—

What was the grandfather clause?

It was basically a whole thing where—so, rent stabilization is a sect of units in the real estate market where their rent can only go up a certain amount. So it’s different from market rate, where you can just increase whatever. A lot of the time it applies to older buildings, prewar. There used to be a thing that helped landlords convert units out of rent stabilization if people moved out or if their situations changed. [Housing Justice for All] helped protect against that.

Anyway, I’m an organizer with their Freeze the Rent campaign. It’s the first really big campaign that the Tenant Bloc has put on. The Tenant Bloc itself is a pretty new vehicle.

And that’s an organization you were working with separate from your old nonprofit job?

It’s a little bit entwined with my old job. I used to work for a national network of housing groups, so we had groups in all different cities and states. Some of those groups are also members of Housing Justice for All and the Tenant Bloc, so I became familiar with their work in that way and just through going to school [in New York] around the time those laws were getting passed. I was like, “Oh! Okay, I know these people.”

I just started with the Tenant Bloc this year. Even before my last job, which was seven years worth of work, my first foray into organizing stuff was when I was in high school. I started organizing with the national digital organizing team for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign. So a lot of my work has been on a national, higher level, and it’s not as immediately impactful, so I wanted to get more involved in what was happening locally. The rent freeze campaign launched at a really exciting time, because this vote happens every year. The rent has gone up around 9% since Eric Adams has been in office, and the previous mayor, de Blasio—oh, that’s fierce.

Editor’s note: Lex was not deeming former mayor Bill de Blasio fierce. We were stunned by the arrival of my enormous plantain brûlée iced latte. Shoutout Antilles Cafe.

That is fierce.

That little sugar shard, too? This is intricate. Do you remember that phase of milkshakes—

I do. With, like, a donut on the side, and an ice cream cone—

An entire plate is on top of it—

A second milkshake is somehow attached—

Ugh. Yeah. What a moment. But yeah, anyway, it was an exciting time because it was not just, you know, “Oh, we need to freeze the rent,” but it’s also tied to this mayoral race and trying to, in the wake of everything that happened in the general election last year, with Trump winning, see ways that we can not just take this sitting down. They were having these citywide canvassing days on the first Saturday of every month, right around when people would be paying rent, and door knocking in neighborhoods with a lot of rent-stabilized units to let those folks know and be like, “Hey, these are the people that are in charge of”—I don’t know if you know of the process with the rent guidelines board, or…

I don’t! Take us through it.

Sorry, I’m going on, like, 85 tangents.

No, it’s amazing! I’m learning so much.

The rent guidelines board is a panel of people that vote on how high rent can increase for two million stabilized tenants. It’s not an elected body, so it’s kind of a big deal that these two million people’s lives are at the mercy of these random people that are just appointed by the mayor. There are five “public members” and two owner members, which are representing landlords’ interests.

Who will think of the landlords?

No, literally. And then two tenant members are supposed to represent our interests. Their whole deal is that they’re supposed to do reports on how expensive things are getting in terms of things like maintaining a building, what’s happening with renters’ wages, or landlord profits. It’s also just a fucking thing too because these people are considered experts, but I just recently—I’m gonna go on a lot of tangents.

No, that’s totally okay.

Stay with me here! So, the rent guidelines board is actually having their final vote on what the increase will be the day after the election, June 25th.

And by “the increase,” you mean the legal amount by which they can increase rent?

Yeah! People who will be starting after…I don’t know if the deadline is June or October, I think it’s on their website. But this new increase will go into effect for those units. So right now, I think the rates are between 1.75% and 4.75% for one year leases, and the higher limit is around 7.75% for two-year leases. They recently re-voted, which is something they normally never do, to decrease the amount. So it went from 4.75% to 3.75%, which is still not a rent freeze, but it is significant. None of these votes that they’re doing before the 25th are binding. They could still decide to do a rent freeze. They probably won’t, because Eric Adams appointed all these people.

Anyway, what I was getting to before was that a lot of these people are supposed to be considered experts. It’s usually academics or whatever. And so, leading up to this final vote, they have these borough-based hearings where tenants are supposed to come in and testify about why things are so expensive. I was at the Brooklyn one and someone asked, “How many of you are actually tenants? How many of you are even in a rent-stabilized unit? Does more than half your paycheck go to rent?” Only the two tenant reps could say, “Yes, I rent.” So these people aren’t directly impacted by the decisions they’re making. There was a report released this year showing that landlord profits are up by 12%, or 8% with inflation, and tenant wages are down, and rent’s still going up!

Something has to give.

Exactly. If we want to freeze the rent, it’s important that we elect someone who will appoint people that are in line with that goal. The campaign started to try to [tell candidates] “If you want to be taken seriously by the 70% of New Yorkers that are tenants, you need to take the call for a rent freeze seriously.

And when you say “rent freeze”—I know this is super self-explanatory—you want them to make it illegal to raise rent at all?

It would look like a 0.0% increase on a lease. This has happened in the past; there is historical precedence for it.

And that would just be for this year, and then they’d reevaluate next year?

Our push is for the rent freeze to last all four years. I think only one candidate has fully committed to freezing the rent for all four years of their administration, and that’s Zohran. Brad Lander was in support of it, but only for one year, and then he would reevaluate. So some people are hesitant. But I feel like, because of the pressure that we’ve put, it’s become a surprisingly big issue. Now we’re at the point where the only person in the race who doesn’t support a rent freeze is Cuomo. When Zohran first launched, he was the one who said, “That’s a big part of my platform right off the bat.” That was really monumental for us. I don’t remember what the original question was.

The original question was “What do you do?” but this is what I wanted! I knew that it was so broad, and there’s so much to talk about and dig into, so I’m glad you gave so much info. You mentioned organizing in high school. I wanted to ask, was there a single event that radicalized you?

I don’t know if there was a single event. When I talk about when I first started developing that consciousness, I always tell people about my mother, may she rest in peace. She’s still alive, I just don’t talk to that bitch.

Oop.

For all of her other faults, the one thing she was good at was that she was a public school teacher—specifically an art teacher—who wanted to make sure her curriculum was representative of the people in the classrooms’ lived experiences and cultures. We had a lot of Nigerian and Korean kids at my school—

Where’d you grow up?

I grew up in Baltimore county. It’s a very diverse area, so she was very anti-dead-white-male-artists and had a social justice tilt. One of my earlier memories was that she was showing me some song—I don’t remember what it was, but it was about Steve Biko and South African apartheid. I have this little memory of making my mom drive me around our Black suburban neighborhood and calling out “This is about Steve Biko and apartheid! We really need to fight this, you guys!” Apartheid had ended.

You were gonna fix it!

I was like, “Imma fix it! I’m on the case!”

That’s so funny.

So yeah, I had that awareness of social justice stuff and this other current of political stuff. I was just reflecting on this. My next zine is just gonna be reflecting on how this is technically my tenth year of organizing work, because of the Bernie stuff, and just thinking about how socialism being prominent in politics has changed so much since then. I was thinking back to, like—the three things I was interested in when I was a kid were fashion, being a diva, and presidential history.

Right.

So for historical figures day, I went in FDR drag.

Whoa.

I didn’t know about the internment camps. They left that part out of all the books.

Right, right.

But I loved FDR down. I was like, “He helped so many people! He got us out of the Great Depression!” He also cheated on his wife. His wife was also gay, so I don’t think she gave a fuck. They were cousins. There’s a lot going on in that space. Anyway! When it came time for the primary leading up to the 2016 election, I was very excited because it was my first time being able to vote for the president, and I wanted to get involved.

Same!

So I started researching, and that’s when I found out about Bernie. I thought he was really great and I wanted to support him. I was like, “We’re in the time of change. We’re gonna do so much.”

That’s how it felt, for sure. I was a freshman in college during that election, so I was in College Democrats, I was so excited, we were doing all this stuff.

Right. So later that summer, it was 2015—what a monumental summer. I remember that was the same year that the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. I was in San Francisco with my friend at her lesbian moms’ house.

That’s major.

We were celebrating Pride. It was a great time.

I was in Athens, Georgia.

Mamma Mia!

Afterwards, I went with my theater club to go see this gay play. So that was festive!

Period. I love that. But yeah, later in the summer, the campaign started having livestreams of their call to action to build a movement and volunteer. I remember getting on a call with the director of their digital organizing team, Zack Exley. He asked if anyone had any extra time and I was like…I’m a high school student. School’s not in session. I’m down to throw down. So I ended up finding my way into doing this higher level digital organizing stuff.

You said “digital organizing?”

Yeah, digital organizing is helping organize all of the events that were happening, seeing what the attendance rate was, coordinating with statewide staffers—I remember having these calls late at night, and I was like, I have to do my homework, but I also have to moderate this call with volunteers in West Virginia. It was just an exciting time. I got interviewed by TIME magazine.

Wow!

They were writing this whole thing about the moment. And then when Bernie lost the election, a lot of the people from his staff moved to create this new formation that’s called Brand New Congress. The idea of it was to take people that were not career politicians—that were nurses, teachers, stuff like that—and try to unify around policies. It was supposed to be beyond political party. That was eventually the thing that helped elect AOC, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, all of those people. I feel like in another universe, I would’ve been on that scary student politician path of like, “I love Washington, DC!”

Oh my god, yeah.

You know the type. Thank God I found progressive people. So then, I did labor organizing in college, and it turned into housing stuff, and here we are.

Here we are! Also, I simply have to ask: did you bedazzle your hat?

Well, yes! I don’t know if you remember what I wore to [Salon Avec Moi]—

Oh, I remember. It was crazy!

I had all these extra green rhinestones, so when they made these hats, I had to bedazzle one. A lot of people have asked where to get the bedazzled one.

It’s a hot commodity. Anyway, student organizing?

I was in a local chapter of United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), which was—

Oh, that’s how you know [my college friend who was our one random IG mutual when we met]! I forgot about that.

Oh yeah! I was on their steering committee for a year or something. And then I was [redacted], which we don’t need to talk about. They will sue me.

And what do you do now, in terms of canvassing and events?

We had been doing a Tenant Tuesday canvas. I’ve been hosting one in Flatbush. We also had the Freeze the Rent rally on May 15th, which was super packed. It was also where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his speech denouncing the Vietnam War. I remember when I was in college, they had Angela Davis speaking there for an abolition conference. It was this weird, full-circle moment where I realized I’m part of New York organizing stuff now. I guess.

You are! You’re part of the fabric. That’s really exciting.

It is exciting, yeah. So we’ve had press conferences, too, around Cuomo’s terrible housing policy stuff and his track record as mayor, where rents went up 50%. We had one with Zohran a couple weeks ago that was supposed to be in response to Cuomo taking two and a half million dollars from the New York Apartments Association, which is the landlord lobby. This crazy guy comes out of nowhere and is banging on a cowbell—

Oh damn!

—and he’s like, “Zohran, you lied to me, I’m a native New Yorker, you have to listen to me!” Apparently the only native New Yorker in the entire history of New York. Nobody else. He ended up biting one of my friends on the arm. It was fucking nuts.

He didn’t draw blood, did he?

No, but she had to get a tetanus shot.

Human mouths are not clean. They’re disgusting. You’re better off getting bitten by a dog than a human.

No, literally. That’s nasty as fuck. But anyway, it’s been a lot of that and debate watch parties. We just had our most recent one at C’mon Everybody. We’re definitely trying to do more, especially looking beyond the primary for a way to keep people engaged.

Definitely! What do voters need to know about the primary and the months leading up to the main election in November? What do we need to be thinking about?

I think it’s important to be ranking people that are not only in line with your values, but also able to change your material conditions. There are some people who fully do not have platforms on their website, and they’re shading Zohran about not having experience. It’s like, what are you running for? And the way this whole election—if you watched only the debates, you would think it’s about mayor of Tel Aviv. Hello?

No, it’s very odd. What does Israel have to do with the price of fish? We’re in New York!

And all this stuff about antisemitism, too, is making a lot of Jewish people feel unsafe, and they’re directing a lot of Islamophobia at Zohran.

That’s how you know they’re getting scared, which is a good thing, but I wish it didn’t lead to this.

Millions of dollars are being put into making this man seem like he’s the second coming of Satan. It’s nuts.

It’s ridiculous.

But yeah, beyond [researching the candidates], it’s also about contacting your network. One thing the campaign is really pushing now is for folks to get on an app called Reach, where you can import your contact list and it’ll show you eligible voters. So you can ask if people know where their polling place is or whatever. It can help you double or triple your vote by making sure people are aware. Voting down-ballot is important as well, because this doesn’t begin and end with Zohran. You want to be sure that your city councilperson is in support of a rent freeze. The comptroller is the second highest elected office. Justin Brannan has been a big proponent of some of Zohran’s stuff. He’s actually outlining where we’re gonna get the money for our plans. So the more collaboration that can happen, the better the government for all of us.

A well-oiled machine.

Yeah. And then, after the [primary] election, regardless of if Zohran gets a nomination or ends up running on the Working Families Party line, the fight will not be over either way because Cuomo’s still on the ballot. It’s a hard time because so many people feel so exhausted with all of the things that are happening. I don’t know if there’s a way out. It’s easy to just decide to tune out from all of this, but we’re only gonna get through it if we all come together. Some people think of organizing as a lot of heavy work, so it’s been exciting for me to try and figure out how we can insert lightness into that space.

Make it more of a part of your everyday life, versus something you have to “clock in” for.

Exactly! It’s about a culture shift, kind of in the same way that punk wasn’t just a way of dressing. It was a lifestyle. Culture is a weapon! That’s how we can come together. As tenants, we are 70% of New York. It’s the thing you’re most likely to have in common with a random person you sit next to on the subway. And I’m also thinking about ways to collaborate with people who are throwing cool events, so we can bring—

—Different communities together.

Yeah!

When I was working with College Democrats, like I said, it was 2016. I was in Alabama, it was a lot of work and a lot of arguing. I burned out pretty early on, so I’ve been trying to come back from this mindset of tuning out and thinking, “Nothing matters,” because it does matter! So I wanted to ask, how do you avoid burnout? How do you remain hopeful?

I think this is a great thing for me to put in Dykes and Dolls, of all places, because a lot of it has felt less exhausting because I’m not organizing with a bunch of Marx bros. Similarly, I got a lot of burnout in college from having to be around a lot of that energy and white guys who read theory but didn’t want to “do the dishes” of the work. USAS had this idea where everyone loves the “meal” of organizing work, where it’s all flashy and great, but no one wants to do that reproductive work that allows this process to continue. They just want to be in front of things. But no one really notices when that work isn’t happening until it stops. And that often falls on women of color and queer people.

What’s been great about this, and what Zohran has helped shepherd in, is that when I go to those events it’s not all white boys, like how I think the Bernie stuff felt for some people. There’s Bangladeshi aunties and uncles, there’s families.

Very New York for New York.

Yeah, exactly. So it’s a lot of that, and with the people I’m organizing with, I made a joke to my friend: “It’s so great over here! It’s all divas and queers.”

Tea.

It feels reflective of the lineage that’s been in New York tenant organizing. There was this woman, Frances Goldin, who lived in what’s now the East Village but was considered the Lower East Side at that point—have you ever heard the name Jane Jacobs?

I have, but I only vaguely remember it.

Fuck that hoe.

Oh?!

She was in the West Village or Greenwich Village. People always talk about her as this little lady who took down Robert Moses when he wanted to put a highway through Washington Square Park and the West Village. She was part of a group that objected and said we need to build great American cities—

So why is it fuck that hoe?

She was homophobic. And she lived in Greenwich Village! How you in the gay village and you’re homophobic? Anyway, Frances Goldin—not homophobic—had two lesbian daughters, and she would go to Pride every year with a sign that said “I adore my lesbian daughters.” Talk to ‘em Frances!

Tell ‘em!

She was, I wanna say, Toni Morrison’s literary agent as well. This diva had a lot of lives. She was dealing with a similar struggle on the east side with Robert Moses, where he demolished things that affected a lot of Puerto Rican families. All of these buildings went down, and people were displaced. She really fought against development that was displacing people and helped start the first community land trust in NYC, called the Cooper Square Committee. I don’t know what the demographics look like now, but back in the day, it was this whole coalition, mostly women-led, multiracial, and they were all coming together. So I feel like [we’re currently in] this nice moment of…this is kind of what the movement looks like too! It’s all women and queer people organizing. It’s felt restorative to me.

That’s awesome.

This campaign has also been pretty popular. It’s not something controversial. It’s funny when someone says, “I don’t support a rent freeze. It’s so hard to own a building.” I’ll laugh.

That’s funny.

That’s hilarious.

You’re a joke.

This is a tight five. This is crazy.

Have you met Zohran?

Yeah! It’s been a couple of times, at press conferences. When the Working Families Party endorsed Zohran, I was our Tenant Bloc rep to be like, “We love Zohran!” I met his dad, actually, which was funny. I didn’t really register it at first because I was just in that mode of “Hello, nice to meet you, what’s your name,” and then I asked his email because we were trying to build our email list. He was like, “That’s literally my son.”

I was on Zohran’s Wikipedia page gagging. I think I saw that his middle name is Kwame and I like…Ghana mentioned? So I had to do some research.

I know!

He’s an interesting guy, I’d love to meet him. What’s his vibe?

He’s pretty chill. I don’t know him super well, but he’s been a partner with Housing Justice for All and those people for a long time. Some of them are in DSA, where he came up, and where there’s an idea of co-governance and thinking about how to build power outside of elected officials. So it probably won’t be a situation where he’s like, “Thanks for helping me get elected! I’m never talking to you again.” Which is obviously the risk of these things, and even if he gets elected, he’ll be busy! He’s a politician. But that’s the point: we can’t expect politicians to be the end all be all. It’s on us to step up.

This has been super informative! I’ve learned so much. That’s all I have for election stuff, but I also have to ask: what are you doing for Pride?

Man, I am so fucking tired.

Right.

It’s hard because there’s so many things, but this is a time where people are hitting the pavement for election stuff. My friend Ariel is having Dyke Darty this weekend at The Rosemont.

Dyke Darty! I know that one. And I have friends who love The Rosemont. I’ve been once, but I wanna go check it out again. It looks really fun.

She’s also hosting Lezzie McGuire.

That one has been on my radar for a while. I think it’s just not the closest party to me or my friend group, so there’s not much momentum to get me there, but I do want to check it out. And I’ve never been to C’mon Everybody.

C’mon Everybody is great!

You remember that one nice day in April that got really cold really fast?

Oh yeah.

Earlier that day, I was at Fort Greene Park, and so was Michael Cera.

Oh, fierce.

Someone told me he owns C’mon Everybody—

What?!

—and I look it up and it says it’s queer-owned, so I’m like…I don’t think he owns this place.

I mean, I met the owner…

Turns out, he owns a taco shop or something right next to C’mon Everybody.

Okay businessman! What else…Ginger’s is having a block party, and Karlye from [Salon Avec Moi] is having this Orchestra Q thing, and Madison’s gonna do live portraits.

I saw that! That looks so cool. Gay Gayer Gayest is the same night; otherwise, I’d be there.

I put stuff on my calendar and then I leave it up to God to see what I’m actually gonna do.

There’s a lot going on. Last year, on the Sunday of Pride Weekend, I just crawled home and lay in bed all day. So I’m very hesitant to pay for any tickets for Sunday because I don’t know where I’ll be. I don’t know how I’ll be.

It’s a mystery.