We like to take time to highlight women we see out in the world doing their part to make the world a little nicer. In this Real Nice Lady Spotlight, we’re talking to Tara Raghuveer, Director of KC Tenants, about how community organization makes the impossible possible.

Job Title/Profession
Director, KC Tenants

Favorite Drink?
Coffee or water or Mezcal

Favorite Food?
Tara Special at Yasmeen Cafe on Independence Ave. It's a chapathi wrap with spicy scrambled eggs. Perfect.

Karaoke Song?
Picture by Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow (I sing the Kid Rock part)

What song are you listening to on repeat right now?
Veteran's Day by Cut Worms

Telling as little or as much as you want, how are you feeling these days?
Gloomy, anxious, tired, silly, angry. I feel some mix of those emotions daily. I'm longing for friends I haven't seen and bars and restaurants and museums I love. I want to go to a concert so bad. The sheer scale and depth of the tragedies and loss around all of us -- from evictions to death to cancelled plans -- is overwhelming to the point of making me feel numb. An organizer is typically motivated by anger or joy or righteousness. Feeling numb is not a strong foundation for building power or taking collective action. So I try to keep myself grounded and focused by having one on one check-ins with the leaders in my base, reading, listening to music, and tweeting.

What drew you to creating KC Tenants?
After studying eviction in Kansas City for several years, I became uncomfortably clear about something. Nothing was ever going to change, nothing was ever going to get better, just because I was running around town with some interesting data and a well-designed powerpoint deck. The only way things were going to change was if the people who are the most impacted by the problems--eviction, poor housing conditions, landlord harassment, etc.--were organized to the table, to flip the table over, to determine their own liberation. I met people like Tiana Caldwell, a tenant leader who was experiencing homelessness in December 2018, who told me about her vision for a better world. I talked to people like Diane "Momma Di" Charity, a tenant who knew that we all deserve more, who asked questions like: "what if we got well?" Following their leadership, I moved home to Kansas City to start KC Tenants and do my part to build power towards their radical imaginations about what was possible, if we were ready to fight for it.

What advice would you give other women trying to succeed in your industry?
Organizing is a project of hope, of making the impossible, possible. In order to do that, you have to know what world you seek to build. If you can imagine it, you can organize to win it. Be radical in your imagination, and go build the relationships you need to imagine something even bigger.

What was a formative moment in your life that made you who you are?
2013-2014: I became obsessed with housing, I started thinking seriously about WHO (not WHAT) I wanted to be when I grew up, I got clear on what kind of risks I wanted to take, I was rapidly politicized by my eviction research in Kansas City, I moved to Chicago to become a community organizer.

What do you hope for the future of KC Tenants?
KC Tenants leaders are building something that none of us has ever experienced before: a collective of regular people who are fighting for a better Kansas City, stronger together than we are as individuals. We are a multiracial, anti-racist, multigenerational group, organizing across all the lines that the other side uses to divide us. It's a complicated but beautiful project. If we fulfill our charge, we will win a Kansas City where everyone has a safe, accessible, truly and permanently affordable home. I hope that KC Tenants continues to flex the power of everyday people to confront the systems that oppress and divide us-- until we win!

If someone wanted to support your mission but didn’t know where to start, what would you suggest?
Join KC Tenants! Come to a Saturday tenant meeting and experience the power of our collective brilliance.

What have you learned about yourself since starting KC Tenants?
I've been humbled to learn from the resilient, brilliant, powerful leaders in our base. It's funny to say this because I was an organizer before I moved back home to KC, but the leaders in KC Tenants have really taken me to school on organizing. Everything I know about organizing, I owe to them. I've also learned hard lessons in the last nine months, since the pandemic set in. "Hope is invented every day." That's James Baldwin. I've found it hard to maintain hope, and hope is so fundamental to organizing. But, alongside my KC Tenants comrades, we've figured out how to invent the hope we need in order to organize for another day.

When do you feel the strongest in your life? When do you feel the most vulnerable in your life?
Strongest: When taking direct action with KC Tenants, like when we shut down evictions at the downtown courthouse. Vulnerable: In conversation with comrades who know me well and challenge me to be better.

Given the state of the world, what have you been doing to maintain your mental health lately?
Going on walks and bike rides. Watching television. Listening to my partner play music on the porch.

Who are five women that inspire you?
Mariame Kaba, Arundhati Roy, Ilhan Omar, Kayla Reed, Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor

Get Involved with KC Tenants

Interview: Tara Raghuveer - Founding Director of KC Tenants

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