Stop Me Before I Vote Again

"Participants of the Occupy Wall Street movement began a new campaign of protests against the banking system on Tuesday called Occupy Our Homes, which is focused on “the liberation of vacant bank-owned homes for those in need, and the defense of families under threat of foreclosure and eviction.”

Events were planned in more than 20 cities, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., on what the group called a “national day of action to stop and reverse foreclosures.”

After a march through the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York on Tuesday afternoon, the participants took possession of a foreclosed home, began cleaning it and chanted, “Our Homes Are Under Attack; We’ve Got to Take Them Back.”

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/occupy-protesters-move-indoors-to-fight-home-foreclosures/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/06/occupy-wall-street-occupy-foreclosed-homes

from the guardian:

" Thousands of Occupy protesters across the US will occupy foreclosed homes today, in what organisers are describing as a "new frontier" for the movement.

In New York, Occupy Wall Street has teamed up with local activist groups to secretly occupy an empty home, and plan to hand the property over to a homeless family. Similar action is scheduled in more than 20 other cities.

Over the last month many occupations have been evicted from their encampments, as cities cracked down on demonstrations that had lasted for several weeks.

In New York occupiers plan to march to the closely-guarded location of their pre-selected foreclosed home, which organisers told the Guardian had been occupied overnight.

After meeting with a family that was evicted from their own home, protesters will journey through a Brooklyn neighbourhood which they say is "on the front lines of the economic crisis".

"This action is part of a national kick-off for a new frontier for the occupy movement: the liberation of vacant bank-owned homes for those in need, and the defense of families under threat of foreclosure and eviction," Occupy Wall Street said in a statement.

Occupy Wall Street said the march will end with "a housewarming block party" for the family, while protesters begin work on renovating the foreclosed property.

"The NYC foreclosure tour and home re-occupation is part of a big national day of action on December 6 that will focus on the foreclosure crisis and protest fraudulent lending practices, corrupt securitisation, and illegal evictions by banks."

Organizing for Occupation, or o4o, a New York-based activist group which enters abandoned properties and makes them available for homeless familes, is one of a number of organisations which have joined Occupy Wall Street in the action. The others include Picture the Homeless and New York City Communities for Change.

Activists from o4o have already occupied the Brooklyn house which protesters will march to, and were responsible for matching a family to the property.

Co-founded by prominent radical Episcopal priest Frank Morales – a proponent of squatting since the late 1970s – o4o normally moves destitute families into homes "covertly", with the intention of establishing a long-term residences for them.

A sub-group known simply as "crack" enters and secures vacant properties, before "a lot of people with skills" take over and renovate, Morales said.

Set up in response to the housing crisis, o4o has infiltrated roughly a dozen buildings in the city since June.

Ed Needham, who acts as a media liaison for Occupy Wall Street, said the Occupy Our Homes demonstration represented a new phase for the Occupy movement.

"Across the coutry we're expecting thousands," he added. "We expect over 1,000 protesters to take part in events in New York tomorrow, and hundreds to be at the house."

Needham said he was unsure "how long the family will be able to stay" at the property, given that the action has been widely publicised, however activists are keen for the follow-up to the 6 December march and occupation to be just as important as the event itself, with one o4o activist telling the Guardian he hoped the demonstration would kick off a "mass occupation" of foreclosed homes and vacant properties nationwide."

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-07/occupy-movement-targets-home-evictions-in-u-s-day-of-action.html

bloomberg

" Occupy Wall Street protesters marched through a neighborhood of New York’s Brooklyn borough to claim a foreclosed property for a local family as part of a nationwide day of demonstrations against home seizures.

Behind a banner that said “Foreclose on banks, not people,” about 300 people made their way to a house on Vermont Street in Brooklyn’s East New York section, where Alfredo Carrasquillo plans to live with his wife, Tasha Glasgow, and their two children. The property had been vacant for three years and is owned by Bank of America Corp., according to a statement by Occupy Wall Street.

The East New York neighborhood had the highest foreclosure rate in New York City last year, with 16.8 per 1,000 homes receiving filings, according to a city comptroller’s office analysis of data from RealtyTrac Inc. Similar demonstrations were scheduled at more than 20 American cities as the Occupy movement turned its attention to the U.S. housing crisis.

“There’s growing discontent with the way the foreclosure process is working, and this is a very dramatic way of calling attention to it,” Peter Marcuse, professor emeritus of urban planning at Columbia University in New York, said yesterday.

More than 4 million homes in the U.S. have been taken over by banks since 2006, according to RealtyTrac, a real estate data firm in Irvine, California.

Show of Support

In Brooklyn, demonstrators made several stops before arriving at the Vermont Street home, tearing away the yellow tape that blocked the entrance to one vacant property. On the front of a boarded-up house at 399 Pennsylvania Ave., a sign said “First-time homebuyers, $1,000 down.” As the group passed Thomas Jefferson High School, people waved from windows in support.

Carrasquillo, a community organizer for VOCAL-NY, and his family were at the Vermont Street house when the marchers arrived. The crowd passed “housewarming gifts” to the family as volunteers began cleaning the house.

Gail Miller, a retired social worker, said she joined the march to bring attention to policies that are “bailing out banks, not people.”

“I have a home, I have a family, and I believe that having a home and having a family ought to be a right for everybody,” said Miller, a 70-year-old grandmother of nine who was born in Brooklyn and lives in Manhattan.

Blankfein’s Home

East New York suffered disproportionately during the housing crisis because its black and Latino communities were targeted by predatory subprime lenders, according to the statement from the Occupy group. East New York natives include composers George and Ira Gershwin and Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., who grew up in a public-housing project in the neighborhood.

The Occupy Our Homes day of action comes almost a month after Occupy Wall Street was evicted from Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, the birthplace of the movement, where protesters camped for about two months.

In the Los Angeles area, demonstrators from several community groups marched toward a house in South Gate where Ana Casas Wilson lives with her mother, her husband and their 17- year-old son. Wilson, who has cerebral palsy, and her family are refusing to leave the three-bedroom home while Wells Fargo & Co., which owns the mortgage, moves to evict them.

‘Don’t Give Up’

“My daughter tells me, don’t give up, Mom,” Becky Casas, 72, said in an interview. “I pray, pray, pray. I have faith that he’ll help us,” she said, pointing her thumb toward the sky, while a protester fastened a poster reading “Reclaiming our houses” to the porch.

A representative with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment yelled a phone number into a microphone. She said it belonged to Wells Fargo’s CEO, John Stumpf, and urged everyone with a cellphone to call. “It’s busy!” some in the crowd shouted back.

Jason Menke, a spokesman for Wells Fargo in Des Moines, Iowa, said the Wilsons were reviewed for payment assistance “multiple times and offered two separate modification options prior to their foreclosure sale in July 2009. After the sale, we reviewed the loan again and could not find an affordable option.”

As the crowd cheered outside the home, Ana Casas Wilson said, “One person asked me what I would do if I had to go to jail. Well, then, I’ll go to jail.” Demonstrators responded with “We won’t let that happen, Ana.”

The Occupy protesters were backed by housing advocacy organizations including Take Back the Land, a Washington-based group that fights homeowner evictions.

Max Rameau, co-founder of the five-year-old organization, which helped plan today’s events, said energy from Occupy Wall Street is giving groups like his a push and is likely to result in many more actions.

“By the spring, you’ll be surprised by the amount of organizations doing this,” Rameau said in an interview yesterday."

God, this is making me so happy.