From: Housing, Organizing, & Movement Empowerment Society
Date: September 29, 2025
Subject: HOMES - 09/29 Newsletter



Hi, everyone!


Good morning, and happy Monday! We were thrilled to see so many of you at our first general body meeting last week. It has been an eventful time, but BU HOMES stands ardently against police violence and intimidation. Students deserve to feel safe while obtaining an education, without fear of being confronted or harassed. We strongly urge you to reach out to the school administration to express your thoughts on recent campus occurrences if you have the time.

In the meantime, want more opportunities to get involved? Join us this week at City Life/Vida Urbana for their weekly tenant organizing meetings! City Life is a 50+ year-old grassroots organization fighting for racial, social, and economic justice through direct action, coalition building, education, and advocacy. They hold meetings every Tuesday (in English) in Jamaica Plain and every Wednesday (in Spanish) in East Boston to build community and inform people about their housing rights!

Every Tuesday in Jamaica Plain, HOMES holds a 'Know Your Rights' training for tenants who have recently received a Notice to Quit, marking the first step in the legal eviction process. Speak Spanish? HOMES is starting a new initiative to provide translation services to legal aid attorneys at CL/VU's Wednesday night meetings in East Boston. Message us to find out more!

If you'd like to attend a meeting with HOMES members, please complete the Google form below. Let us know if you have any questions or transportation concerns, and we will be happy to help! The BU Public Interest Law Society pro bono transportation reimbursement form can be found here.

Weekly Sign Up for City Life/Vida Urbana Meetings

RESISTING THE INTERSECTING ATTACKS ON IMMIGRANTS AND ADVOCACY FOR PALESTINIAN HUMAN RIGHTS
Join Northeastern University School of Law for a talk TONIGHT  from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm at 240 Dockser Hall. "How are advocates responding to the current attacks on democratic norms and the rule of law? Please join us for a series of conversations with practitioners on the front lines. Featuring: Mahsa Khanbabai is an advocate on immigration issues including the unlawful targeting of international students advocating for Palestinian human rights, the Muslim/Africa Travel Ban, Afghan Humanitarian Parole, and consular visa delays in the Global South. She currently represents Rümeysa Öztürk in her federal and immigration court cases. In conversation with: Professor Rachel Rosenbloom." Register here!

BOOK TALK: BENEATH THE MOUNTAIN
"Join the Lucy Parson Center on October 3rd at 6:30 pm for a discussion on Beneath the Mountain: an Anti-Prison Reader, presented by Dr. Jennifer Black and Noelle Hanrahan. This collection of writings is co-edited by Mumia Abu-Jamal, and serves as a reader’s guide for understanding the evolution of anti-prison tenets. This essential core of primary texts provides an arc of insurgent writings by dissidents and revolutionaries who experienced incarceration and state terror first-hand. What emerges from these texts is an emancipatory vision that inspires the work being done today, a vision centered on organizing and solidarity as an antidote to repression.

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning journalist, political activist, and author. Throughout his decades of imprisonment, most of which was spent in solitary confinement on death row, he has steadfastly maintained his innocence. Dr. Jennifer Black is a researcher focusing on high-risk activism, state-sponsored terror against political insurgents, and the impact of mass incarceration on marginalized communities. Noelle Hanrahan is a lawyer, investigative journalist, and the director of Prison Radio, a project of the Redwood Justice Fund. Since 1992 she has been producing Mumia Abu-Jamal’s radio commentaries. Black and Hanrahan will also have a message from Mumia Abu-Jamal to deliver on his behalf." Find out more here!

NLG RADICAL LAWYERING OFFICE HOURS
Join the BU National Lawyers Guild chapter, one of our close affiliates, for office hours TODAY from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm in room 102! There will be great company and space to destress from the chaos of law school.

BOSTON DSA: SOCIALISM 101 READING GROUP
Everyone new to socialist organizing and/or Boston DSA is invited to a three-session intro reading group on the basics of socialism and DSA. The next group meeting is on Tuesday, September 30th and runs for two more weeks (9/30, 10/7). All sessions are 7:00-9:00 PM on Zoom. Register at bdsa.us/Soc101." Click here for more information. Further, join the Allston/Brighton DSA for an October Social on Sunday, October  5th at 1:00 pm in Ringer Park. Find more information here!

HONK! IMMIGRATION ACTIVIST FESTIVAL
"Join the MIRA Coalition at the 20th annual Honk Fest! This free event unites brass bands from all over the world to Somerville for a celebration of music, community and activism. Join us on Sunday, Oct. 12th as we march from Davis Square to Harvard Square, to advocate for immigrants' rights!" Find out more here!

LEXIS IS SELLING YOUR INFORMATION TO ICE
For more information, check out the linked Zine by the End the Contract Coalition, which is pushing LEXIS+ parent company RELX to cut its ties with ICE. For more information on the disappointing results of a recent lawsuit against Lexis for unjust enrichment upon selling customer data to ICE, click here. Further, click here to review an article by the University of Colorado Law School Law Review that investigates the basis of unjust enrichment claims for Lexis's cooperation with ICE.

Here are some more upcoming events that might be of interest to you all:

Take care!

In solidarity,

BU HOMES
Boston University School of Law
Sarah Birkhaeuser, Co-President
Josh Palackal, Co-President
Greg Bowe, Vice President
Angel Yi, Treasurer
Chloe Buck, Secretary
Zoie Valencia, Director of Community Partnerships
Eliza Thorpe, Sub-secretary

Have you joined our GroupMe?
If not, click here to stay updated on important events and communications.


Sign up for City Life/Vida Urbana’s Action Alert emails!
Stay up-to-date with City Life’s organizing by joining their mailing list here. City Life sends out emails in both English and Spanish with time-critical event information.

Do you know who your landlord is?
If not, click here for more information on how to find out.

Want to check your landlord's housing code compliance?
Or do you just have some free time on your hands? Check out the following Housing Code Checklist. If you notice any issues, remember you have a right to unionize.

For more information on unionizing (either joining a pre-existing tenants union or building one with your neighbors), check out the Greater Boston Tenants Union here.

Do you know who your landlord is?
If not, click here for more information on how to find out.

Want to check your landlord's housing code compliance?
Or do you just have some free time on your hands? Check out the following Housing Code Checklist. If you notice any issues, remember you have a right to unionize.

For more information on unionizing (either joining a pre-existing tenants union or building one with your neighbors), check out the Greater Boston Tenants Union here.

Author Talk: Michael Glass on Debt and Inequality in Suburban America on Wednesday, 15 October 2025 At 12:30 PM. No image description provided

EVENT

Author Talk: Michael Glass on Debt and Inequality in Suburban America

clock Wednesday, October 15, 2025
12:30pm - 1:30pm
Location pinBoston Public Library - Commonwealth Salon, 700 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116, United States
Link
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Join Boston College historian Michael Glass for a conversation about his new book, Cracked Foundations: Debt and Inequality in Suburban America. The book explores how home mortgages and municipal bonds helped build postwar suburbs while also making them financially fragile, and how these tools entrenched disparities that still shape American life today.

Lunch will be served and registration is required to attend.

Michael Glass is an Assistant Professor of History at Boston College. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and previously worked as a public high school teacher in New York City. A political and urban historian of twentieth-century America, his work focuses on the intersections of race, metropolitan development, and capitalism.

His research examines how financial systems—such as credit markets, property taxes, and home insurance—generate inequality and shape everyday life, from housing and education to environmental risk. By making complex economic and policy systems tangible, his writing reveals their human consequences and historical roots.

In discussion with Glass is Lizabeth Cohen. Cohen is the Howard Mumford Jones Research Professor of American Studies and a Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of History at Harvard. From 2011-18 she was the dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. In addition to Saving America’s Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age, which won the 2020 Bancroft Prize in American History, previous books include Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939, also winner of the Bancroft Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer, and A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America.

She is also co-author with David Kennedy and Margaret O’Mara of a widely used college and advanced placement United States history textbook, The American Pageant. Her writings have appeared as well in many edited volumes, academic journals, and popular venues, including The Atlantic, New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and the American Prospect.
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