Capitalism: a savage and destructive system

There was an editorial in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago about the superiority of the market economy, basically cheer leading for capitalism as the most successful system of production possible.  How anyone can make this argument in the light of the very same capitalism being rescued from the edge of the abyss by public funds and "socialistic" type measures baffles the mind but we expect this from a mouthpiece of capital like the WSJ.

It's harder to grasp when such praise comes from American workers who more often than not call themselves  "middle class" which complicates things.  There appears to be a middle class and a lower class in the US , I'm not sure if there's an upper class although the term 1% perhaps covers it.   But the working class seems to have disappeared until we come to understand that the working class in the US is called the middle class. This is a remnant of the post second world war boom.  But the material conditions that gave rise to the idea of the American Dream have entered the history books, never to return.

Most US workers today are in no mood to lavish WSJ type praise about how great capitalism is barring the most politically backward. In the US, home prices have dropped 34% over the last 6 years and this was where US workers were told to put our money, "safe as houses" had a real meaning here.  The home was the college cost, retirement, the nest egg.  Now, many working class families are stuck paying off $500,000 mortgage loans on homes worth half that much.  More than two million properties are in foreclosure and almost one in four under water the Wall Street Journal reports.

Myself and other writers on this blog have pointed to the incredible anger at the rich that exists in US. Back in 2010, the US Chamber of Commerce found through its focus groups that its public campaign to breathe new life in to the reputation of the market in the public's eyes could not use the term "capitalism". The Chamber found that most people felt the term capitalism meant the strong devouring the week.  Despite the individualistic, selfish, view of the world that the 1%'s mass media touts as human nature and the propaganda that those who find themselves in hard times are there through their own failures, the feeling of compassion and solidarity for others among human beings is a powerful one and this crisis has hit many who thought they were safe.

This inherent class solidarity has to be undermined and broken. As Union busting lawyer Martin Jay Levitt wrote in his bestseller "Confessions of a Union Buster: "The enemy was the collective spirit.  I got hold of that spirit while it was still a seedling; I poisoned it, choked it, bludgeoned it if I had to, anything to be sure it would never blossom into a united workforce...." Things haven't changed.

The housing crisis like the economic crisis in general is global.  From Spain to Ireland, China and the US, housing and household debt is holding back economic growth.  Consumers are unwilling to spend and banks unwilling to lend.  Earlier this month, the IMF appealed to capitalist governments around the world for some restraint on cuts in social spending on services, jobs and wages as the intensity of the assault is likely to push the world economy further toward the cliff's edge and it is fostering social unrest throughout the world

Government (taxpayer) intervention will help, the IMF says pointing to Roosevelt's Home Owners Loan Corp created during the Great Depression: "By making mortgage payments more affordable" the IMF says, the HOLC, "...effectively transferred funds to households with distressed mortgages" which was intended to boost consumption."  The journal neglects to mention the 1937 depression and the war production that followed.  It was the war at a cost of some 50 million dead that saved capitalism that time.

These are the conditions that pertain in some of the advanced capitalist countries, the wealthy ones. For the world's poor, the countries that capitalism will not develop because it is not profitable to do so, life is a living nightmare.  According to UNICEF 22,000 children die each day due to poverty.  Capitalism has the means to feed them, or provide them with decent water and sewage systems, but like any other commodity, and food is a commodity, if you can't buy it you don't get it.

In our world where the market reigns  72 million children of primary school age in the developing world were not in school in 2005; 57 per cent of them were girls.  And these are regarded as optimistic numbers, the global capitalist crisis has no doubt made matters worse.  Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.

Capitalism is especially savage to children:

10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (same as children population in France, Germany, Greece and Italy.

1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation.

Yet this happens in the midst of extreme abundance as these figures from Global Issues show:

The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined.

Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen. Since then, we have wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and the US, the world's preeminent arms dealer building hundreds of facilities throughout the world to defend the interests of the global corporations.

These conditions we are told have to do with the qualities of men and women, bad qualities. They are the product of inferior races and poor ignorant people that are not capable of governance. It is human nature, some are clever and creative and others are indolent.

But this is a product of a global economic system, a system of production we call capitalism.  It is the failing of an unplanned system of production where private individuals own the means of producing the necessities of life and how these necessities are produced and distributed in society.  The products of our collective Labor belong to these private individuals to do with them what they will. Inherent in this system of production is poverty and hunger, sickness and disease, wars and conflicts over the control of resources and rapacious struggle for profits.


This is civilization?  No, this is a nightmare, it's madness.  It has to go.

Occupy Homes Minnesota fighting foreclosures and winning

Occupy Homes Minnesota has been having some success in their struggle against foreclosures. From what we understand, Occupy Homes MN goes door to door to find homeowners threatened with foreclosure building solidarity with the community in order to make a successful refusal to vacate a home possible. The example in this video is one example of a recent victory the group had. This report is reprinted from Socialist Alternative.

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Occupy Homes Protest Forces Delay of Sheriff Sale
By Ty Moore 

US Bank buckles under pressure, delaying sale of veteran John Vinje's home until May 29th

After a week of escalating pressure demanding US Bank postpone the sheriff’s sale of John and Lucinda Vinje’s home, Occupy Homes won another 11th hour victory today. John Vinje led a contingent of 50 Occupy Homes MN supporters into the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office Civil Division where the sale was to take place at 11:00am this morning.

Speeches, chants, and song filled the marbled hallways in the ground floor of city hall. No potential buyers were seen entering the courtroom the entire time, and just after 11:30am it was announced that US Bank had delayed the sale to May 29th. Following the victory, John said: “This shows that the power is now with the people, and not with large, monolithic corporations, like US Bank.

Homeowners throughout Minnesota facing foreclosure, facing sheriff's sales, should get together with their community and demand a postponement and renegotiation. They should get connected with Occupy Homes because we can save homes throughout the state of Minnesota when we all work together.” Today’s action followed a week of escalating pressure on US Bank, including a national call-in campaign aimed to VP Tom Joyce, and a march on US Bank CEO Richard Davis’ mansion on April 7th. Ty Moore, an organizer with Occupy Homes explained: “We’ve got the banks scrambling already, but this fight is just beginning. John’s victory, following Monique and Bobby’s victories, is sending a message. Minnesota homeowners aren’t going to leave their homes quietly and in shame anymore. It’s the banks and CEOs like Richard Davis who should be ashamed!”

Occupy Homes MN achieved national media attention after winning Bobby Hull’s foreclosed home back after US Bank bought his property at a sheriff sale, and repeatedly delaying the eviction of Monique White, who also received her original mortgage through US Bank. John and Lucinda Vinje are among a growing number of homeowners joining together through Occupy Homes to fight back against the unjust and illegal banking practices behind the foreclosure crisis. John and Lucinda Vinje bought their home in 2008, the first house either of them had ever owned. John is an Air Force veteran now working as a security guard, and Lucinda has worked a government job for ten years.

But when financial difficulties caused them to fall behind on payments by just two months, US Bank refused their request to repay their arrears in installments and immediately began foreclosure proceedings. Meanwhile, Lucinda has been forced into "medical retirement" due to a chronic condition, adding financial strain on the family. If US Bank would renegotiate their mortgage to current market value as the Vinje’s request, they could afford the payments. After six months of delays, in March US Bank offered them a measly $97 less on their monthly payments. Both John and Lucinda have worked their entire lives, but now stand to lose the only home they have ever owned.

Ows. Clarifying the demands and sharpening the focus and cutting edge.

I enclose below a piece from an article by Naomi Klein. I think it is very instructive in how it shows the dominant issues in the minds of the OWS activists whom the employers media lie and say do not know what they want. It also shows how how these ideas coincide with the issues which are so prevalent in peoples minds. Also it shows how the capitalist class have been coordinating and centralizing their attacks on the movement. As we have said on this blog, US capitalism knows that it cannot keep funding its wars abroad, the living standards for its working class at home and so it has been on the offensive against its own working class at home. Its idea is to take back all that was won in the 1930's and the 1960's.

We have argued on this blog for a united front of struggle of all the OWS forces and the working class which is finding itself more and more under attack all the time. We have argued for an increased orientation towards the direct attacks on working people such as foreclosures, firings, wage cuts, benefit cuts, education and health cuts, against the wars, etc and to use the tactic of mass direct action to pursue these struggles. We still think is the correct approach.

Let us develop some demands such as raised by the OWS people in the interviews with Naomi Klein. For example she says the top demands was take the money out of politics. Should we raise that all lobbying be made illegal. Is this something that we can fight for, or perhaps fight for that any contribution more than 25$ to any political cause or campaign by any one individual would be a felony.

I believe we should fight for an end to the gerrymandering of the political system where there are two Senators for every state irregardless of the size of the state and where there is an electoral college to elect the President as opposed to a direct vote and where elections are staggered so that a mass change in consciousness cannot sweep in a new congress and presidency all in the one elections.

I do not believe that society will be changed by elections, the ruling elite will seek to stop this by force, but people believe in the electoral process and as they get mobilized will try and use it to change their lives. We have to have something to say about this.

I watched my local TV coverage of the small city where I live in Illinois last night. Their were 18 elected officials and three bureaucrats and four member of the public present. The public was outnumbered around five to one. There was no opposition, this forum was not being used for struggle and a platform for an alternative, it was being used by the local business people and their politicians to get their way. This is a mistake of the left. These fora should be used as platforms to get our ideas out and launch struggles. Of course the main launching pads has to be on the ground where the attacks are taking place, that is where people are being foreclosed on, fired, having their wages and benefits cut, having their education and health care cut, being sent to war to get an education etc.

Some ideas for taking the OWS movement forward. See the piece from the Naomi Klein article below.

Sean.

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profitsis less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

OWS. How to increase our base and get reinforcements.

A few days ago Sheriffs in I think it was Florida were sent to foreclose on a house. The criminal vultures who were demanding this were the owners of Chase bank. There were two ladies living in the house. One was 103 years old and the other was her daughter who was 83. When the sheriffs came the lady in her eighties collapsed and had to be taken to hospital. In the course of what followed the Sheriff and his deputies refused to carry out their orders and fore close on the house and evict the ladies. They turned around and drove away. The bank said they would look at the case again. What a bunch of savages and criminals are these bankers. None of them have gone to jail or been evicted. .

Let us draw some conclusions from these events. The OWS movement is also getting evicted in many areas. The movement however continues to have great courage and energy. The big question is where do we go from here. We on this blog have argued that we should orient the OWS movement to the day to day experiences of working class people where they are experiencing the attacks of the banks and financial institutions and bosses system directly. These take the form of fore closures and evictions, firings, wage cuts, lock outs, strikes, school closings, health cuts, repression, racism, sexism, wars etc.

Take this example of the fore closure I mention above. The local OWS should surround this house with the agreement of the ladies who live their and refuse to allow anybody to evict them. It is already shown that there would be a lot of sympathy for this when we see the Sheriff refusing to evict the occupants. The OWS in every area should seek out those places where working people are under attack and transfer their occupations and mobilizations there. This would put down roots for the OWS in the working class and the day to day struggles of working people. I read that there have been up to 1 million people fore closed on in 2011 so far. Imagine the strength of our movement if we move in and advocate that nobody leaves their home and we surround and occupy the areas around the peoples houses and stop any and all foreclosures. The mood in the country is very very ripe for this. Let us take the OWS to the working class struggles and not expect the working class struggles to come to us. This would be a much more successful tactic.

Sean.

800,000 Americans kicked out of their homes by bankers and speculators*

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There is a major housing crisis in the US.  There are so few people that need a decent place to live that there is an abundance of empty dwellings. There are no homeless people which would help.  And there are no dilapidated or run down slums so this problem of too many houses is a bit of a stickler.

If only this were true.  It is partially true though. There are too many empty residential properties in the US. The US taxpayer is the owner of 248,000 of them.  The US taxpayer owns them because the moneylenders and their agents in the government; the courts, police, sheriffs etc. drove out the families that were living in them. The burden of paying the mortgage interest to the moneylenders became overwhelming as people lost jobs, incomes or were swindled in to an destructive agreement by mortgage lenders.

Washington is “sitting on nearly a third of the nation’s 800,000 repossessed houses, making the US taxpayer the largest owner of foreclosed properties” Business Week magazine points out in this week’s edition.

When the housing bubble burst, the taxpayer stepped in to bail out the coupon clippers that caused it.  As an earlier blog pointed out, almost $16 trillion was allocated for the finance industry. Isn’t the free market swell?   The taxpayer also pays for the cost of maintaining these dwellings, keeping them in decent enough shape for that time they can be released in to the market without depressing prices.  It is important not to depress prices as investors will lose a lot of money and it will destabilize the market.  That’s why they poured milk down the drain in the great depression. There are workers who have and will be affected as their mortgages are greater than the value of their homes, something that can easily be remedied by the taxpayer taking them over without compensation to the moneylenders and lowering the mortgage to assessed new value.

So many families have been driven out of their homes, their shelter is really what it is, that a fifth of the 3.65 million homes for sale at the end of July were foreclosures.  The Obama administration’s solution to the problem is for the taxpayer to enter in to an ownership partnership with housing speculators (the same folks who got us in to this mess) rent out the homes they’ve already kicked people out of and “when the market recovers” sell the homes at a profit.

One of the major problems is that there are so many homes vacant.  “Some of the neighborhoods, you can’t move in to……there’s so many empty houses, it’s just not safe.”,  says Mark Wiseman, the former director of Cleveland’s foreclosure prevention program according to BW.

I was visiting a friend who moved in to a new tract home in a working class community in California’s Central Valley a while ago.  He lives in a 2000 sq. foot house around a man-made lake.  Sitting in his back yard I commented on the nice little lake with the houses around it.  “Most of them are empty” he said.  “People come in to the lake on canoes and boats at the other end and break in to houses and steal everything.”

“Like what?” I asked as most people had been kicked out.

“Stoves, fridges, TV’s carpets, water heaters” he replied, explaining that one boat was towing a trailer in the middle of the night with a fridge on it.

I had written about a woman, her husband and disabled child living in a motel in Turlock California, also out in the valley.  She had called me for some help with her issue.  Her husband was still working but they had been kicked out of their home by the sheriffs.  Here she was living in a motel a mile or so from her home which still had her personal property in it.  She was not allowed to enter it without a representative from the bank or a sheriff I think it was as it was “private property.”  And we wonder why people go nuts.

This is the insanity of capitalism.  A home should not be an investment.  During the boom I read one report on the boom in Las Vegas which is now one of the most distressed areas when it comes to housing.   It quoted a real estate representative saying that he was earning $500,000 a year “filling out forms”. If some of the more apathetic or pro-market workers should have learned anything form this crisis it’s that the private sector is not the vibrant force it is made out to be; it has just received trillions in welfare and been saved from oblivion by public finds.

But get this.  The government is in such a quandary it doesn’t know what to do about this housing mess that’s is dragging down the economy.  What they mean by “dragging down” is not creating a suitable environment for profit making.  But the administration’s efforts, any administration, will always be to include the private sector as they do in everything. Why, when we own these properties already should we enter in to any relationship with investors and speculators whose sole reason for letting cash go is to make profit? Why pay a middleman?

So the frustrated millionaires and billionaires that write and pass legislation in this country have asked the American people to help.  I try to keep myself informed but I wasn’t aware of this: Last month the Federal Housing Authority along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government agencies “issued a joint plea to the public for ideas about how to solve the problem” of too many empty houses.  The situation is so dire, “It’s almost like having the captain of the Titanic go on the public address system and say, ‘Does anybody have an idea?’” says Wiseman.

The bourgeois are not stupid enough to organize community meetings to get feedback from the US working class as they know they will get a mouthful and will have much less control over what might be said and what they want to make public as far as suggestions go. But they have an email to send your suggestions to, it’s reo.rfi@fhfa.gov  

A small glimpse of part of the problem

A society is far from civilized that has half a million empty dwellings, while a few million people live in shacks and run down buildings or sleep under freeway underpasses.You have until September 15^th to send in your suggestions as the government is “deluged with repossessions” says Business Week. Here is what I plan to send and think is a good start to solving the problem of too many empty houses. If you agree, send it in or something similar. 

(1)  Put all victims of foreclosures and evictions back in their homes

(2)  Reduce all residential mortgages to reflect assessed market value

(3)  For those who have lost jobs due to a crisis they never created, the government should pick up the mortgage or portion necessary to keep people housed as part of a mass infrastructure development program to create jobs

(4)  This to be paid for by ending the wars in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq

(5)  Make Wall Street and the bankers pay: Tax the rich at 1945 levels

*This is not the total number of foreclosures or people that have been thrown out of their homes which is in the millions

Hedge fund managers steal our money and our homes

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There's enough here to house everyone

I wrote a blog a few weeks ago about hedge funds buying up foreclosed properties.  The particular hedge fund in this instance was McKInley Capital Partners of Oakland. CA McKinley’s partner in crime is Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC of New York.

Daniel Och is a principal at Och-Ziff and Forbes describes him as it does all these coupon clippers as a “self made” man.  Ochs net worth according to Forbes is $3.6 billion and according to Wikipedia he received total compensation of almost one billion dollars in 2008,  $918,939,482 to be exact.   I was in Vallejo California this evening which reminded me about it this issue as the source of my blog, the Wall Street Journal reported that one man who lost his home through foreclosure was now renting it back off these coupon clippers.

But get this. Daniel Och who is somewhat of a philanthropist and all round nice guy is Vice Chairman of a charitable organization he helped found that is described as fighting poverty in New York City. The name of his little venture is the Robin Hood Foundation.  It’s sickening when you think about it.  It is the actions of Och and others like him that cause poverty in New York City.  As a friend called it tonight, the “Robbing Hood Foundation.”

There is no such thing as “self made” it’s a ridiculous concept.  These parasites are getting richer off of people’s misery.  The government should take all these properties that have been stolen and put their owners back in them with mortgages that reflect their present value: a home should not be an investment, it is human shelter. People are paying these coupon clippers interest on loans that are worth twice what their home is.  And we should reject this notion that people have “lost” their homes. They have not “lost” their homes, they are still there.  Bankers and speculators like Och have stolen their homes from them.

Meanwhile banks we bailed out to the tune of $14 trillion are waging court battles against federal and state officials seeking penalties from them for dodgy mortgage deals. These officials want $20 to $25 billion from Bank of America and JP Morgan after long running investigations in to the banks’ foreclosure practices.  The banks are refusing to give any money unless they get complete immunity from mortgage related claims. “They want to be released from everything including original sin,” says one US official.

Over the course of the housing boom, the moneylenders raked in billions, and before that trillions more.  Anyone that pays a mortgage sees that for years the principle hardly changes as they make sure they get heir interest.  But the banks want to hand over $25 billion and be free of any threats from lawsuits or claims as the morass of dodgy deals are uncovered.  As they sold packages of mortgage debt throughout the world, many banks still have no idea who the formally legal owners of many of these homes are.

And we are supposed to believe social services and public sector pensions are wrecking the economy.

** Afternote
Last year, when I spoke at OEA bank demonstrations and wrote press releases, I put the total amount of the big bank / Wall Street bailout at "nearly $14 trillion", most of it coming from the Federal Reserve bank. I got those figures from the Real Economy Project of the Center for Media and Democracy. Well, most of the bailout provided to the banks did come from the Fed, but  I was mistaken about the amount. It was bigger.

The first-ever audit of the Federal Reserve bank shows that the Fed provided the financial sector with $16 trillion. That's bigger than the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. It's more than $50,000 per U.S. citizen. It is 20 TIMES the size of Obama's "stimulus package".

Let's look at the austerity drive in this context. The banks have managed to morph their private debt into public debt, thanks to Paulson, Geithner, and especially to Bernanke and the Fed. They've transferred it onto our backs. Austerity is their attempt to get working and poor people to pay it off.

Jack Gerson

Hundreds protest Wells Fargo Bank foreclosures in San Francisco

A quarter of all foreclosures in the US occur in California with 700,000 California residents going through the process at the moment.  About three hundred people rallied in Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco yesterday before marching to Wells Fargo's headquarters. 

The event was organized by Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and Contra Costa Interfaith.  The groups targeted Wells Fargo because they say there are 350,000 homeowners that qualify for the Home Affordable Modification Program yet only 77, 402 have received permanent modifications to avoid losing their homes.

Wells Fargo received  some $43 billion in bailout money from the taxpayer and the bank paid its CEO $17 million in 2010 that included a $14 million bonus.  The bonus must have been for weaseling the bailout from the taxpayers.

I shot a little video and it was a spirited march but as if often the case, more so here in the US than other countries, there is rarely any emphasis on the system as part of the problem; the way society is organized.  The CEO is a bad guy, worse than other CEO's is a common theme. During the Safeway strike a few years ago it was the CEO of that company that was demonized, he was not a good boss, a decent capitalist like some of the others.


Some Wells Fargo Facts:

Bailout funds received: $43.7 billion
Profits, 1996-2010: $101.8 billion
Profits since bailout (2009-10) $24.6 billion
2010 CEO pay: 17.1 million
Lobbying 2009-10 $9.7 million
Wells Fargo Bank Teller wag $10.63 an hour ($22,100 per year.
Bonuses and compensation for 5 execs last 10 years: $345.5 million

If you are in foreclosure or want more information on this campaign call:
Kristina Bedrossian @ 818-307-9730
Preet Singh  415-735-8935
Mike Roth: 916-444-7170

I didn't have time to stay for the gathering at the headquarters but some of you might be interested in this short clip.

OEA/ACCE bank demo Tuesday

Jack Gerson, OEA member requested that we post this annoucment

Oakland Education Association

Next Banks Demonstration:

Tuesday, Feb. 15 4:30 pm

Assemble at Fruitvale & MacArthur

Co-sponsored by OEA & ACCE

The first Oakland Education Association (OEA) initiated banks demonstration before the MLK holiday, drew 60 people, including allies in ACCE, SEIU 1021 and Oakland Parents Together. The response we’ve received shows that public anger at the bank bailout is a hot-button issue from which we can draw support for a good contract:

• The demonstration drew TV coverage from NBC and KTVU and radio reports from KQED and KPFA. NBC followed up with an interview of a teacher losing his home.

• Passersby honked and waved in agreement with our banners and signs. Shoppers at the mall told us they supported us as we picketed three banks.

• Oakland Police told us the rally in front of 3 banks was "completely within [our] rights,” an important victory, as the right to rally/leaflet in malls has long been hotly contested.

• Multiple educator websites spread news of our demonstration nationally.

• We succeeded in getting the Wells Fargo branch manager to fax our letter to WF’s CEO asking for a meeting. We still await a response.

• A week later, former U.S. Asst. Scty. of Ed and NCLB booster Diane Ravitch tweeted: “New mantra: Don’t throw money at education, throw it at banks & Goldman Sachs.”

Think of the pressure we can build on the banks, corporations, politicians…and ultimately on the district for a good contract… but only with your help!

Will you join us Tues., Feb. 15 at 4:30 pm? (Fruitvale & MacArthur)

Church foreclosures skyrocket

The market is indeed a powerful force; even god can’t stop it. The Wall Street Journal reports that Since 2008 the banks have foreclosed on 200 churches compared to 8 as recently as two years ago. There were none in the 10 years before that.

The worst is not yet over and there will be many more foreclosures of church property, they are “the next wave in this economic crisis” says Jesse Jackson. No doubt this will upset the gravy train that these preachers have been riding for a long time. And, as with all businesses, it is the small independent churches that are suffering the most as they don’t belong to large national organizations.

The WSJ gives the example of the Family Christian Center in Orangeville CA. The owners of this business were doing quite well as their dues paying members rose to 1000 from a few hundred in the nineties; until the crisis hit. They borrowed $4.2 million for a new structure, or sanctuary as they called it but with the housing crisis and job losses, many church members ended up unemployed or moved away and contributions fell. The value of the church property dropped to $2.5 million from $8.5 million between 2002 and 2008.

Bankers are more “reluctant” to foreclose on churches, the WSJ adds because they don’t like to “foreclose on God.” But in the last analysis as in all things, the real world, in this case, the capitalist economy, is what matters not the supernatural. “Religious organizations may be subject to the laws of God but they are also subject to the laws of economics.” Says one real estate strategist.

How they adapt religion to suit the economic realities of life. Jesus was credited with throwing the moneylenders from the temple but we live in a world in which the moneylender rules. They even consider churches a safe bet as they are a business that have regular cash flows in the form of tithes. Like the victims of the sub prime loan fiasco, moneylenders sucked the churches in, or more accurately, the folks that run the religion business were sucked in by low rate, short-term loans. This year is expected to be an even worse year for the churches as many payments on loans come due.

How could god let this happen I wonder?  Is it possible he's angry at them?

Hypocrisy of the corprate politicans in the aftermath of the Tucson shootings

This is not a natural disaster

Not so long ago I received a call from a woman living in a motel room with her husband and child. She was disabled but didn’t give me any details. She contacted me because at the time I was trying, along with other activists, to bring together people who were being forced out of their homes by the bankers. We were hoping to form Hands Off Our homes Committees in each neighborhood where people were being thrown out because they couldn’t pay the moneylenders.
The capitalist propaganda that we are in control of our own destiny is garbage but it is pretty strong here in the US. I mean, George Bush never pulled himself up by his bootstraps. Because people fall prey to this false idea it is difficult to discover something like who in a community is being foreclosed on. People feel ashamed. They feel like they have failed, that they are in this situation because of their own personal weaknesses. That’s what that ideology is meant to do, make us blame ourselves for finding ourselves in a situation that is a product of society and how it is structured and managed.

This woman was living in the motel because the bankers had kicked her out of her home.
But she had not “lost” her home, this is the language of another class, it was still there; it was stolen from her. Her home was not far away in the same town and most of her belongings were in it. She was not allowed to enter that property without a sheriff.  Her husband had to leave that motel room every morning to go to work and they lived their lives as best they could given the circumstances. I regret at the time that there was not much I could do to help.

I am reminded of this by the news today that one million homes were foreclosed on by the moneylenders in 2010. How many people that effects is anybody’s guess; maybe three million, maybe four, and who knows how many children. These are people that get up and go to work every day. They are people who may have served this country in one of its wars or have sons or daughter’s in Iraq or Afghanistan, most of them there as victims of an economic draft. What’s more, five million (perhaps 10 million debtors) homeowners are more than two months behind on their mortgage payments, or more accurately, interest payments on the loans, according to the foreclosure tracker, Realty Trac. And they expect that 201l will top 2010 for foreclosures.

This is why we stress on this blog, the hypocritical nature of the ruling class and their representatives. We have stated many times that we vociferously condemn the killings in Tucson and that such acts are against the interest of the working class and lower class consciousness as Sean wrote earlier.

Obama said in his speech in Tucson that "it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds."

Who’s he talking about? Is an armed police force physically removing families from their homes and out on to the street on behalf of speculators and moneylenders an act that brings healing to a community? Is it possible that being thrown out of your shelter and living is a motel room with two children might have an effect on the mental health of the family and the individuals in it? Does it affect the personal relations between the mother and the father? Might it affect the development of the child as they grow older. Might it lead them to drink, steal, have erratic behavior or even commit acts of violence?

The Wall Street Journal reports the president as saying that for his speech he, “chose to dwell on the heroes of Saturday, and the victims of the violence—especially nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green—as he urged the nation to rise above ugly political debates and see civic life "through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol'' of adults.

How caring. But how many children’s lives are being torn apart by the deliberate actions of the politicians of big business, and Obama is one of them, in the interests of speculators, moneylenders, bankers and others that do no productive Labor. The same Wall Street Journal reported on Obama’s recent meeting with CEO’s as they have an accumulated $2 trillion in cash on hand that they won’t invest in the economy; in putting people to work. Various terms have been used in the media on the subject, that Obama is trying to “charm” the CEO’s or “coax” them in to stop hoarding capital.

All the talk now is about “national unity”. Why would I want unity with the people that are slashing wages, cutting services, eliminating jobs and throwing people out of their homes? These forces are not our friends; they are our enemies. Friends don’t do such things to each other. Unity is a positive thing; but unity around what?

They don’t “coax” families out from under their shelter when they have been bled dry by the moneylender and can’t continue to pay them their pound of flesh. No, private property rights are paramount there and they will remove you by force.

The point was already raised today about the incredible pouring of mourning for 6 Americans while the US military machine slaughters thousands upon thousand of people abroad. Obama represents the real people that make policy decisions in this country, those that fill the boardrooms of the major corporations and the offices on Wall Street. They meet in Jackson Hole Wyoming, Doha and London with their foreign counterparts and discuss how best to manage the society they govern and plunder the wealth working people create.

The murders in Tucson are a national tragedy. We have similar tragedies every day as young people are killed in the streets, youth with no future and no chance of a job, harassed by the very same police forces that physically remove workers from their homes when they can’t pay the bank. There are thousands upon thousands of deaths in the US due entirely to the inability to pay for health care. There are another two million in prison.

It is not that the murders in Tucson are not real tragedies. It is the hypocrisy of those who are waging a war, not only against the workers of the world, but the workers of America using this tragedy for their own ends; that we have to oppose.

Three die in Oakland CA fire: Slumlords and Bankers responsible for urban blight and thousands of deaths

Urban gangs are small fry compared to these guys

In a previous blog I commented on a fire I heard about on the news as I was writing. There is a little more about this in the San Francisco Chronicle this morning.  As I mentioned yesterday, a woman and her child were both killed by the fire. It turns out a man that was also living there rescued the dead woman's other child but died himself when he went back in to rescue others; people knew him only as "Memo." Memo is a working class hero as John Lennon's song goes.  Two other people broke their legs jumping to escape the inferno. Had there been smoke alarms in the building they might have had a chance.

The dead woman was  a 23 year-old immigrant from El Salvador, her 3 year old daughter perished with her.  The building had no smoke detectors.  The fire was started due to  a series of extensions cords the woman had set up, plugging the main one in to a socket in another unit in order to get power as hers was shut off by the power company.

The previous owner who bought the property as an investment for his retirement had walked away from it as he couldn't afford the payments.  The bank that was supposed to manage the property, Bank of New York Trust,  paid not much attention to it and just let it sit there. The place was in a very shabby condition and no smoke alarms is illegal as far as I know.

The dead woman, Ruth Mejia had lost her job recently and was trying to survive in a country that is the worst industrial economy in the world to live in if your poor. It has no social welfare except for the rich.  She came from El Salvador, a country that was devastated in a civil war that was made all the worse by the US support of the oligarchs as it does throughout Latin America.  It doesn't mention Mejia's legal status but you can bet that if she turns out to be undocumented the immigrant basher's will be quick to point to this.  But why might she be here in the US?  People don't leave their own communities for nothing.

Maybe a minor glimpse at some El Salvadorian history might help us. In 1932, shortly after seizing power, Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez slaughtered some 30,000 Pipil Indians who had revolted against the giant landowners. With U.S. support he banned all Unions and ruled in the interests of the ruling elite until 1944. The coffee magnates that he and subsequent regimes supported with U.S. help took over so many small farms that the number of landless peasants in El Salvador quadrupled between 1961 and 1975. Hundreds of thousands left the country looking for work. Where do you think many of them went?

Supported by El Salvadore's Catholic Church a movement toward democracy developed in the late 60's and 70's that gave El Salvadorians some hope for a better future ( the Vatican eventually crushed this movement known as Liberation Theology).  But the more this movement developed the more repressive the oligarchy and its military dictatorship became. A civil war erupted in 1979 after an army coup aborted the results of a democratic election. During the next two years right wing death squads supported by the U.S. hunted down any dissidents; more than 8,000 trade unionists were murdered or abducted during this period. (Source:Harvest or Empire: Juan Gonzalez)

"We just have to put pressure on these big banks in New York City to pay attention, so more families don't die." says Larry Reid, an Oakland City Council member.  What sort of pressure he doesn't say. I do know that I have been involved in the past in fighting slumlords in this area.  Richard Thomas is a notorious Oakland slumlord who owned some 200 units at the time.  With tenants, we occupied the former mayor Jerry Brown's office at the time and the DA's office.  We demanded they indict Thomas but they never did.  The city councils and the politicians are under pressure from the big landlords not the other way round.

An activist in the Latino community, Gilda Gonzales, points out that there are thousands of people living these lives, living in foreclosed buildings that banks and giant landlords have let sit as they are merely investments just like a cd you might have at your local bank.  She points out that an "attentive landlord" might have known there were no smoke alarms in the building.  But there is no need in these situations for banker/landlords to be "attentive" there's no significan money flowing in from the venture so why pay attention to it.

We constantly hear about needing to beef up the police force to get youth of the streets and fight gangs.  But the gangs that cause the most human suffering and kill the most people are the slumlords, landlords, property developers and others who see money in people's need for shelter.  Their clubhouse, the  Chamber of Commerce is never raided and the culprits hauled off to jail.

The answer is not the magical pressure that the council member is fantasizing about for the media but for decent public housing; housing like medical care, should not be a business, an investment opportunity.  An earlier blog talks of the amount of workers'  money in pension funds, this money is used as a resource for the rich but this money is ours and can be used to build decent and affordable housing.  Investment in this way would also increase employment for such construction and also for permanent maintenance.

This would make people's lives safer and free them from the clutches of the banks and the slumlords that represents them. That is undoubtedly an attack on the rights of capital, against their right to exploit people as they wish for their personal gain. It is against their right to bleed people dry.   But it would increase our rights, the right to s decent and secure home and there would be less likelihood of another situation where a child is in the street crying "Mama! My mama's burning."

Terrorism in the US:bankers get more aggressive kicking people out of their homes.

Well here’s some good news at last; the number of homeowners underwater (those who owe more on their house than the house is worth) fell by one third in the last quarter, the Wall Street Journal reports. * This news perks me up in the morning knowing that people’s lives are improving.

But wait! What’s this? The reason fewer people are underwater is that the banks are kicking them out of their homes faster. It’s from “banks getting more aggressive on home foreclosures, not from home values going up…” the Journal adds. Oh well.

About 10.8 million mortgage holders representing 22.5% of the US total (this is such a harmless term, these people are debtors, in the clutches of moneylenders) are hanging on for dear life and paying the moneylender in the hopes that they can keep their home. I know a number of them and I am sure you do too.

So the number has declined a bit because debtors were so financially, physically and emotionally exhausted that they stopped paying a moneylender interest payments for a roof over their head or the moneylender threw them out with the help of the state and its agents.

I grew up in Britain in the age of the council houses. My dad, after spending three years and nine months as a prisoner of the Japanese working for Mitsubishi during WW11 was a tenant publican in a small village; he ran away from home at 16 and joined the army in 1934 to be with horses.  He never saw any horses and ended up in Japan by 1939, involuntarily, I might add. I remember my mum trying to get on a list for a council house in the local town because it was such a good and secure deal. I had lots of friends that lived in government housing which didn’t have the stigma it does here in the US where, if you are living in the shabby government housing they generally provide you are a complete failure, lazy and a “ward of the state”. And the US capitalist class figured out a long time ago that if workers owned their own home through the moneylenders, it would be much harder for them to go on strike for fear of being evicted for non-payment of the mortgage.

Here in the US, the home has been your little piece of security, your savings account. Trillions were taken out of homes in the form of loans in the wake of the housing bubble that burst in 2007. This is what fueled consumption which is the most important thing in a capitalist economy as the commodity bought contains that magic stuff the capitalist seeks, profit; we could call it their “wages” just for simplicity. All commodities produced through human Labor power contain within them Labor power that the capitalist pays for and Labor power that they get for free.  This is possible by forcing workers to work above the time it takes to produce the value of our own wages..

It is this mentality that they push that drives people to own a home and even better if you have a decent paying job so that you can borrow more money, buy another one and have a less financially fortunate person pay the mortgage via the rent; its a con game. This worked for quite a while to the detriment of all of us.

The terrorists responsible for this, live here, and they're not Muslims

Some debtors have moved out of their homes and are renting them to others for less than their payments on the mortgage in the hope that things will turn around, hopefully they can keep their homes and eventually return. The idea that you have a “moral” responsibility to pay the moneylenders is very strong in the US although it has been weakened during this economic crisis. One debtor who paid $217,000 for a home that is presently worth $150,000 has rented out his home for $500 less than the mortgage payments is having doubts about his “moral obligation” to keep paying the mortgage. After all, it “not only doesn’t it provide us with shelter, but actually makes it almost impossible for us to pay our monthly living expenses”, he tells the WSJ.

Capitalist society forces us through pain of homelessness, sickness or death to act in an individualistic, selfish inhuman way to each other. This is how it works. But despite this, there is a powerful tendency among human beings for kindness, solidarity and fairness. The capitalist class, the class that rules this economic system of production in which we live and work, turns these feelings in to their opposite, uses them against us in order to sell their products and perpetuate their system. There are people in this country that give millions of dollars each year to religious charities in response to ads on TV about starving children in other parts of the world, something that will never end hunger, but people are sympathetic to the misery of others.

The capitalists offer us divisive choices, my child starves or yours. All normal humans want both to eat, and when we have joined forces and fought them we have made gains but if the united road forward is blocked, the unity breaks down and we make that horrible choice: “Its every man for himself”, but this is not our preference, it is the refuge of last resort.

The present economic crisis has had a dramatic affect on the consciousness of the US workers and middle class. The mood is changing and there will no doubt be more explosions ahead. The present historical multi-racial strike of prisoners in Georgia is an example of what is to come. But the ride won't be free of twists and turns.

Housing should not or ever have been an investment opportunity or a savings account. Housing is shelter, it is as important as food in the needs of human beings to live a safe and secure life. A society that depends on moneylenders for shelter is in no way a civilized society. Home ownership in the US will never be the same after this crisis. The level of home ownership has fallen back to the 1999 level and is below 40% for the first time since World war 11.

The homeowner renting out his home for less than he’s paying the moneylender in interest says it all, “It just kind of leaves you wondering what the safety net is for my generation, because it’s obviously not our home.” The history of capitalism is a “safety net” free history. Any safety nets we have were fought for with great courage and sacrifice and opposed with equally great violence and brutality by the capitalists. With the continued decline in the US of the conditions that arose in the economic upswing that followed World War 11, the future will be a stormy one but with great opportunities, as long as we take them.

Yep, “The Times They are A Changin’.”

* Fewer Underwater as Foreclosures Rise: WSJ 12-14-10

No Foreclosure protest at Wells Fargo in Oakland California

I went down to a  small protest today that I heard about that ended up inside a Wells Fargo bank in Oakland California. At the peak there were about 60 or so noisily protesting inside the bank.  The protest was organized jointly by SEIU Local 1021 and ACCE which as far as I can figure out is a reconstructed ACORN of California, certainly some of the same people are in it.  SEIU Local 1021 is the Local whose members that work for the city of San Francisco voted down a concessionary contract in May 2009 only to have it shoved down their throats by their leadership who claimed their members were "confused" according to reports in the press.

The protesters included community members and supporters  including some who were facing foreclosure as well as members of OEA, the Oakland teachers Union and city workers.

It was a spirited protest and certainly surprised the bank personnel and the customers who were overwhelmingly supportive.  What this coalition is demanding is that the Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase and all California banks "suspend all foreclosures in California until they can prove they are following all the relevant laws."  This leaves a lot to be desired as we should demand an end to all foreclosures regardless.  All foreclosures should be illegal and housing should not be something that bankers and investors profit from and deny us whenever it suits them.

Still, it was worth going along to support the homeowners and I shot a little video that folks might find interesting. I'm no expert at this and can't edit too well but it'll give you some idea of how it went.

RV sales on the rise. But are people actually vacationing or living in them?

Being retired, I normally have the luxury of coming down to the coffee shop every morning, reading the papers, and doing what I'm doing now.  I normally park in a shopping center parking lot which is free.  Lately I have noticed more than one RV parked there.  They are normally gone by 8.30 am as people start to come and shop and the local parking police start their rounds marking tires.

These are obviously people who are living in these mobile homes.  Who knows where they're from, where they're headed or how long they've been living in these vehicles.  But it is my experience that this is on the rise and seems to make complete sense given the home foreclosures, job losses and such.

This morning's Wall Street Journal has a related story about RV's.  It writes about Elkhart Indiana, this was the place Obama visited in February in a photo op to push the stimulus bill.  The RV industry amounts to about 25% of Elkhart's economy and when the crisis hit, it hit hard.  The unemployment rate in Elkhart back then was about 18% and we know these are always very conservative figures.

In November the town's unemployment rate fell to 14% according to officials estimates.  The decline is is apparently due to the increase in RV sales.

It is hard for me to believe that people are buying RV's in this economy in order to go on trips around the country.  My guess is that people are getting together all the cash and assets they can after losing their home or simply walking away from it as more and more people are reportedly doing even if they can cover the mortgage.  This is actually a major shift in consciousness, this trashing of what I have heard termed "debt loyalty" as folks are refusing to pay mortgages that are nothing but interest payments to the usurers on a loan that is higher than their home's value.  It is a reflection of the hatred and contempt people have for moneylenders.

Instead, they are taking that money and buying RV's.After all, you get a tax right off for any interest you pay on that loan also. Who knows.  But I do not think this can be ruled out and makes sense to me.

Funny, though, the Wall Street Journal doesn't consider this option.  For them, it's a sign of a growing economy. 

Capitalism: A Love Story - A Review Attempt

Science is science; art is art. One explains reality and one conveys moods evoked by reality. A documentary is a hybrid of the two. Capitalism - A Love Story, is a great stringing together of facts, not simply as cold reality, but congealed by anger and humor.

In one of its opening scenes a family documents its own eviction, prying the window blinds to count the number of squad cars that are coming up their road. It's a moment of great tension that silenced movie audiences: watching an unarmed family having their door smashed in by heavily armed uniformed sheriffs. In the past decade as an organizer for the Campaign for Renters Rights, we've frequently had the cops called on us while fighting evictions. The movie carried the reality of foreclosures and the emotional anxiety and devastation, like I've never seen on the big screen.

The movie brings you to the edge of your seat with empathy and anger. Then you get a break with a laugh at some horrible bastard's expense, and then it reassures you that you can fight back.

The ruthless nature of capitalism, its drive to steal everything that's not nailed down, its unbroken and utter corruption, all of its sins that most working people knew were true, are explained. Given who Michael Moore is and who he supported in the last election, this movie is more than a pleasant surprise. He goes places I never thought he would as a liberal documentarian who continues to move further and further left. He shows the poll, we publicized in our "Facts" newsletter that given the choice between identifying between capitalism and socialism, under 30-year-olds, were almost evenly split at 36% for capitalism and 33% for socialism.

He argued powerfully against attempts to reform capitalism, argueing that it needed to be abandoned completely in favor of "democracy." He stopped short of calling it socialism or even a workers democracy, but all that was implied.

I was very impressed at how Moore took on the religous right, explaining the anti-rich sentiments of early christianity and of christianity in urban America. He dubbed over a Messiah movie, having Jesus turn down a sickly old man because he couldn't cure him with a pre-existing condition. My partner, brought up in a religious household was almost in tears, laughing. But then he overdoes it, bringing in footage of a Chicago Bishop blessing workers occupying their factory. He risks counterposing the horribly corrupt Catholic establishment against the capitalists who claim to be born again.

The Democrats and in particular the Democrat House leadership that pushed through the original $700 billion bailout are hammered. Yet he skirts around Obama. He exposes how all these White House insiders are bought and paid for by Finance Capital, in particular Goldman Sachs and Citibank. Yet, for a man who has skillfully and thoroughly connected the threads and workings of capitalism in this movie, he carefully does not connect these insiders to the President. Moore basically followed the path to the current White House door, showed us the door but didn't go in. A friend in our gang at the movie who was the only one of us that voted Democrat in '08, yelled out, she was so mad at the soft portrayal of Obama.

I was touched when Moore walks his own dad over the expanse of flattened buildings that remain of the big GM plant in Flint that once employed tens of thousands. His dad talks about how he misses his workmates and the comeradery of working at GM. The role that the union leaders played in rolling over in the face of closures was a stone unturned.

What makes Micheal Moore special and different and such a great documentarian is not just technical or even his smarts. To me, his movies are never dull or grey. They are not the product of a stale University research group or Washington thinktank. Michael Moore has kept the working class element in himself alive. He captures the spirit of resistance, the tenacity, the indignance, the strengths and humor of the American working class. He has a feel for his medium and a feel for people. The world is a better place for this movie. It is inspiring, shining light on those things kept hidden and raiseing the will to fight, through careful and skillful movie-making. He has attempted to connect the dots for all of us out here.

Art is the product of concious thinking and subconcious feelings. Moore, with scientific precision, has provocatively blended how he views Capitalism with the contempt that Capitalism views us.

Rob, unemployed carpenter, California

PHONE BLITZ for June Reyno CALL SAN DIEGO MAYOR!

March 12th 2009
Campaign for Renters Rights: Hands Off Our Homes! No Foreclosures!
This Message from CRR member Matt who was thrown out of June Reyno's house this morning, along with June, by San Diego Sherriffs:
CALL SAN DIEGO MAYOR JERRY SANDERS' office (619) 236-6330
please start calling tomorrow, March 13th, after 9am:
1. Ask what they know about June Reyno's case
2. Ask if the Mayor can call the Sherriff to stop evicting people from their homes
3. KEEP on the phone as long as possible
FACTS: June Reyno resides at 10169 Presley St. San Diego California 92126
June's number is 858 549 4764. Her family is getting evicted as a result of foreclosure on a house where the bank has extracted tens of thousands in interest and in a situation where 19 million homes are already vacant in the US.
PLEASE CALL. GET YOUR FRIEND'S TO CALL. STAY ON THE PHONE AS LONG AS YOU CAN!!!
Campaign for Renters Rights (510) 595-5545

Anti-foreclosure event in Oakland

I just returned from an anti-foreclosure gathering at a house in East Oakland CA. The action was organized by ACORN. There were about 100 people there including a few more Union members. There were also members of the Union officialdom and there as well as some BA's. This is a bit of an indication that the foreclosure issue is heating up. There will be a new wave of foreclosures as ARM's adjustments come due and unemployment increases.

I was talking to one guy who is facing foreclosure and he said that he is working with the government to modify his loan and they told him to call ACORN if he needs help. There is a positive and negative side in all this. This is the second anti-foreclosure event I've attended in the last couple of weeks and a bit of a momentum seems to be building up. The negative is that the government is recommending ACORN which shows that they feel a certain safety and that ACORN will keep a lid on any movement that might seriously challenge the banks. The presence of top Union officials is for the same reason, temper any movement, direct it in to passive resistance and the Democratic Party politically.

Still, this was a spirited rally and a strong show of support and these things have a way of developing a life of their own. If you are reading this and live in the Oakland/San Leandro A;ameda CA area, call Hands Off Our Homes at:510-595-4676

San Diego Foreclosure

June just informed me that she is trying to organize to stop a foreclosure in downtown San Diego Thursday morning. The homeowner; Rasheeda, has also been the victim of predatory lending. The bank bought her home for a fraction for what she paid for it, and refused to negotiate a new loan. It looks like they are going to be able to get some semi-charitable legal assistance to put an injunction on the home; but we can have only so much faith in the legal system.
You can check out another side of June's story here, but as you see more and more homes foreclose, individualists and opportunists will realize the importance getting behind a movement that deals directly with working class America.
June mentioned that she was going to be able to get the word out on the local Channel 10 News, if her story doesn't fall to the wayside in light of the tragic fighter-jet crash. She still plans handing out flyers and getting the word out as best as she can in order to gather support.
Matt