Happy Mother’s Day to the women who taught us that home is something worth fighting for 🌹🩵🕊️

Mother’s Day became a national holiday in 1914. That same year, working-class immigrant women in NYC were organizing against landlords, overcrowded housing, unsafe tenements, and impossible rents.

Long before tenant rights became policy language, women were fighting for dignity in hallways, kitchens, stoops, and city streets. For many women, “home” was never separate from politics. It was the front line.

And over a century later, women like myself are still organizing against many of the same injustices.

April was Fair Housing Month, and it felt especially meaningful to me as my pending housing court case adjourned yet again. On April 26th, I completed a 50K perimeter run around Manhattan in honor of the displacement crisis impacting Black and Latina New Yorkers in Harlem and beyond because New Yorkers of color shouldn’t have to fear displacement in order to remain home. ❤️💪🏽

I also had the honor of speaking on two panels at the National Conference on Rent Control and Tenant Rights in April as a representative of the Upper Manhattan Tenants Union 🫡 Two things I’m carrying forward from the conference: when we fight, we win, and silence helps no one.

After the panels, I stayed to speak with attendees about rent-stabilized succession rights because too many tenants are navigating these systems without clear information or support. Knowing your rights is power. Sharing that knowledge with others is how we protect each other against displacement.

In May, my window exhibition, Windows of Resistance: Selections from the Marie Runyon Archive, dedicated to tenant organizer Marie Runyon quietly came down after being on view for two months for March (Women's History Month) and April (Fair Housing Month). I’m deeply grateful to The Columbia Spectator and to Ian Romero for featuring a review of the exhibition and helping preserve my work and story: click here to read it!

Spending time with Runyon’s archive reminded me how important storytelling and documentation are in struggles against displacement. Learning more about the history of tenant organizing across West Harlem, I saw the dots connecting so many of our stories together: from Bruce Bailey, to Operation Move-In, to Marie Runyon, and now to me. Runyon’s work grounded me in my own fight to remain home. She stood up to powerful institutions for nearly four decades and won. Today, her building and her block both bear her name. That reminder has carried me through two years of navigating a holdover eviction as a rent-stabilized tenant following my grandmother’s passing.

If only grandma could see me now 🩵 speaking on tenant rights panels, running 31 miles for housing justice, using art therapy as a healing module, practicing meditation as resistance, and using what I've learned along the way to support others navigating housing precarity.

Thank you to the 1,580+ people who have signed my petition, the organizations who have written letters of support, my local elected officials who have also shared letters of support, and the communities who continue showing up for me during a time that has often felt isolating and interrupted by grief.

It’s because of you that I’ve been able to lift my chin up through the adversity, find my voice, and continue fighting not only for myself, but for others too. I will continue advocating for a New York City where elders can age in peace without fearing the loss of their homes, and where young people can grow up with a true sense of belonging and stability instead of gentrification-driven alienation and upheaval.  

Please keep sharing this petition with others. Let’s get to 2,000 signatures to mark this second year of fighting the good fight ✊🏽

For more ways to support, including purchasing a handmade BEEN HERE STILL HERE watercolor, visit beenherestillhere.com

Thank You,
Kristina Maria Lopez

Granddaughter of Mireya and Jaime and all those who came before