Washington Democratic Socialist Congressional Candidate Suggests a Million People Break into Empty Homes

Rebecca Parson, a Democratic candidate running for Congress in Washington, has released an ad with a proposal to solving homelessness. Parson suggests one million people break into empty homes and essentially squat until Congress passes a Housing for All bill. She makes her suggestion while playing Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name.”

“I did what they told me,” she says while the song — which includes the lyrics “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me” — plays. “I went to college. I got a master’s degree. I ended up living in my car. I did what they told me. Protests. Letters. Phone calls. Nothing changed.”

Billionaires, she says at another point, want everyone “depressed and hopeless.”

“Fuck that,” she says in response.

In the ad, Parson eventually takes bolt cutters and cuts through a fence so she can enter an empty building with a foreclosure sign on it.

“Imagine I proposed a Housing for All bill in Congress. Then imagine you, me, and a million of our friends took action and occupied empty houses nationwide. They couldn’t ignore us,” Parson says. “No one has ever done anything like this. That’s why it’s going to work.”

In 2020, the group Tacoma Housing Now, for which Parson was a spokesperson, organized homeless people to occupy multiple motel rooms, paying for only one night, but staying for six days as a form of protest. Parson appears to reference the action in the video as proof the larger occupation could work, saying her earlier protest led to 200 new homeless beds in response from local officials.

Parson is also calling for an increase in the minimum wage to $30, saying it’s the “bare minimum” for people to live in the U.S.

“Those are the facts and no amount of praying to Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman will change that,” she said, referencing the Atlas Shrugged novelist and the influential economist respectively, both of whom are often referenced by libertarians and conservatives.

Parson is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, which she said she joined after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) entered Congress. She ran to represent Washington’s 6th District in 2020, but lost her primary.