Demonstration Against Racist Slumlord Darius Mohsenin

At the October 18 No Place Like Home event at the Civic Auditorium, Mohsenin distributed flyers that used racist and anti-immigrant language and images to urge voters to oppose Measure M. Telling readers to “meet their new neighbors!” the flyers depicted a group of tattooed Latinx people in a jail cell and stated that landlords would be unable to evict tenants dealing drugs out of their units without paying relocation costs. Aside from being full of outright lies (Measure M includes illegal activity as a just cause for eviction with no relocation assistance requirement) Mohsenin’s flyer connects brown people to criminality in a mirror image of the worst rhetoric coming out of the current White House administration and its supporters. In our time of open racist, xenophobic, anti-semitic, and misogynist violence driven by an ascendent American far-right, we cannot let this go unaddressed.

We are deeply concerned that the No on M campaign is in agreement with Mr. Mohsenin’s actions. Campaign finance records show he donated at least $3500 to the campaign and he was featured prominently on a piece of Santa Cruz Citizens Against Costly Initiatives literature, the group which changed its name to No on M as soon as measure letters were assigned. The No campaign’s only public rejection of Mohsenin’s behavior has come on a closed UCSC Facebook group in a statement addressed specifically to students at the UC. Despite this supposed rejection, he has continued to appear as a representative of No on M, most recently at an October 29 council candidate and issues forum on the UC campus.

Mr. Mohsenin’s racism is not confined to him, or even to the Santa Cruz rent control fight. In San Mateo the opposition to rent control (Measure Q there) ran its own flyers with similar racist tones and drug-related fearmongering. It is no surprise to us then that these racist anti-Q flyers were paid for in large part by the California Apartment Association - the same organization providing major committee funding for Santa Cruz Citizens Against Costly Initiatives (now No on M). This pattern of racism used to defeat rent control initiatives is reminiscent of the US’s history of racist housing practices, including segregation of neighborhoods by loan withholding and deed covenants restricting home sales to people of color.


Darius Mohsenin featured on a flyer put out by SCCACI (now No on M)
https://www.facebook.com/SURucsc/photos/a.1498894360155548/2149415345103443/?type=3&theater

Darius Mohsenin representing Santa Cruz Together at an on campus candidate forum 10/29/18:
https://www.facebook.com/SURucsc/videos/294079501208575/

Racist anti-Measure Q flyer:
https://medium.com/@tenantstogether/landlords-ramp-up-misinformation-campaign-about-costa-hawkins-repeal-9b253d9b74a6

Darius Mohsenin’s campaign contribution against Measure M:
https://www.facebook.com/SURucsc/photos/a.1498894360155548/2150864268291884/?type=3&theater