Activism within tenants’ rights groups: Democratic practices and organizational limits
This article looks at the organizational limits and democratic practices for the development of people mobilized within tenants’ rights groups in Montréal. These organizations are, to use the term of Mathieu and Mercier (1991), interest groups with the scope of improving tenants’ living conditions, defining and structuring themselves based on the structural problems tenants face. Interviews conducted with seven of their workers reveal worries based on a professional and ideological basis concerning members’ deliberation and decisions issues. Forty years after the creation of the first tenants groups, we offer a critical look at their experience of the democratic ideal in a context of a renewal of democratic practices.