Before enjoying a bounteous Friendsgiving feast together, today the Central District renter hosting the gathering asked everyone to please join him in a lease acknowledgment of his apartment’s previous tenants.
“We acknowledge today that we are inside the unceded one-bedroom rental of tenants who previously leased this unit until they were evicted when they couldn’t afford the skyrocketing rent,” said host Tristan James while holding hands with his live-in girlfriend Megan. “We recognize the stewardship of Seattle’s Black and Brown communities that for decades made this a culturally interesting neighborhood in the first place, the disruption of this by gentrification, and the awkward amount of white guilt we have about it. We nonetheless endeavor to stay right where we are as long as we can because we’re probably next if we don’t get raises next year.”
Local annoying friend Jeffrey then asked what the point of giving the lease acknowledgment is if you’re not going to give the lease back to the previous tenant or at least make some donation to the Tenants Union of Washington.
“The point is I’m acknowledging that I have privilege relative to the previous tenants and that I feel bad about it and now we can all feel good about how I performed feeling bad about it—god! Duh, Jeffrey,” said Tristan. “Besides, we’re trying to save money so we can eventually move on up to giving land acknowledgments without donating anything to Real Rent Duwamish.”
At press time, Tristan was wishing he’d made up a story about how he actually had a nice dinner with the previous tenants before they had to move out.
