ACORN Initates Civil Disobedience to Stop Foreclosures

As resistance to foreclosure evictions grows among homeowners, community leaders and some law enforcement officials, a broad civil disobedience campaign is starting in New York and other cities to support families who refuse orders to vacate their homes.

The community organizing group Acorn unveiled the campaign with a spirited rally on Friday at a Brooklyn church and will roll it out in at least 22 other cities in the coming weeks. Through phone trees, Web pages and text-messaging networks, the effort will connect families facing eviction with volunteers who will stand at their side as officers arrive, even if it means risking arrest.

“You want to haul us out to jail? Fine. Let the world see how government has been ineffective,” Bertha Lewis, Acorn’s chief organizer, said in an interview. “Politicians have helped banks, but they haven’t helped families in the way that it’s needed, and these families are now saying, enough is enough.”

At the onset of the foreclosure crisis, the problem was regarded by some as one of a homeowner’s own making, the result of irresponsible decisions made by families who chose to live beyond their means. But as foreclosures spread across the country, devastating even solidly middle-class communities, the blame has slowly shifted to the financial companies that made questionable loans and have received billions of dollars in federal aid to stave off collapse.

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Activists Place Homeless in Vacant Houses

As President Obama is scheduled to announce his $50 billion foreclosure prevention plan today the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign is taking matters into its own hands and finding housing for homeless people in foreclosed and vacant homes. .

As people were getting thrown out of their homes across the country, and in the absence of any real government action thus far, some are taking action on the local level. The community organizing group, Acorn, recently unveiled a campaign in at least 22 cities to help homeowners resist foreclosure evictions. Meanwhile, the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America is bussing homeowners facing foreclosure to the homes of chief executives of financial institutions to protest outside. Sheriffs in some places have also taken a stand. In Wayne County in Michigan, Sheriff Warren Evans, suspended all evictions starting February 2nd until the federal government implements a plan to help homeowners facing foreclosures. And in Ohio Congressmember Marcy Kaptur, recently speaking on the House floor, encouraged homeowners facing foreclosures to stay in their homes.

Today we go to Minneapolis to look at a similar organizing effort. The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign recently revealed to the media its long-running project to move homeless people into many of the foreclosed and vacant homes on Minneapolis’ North and South Side. They are also seeking a city moratorium on foreclosures, short-sales and evictions.

Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign

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Foreclosure Protests at D.C. Offices Reflect Trend

By Darryl Fears,Washington Post Staff - Dozens of demonstrators with the community group ACORN barged into a District office that auctions foreclosed homes in upscale Chevy Chase yesterday and shut it down for an hour, chanting "No sales here."
In Rye, N.Y., and Greenwich, Conn., on Sunday, more than 300 people converged on the homes of two bank executives who opposed modifying loans to help homeowners and barraged the men and their neighbors with slogans.
And in Boston, Detroit, Memphis and Cleveland, protesters against foreclosures have gathered in recent months to confront bankers amid the worst housing crisis in three generations, demanding a moratorium on foreclosures until homeowners get a bailout similar to the one given to banks.
Many of the protests and acts of civil disobedience appear to be unrelated, and some organizers said yesterday they were unaware that a coalition of grass-roots groups called the Bail Out the People Movement is planning what they hope will be a massive demonstration on Wall Street on April 4.
Wall Street is being targeted because banks offered many people exotic loans that carried high interest rates they could not afford, said Larry Holmes, a coalition spokesman. Like other groups, the coalition is demanding a moratorium on foreclosures.

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If you're interested in endorsing and/or attending these protests please read on...

Dear activists,
Events have called upon us to make history. Future generations will look back on this moment to see whether we were able to understand what is at stake, and rise to the occasion.

We call upon you to join with the Bail Out the People Movement and the many community leaders, activists and organizations that are part of it, to help organize the first National March on Wall Street on Friday, April 3 and Saturday, April 4.

Yes! This is a two-day event. The first phase of the march will begin on Friday, April 3; thousands traveling to New York City from all over the country will join us on Saturday, April 4.

We invite you to a planning meeting for the national march, on Wednesday, February 18, at 6:30 p.m. at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave., New York City. (between 34th & 35th St. - you'll need ID to get into the building. Trains: N, R, W, B, F to 34th St.; PATH to 33rd St.)

The Wall Street march will take place during the same week that the G20 countries are holding their second emergency global economic crisis summit meeting in London on April 2 and 3, which will be followed immediately by a 60th Anniversary of NATO summit meeting in Strasbourg, France on April 4. Both meetings will be the focus of strong protests against war and for economic justice.

Great advice for anyone losing their homes to foreclosure: Stay Put

Follow the law

Wall Street and its co-conspirators on Main Street had a great plan.

 

Step 1: Ram predatory loans down the market with fraud and deceptive marketing.

 

Step 2: Some of the loans will blow up, but in the aggregate it will all work out and besides, the loans will be bundled and sold off to investors (spreading the toxic waste), so who cares?

 

Great plan, but it had a few problems.

 

Problem #1: It destroyed the world financial system (minor detail)

Problem #2 (And he's where it get VERY interesting...) For a loan to be valid, the lender needs to be able to produce the paperwork.

Guess what?

In their mad greed to screw the American people and line their own pockets, Wall Street forgot that little detail.

Many of these loans and been sliced and diced and sold and re-sold so many times that not only is the paperwork not easy to lay hands on, in some cases, it's not clear who actually owns the loan.

Here's where property law comes in.

If the bank can't produce the documents and the real owner of the loan can't be identified, the contract is null and void.

You've got to hand it to Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (and Ohio which produces a lot of great Congresspeople.)

By telling a bank to "produce the note," a homeowner can delay foreclosure by forcing the lender to prove the suing institution is actually the same which owns the debt.

Now, the banks own sloth and disorganization (and inherent dishonesty) can be used against it.

Final word: The media (and Wall Street and its criminal partners in Congress and the former Bush White House) love to call these loans sup-prime.

Here's the old fashioned word: predatory.

 

Many of the loans that were made in the past five years that have created so many problems would have been illegal until Bush & Co not only gutted lending laws, but also literally sued states to stop them from enforcing their own lending laws.

 

Former governor Elliott Spitzer was the ring leader of the state movement to enforce local lending laws...and you saw what happened to him.

 

He's no saint (and truth be told, he's kind of a jerk) but if every politician who went to hookers was busted, Washington and all the state capitals would be ghost towns

 

Why Elliot Spitzer was assassinated

 

Stay Put

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