Marvin Rees has been called “disgraceful and utterly cynical” for likening rent campaigners who disrupted a Bristol City Council housing think-tank meeting to the deadly January 6 attackers. The mayor was asked at a council meeting if members and staff could still do their jobs safely at City Hall following the protest by members of tenants union ACORN who stormed the inaugural meeting of the authority’s living rent commission in July.
Mr Rees said the demonstration was “akin to January 6”, referring to last year’s attack which left at least five people dead and scores injured, including 138 police officers, when an armed mob invaded the Capitol Building in Washington DC in a bid to overturn the US election and keep Donald Trump in power. A gallows was erected as rioters, venting their fury with the then vice-president, chanted “Hang Mike Pence” because he refused to accept false claims the election was “stolen”, while congressmen and women fled for their lives as more than 2,000 insurgents rampaged through the seat of American democracy.
In Bristol, on July 26, about 20 people from ACORN carrying homemade placards and chanting about fair rent walked past security, entered a meeting room and caused the council’s rent commission discussion to be postponed. The community union took the action because the local authority did not invite it to be part of the new group, despite ACORN being the largest representative group for people who rent homes in the city.
