Demonstrators carried signs that read, "Don't get Scrooged by your landlord" and sang "Eviction Free Carols."

The lyrics to one such carol:

"We're dreaming of affordable housing/ Just like the homes we used to know/ Where all working people/ Can live securely/ Although their incomes may be low."

The rally began at City Hall, with speeches and chants of "Hey-hey, ho-ho, greedy landlords have got to go."

Demonstrators then marched down Mass. Ave. to the music of the Batucada Belles, pausing before various buildings.

"We're stopping at corners where tenants are in a struggle resisting rent increases and eviction, and basically fighting to keep their homes," said Bill Cavellini, the 55-year-old Cambridge Cab Driver of the Year. Like the majority of event coordinators, Cavellini is a volunteer with EZF.

At one such corner, 580 Mass. Ave., speakers commemorated a nine-month rent strike by 20 Haitian families in 1990 that ended in a success.

Returning to City Hall, demonstrators gathered on the steps for a candlelight vigil, speeches and caroling.

The demonstration spanned all ages and ethnicities. The EZF banner displayed its slogan in four different languages, and one of the participants spoke and chanted in Spanish.

Susan L. Mello, 37, attended with her eight-month-old son Ian, bundled against the cold in a blue and green jumpsuit.

"I'm a member of EFZ, and I've personally experienced housing injustice," she says.

According to Mello, her landlord tried to raise her family's rent by 500 percent.

It did not matter that her husband's family had lived in the building for 40 years, she says, or that Mello and her husband were prospective parents.

"[The landlord] tried to evict a man in his 80s, a crippled man in his 60s, and people like us with families," she says. "The man has no soul."

Mello decided to fight back. "We refused to pay the rent increase, we encouraged other tenants not to pay, and we took him to court for violations of the housing code. We hung together," she says.