By Sam Ozer-Staton 

At a moment when the Biden administration is touting the success of its bipartisan backroom dealmaking, one recent political battle was fought and won out in the open — on the steps of the United States Capitol. 

Representative Cori Bush, a community organizer from St. Louis, Missouri, in just her first full year in Congress, successfully pushed the Biden administration to reverse course and extend the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) federal moratorium on evictions. Armed with a lawn chair and an orange sleeping bag, Bush camped for three nights on the steps of the Capitol, where she was joined at various points by fellow progressives including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren. 

For Bush, the issue of eviction is not an abstraction. She’s been evicted three times, twice in her twenties and once in 2015, when she was an organizer in the nascent Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, Missouri, following the killing of Michael Brown. She wrote in a CNN op-ed last week: “I've lived out of my car for months with my two babies. I've seen my belongings in trash bags along my backseat. I know what that notice on the door means. Cold from the elements or wondering where I could find a bathroom, I've wondered who was speaking up in DC for people in my situation.”