Bilbao        Originally, the Organizers’ Forum delegation was scheduled to travel to Bayonne to visit Alda, a sister organizing project in the northern Basque country concentrated in the three provinces of France.  Our French affiliate, JusticeEnsemble, had trained and supported the growth of the organization.  We really wanted to visit.  Then reality sat in.  Instead, we would meet their head organizer Malika Peyraut in the middle.  She would bus two hours, and we would bus one hour and meet her not quite in the middle, but along the way.  After mustering and herding everyone into cabs to the airport in Barcelona at 445 AM to fly to Bilbao the day before, the notion that we would be able to get everyone out of the hotel by 7AM, missing breakfast again, and onto a bus at 8, just looked like another case of our bodies defeating our will, so to the relief of both sets of straphangers, we settled on Zoom for our meeting to the relief of all.

Their website gives a thumbnail sketch, “Alda (meaning “change” in Basque) is a highly active tenant union and social justice organization operating in the French Basque Country (Pays Basque nord). Founded in the autumn of 2020, it has quickly grown into a dominant force for housing rights. It utilizes community-organizing models to protect the working class and lower-income families against the region’s severe housing crisis.”  Alda is a project supported by ELA, the Basque Union in Spain, through its foundation working in Basque country in France.

Talking to Malika, we learned that in this short period they have grown to 1200 members and have won elections in public housing to represent tenants in Bayonne.  In coming months, they are hitting 20,000 doors in preparation for elections to officially represent tenants throughout Basque country.  In France, where public housing still dominates in working and lower income neighborhoods, there is a representative election every four years for tenants to vote for an organizational representative.  The winner is provided support for staff and an office in the complexes.  This allows them now to have six staff members and 7 offices in social housing already.  Their general assembly with 25 members plans the strategy for the organization.  Additionally, Alda puts out 41,000 copies of a free newspaper in the region that they distribute with 500 of their members and volunteers.  Malika says that they have 1500 volunteers that propel the organizing.

One of their most successful campaigns has been to rein in Airbnb.  They have occupied illegal Airbnb properties, and won strict regulations despite the center right politics of much of the area, though the organization is of course nonpartisan.

This is old school organizing!  We felt like we were hearing about an ACORN affiliate.  A number of the ACORN delegates couldn’t help but ask Malika why Alda wasn’t part of ACORN already with so many similarities as well as training, thanks to France, in the ACORN model.

This is a solid organization with a bright future.  This is one where we will all follow-up!