U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, blasted Teen Vogue on Thursday over a July column in which the writer advocates for the eventual end of private property rights. “Just wondering if anyone sees any issues with our next generation reading Marxist propaganda in popular teen magazines...?” Crenshaw, who has represented the Houston-area 2nd Congressional District of Texas since 2019, wrote on Twitter.
Columnist Kandist Mallett, who has recently focused on issues related to racial injustice protests, centered her argument around those struggling financially during the coronavirus pandemic -- such as those dealing with rent and eviction issues.
“It’s been four months since the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic first highlighted the failures of capitalism and the incompetence of the United States government,” Mallett wrote in the piece, which was titled "An Eviction Crisis Is Coming — We Need to Treat Housing as a Right."
She said it was time to look at the role private housing plays in the “economic violence” against communities – especially those of color – who are currently facing eviction due to the pandemic.
“The pandemic didn’t create this housing crisis, but it did further expose the cruelty of payment-based housing,” she wrote. “Wages that have remained stagnant while rent prices ballooned, especially over the last two decades, have meant millions of Americans have been living one disaster away from being unable to afford their rent.”
She wrote there is a disconnect of “wealth and class” between politicians and the public. “The constitution was created by landowning white men, who were the only people who could vote for decades after this country’s founding. This legacy still guides the government’s funding priorities.”
Mallett added that the anti-eviction movement should be linked to larger land struggles in the country’s history, adding that a moratorium on evictions only delays the real issues of the housing crisis.
“We should cancel rent outright as this pandemic rages,” she wrote, "and we should work toward a world where landlords no longer hold this sort of power over people’s lives.”
She added that the housing movement should be based on “a rejection of the construct that any one person should own this earth’s land.”
“While we’re working to abolish the police, we must also work to dismantle what the police were put here to protect: property. What is more evident of the legacy of settler colonialism and its violence than the idea of the ownership of land?” she wrote.
Crenshaw has been a vocal supporter of police in the country amid protests and told Fox News last month that "every single piece of data and every single piece of evidence and over the last few years...violent crime and crime, in general, has gone up across major cities. And, that is a result of police having to pull back. And so, it's the exact opposite outcome that we want if we're trying to help the people that we're claiming to help."
