foreclosure

After Pressure from Occupy Bernal, Wells Fargo execs fly across country to meet with Bernal Heights man

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People facing eviction and foreclosure often report hardly being given the time of day by banks and lenders. But yesterday, three top Wells Fargo executives flew to San Francisco to meet with Alberto Del Rio, a Bernal Heights resident facing foreclosure.

Del Rio’s parents purchased their home in 1973. The home was refinanced multiple times, he says “for a better life” for his family. The most recent refinance, in 2007, was a result of lenders convincing Del Rio’s mother that refinancing would be an easy to pay for some of her retirement. 

“It sounded really great because my mother had no monies for retirement. The loan officers told her pull out some cash and reinvest it so she could have a better retirement. They told her, ‘after two years, you’ll be able to refinance out of this,’” said Del Rio.

The loan she got was a pick-a-pay loan, one of the most notoriously predatory loans that banks offered in the years leading up to the 2008 crash.

After continued requests from Bernal resident Alberto Del Rio and support from that neighborhood’s foreclosure-focused branch of the Occupy movement, Del Rio was finally given the time of day- by top executives in the Wells Fargo home preservation department.

The executives, including Sharon Zuniga and Shawn Woods, who flew in from Wells Fargo’s headquarters in Texas, met with Del Rio Feb. 22 at the San Francisco offices of Consumer Credit Counseling Services for about an hour and a half.

Del Rio says they gave him three options: to move out of his home and convert it into rental units, allow a short sale on the house and accept $3,000 to move, or let foreclosure proceedings continue as planned.

“They flew a guy here all the way from Houston to try to bully him into giving up,” said Buck Bagot, an organizer with Occupy Bernal.

But the fact that they took the time to do that was a result of continued pressure from Del Rio and his supporters.

“It was a good thing,” said Del Rio.

“But it also felt like they were trying to pressure us into doing something they wanted us to do rather than what we wanted to do.”

Del Rio says he’s grateful to Occupy Bernal for supporting him thus far. And when the Wells Fargo executives pled with him to give up his home, he refused.

“I’ve made up my mind. I told them, if I’m going to lose the house I’m going to lose the house to a fight, to what I want.”

His perseverance worked to a degree; the bankers agreed to give Del Rio 90 days to “increase his income,” and then, potentially, work towards loan modification. Del Rio, an independent contractor, thinks its possible.

Meanwhile, Occupy Bernal will continue to struggle others who, often, are ignored by banks when they express their need for loan modification.

“Looking at everybody that I’ve been meeting that’s going through foreclosure and eviction, every single person is either a person of a minority group, a senior citizen, disabled, or someone else that would be easily influenced when approached with a better life, a better financial life. It can be seen in all their faces,” Del Rio told me.

Occupy Bernal has help postpone and prevent dozens of evictions, including that of Monica Kenney yesterday morning. They are planning a forum tonight on foreclosures to be held at the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center.

Why do evictions continue despite widespread banking fraud?

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Do you think a groundbreaking report – showing that 84 percent of foreclosures in San Francisco over the last three years involved faulty paperwork, some of it amounting to fraud – would finally mean swift justice for victims of those crimes?

Think again.

According to Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, whose office produced the astonishing report, government action is certainly appropriate in the follow-up to the report. “There are potential legal action on behalf of the attorney general and potential policy solutions at the state level,” said Ting.

But these solutions will likely take their long, bureaucratic time. And in the meantime, San Francisco homeowners — many of whom say that they were lied to, tricked, or defrauded by the lenders or beneficiaries of their mortgage loans — will continue to be kicked out of their homes with no legal oversight.

People have been claiming these injustices for years. Now, the report has proven that the vast majority of them are probably right.

“Until now, public information in California regarding improper foreclosure practices has been largely anecdotal. This report is important because it is the first to provide a rigorous, quantifiable analysis of the nature and frequency of foreclosure irregularities in California,” said Lou Pizante of Aequitas, a mortgage investigation firm that partnered with the Assessor-Recorder’s office to produce the report, in a press release.

The report focuses on six areas: assignments, notice of default, substitution of trustee, notice of trustee sale, suspicious activities indicative of potential fraud, and conflicts relating to MERS (short for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.).

In 99 percent of loans, the report identifies “one of more irregularities.” In 84 percent, there were “what appear to be one or more clear violations of the law.”
These violations include forging signatures, failing to file proper paperwork, failing to notify borrowers of things that they are legally required to know such as changes in the owners of their mortgages and notices that they have been put on track for foreclosure. And lots of felony fraud. 

Yet Ting told us it will be difficult to use these findings to hold banks and other lenders accountable, at least any time soon.
The report is likely the beginning of a lengthy process that will, at best, involve investigations from several city and state departments.
Matt Dorsey, press secretary for the city attorney’s office, confirmed that “we’re working with our client department the Assessor-Recorder,” but couldn’t say much else.

District Attorney George Gascon released a statement addressing the report, which says that “Mortgage-related fraud is a top priority in my office will prosecute those who pray on vulnerable homeowners. Many people have lost their homes due to foreclosures, tearing apart families and communities.”

But according to Assistant District Attorney Omid Talai, the DA’s office cannot begin looking into the cases until it receives documents from the Assessor-Recorder detailing the allegations in the report.

Talai emphasized that “our door remains open, and we would always welcome anyone with any kind of information”; homeowners with documents that they believe contain proof of invalid foreclosure proceedings can go to the DA themselves.

But will the release of the report help these homeowners?
 
When asked if people who believe they were a victim of these “irregularities” and “felony crimes” could use the report to challenge their lenders, Ting replied, “they could potentially.”

But, “the alternate question would be asked, which is: were they actually making payments on their homes? If they weren’t, they would have a very hard time challenging their foreclosure.”

Yet, anecdotally, lenders often tell consumers that they need to stop making loan payments in order to qualify for loan modification. They then get put on the fast track for foreclosure. Ting said his office heard these anecdotes too.

“Unfortunately, oftentimes when that happens, it’s done verbally. We also heard that. But it becomes almost impossible to prove,” Ting told me.

So banks can lie to consumers, thus potentially immunizing themselves from prosecution based on crimes committed against consumers. Then to top it all off, when folks get evicted and become homeless, they can be ticketed or jailed for sitting on the sidewalk. Thanks, justice system.

Hopefully, this report can act as an important step in the right direction.

“I’m proud of the fact that this is the first report of its kind, in the state, really identifying these issues on a systematic basis,” said Ting.

At least now the thousands of San Francisco residents that have lost their homes can point to evidence proving that this is a more complicated problem than people borrowing money that they can’t afford to pay back.

As the report states, “Reckless borrowing notwithstanding, much publicly available evidence suggests that there are indeed many legitimate victims of abusive lending and service practices.”

These people didn’t need the report to tell them that they were “legitimate victims.” But let’s hope that, with its help, they can see some justice.

Alerts

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WEDNESDAY, FEB. 22

 

Police graft

This event, part of the Shaping SF Public Talk series, will focus on the 1937 Atherton Report that blew the lid off San Francisco police corruption in that era. Speakers Hank Chapot and Chris Agee will address their research, on the report and on SF policing and crime in the 1950s, respectively.

7:30pm, free

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

www.counterpulse.org/?tribe_events=shaping-sf-public-talk-police-graft-in-san-francisco/

THURSDAY, FEB. 23

Eviction community forum

A panel discussion and chance to access resources for those affected by and interested in the epidemic of foreclosures and evictions in our neighborhoods. Hear from community organizers, foreclosure lawyers, and affected homeowners and tenants. This is organized by Occupy Bernal and will feature Spanish translation and childcare.

7pm, free

Bernal Heights Community Center

515 Cortland, SF

415-821-7617

 

Garden for the environment

Enjoy live music, food from Haight Street Market, a raffle, and a celebration of urban permaculture at the fundraiser. The Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Center celebrates the achievements of Garden for the Environment, a group that maintains a one-acre garden in the Sunset demonstrating the educational, environmental and food-security possibilities of permaculture.

6pm, $5

111 Minna, SF

www.hanc-sf.org/urban-farming-fundraiser-and-party.html

FRIDAY, FEB. 24

 

History of porn

Join author Sam Benjamin and golden age porn star Richard Pacheco for a lively presentation chronicling how porn emerged in its present form by looking back over past decades. The presentation will use non-explicit clips but promises to be funny and informative. Benjamin is the author of American Gangbang: A Love Story.

8pm, $10-30 suggested donation

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

www.sexandculture.org/

SATURDAY, FEB. 25

Foreclose on Wells Fargo CEO

A demonstration, complete with street theater and education, as activists attempt to foreclose on and evict Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf. According to Occupy Bernal, this fun community event will feature “street theater to foreclose, auction home, and evict the CEO, music, Pride at Work dance mob, and special surprise bidders.”

1pm, free

1090 Chestnut, SF

www.occupybernal.org/wordpress

 

Deep Green Resistance

Have you ever felt that to continue to live on the planet, people must actively dismantle industrial systems which are destroying the earth, perhaps by any means necessary? If so, you should hear author Aric McBay speak about his book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet. In the book, also by Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith, the authors discuss the philosophies, tactics and implications of this brand of radical environmental activism.

7:30pm, free

Unite HERE Local 2

209 Golden Gate, SF

www.occupysf.org/calendar-2/

Who gets to live here?

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yael@sfbg.com

Housing policy — which determines who will be able to live in San Francisco — has been a hot topic at City Hall these days.

At a Board of Supervisors Land Use and Economic Development Committee meeting on Feb. 13, representatives from the Mayors Office of Housing (MOH) reported on the state of middle-income housing in San Francisco, at the request of Sup. Scott Wiener. “Middle class” people make up 28 percent of the city’s population, a 10 percent decrease in the past two decades, and to reverse that decline would cost about $4.3 billion in housing subsidies, or more than half the city’s annual budget.

Wiener, who insists that “middle income and low income housing are not mutually exclusive,” said he’s raising the issue because the needs of the shrinking middle class are not being addressed. But during the public comment period, a long procession of low-income residents say city housing policies have kept them on the brink of homelessness. The takeaway message was: don’t embark on new housing efforts until you can enforce the ones that are already in place.

Also underscoring the desperate state of many San Francisco residents, Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting released a report Feb. 16 that contains shocking statistics about invalid foreclosures and illegal evictions in San Francisco. Ting found that 99 percent of all foreclosure proceedings in San Francisco in the past four years have contained paperwork irregularities, and in 84 percent of cases, banks or lenders have committed fraud or broke other laws.

With the loss of the redevelopment agencies, Mayor Ed Lee’s proposal for a housing trust fund, renewed calls for more condo conversions, and a new focus on middle income housing incentives, the conversation on housing in San Francisco is heating up.

 

MOVING TOWARDS RENTAL

San Francisco’s housing market is 64 percent rentals and 36 percent ownership, according to MOH. So despite the focus of politicians and developers on homeownership, housing policy in San Francisco mostly involves renters, many of whom face myriad threats.

Rents can be so steep that market-rate rental housing is becoming increasingly accessible only for parts of the middle class and the highest income brackets in the city. People in San Francisco tend to pay a huge chunk of their income towards rent.

The federal Housing and Urban Development Agency considers it reasonable for a households to pay 30 percent of their income towards rent; but for the city’s very low income households, rent is typically nearly 60 percent of income. For middle income households, the average percent paid toward rent has increased since 1990, but remains below 30 percent.

Those people fall mainly into the middle-income bracket, those earning 80-120 percent of Area Median Income (AMI.) Planning Director John Rahaim said that for the very low-income population (0-50 percent AMI) all rental housing is “virtually off-limits.”

So, for the middle class, renting a place in San Francisco is tough. For the low and very-low income, it’s next to impossible. And that reality threatens the city’s diversity.

“The highest rent burden still falls on lower income residents, many of whom pay 70 percent of their income as rent,” Sup. Eric Mar, who also sits on the Land Use Committee, said at the hearing. “In my district, people have whole families living in their living room or extra bedroom.”

But things may be looking up for renters. MOH’ Brian Cheu said developers believe that the market trends are heading towards construction of new rental housing after being almost exclusively owner-occupied units for many years. Cheu said there are 725 rental units in the pipeline for the next five to ten years, more than twice the new housing units meant for ownership slated for that time period.

Most of this will be market rate housing, and thus still unaffordable for a good deal of the population. But for those making around 100 percent of AMI — the middle class that Wiener hopes to serve — there are more rental units on the way.

“Any increase in supply of rental housing would help,” said San Francisco Tenants Rights head Ted Gullickson, “because there’s been virtually no new rental housing built in San Francisco is last 20 years.”

Even as Wiener promised to continue to prioritize the needs low-income residents, the foreclosure crisis was barely acknowledged at the Feb. 13 hearing. Many low-income residents say they are not sure they can trust the city’s claim that “this is not a matter of us vs. them.”

At public comment, many community members spoke of the housing troubles that they were already facing. Yue Hua Yu, who spoke at the Feb. 13 hearing, lives with her family of four in a single residency occupancy hotel room (SRO), units intended for single occupants.

“We would support a policy that protects the city’s affordable housing stock,” said a statement from Wing Hoo Leumg, president of the Chinatown Community Tenants Association.

Renting may be the realistic choice for most San Franciscans, but homeownership remains an important goal and achievement for many families, and the main obsession of many politicians.

Part of the middle class exodus is unmistakably due to better homeownership rates in Oakland, Daly City, Marin, and other surrounding areas. But there are neighborhoods with higher rates of homeownership than others, including Bayview-Hunters Point.

BHP has long been a prime spot for low-income homeowners, but it’s slated for extensive new housing construction in the coming decades that could compromise its affordability. It is also an area hit hard by the foreclosure crisis: there have been 2,000 foreclosures in Bayview in the past four years, according to Ed Donaldson, housing counseling director at the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation.

Rising prices and the foreclosure crisis have played a large part in the large-scale African American out-migration that has devastated San Francisco communities in recent decades.

 

 

APARTMENTS OR CONDOS?

One of the biggest points of controversy in the homeownership debate has been the issue of condo conversion, which was brought up again this past week at the Feb. 14 Board of Supervisors meeting, when Sup. Mark Farrell asked Lee if he would support legislation to let 2400 tenancy-in-common (TIC) owners bypass legal limits and fastrack towards condo conversion.

Farrell framed this as “a vehicle to allow residents of our city to realize their goal of homeownership.”

On Jan. 16, the city held its annual condo conversion lottery, in which 200 lucky TIC owners win the chance to convert their units into condos, thereby legally becoming homeowners. TICs and condo conversion have long been fraught with controversy in San Francisco, where there is never enough housing for everyone who wants it.

Condo conversion proponents say that turning a TIC — usually a building that used to be rental housing that has been purchased by a group of people that own it in common — into condos is a cheap way to become a homeowner in a city as expensive as San Francisco.

But tenants rights advocates have long opposed this process on the basis that it depletes the city of its rental housing stock. “When you have more condo conversions, you have more evictions, and it’s harmful to low-income residents” Gullicksen said.

This controversy, and the struggle to maintain a balance between opportunities for homeownership and reasonable rents has raged in San Francisco for years. In 1982, the Board of Supervisors passed a limit of 200 condo conversions per year as a compromise. There are no regulations, however, on converting rental housing to TICs.

“This has come up almost every single year for years and years about this time,” said Peter Cohen, organizer with the Council of Community Housing Organizations.

This year, however, proponents are not simply reiterating a request to bypass the condo conversion lottery. Plan C, a coalition of San Francisco moderates, is pushing for adding a fee to condo conversion, ranging from $10,000 to $25,000, which would go towards an affordable housing fund.

Mayor Lee said that he is open to considering a change in condo conversion policy, “providing it balances our need for revenue for affordable housing, the value that responsible homeownership brings to the city, and the rights of tenants who could be affected by a change in policy.”

 

WHOSE TRUST FUND?

This comes at a time when the city is facing a loss of millions per year for affordable housing with the dissolution of the redevelopment agency (see “Transfer of power, Jan. 31).

That dissolution led to Mayor Lee’s plan for an affordable housing trust fund, to be voted on as a ballot measure this November. The kick-off for that plan also began recently, with a press conference and big-tent meeting to discuss what it might look like.

On the day after the Land Use Committee meeting, where he started the conversation on “middle class” housing, Wiener posed a question to Lee at a Board of Supervisors meeting, asking how the mayor plans to “ensure that the housing trust fund that comes out of the process you have convened will meaningfully address the need for moderate/middle income housing.”

Some are concerned that too much of the trust fund could be allocated outside low-income demographics. “There’s a limited size pie of resources,” Cohen said. “Just in a matter of the last months, we lost the redevelopment agency. The city is madly scrambling to try to replace that through housing trust fund, and working to get us back to somewhere close to where we were…Is that pie, that has dramatically shrunk, going to be stretched further for another income band?”

That question will be important when the proposal goes to vote in November. According to Donaldson, many low-income homeowners will not vote for the measure unless it addresses their needs. The specifics of the measure calling for the trust fund are still being worked out. But, it will likely be funded by an increase of the transfer tax paid when homes change ownership.

Yet that proposal was the subject of an unusual political broadside from the San Francisco Association of Realtors, which last week sent out election-style mailers attacking the idea. “Brace yourself for an unexpected visit from the city’s tax collector,” the mailer warns, showing the hand of government bursting through the wall of a home, urging people to contact Lee’s office.

The measure may also see opposition from low-income communities, especially if, as Wiener has urged in the past week, it allocates a chunk of funds towards middle-income housing.

“It’s hard to find people who will support it. They’re saying, ‘what’s in it for me? Why would I vote for a transfer tax that I’m going to have to pay to help finance the building of affordable housing or middle-income housing. Why support programs that will support middle income people, who make more money than existing homewoners?” explained Donaldson. To agree on a way forward for housing in San Francisco, policymakers will need to reconcile a range of interests. In the worst-case scenario, the profit interests of realtors and developers will overtake the interests of San Francisco families struggling to continue to live in the city they love. But housing advocates are willing to work together to come to a solution. “Let’s put everything on the table, and let’s figure it out. In the spirit of cooperation, and with the understanding that each respective constituent group is not going to get everything that they want, but let’s put all the cards of the table,” said Donaldson.

Making history: Joanne Griffith’s ‘Redefining Black Power’ project comes to the Bay

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“Joanne [Griffith]’s work is centered on one theme: not to offer information as a point of journalistic fact, but to act as a conduit for debate and conversation, especially around issues relating to the African diaspora experience.” So writes Brian Shazor, director of the Pacifica Radio Archives, in the foreward to Griffith’s new book Redefining Black Power: Reflections on the State of Black America (City Lights Books, 206pp, $16.95). Griffith will be presenting her work, part of an interactive project to archive the state of African Americans in the United States in the Bay Area this week — starting tonight (Wed/8) at the Museum of the African Diaspora.

This shouldn’t have to be said, but in these times of reductive news media it does: Obama isn’t the only black voice that needs to be heard, during this Black History Month or any other month. Inspired by the archives of progressive African American voice kept by LA’s Pacifica Radio Archives, Griffith — a leading progressive voice herself, having reported on issues from around the African diaspora for the BBC and NPR — transcribes her interviews with leading thoughtmakers for the book, set up as a series of dialogues. Hear from political prisoner Ramona Africa why Obama is “the new crack,” journalist Linn Washington, Jr. on media matters, green jobs leader Van Jones on hybrid activism. The president is used as a theme of the book, but the interviews use him as a lens to look at issues that range far beyond the White House.

Griffith and the other minds behind Redefining Black Power want these interviews to serve as a jumping off point for other unheard voices. Head over to the book’s website and you’ll find directions on how to add your point of view to those of the better-known activists and professionals already immortalized in the Pacifica archives. You can go to one of Griffith’s upcoming readings (details below) for inspiration. Or better yet, read our recent email interview with her and then do that. 

SFBG: Explain where the interviews in the book came from. How did you become acquainted with the Pacifica Radio Archives. Why are they important for people to hear?

JG: The idea for the Redefining Black Power Project, of which the book is part, was born out of the historic audio held in the Pacifica Radio Archives; a national treasure trove of material charting America’s history from a progressive perspective dating back to 1949. Within the collection are key recordings from the civil rights, black power and black freedom movement, including Rosa Parks, Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Bobby Seale, Elaine Brown, and so many others. But it was one recording of Fannie Lou Hamer addressing the 1964 Democratic National Convention that sparked the idea for Redefining Black Power. The director of the Pacifica Radio Archives, Brian DeShazor, heard the tape and wanted to find a permanent way to preserve and share the voices held in the archives with a wider audience, and what better way than through the written word. Brian approached City Lights Books with the idea, and this book is the result, drawing on the voices of history to link us to the election of Barack Obama, one of the most significant moments in the social and political history of the United States. Through this project, we hope to preserve the voices, opinions and perspectives of African-Americans in this so called ‘Age of Obama’ for historians to digest and explore in years to come. 

How did I get involved? As a complete audio nut, I always make a point of visiting local radio stations wherever I travel in the world. Back in 2007, I was in Los Angeles, called KPFK to arrange a visit and was introduced to the Pacifica Radio Archives. Speaking with Brian DeShazor, we came up with an idea to share the historic collection with a UK audience and I’ve been doing this every Sunday evening on BBC Radio 5 Live in the UK for over four years. Because of this work and the extensive list of people I have interviewed over the years, Brian invited me to do the interviews for the Redefining Black Power project. Through this book, we delve into the role of the activist from different perspectives; the legal system, the media, religion, the economy, green politics and emotional justice. All were recorded between September 2009 and August 2011. To be clear though, this book is not an anthology of black leaders speaking on the Obama presidency. This is simply a taster of opinions on the subject, but everyone is encouraged to participate with their thoughts and opinions at www.redefiningblackpower.com and come out to the many events we’re hosting throughout February, including here in the Bay Area at the Museum of African Diaspora from 7 p.m. on Wednesday Feb 8 and at Marcus Books in Oakland with guest panelists Hodari Davis from Youth Speaks and social justice activist Dereca Blackmon on Thursday Feb 9 from 6.30 p.m.

SFBG: Has there been an interview you’ve conducted in which your subject’s answers have deeply surprised you? 

JG: Every interview had its own surprise; from Ramona Africa describing President Obama as ‘the new crack’ and why she refused to vote, to economist Dr. Julianne Malveaux revealing the financially precarious situations many African Americans find themselves in; from high foreclosure rates and high unemployment to the low levels of accumulated wealth for black women. Very sobering statistics. Michelle Alexander, too, the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness really shocked me when she said that more African American men are currently incarcerated than were enslaved in 1850. 

However, it was Dr Vincent Harding, the man behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech that surprised me the most. A true veteran of the civil rights movement, he made the point that the election of President Obama was never the goal of the movement; instead he prefers to call the work “the movement for the expansion and deepening of democracy in America.” Put this way, it made me realize more than ever, that the work we do today is not in isolation, but part of a wider movement, stretching back all the way to slavery. And the work isn’t over. 

SFBG: Your introduction ends with a quote from Kanye and Jay-Z’s Watch the Throne album. What role, if any, does hip-hop play in the book?

JG: Hip-hop doesn’t play a role in this book, other than this quote, but it will feature heavily in the next volume of Redefining Black Power which will focus on the reflections of black entertainers, writers, poets and performers on this moment in US history.  

SFBG: What would be the best way the United States could spend Black History Month?

JG: Black history — regardless of whether it is the United States or the UK where I moved from or anywhere else — should be acknowledged daily; this is the only way for us to keep memories alive and never forget where transformative change, like the election of President Obama, comes from. 

Listening to recordings like those held in the Pacifica Radio Archives with our youth would be a great place to start. I spent a couple of days with a group of students in Detroit, sharing the archive material and getting them to discuss their thoughts on the recordings; Audre Laude, James Baldwin, Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela, and others. Every one of them said they wished they had heard these voices before. It gave them a context to their own lives that didn’t exist previously, while encouraging them to never give up; too many people have suffered for them to let less than favorable circumstances stop them now. 

SFBG: Who should read this book? How should it be used?

JG: Use it as a conversation starter to discuss issues in your own community. Parents, use it as a way to engage your children in history. Students, use it as a resource for papers on race and the Obama presidency. Most importantly, everyone, share your thoughts at www.redefiningblackpower.com. This book is not the end of the project; we’re only getting started. 

Joanne Griffith’s Redefining Black Power author readings:

Wed/8 7 p.m., free with $10 museum admission

Museum of the African Diaspora

685 Mission, SF

(415) 358-7252

www.moadsf.org


Thu/9 6:30-8 p.m., free

Marcus Books

3900 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakl.

(510) 652-3244

www.marcusbookstores.com

 

 

“Occupy Wall Street West” hopes to see massive protest

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A coalition from across San Francisco is hoping to make tomorrow – Friday, Jan. 20 – a monumental day in the history of Bay Area activism, the Occupy movement, and the fight against home foreclosures and other manifestations of corporate greed.Organizers call the day of protests, marches, street theater, pickets, and more “Occupy Wall Street West.”

Those that urged Occupy protesters to focus in on a list of demands should be pleased, as the day includes a list of demands on banks, including a moratorium on foreclosures and an end to predatory and speculative loans.


Organizers note that Occupy SF Housing, the coalition that planned the day, is separate from OccupySF. In fact, a subset of the group known best for its months-long tent city at Justin Herman Plaza was only one part of a substantial coalition that planned this day of action. Among others, the coalition includes the SF Housing Rights Committee, Homes Not Jails, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), and Occupy Bernal, a neighborhood-focused Occupy group specifically aimed at preventing evictions and foreclosures.

Justin Herman Plaza – or Bradley Manning Plaza, as many in OccupySF like to refer to the park just across from the Ferry Building – will be a crucial meeting point. A press spokesperson said that “down at Bradley Manning Plaza at 6 a.m.,12 p.m., and 5 p.m., we’re going to be launching various segments of the protests, and there will be information desks and education all for those who are interested.”

Organizers hope to culminate the day with a mass march at 5 p.m. A map of the planned actions can also be found here.

Many of the groups in the coalition have focused on specific cases of homeowners and tenants facing eviction and foreclosure; tomorrow, they bring their power to the Financial District.

Vivian Richardson, a member of the coalition who has also worked with ACCE and the newer Foreclosure Fighters group in Bayview, says that she remains in her home after being threatened with foreclosure due to community support.

“On my own, I tried everything to get out of this bad loan… I fought for two years on my own, only to have my home foreclosed on and taken away,” Richardson said at a press conference held yesterday.

“With the help of my community, unions, and ACCE members throughout the state, we generated over 1,400 emails and a few hundred calls to the CEO of [lender] Aurora Bank, and within one hour they called me to reopen my case,” she said. “As of today, the bank has voided the sale of my home and rescinded the foreclosure.”

Groups hoping to prevent foreclosures have had many success stories like Richardson’s. But tomorrow, they will put pressure on large corporate banks.

As SF Housing Rights Committee Executive Director Sarah Shortt said at the rally, “What we’re trying to do here is draw connections between some of those issues and the banking industry… I think that’s one of the most important pieces of the Occupy movement: starting to educate ourselves and each other about how ubiquitous the toll that’s been taken on cities, neighborhoods, communities by banking industry and the one percent.”

The focus is on housing, but in typical Occupy fashion, protesters will draw connections between all kinds of concerns that they see as abuses by banks and corporations.

According to OccupySF member Lisa Guide, the day is about “war profiteering, unjust foreclosures and evictions for profits by the big banks, exploitation of labor and union workers, and liberation of the commons for public good, among many other [issues].”

Guide also mentioned that Jan. 20 is “the eve of the Citizens United Supreme Court case, the court case that gave corporations the power to buy our government.” Simultaneous actions are planned to protest Citizens United, including an Occupy the Courts action at the Ninth District Court of Appeals at noon, to coincide with a national call to “Occupy the Courts

More than 55 organizations are involved in the day of action, and their focuses go beyond housing rights. These include students from Occupy SF State, Occupy Modesto Junior College, and other campus Occupy groups; anti-war organizations such as Iraq Veterans Against the War; environmental organizations such as the Rainforest Action Network; several unions, including UNITE HERE Local 2 and the California Nurses Association; the Chinese Progressive Alliance; and the Interfaith Allies of Occupy, which will be hosting an all-day “respite area” at Saint Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church at 756 Mission.

The array of events planned for Friday is overwhelming. There are demonstrations, pickets, and occupations planned at dozens of banks and corporations throughout the Financial District. Street theater is planned in several places, including an adaptation of A Christmas Carol by the San Francisco Mime Troupe at Justin Herman Plaza at noon and a show from Iraq Veterans Against the War that, according to IVAW member Jason Matherne, a Navy veteran who served in Qatar, “is called Operation First Casualty, because the first casualty of war is the truth.”

Matherne said, “corporations are profiting off the war at the expense of the 99 percent. Specifically, the Bechtel Corporation is using–misusing–billions of dollars to rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq.”

Tomorrow should be big. In a press release, organizers claim that “this is predicted to be the largest street protest of the Financial District since anti-war protests in 2003.”

Whatever the turnout, the Saint Patrick’s “respite” should be a boon, as weather reports indicate rain for tomorrow. Luckily, as Vicki Gray, a Deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of California, Occupy supporter and Interfaith Organizer, said of the sanctuary: “All are welcome. It will be warm, it will be quiet, and you will be loved.”

Protesters climb on Wells Fargo roof to protest evictions

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Activists held a massive banner and pitched a tent on the roof of the Wells Fargo branch at 16th and Mission Jan 14, while 150 supporters watched from the parking lot. Seven were arrested.

Organizers say the demonstration was meant to draw attention to the bank’s complicity in unfair foreclosures and evictions.

The protest was planned by a coalition of Bay Area housing rights and homelessness advocacy groups, along with organizers from Occupy San Francisco.

Sarah Shortt, Executive Director of the San Francisco Housing Rights Committee, says that abuses by corporate banks are inextricably linked to issues that her group has been working on for years; “evictions, displacement, affordable housing, and tenants rights.”

After rallying at 16th and Mission, protesters looked up to see that six had climbed to the roof. They unfurled a banner reading “Banks: No Foreclosures/Evictions for Profit!”

A fire truck arrived ten minutes later, and put up a ladder to give the police and firefighters access to the roof.

The Police Department cooperated with protesters, assisting a negotiation with the bank branch’s manager. A letter detailing their demands, including a moratorium on foreclosures and an end to predatory and speculative loans, was apparently faxed to Wells Fargo spokeswoman Holly Rockwood.

Protesters said that they would not leave the roof until they had a meeting scheduled with Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf. Six were arrested.
According to an SFPD statement, “A bank employee signed a private person’s arrest (citizens arrest) for trespassing.”

After those arrested were painstakingly shuttled down the ladder and into a police van, protesters blocked the van from leaving Hoff street between 16th and 17th for about ten minutes until it sped out through the parking lot. Protesters then marched to the nearby Mission Police Station, where a drummer from the Brass Liberation Orchestra, which often accompanies protest events in the city, was arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer with her drum.

Those arrested on the roof were cited for trespassing and released within hours. Supporters have put up money to release the drummer, known as Montana; bail was set at $8,100.

While the drama on the roof unfolded, Shortt, along with organizers from Causa Justa: Just Cause and the San Francisco Tenants Union, spoke about abuses committed against tenants and homeowners. They also spoke about Wells Fargo’s investment in private prisons. 

In a press release, organizers said that the protest was meant to call attention to “predatory equity scams, Ellis Act evictions, and immoral home loans.”

The Ellis Act allows landlords to evict tenants for any reason, if they don’t re-rent the units at a higher price in the next five years. The act hasno restrictions on selling the units as tenancies in common — a backdoor way to create condos — and that’s a lucrative and common practice in the Mission.

Ellis Act evictions increased by 8% in 2011, According to the San Francisco Rent Board Annual Report.

Jose Morales, a tenant who was evicted based on the Ellis Act and activist with the San Francisco Tenants Union, spoke to the crowd Saturday. Said Morales, “I have osteoporosis, I’m 82 and a half years old, but you still see me walking around with my sign.”

He displayed protest signs declaring that housing is a human right and urging single-payer health care.

Mesha Irizarry also told her story to the protesters. Her Bayview home was sold to Bank of New York, then transferred to Bank of America on September 1, but says that she refuses to leave and is fighting the foreclosure.

“We do not play the blame-the-victim game. We are not alone. We are not ashamed to sat ay what has happened to us. We are fighting back, and we are going to win” said Irizarry, who named several other women who are resisting foreclosures in Bayview. 

Irizarry began a San Francisco chapter of Occupy the Hood, a group dedicated to confronting problems that disproportionately affect the poor and people of color within the Occupy Movement. In San Francisco, the branch has focused mainly on defending homes from foreclosure and eviction. Saturday’s protest was part of that effort.

This demonstration was also a part of a series targeting banks, that protesters plan to top off with a day-long “occupation of the financial district” January 20th.

Said Occupy SF Housing Coalition media spokesman Gene Doherty, “The banks and the development companies that have gotten us all into (the foreclosure crisis) are a major part of the problem…it is their ethical duty, moral duty right now to be fixing this. And if that means it’s going to eat into their profit, that means it eats into their profit.”

 

The unlikely sheriff

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Michael Hennessey has served as San Francisco’s sheriff for half of his life, the longest such career in California history — and by all accounts the most progressive. Since taking office in 1980, Hennessey has been an island of liberal enlightenment in a political climate and law enforcement culture where tough-talking conservatism has been ascendant.

Yet in that era, Hennessey pioneered the creation of innovative programs to compassionately deal with drug abuse, violence, recidivism, and lack of education among jail inmates. He proactively brought unprecedented numbers of minorities, women, LGBT employees, and ex-convicts onto his staff. And he sometimes resisted carrying out evictions or honoring federal immigration hold orders, bold and risky social-justice stands.

His stances drew scorn from the local law enforcement community, which never endorsed him in contested elections, and criticism from political moderates and national media outlets. But San Francisco voters reelected him again and again, until he finally decided to retire as his current term ends next month.

He credits his success and longevity to the people of San Francisco, who have also bucked the harsh national attitude toward criminals and the poor. “San Francisco is still largely a liberal voting town,” he told us in his well-worn office at City Hall, “and not many liberals run for sheriff.”

That logic held up in this year’s election when progressive Sup. Ross Mirkarimi — Hennessey’s hand-picked successor — was elected to the post. Mirkarimi, who led a tribute to Hennessey at the Dec. 13 Board of Supervisors meeting, said he’s honored to be able to continue the legacy of someone he called “the most innovative sheriff in the United States.”

 

LONG RECORD

Hennessey was a 32-year-old Prisoner Legal Services attorney for the Sheriff’s Department in 1979 as he watched then-Sheriff Eugene Brown letting go of reform-minded staffers and ending his predecessor Dick Hongisto’s early experiment with a school in the jail. So Hennessey quit his job and focused on running for the office.

“I said to myself that I’m not sure if I’ll be a good sheriff or not, but I know I’m better than anyone else running,” he told us, later adding, “I certainly never expected to be sheriff for 32 years.”

Rank-and-file deputies — with whom Hennessey has periodically clashed throughout his career — always preferred one of their own in the job. “As seen in this election, they would like to see someone coming from their ranks,” said Hennessey, even though he notes that at this point, he has hired all but three of the department’s nearly 1,000 employees.

But Hennessey’s outsider status allowed him to deal with the inmate population in a way that the average San Franciscan appreciated, even if the average cop didn’t. “When you’re in law enforcement, all you see are criminals, victims, and people in law enforcement. But I would talk to all kinds of people in the community,” Hennessey said, noting that his experience as a jailhouse attorney gave him a holistic view of his job. “I worked in the jail and I got to know prisoners as people.”

They were people who had certain needs and problems, such as substance abuse, a common problem among criminals. And they were people who would be returning to society at some point, as Hennessey constantly reminded those who expected prisoners to be treated harshly or simply warehoused.

So he broke down the wall between the jail and the community, bringing the city’s social service providers and educators to work programs in the jails, and developing anti-recidivism and vocational programs that allowed ex-offenders to re-engage with the local community.

“Take the bold step of inviting the public in, not all the public, but those who can provide services and help address people’s problems,” Hennessey said. “Then we took the same concept and applied it to violent offenders, which is a little riskier.”

But it was a risk that has paid off as recidivism rates among jail inmates has dropped, and it’s been without any serious cases of inmates harming outsiders. Hennessey is particularly proud of the high school he created in the jail, which will graduate its next class on Jan. 3.

He said the school can truly transform those who end up behind bars. “It gives them a leg up and it’s like a booster shot,” Hennessey said. “They’re at the lowest point in their lives when the come to jail, and then they’re given an opportunity to accomplish something they haven’t been able to on the outside.”

One of many controversial moves during Hennessey’s storied career was his decision to allow female inmates to leave the jails and perform in theaters around San Francisco with the Medea Project, which was created by Rhodessa Jones and the Culture Odyssey art collective to turn the stories of female inmates into plays.

“Rhodessa is a very persuasive person who talked me into letting these women out of jail to perform,” Hennessey said, smiling at the memory. “It was very controversial.”

 

HIRING REFORMERS

Hennessey’s mentor in the Sheriff’s Department — the man who hired him, ran his first campaign, and then became his longtime chief-of-staff — was the late Ray Towbis, a tough activist whose social justice stands on behalf of tenants, prisoners, and other marginalized members of society would sometimes put Hennessey into difficult positions.

“Ray caused me aggravation many times,” said Hennessey, who nonetheless kept a life-sized cutout photo of Towbis in his office long after he was gone, a reminder to fight for the values he believed in.

There was the time when Towbis angrily flipped over a table and cursed at a panel of parole commissioners after failing to win the release of a model inmate, triggering a demand from the presiding judge that Hennessey fire Towbis, which the sheriff ignored.

Later, Towbis adopted a compassionate approach to the evictions that sheriff’s deputies are forced to perform, allowing deputies to spare tenants who were disabled or elderly and personally calling journalists to help publicize cases in which the parties bringing the eviction action might back off. That sensitivity stays with Hennessey today.

“That’s one of the tough spots I’m in is doing these foreclosure evictions,” Hennessey said, clearly troubled by his duty but also aware that it is one that he is required to perform, despite pressure from progressive groups urging him to refuse to carry them out.

As a lawyer, Hennessey said he must respect court orders and avoid being held in contempt of court, as Hongisto was in the mid-1970s for refusing to carry out evictions against tenants in the International Hotel.

Hennessey and his staff have always been willing to help tenants resist eviction. His office has an eviction assistance program, and Towbis would sometimes tip off the media to publicize certain unjust evictions. One time, Hennessey said Towbis even called hotel magnate Leona Helmsley and talked her out of allowing her company to evict an elderly ParkMerced resident. Instead, Helmsley allowed the woman to live rent-free for the rest of her life, an unlikely gesture of kindness from the “queen of mean” that Towbis helped publicize.

Hennessey draws the line at outright refusal to carry out a judge’s eviction order. “The sheriff shouldn’t be a law-breaker,” he says. Yet Hennessey’s lawyerly approach to complex issues also resulted in his recent policy of not honoring federal detention holds on undocumented immigrants in the jail, after discovering that the holds are administrative — different than arrest warrants — so defying them isn’t a crime.

The policy Hennessey created last year was to ignore ICE requests for prisoners who aren’t charged with felonies or domestic violence charges, noting that the latter charges are often brought but eventually dropped against people who are the victims of domestic violence.

Hennessey tapped federal and foundation grant money to fund his new treatment and educational programs, hiring an ex-convict to write his grant proposals, something that particularly irked many of his deputies.

But Hennessey believed that ex-offenders had something to offer the department so he didn’t back down in hiring them, going so far as to elevate Michael Marcum, who had gone to prison for killing his own abusive father, to the top position of undersheriff in 1993.

Police groups were outraged, but Hennessey said he had known Marcum for many years and valued his counsel and perspective on the criminal justice system. “It wasn’t hard because I knew him and I know of his integrity and loyalty,” Hennessey said.

Hennessy also irked conservative cop culture for aggressive efforts to make the department more diverse. “We wanted more minorities, we wanted more women, and we wanted gay people,” said Hennessey, who initiated outreach efforts to each of those communities.

In 1984, when he approved of an outreach event in Chaps, a gay leather bar in the Castro — complete with flyers around the Castro publicizing the event — it generated a furor that made headlines not just locally in the San Francisco Chronicle, but the National Enquirer tabloid as well.

Yet Hennessey was able to ride out each of the controversies, many of which happened to fall years away from his next reelection campaign. “Those are good times to make dramatic changes,” Hennessey said.

And because he also saw to some neglected basics in the Sheriff’s Department — such as improving training and the jails’ physical structures to prevent escapes and instituting policies to reduce violence between inmates and guards — Hennessey endured and became a beloved sheriff.

 

VICTORY OF PERSISTENCE

“I’ve always felt somewhat isolated in these beliefs,” said Hennessey, who said that the biggest failure of his career was not proselytizing those beliefs to a statewide and national audience more aggressively. Instead, he has focused on San Francisco, quietly turning the city into a national model for a different kind of policing.

Despite his progressive record, Hennessey has won plaudits and respect from across the political spectrum. In the last election, even the cops who sought to replace him and to undermine his endorsement of Mirkarimi — Chris Cunnie, Paul Miyamoto, and David Wong — all praised Hennessey and promised to continue his programs.

During the Dec. 13 board meeting, Sup. Mark Farrell — consistently one of the most conservative votes on the board — said he has known Hennessey almost his entire life (the sheriff and Farrell’s dad were law school classmates). “I cannot think of anyone with more integrity, a more trustworthy and honest person, than I’ve ever know in my life,” Farrell said.

Sup. David Campos said the immigrant community owes Hennessey a tremendous debt of gratitude. “You have been a tremendous champion for civil rights,” Campos said. “For that, history will judge you very kindly.”

It is a history that Mirkarimi pledges to continue. “Who’s going to fill his shoes? It’s impossible,” Mirkarimi said at the board meeting. “But we certainly have an incredible standard to try to live up to.”

As for Hennessey, he has a fairly clear idea of what he plans to do now that his long and unlikely run as one of the city’s top cops is over: “I’m going to goof around.” *

Occupy movement targets foreclosed homes

14

Throughout the Bay Area on Tuesday (Dec. 6), Occupy activists and housing advocates launched what they said will be an ongoing effort to place families back into their foreclosed homes, seizing bank-owned homes to put pressure on the banking industry to cooperate with homeowners in loan trouble.

In San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland, activists highlighted the nation’s foreclosure crisis by occupying foreclosed homes as part of the Occupy movement’s national day of action against foreclosures. Occupy Oakland activists said the tents are gone in downtown Oakland, but the move toward house occupations represents a new phase for the movement.

“I am here fighting for my home,” said Margarita Ramirez, addressing a crowd of 150 supporters at the West Oakland BART station. Ramirez said her family fell behind on their mortgage payments after her husband was laid off at the onset of the recession. The Ramirez family applied for a loan modification under the federally subsidized Home Affordable Modification Program(HAMP) hoping for some relief, but their lender, Bank of America, denied their request. Though HAMP is a federal program, it is administered though individual mortgage lenders.

According to Ramirez, with time left before her foreclosure, Bank of America urged them to explore other options to save their home. Then, inexplicably, Bank of America sold her home to Fannie Mae, leaving her family out of options despite what Ramirez says is Bank of America’s later admission to the error and willingness to work with the family. Fannie Mae however has held firm that the sale was valid, leaving the Ramirez family in an uncomfortable comprise of renting their own home.

In order to pressure Fannie Mae on behalf of the Ramirez family, activists with Occupy Oakland and Just Cause seized a vacant Fannie Mae owned foreclosure at 1417 Tenth street in West Oakland.

“This house is owned by the federal government, who we pay taxes to,” said Occupy Oakland activist Thaddeus Guidry, who said that he had struggled hard to get by during the recession. As he stood over a grill cooking hotdogs for the crowd gathered in the yard of the newly occupied house, he said he had found new inspiration and hope after becoming part of Occupy Oakland.

“Tonight will be the first night here in the house,” said Guidry. “This is my home now. We hope to house eight people here.”

Fannie Mae, which was effectively foreclosed on by the U.S. Treasury in 2008 under a process know as conservatorship, has received $169 billion in federal bailout money and remains under federal control.

The house on Tenth street is modest but spacious, with electricity and water. Downstairs, Just Cause is getting ready to start an eviction defense clinic. Just Cause organizer Maria Zamudio told the Bay Guardian that the group holds regular eviction defense clinics in San Francisco and Oakland, but the freshly occupied house in West Oakland would serve as a community space that people can drop into to learn their rights.

“We have been doing eviction defense for a long time. Since the recession, we have seen a change to tenants being pressured to leave by banks after landlords lose a house to foreclosure,” said Zamudio. “It is important for tenants to know that they do not need to leave a foreclosed property. The tenant has more rights in these situations then the homeowner.”

Only blocks away, Gayla Newsome stood in front of her house at 1536 Adeline St with another crowd of supporters from Occupy Oakland, and housing advocates from the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment(ACCE). She has been out of the house for six months after the foreclosure, leaving her and her children to stay with family in an overcrowded situation as the house sat vacant.

“This is the moment I take my house back. I’m a little scared, a little nervous, but I have to do this for my kids and grandkids. I have to do this for the other people who are going through this,” said Newsome.

Newsome said Chase Bank repeatedly denied receiving her HAMP loan modification paperwork. When she finally sent a copy by certified mail, they acknowledged the application and denied her eligibility in the program.

The eviction came swiftly. Unaware of the looming eviction, and believing she still had time to save her house even though Chase was outside the HAMP program, Newsome was called by her children while at work the morning of July 19.

“The kids were given 10 minutes to grab what they could before they were put on the sidewalk in their pajamas by the bank representative and the sheriff. They called me frantic,” recalled Newsome.

The recession has been hard on West Oakland. One out of 236 houses in West Oakland are in foreclosure, with many more families hard-pressed to hang on. Housing advocates say that foreclosures destabilize entire neighborhoods, as surrounding property values plummet and blight spreads.

“I’m not just here personally to reclaim my house, I’m here to say it is time to reclaim this neighborhood,” said Newsome, who laid the blame for the neighborhood’s sharp decline at the feet of the banks.

Residents of the neighborhood gathered for the rally shared stories of realtors cruising the neighborhood stopping to photograph even properties that are not in foreclosure or for sale.

“This was not an accident, this is redlining,” said Nell Myhand of Just Cause about West Oakland’s housing troubles.

“It’s time to take this to the politicians,” said ACCE organizer Shirley Burnell. “If they are not willing to help us, then they got to go. We will take them to the streets.”

Outside, activists signed up for shifts to help defend Newsome’s home from eviction, and started an emergency phone tree in case of trouble.

“The tents are gone but we are still here!” yelled an Occupy activist from the crowd as home defense clipboards circulated.

“I appreciate everyone doing this with me,” said Newsome. “That’s what Occupy is all about. We will take our homes back one at a time – no, five at a time.”

State of the occupations

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news@sfbg.com, rebeccab@sfbg.com

 

STUDENTS TARGET THE 1 PERCENT

Another Occupy offshoot sprung up at San Francisco State University Dec. 1 when about 150 students attended a march and rally that culminated at Malcolm X Plaza, now the site of the San Francisco’s newest Occupy camp.

Students symbolically blocked off ATMs, wrapped Chase Bank machines in cellophane and plastered nearby Wells Fargo and Bank of America ATMs with “meet the one percent” flyers profiling wealthy University of California Trustee Monica Lozano and California State University Regent Bill Hauck.

The highlight of the action came when SF State President Robert Corrigan arrived on the scene. The group was using the people’s mic to read a letter addressed to Corrigan, penned by the Occupy SF State General Assembly, demanding that he write two letters. One should be directed to the school’s chancellor and CSU Board of Trustees, “urging them to repeal the 9 percent tuition fee increase” that the board passed Nov. 16, and another should go to “the presidents of every other CSU campus asking them to also contact the chancellor and Board of Trustees regarding a repeal of the 9 percent tuition fee increase.”

Corrigan listened, then participated in a frank question-and-answer session with protesters, urging them to contact Sacramento legislators. Yet he refused to write those letters or declare support for Occupy SF State.

Afterwards, the students returned to Malcolm X Plaza and erected about 15 tents, which organizers said would contain “books, food, and homework help” along with providing shelter for sleeping protesters.

 

OCCUPY LA MISIÓN

In the Mission, where city officials have been encouraging OccupySF to relocate from its current home in the Financial District, a separate new Occupy effort could be underway.

Organizer Enrique Del Valle says he and other organizers have been distributing flyers and talking to people and organizations throughout the neighborhood. “We’re getting it together to have a General Assembly,” he told us.

The effort is unrelated to the OccupySF General Assembly’s Nov. 29 decision to decline the city’s offer to utilize an abandoned lot at 1950 Mission Street, he added. Before the city made that offer, Del Valle, a community volunteer with connections with many Mission groups, says he was already working on forming a neighborhood occupation.

If Occupy SF had set up shop in the space offered by the city, “We would have worked with them,” he explained, “but set up somewhere else.”

Meanwhile, Mayor Ed Lee and OccupySF are still waiting for one another’s next moves. On the evening of Dec. 1, when San Francisco Police officers surrounded the camp in steel barricades, protesters felt another raid was underway. But they resisted and took down some barricades, causing police to suddenly back down and remove the rest.

“They’ve just been mindfucking us,” OccupySF protester Markus Destin told us. “As soon as they spend all that money breaking us down, we’ll just come back in a week and re-encamp.”

Mayoral Press Secretary Christine Falvey said Lee wasn’t aware OccupySF rejected his offer: “We haven’t heard back one way or another from the group. The offer is still out there and the group has all of the information they need from us. We are awaiting a decision. Mayor Lee has made it very clear to the group that he supports their first amendment rights and their right to assemble, but that overnight camping at Justin Herman Plaza is not an option for the long term because of the health and safety problems it creates.”

 

OCCUPY AGAINST FORECLOSURE

Community members rallied outside a foreclosed Visitacion Valley home Dec. 1 before moving their protest to the offices of the company that purchased the property.

At 11 a.m., dozens gathered in front of the residence where 75-year-old Josephine Tolbert had lived for nearly 40 years. A day earlier, Tolbert had arrived home with three young grandchildren in tow to find her locks changed. Organizers say the evicted resident needs to access the house to retrieve food and medicine.

The crowd — which included neighbors, friends, and members of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), OccupySF, and Occupy the Hood — demanded that Tolbert be let back in. According to Bayview resident and self-proclaimed “foreclosure fighter” Vivian Richardson, “They would not let her in to get food, diapers, or her diabetes medicine.”

Tolbert had run a daycare business from her home for 20 years. One of her regular clients, a mother with two young children, arrived during the rally. She was surprised to find that Tolbert was locked out of her home and unable to care for her children that day.

“I want to get in my home so I can resume my business,” Tolbert said. “That’s my occupation there, I don’t have any other way of caring for myself.”

The group then headed to the offices of True Compass Loan Services, LLC, the new owners of Tolbert’s home. About 20 supporters gathered at the Ocean Ave office, where ACCE organizer Grace Martinez singled out True Compass owner Ashok Gujral, who owns a $2.75 million home and multiple restaurants, according to a press release from a group calling itself the Foreclosure Fighters.

“The man is worth $10 million, and he has a bunch of limited liability companies,” said Martinez. “Everyone has been shocked at how this man could do this, he knows she is a senior.”

According to Martinez, Gujral personally refused to let Tolbert into her home Nov. 30. He and others from the company “don’t want her in there because they say she’ll refuse to leave,” Martinez added. Calls to Gujral’s office were referred to attorney Jak Marques, who did not return Guardian requests for comment.

A True Compass representative informed protesters “there’s no one here to talk to you,” then swiftly shut the door. But when a few protesters went around through a side entrance and let everyone else in, the group took their protest to the hallway inside.

They remained there for almost an hour, chanting, pounding rhythmically on the walls, and flooding the office on the other side of a locked door with phone calls, demanding Tolbert be allowed to return to her home to retrieve her medicine and belongings.

Five police officers arrived almost immediately as protesters entered company offices. One explained to the protesters that if they didn’t leave, they would face arrest for trespassing. A heated but measured back-and-forth ensued, in which protesters insisted that if Tolbert was his mother, the officer would feel differently. The officer, Lieutenant C. Johnson, responded, “If it was my mother — I don’t know. I have a house for my mother. But I feel for Josephine, and for the millions of other Americans in the same situation.”

Martinez quieted groans from protesters, replying, “You’re part of the 99 percent, and we’re not going to shoot the messenger.”

Organizers conferred and decided to leave the building voluntarily. Sergeant R. Young, who was also at the scene, told the Guardian, “It’s heartbreaking to do this. Their freedom of speech is a constitutional right that we take a sworn oath to protect.”

 

THE SEEDS OF A NEW AMERICA?

Does the Occupy movement signify a new beginning for America? Is history repeating itself? Is violence inevitable? These were some of the big questions pondered by a handful of prominent Bay Area writers, thinkers, artists, and activists Dec. 1 during a panel discussion organized by Salon.com.

Dan Siegel, who most recently made headlines for resigning as Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s legal advisor because he disagreed with her decision to order a police raid of the Occupy Oakland encampment, was a panelist. “The perspective of Mayor Quan and other mayors, besides reflecting the 1 percent, reflects a misguided paradigm,” Siegel said. “The nation’s clearly in an economic crisis that this country has not seen since the 1930s. The mayors should be on the side of the 99 percent. They ought not be the lapdogs of Wall Street.”

Renowned author Rebecca Solnit also participated in the panel discussion. Asked if she thought Occupy symbolized a new beginning, she reflected on the past. “Huge mistakes were made on the left,” in past social movements, she said. “It was supposed to be the revolution, but the women were still expected to make the coffee.” She offered that Occupy represented an evolved manifestation that had benefitted from lessons learned over the years.

“It’s a culmination of decades of refining, searching, and building coalitions,” Solnit said. “It’s the beginning in the sense that summer’s the beginning. We’re reaping the fruit of … what’s been imagined.”

It’s also provided a spark for campus-based organizing. “The Occupy movement has given a tremendous amount of wind to the sails of the student movement and had a consciousness-raising aspect,” said Matt Haney, executive director of the University of California Student Association. “Now they are prepared in a new way to join all of those other folks who are also suffering.”

A key question put to panelists was whether Occupy ought to consider running candidates for office. In response, panelist Melanie Cervantes, an artist and activist, got to the heart of the issue. “What is political power? Is it just representation?” she asked.

Cervantes pointed out that autonomous social movements in Latin America have given rise to leftist political leaders, and she spoke of the past successes of mass-based organizations. “There were things that preceded us generationally, and they worked,” she pointed out. “There’s a lot of different ways people are experienced in trying to change things.”

Panelist Peter Coyote, an actor, activist, and founder of a radical underground group called The Diggers, offered an analogy in response to the idea of Occupy running candidates for office. “If you take a healthy goldfish and throw it into polluted water, it’s gonna get sick,” he said.

Solnit framed her answer as an analogy, too. “We live in a really crummy house with roaches and a leaky roof … Occupy is saying, let’s try to build a better house,” she said. “Our demand is for a better world, isn’t that obvious? We’re building a whole new political vocabulary, a whole new sense of possibility.”

As to the question of whether violence is inevitable as the movement continues to unfold, some panelists discussed nonviolence as a protest tactic, while others focused on the violent behavior of law enforcement officers against protesters. “You don’t hear students talk about using violence,” Haney said. “It’s more like how do we deal with violence that’s being used against us?”

Siegel stressed that the protests ought to be disruptive, yet nonviolent. “The question for our society is, who has the power?” he said. “At the end of the day, we live in a nation state, and people control things. And if they continue to control things, we’re screwed.”

 

WEST COAST PORT BLOCKADE

Occupy Oakland organizers have been engaged in planning yet another shutdown of the Port of Oakland on Dec. 12, which will coincide with attempts to shut down West Coast ports in San Diego, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Longview, Tacoma, and Anchorage. “On December 12, the Occupy movements in different cities will … effectively shutdown the hubs of commerce, in the same fashion that Occupy Oakland shut down the Port of Oakland on November 2nd, the day of our general strike,” according to a Call to Action on WestCoastPortShutdown.org. “The message to you from Occupy Oakland in the face of police raids and continued disruptions of workers lives by the 1 percent is the following: The Occupy movement will strike back and rise again! We will blockade all of the West Coast Ports on December 12th in solidarity with longshoremen, port workers and truckers in their struggle against the 1 percent!” Steven T. Jones contributed to this report.

Homes for the 99 percent

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news@sfbg.com

Pressed by foreclosures, evictions, and an economic crisis with the gnawing tenacity of an early winter flu, San Franciscans protested in neighborhoods throughout the city on Saturday, Dec. 3. Marches from four of the city’s most impacted neighborhoods merged in the Financial District to pressure landlords, banks, and what the Occupy movement has dubbed the 1 percent to ease the spreading hardship surrounding housing in San Francisco.

“The 99 percent tenants and homeowners can no longer let the 1 percent banks and real estate speculators destroy our city and our lives so we’re marching in the neighborhoods and on the streets today,” asserted the statement read by the Occupy SF Housing coalition to the crowd gathered in the Financial District. The message echoed through the glass and granite corridors in front of Wells Fargo, passed along in a thousand voices by the now ubiquitous “mic check” style of Occupy crowd communication.

Housing advocates warned that a steady stream of foreclosures, climbing rents, and lagging job opportunities are driving even native San Franciscans out of the city for the relatively affordable housing in the East Bay or forcing them out of the region altogether, transforming the face of San Francisco into an older, whiter, wealthier demographic.

Throughout the economic crisis, San Francisco as a whole has posted lower foreclosure rates than surrounding counties. At first glance, San Francisco, with one in 880 homes facing foreclosure, looks like a safe harbor in the state’s troubled residential real estate market compared with the statewide foreclosure rate of one home in 243, according RealtyTrac. That represents 55,312 residential units across the state. Nationally, one in 563 homes was in some stage of foreclosure as of October 2011, the most recently released numbers.

However, a near absence of foreclosures in affluent, stable, San Francisco neighborhoods like Pacific Heights and Noe Valley hide troubling foreclose rates in the city’s blue collar ZIP codes that far exceed national and statewide levels. In the 94124 zip code that includes the Bayview and Hunters Point, one in 180 homes received foreclosure filings, higher then Oakland’s overall average rate of one in 245 homes — levels that reflect the experience of some of the nation’s most hard hit areas.

Of the 1,513 homes currently listed on the San Francisco housing market, 1,255 were in the pre-foreclosure, auction, or bank-owned stages of the foreclosure process, representing roughly 82 percent of the available housing stock.

At the downtown headquarters of Wells Fargo, Occupy protesters were placing some of the blame for the deepening hardship at the feet of the big banks. According to the Occupy SF Housing coalition, Wells Fargo is the mortgage lender for 226 homes in San Francisco that are in some stage of foreclosure. That represents about 18 percent of the total homes in San Francisco under foreclosure.

In neighborhoods like Hunters Point, these evictions have turned into an economic cascade of household wealth in decline, even for those who have managed to hold onto their homes.

With foreclosures flooding the market, the median sales price for homes in Hunters Point from Aug. 11 to Oct. 11 was $167,500. This represents a decline of 13.2 percent, or $25,500 per home on average, compared to the prior quarter. Sales prices have depreciated 62.6 percent over the last five years in Hunters Point, wiping out equity families have built over years, and leaving those who hang on stuck in underwater mortgages, where their debt far exceeds the value of their home.

“Predatory equity loans make a quick profit (for the lender) at the expense of home owners in the Bayview,” said Grace Martinez of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). “There are 11 homeowners on a two-block stretch of Quesada in default or have already lost their homes.”

While the Obama administration has tried to ease the foreclosure crisis through the federally subsidized Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), only a small percentage of people who apply through their mortgage holder for relief under the program receive a loan adjustment. At Wells Fargo, only one in five borrowers applying for HAMP relief have received a loan modification.

Protesters sitting in the streets in front of Wells Fargo demanded that the company establish a moratorium on all foreclosures until it reforms its loan modification practices, halts the eviction of homeowners who have faced foreclosure, and instead offers them a rental option to keep them in their homes — a solution they say will ease the suffering of those caught in the middle of the banking crisis.

The banking and real estate driven economic crash has lead to the largest drop in home ownership nationally since the Great Depression. At the same time that home ownership has become increasingly out of reach for many San Franciscans, increases in rental rates and high competition for rental units are driving out many blue collar San Franciscans from the transit-friendly Mission District, in favor of a generally younger, wealthier, more educated, tech-savvy population.

As rallies took place across the city Saturday in the lead up to the afternoon’s Wells Fargo protest, a group of concerned residents and community groups gathered at 24th and Mission to highlight San Francisco’s other housing crisis — the rental market. The other marches started in the Castro, the Bayview, and the Tenderloin.

Much of the turnover of long-occupied rent controlled housing units in San Francisco comes as a result of the Ellis Act, a state law that allows evictions when an owner’s family wants to move in or when the unit is taken off the rental market. Brenda Nedina’s family is facing an Ellis Act eviction at 874 Shotwell Street.

“I’ve lived in that unit my whole life. My family has lived in the unit for 28 years,” said the tearful, 25-year-old San Franciscan native. “We would love to stay here, but with rents so high, it is not likely that we would find a place in San Francisco.”

Nedina, who works a service industry job at Pier 39, says the economic crisis has made it more difficult for her survive in San Francisco. She has had to cut down her college course load to get by in the tough economy. The troubles will get more complicated if her family is priced out of the city, as critical health services that they rely on are available through their San Francisco residency.

“A lot of people suffer through this as a private problem, but we are making it a public problem, and if the problem belongs to all of us then so does the solution,” said Maria Poblet of Just Cause, hugging a tearful Nedina as she addressed a crowd gathered at 24th and Mission streets.

Latino families like Brenda’s continue to be forced out of the Mission District by rising rent, and less economic opportunity for them in the recession. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the past decade has seen a 22 percent decrease in the Mission’s Latino population.

“Landlords often abuse the Ellis Act as a way to remove tenants from rent controlled units,” Just Cause organizer Maria Zamudio told the Guardian. “I’m occupying Kaleidoscope free speech zone art space on 24th and Folsom. My slumlord landlord is not down with that mission,” said artist and gallery proprietor Sara Powell, also facing a Ellis Act eviction after pressuring her landlord to address substandard building maintenance issues. Powell’s landlord withdrew a standard eviction process that housing advocates said was unlikely to succeed before launching the Ellis Act eviction.

“With the help off the 99 percent and with right on our side we are going to fight this and we are going to win,” said Powell, whose gallery next door to Philz Coffee is a cornerstone of the neighborhood’s multi-ethnic arts scene. The San Francisco Rent Board has received more than 4,000 petitions to remove rental units from the real estate market since 1999 through the Ellis Act. While Ellis Act evictions have seen some decline during the economic crisis, more Ellis Act evictions are now concentrated in the Mission District, where 40 percent of all Ellis Act petitions are now filed. At the same time, evictions based on breach of lease throughout the city are on track to double pre-recession numbers this year as more and more San Franciscans are have trouble earning enough to keep up with the city’s exorbitant rental rates. According to Just Cause, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the Mission District is now $2,497. “The only way to keep our Chinese, Latino, Arabic, English speaking neighborhood is to fight like hell for our homes,” said Poblet. “Even before Wall Street was occupied, we have been defending this neighborhood. This is the neighborhood of the 99 percent.”

Bank of America frets about Occupy

An internal Bank of America email has surfaced, making it clear that the megabank is concerned about the national day of action against evictions and foreclosures being carried out today, Dec. 6, by the Occupy Wall Street movement. The leaked internal memo suggests BofA is taking Occupy housing actions very seriously.

According to the email, which was sent to BofA’s third-party Field Services suppliers, the nationwide protests “could impact our industry.”

“We believe protests will likely take place tomorrow at auction sites, homes that are being foreclosed, homes in the eviction stage, and vacant homes,” the BofA memo notes. “We want to make sure that we are all prepared.”

It goes on to emphasize three points: do not engage with the protesters, ensure that vacant homes are secured, and report “media incidents” to 800-796-8448. I called that number to verify that the email was real, and sure enough, a spokesperson confirmed that it was.

The memo concludes with proof that the Bank of America has been paying close attention to activist websites. “The website occupyourhomes.org has a story posted of a Bank customer we are researching,” the email notes. “The web site has an event finder that can help identify upcoming protests.”

After the Guardian called the BoFA to determine whether the email was real, media relations representative Jumana Bauwens followed up with this statement:

“As a matter of normal course of business, when we are alerted to activities that may affect our real estate owned properties, we inform our third party contractors. This is standard operating procedure. The safety of our associates and third party contractors is our first priority. It is the bank’s policy to protect and secure our properties for the investors who own them. Bank of America is committed to helping our customers with home retention solutions and other foreclosure avoidance programs. Foreclosure is always our last resort.”

Homeless families still waiting for a meeting … and housing

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee still has not met with homeless parents organized by the Coalition on Homelessness to discuss their proposed solutions to combat the growing problem of youth homelessness. Nor has the mayor’s office responded to multiple Guardian phone calls inquiring why a meeting hasn’t been scheduled.

Homeless parents organized by the Coalition entered City Hall last Wednesday to raise awareness about a growing problem of San Francisco families lacking a permanent home, and to request a meeting with mayor, whom advocates first contacted Oct. 26.

Coalition on Homeless executive director Jennifer Friedenbach said the mayor’s office had offered to schedule a meeting with a mayoral representative, but not with Lee. “Why would we meet with a representative?” she asked. “We want a meeting with the mayor himself. It should be important for the mayor to meet with parents in a crisis.”

As the Guardian reported last week, the number of homeless families on shelter waitlists citywide has risen to an unprecedented high of 267, while the number of homeless students in public schools identified by San Francisco Unified School District stands at a high of 2,167. Both figures suggest homelessness is on the rise in a city where rents are well above average and the recession has given rise to job loss, evictions, and foreclosures. A nationwide Occupy Our Homes day of action scheduled for today, Dec. 6, is meant to draw attention to tenant evictions and homeowners losing their properties to bank foreclosure.

Part of the problem facing newly homeless families in San Francisco is the lack of availability in public housing and other housing assistance programs such as Section 8 rental assistance vouchers. The waitlist for public housing units in San Francisco stands at between 24,000 and 25,000 — enough would-be tenants to fill the roughly 6,500 units in the city’s public housing system nearly four times over. The San Francisco Housing Authority closed its waitlist for public housing several years ago. The waitlist for Section 8, a separate program administered by the federal government, is also closed.

“Why do waiting lists close? The demand for low-income housing so far outweighs the available vacancy,” said San Francisco Housing Authority (SFHA) spokesperson Rose Dennis. “A number of housing authorities have had to close their waitlists, because we cannot serve the people who are not on the waitlist right now. This is not unique to San Francisco.”

Nevertheless, advocates with the Coalition on Homelessness say part of their strategy is to pressure the mayor to revamp units sitting empty in housing authority properties so they can be used for housing.

Asked about this, Dennis responded that there are relatively few vacancies, and that all vacant units are already in the process of being prepared for new tenants — some of whom have already been identified and promised a unit, and others who are part of a pool of applicants undergoing a screening and selection process.

Housing Rights Committee executive director Sara Shortt, however, told the Guardian public housing tenants she’s worked with have long observed boarded-up units on SFHA properties. She added that they’ve raised concerns about the tendency for empty units to attract rodents, graffiti, or squatters engaged in drug sales or use, which can lead to violence.

Friedenbach said she’d heard from multiple people seeking public housing units who said they’d been promised a unit only to experience delay after delay, for weeks on end. Dennis said it takes SFHA between one and 45 days to move a tenant into a unit once the housing has become available, depending on the status of the tenant.

In addition to the conflicting accounts, another complicating factor is that the actual number of vacancies in housing authority property seems difficult to pin down. Dennis told the Guardian that the occupancy rate in SFHA property typically stands at around 93 percent. Since there are roughly 6,500 units total, this would imply that there are about 450 vacant units. Yet Dennis also stressed that the number of vacant units is always around 225, give or take, and has hovered consistently around that level without any dramatic spikes in vacancy.

A SFHA report to its federal parent agency, the Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which housing advocates received as part of a Freedom of Information request, listed a total of 847 vacant public housing units as of May 2011. That’s nearly twice as high as a 7 percent vacancy rate, and almost four times as high as the 225 vacant units Dennis said the authority consistently has in its system.

“That’s not a vacancy rate,” Dennis explained after we sent her a copy of the document. “That’s a cumulative, historic count that HUD has that is different from day-to-day management. These are not numbers that accurately represent what you would go out and see on a site. These numbers have a lot of other aspects to them.” She added, “The numbers that I gave you are accurate and true.”

The Guardian has placed a call to the Human Services Agency, as well, in hopes of sorting out some of these issues. We’ll update this post if we hear back.

Dick Meister: Six ways to heal the economy

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By Dick Meister

 Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

The AFL-CIO has come up with an ambitious six-point plan for healing our very sick economy – one of the best plans that have yet been suggested by anyone.

Point one calls for rebuilding the school, transportation and energy systems by spending at least $2.2 trillion to restore crumbling 20th century infrastructure. As the AFL-CIO says, it would be an investment that would put millions of people to work while laying the foundation for the nation’s long-term growth and competitiveness with other nations.

Point two is as direct: “Revive U.S. manufacturing and stop exporting good jobs overseas.”  That would involve, among many other steps, reforming and enforcing tax policies that are currently encouraging U.S. companies to have manufacturing done in other countries. And enhance Buy America standards, increase investment in job training and oppose free trade deals.

Point three: Provide federal help for hiring people to do at least part of the work that needs to be done nationwide. That could create millions of jobs in distressed communities, especially communities of color, where much of the work is badly needed. In doing so, pay competitive wages and do not replace existing jobs.

Point four: Help federal, state and local governments avoid more of the layoffs and cutbacks of public services that have been a major drag on the economy. Congress should make a commitment to not lay off any more federal employees. It should prevent more state and local layoffs by providing increased federal funding of Medicaid when unemployment is high and providing additional federal funds directly to communities “to save and create jobs and protect and restore public services.”

Point five: Extend unemployment benefits for at least a year to those whose benefit payout time has expired. “Our economy continues to suffer from a massive shortfall of consumer demand . . . the primary reason why businesses are not hiring.”

The AFL-CIO calls for combining the extension of benefits with providing relief to homeowners facing foreclosure. If banks lowered the principal balance on mortgages to current market value, the AFL-CIO calculates that “over $70 billion a year would be pumped back into the economy, millions of families would be able to stay in their homes and over one million jobs would be created.”

Point six: “Reform Wall Street so that it helps Main Street create jobs.” That would mean channeling capital into productive sectors of the economy – more lending to small businesses, for instance – and enacting a federal financial speculation tax to discourage harmful speculation and “make Wall Street pay to rebuild the economy it helped destroy.” The government should “enforce tough safeguards to stop the kind of cheating and massive fraud on Wall Street that precipitated the crisis of 2008.”

Many of those who did indeed cause the crisis are still in control, many still doing just what brought on the economic ailments that so deeply affect the country. It will take a lot to loosen their tight grip on the economy. But it can be done if we are wise enough to adopt reforms such as the AFL-CIO advocates.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

Alerts

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alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY 9

Student Day of Action

ReFund California begins its Make Banks Pay week of action by organizing a protest to shut down a local branch of Wells Fargo, a contributor to the financial collapse of 2008 and the current foreclosure crisis. Students from City College and the San Francisco State University will join forces to call for banks to help restore the deep cuts to higher educations that they helped cause.

Noon, free

Gather at SFSU Quad to take the M bus to West Portal and march to the bank

www.makebankspaycalifornia.com

 

THURSDAY 10

Poor People’s Decolonization

Join Occupy Oakland, POOR Magazine, and other groups for a march on four government offices that promote the criminalization and deportation of poor people from around the world: the Oakland Police Department, Oakland Housing Authority, Alameda County Social Services, and U.S. Department Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Noon, free

Gather at the OPD

455 Seventh, Oakl.

www.occupyoakland.org

 

 

Picket Hotel Frank

Wells Fargo and its Hotel Frank management company, Provenance, refused to recognize the Unite Here Local 2 contract, increased the workload for employees, and haven’t paid any medical or pension coverage. The National Labor Relations Board has found Hotel Frank guilty of violating federal labor laws, including firing and disciplining workers for engaging in union activities, but only this daily picket seems capable of making a difference.

3-5:30pm, free

Hotel Frank Geary and Mason, SF

www.hotelfranksf.info

 

FRIDAY 11

Bay Area Resilience

Help formulate regional plans by community groups, social movements, and public planners for a strong economy, climate adaptation, and emergency preparedness. Bay Localize, Communities for a Better Environment, Global Exchange, and other groups are coming together for this Bay Area Convening on Resilience and Equity. Come and join the movement.

9am-3pm, $7-10 (includes lunch)

California Endowment Conference Center 1111 Broadway, Oakl

leanne@baylocalize.org

colin@baylocalize.org

 

SATURDAY 12

OccupySF Teach-In

Learn about the OccupySF movement and what it’s all about by attending the General Assembly at noon followed by a march to downtown at 3pm. Meet at the “SF Free School” poster.

Noon- 4:30 p.m., free

Justin Herman Plaza

Embarcadero and Market, SF

www.occupysf.com

 

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Avalos offers resolution supporting OccupySF and its camp

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In the wake of last night’s violent police raid on the Occupy Oakland encampment (a still-tense situation that we’re now on the scene covering) and two similar late-night police crackdowns on OccupySF in recent weeks, Sup. John Avalos and co-sponsors Eric Mar and David Campos are introducing a resolution at today’s San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting that calls for the city to explicitly allow the OccupySF encampment and its related infrastructure to remain.

That resolution (the full text follows below), which Avalos legislative aide Raquel Redondiez says will be the subject of a special hearing on Monday before being considered by the full board on Tuesday, Nov. 1, grew out of testimony from OccupySF participants that Avalos solicited at last week’s board meeting following a late night police raid on Oct. 16 that resulted in five arrests and many injuries.

As we report in this week’s paper (see “Mixed messages,” to be posted this evening, Tues/25), at that Oct. 18 board meeting, Mayor Ed Lee took the position that no tents, kitchens, or other infrastructure would be permitted, a stance that Police Chief Greg Suhr seemed to soften slightly at a raucous Police Commission hearing the next day. In the face of those mixed messages, OccupySF grew into a full-blown tent city in Justin Herman Plaza and there have been no real conflicts with police since.

Both the San Francisco Police Department and the Mayor’s Office were slow to respond to messages we left all week seeking to clarify the city’s policy toward OccupySF, but both finally got back to us last night after the article had gone to press.

SFPD spokesperson Daryl Fong told us, “We’re still currently doing daily safety inspections at Justin Herman Plaza and continuing to provide leafletting…We’re educating the campers about violations and concerns for public safety,” such as unsanitary conditions or unsafe camping structures.

But he said OccupySF hasn’t been given any deadlines for removing structures and there are no current plans for another raid. “Our goal is to get compliance from the campers voluntarily,” he said. “This situation is being continually monitored as it progresses.”

When we asked the Mayor’s Office about the contradiction being Lee’s stance and the city’s reaction to the growing tent city, Press Secretary Christine Falvey wrote, “The mayor’s position on Occupy SF has not changed. He has directed his departments to facilitate peaceful protest, but not allow structures, tents, or a permanent campsite. He wants to ensure the area is safe for demonstrators and the general public. If you have been to the site, you may have seen the Fire and Public Health Departments conducting inspections for public health and safety concerns and you may have seen Recreation and Park and Police staff informing people of the parks and public safety codes that prohibit camping equipment. Individuals are being informed daily of this and the city’s Homeless Outreach Team is offering services to anyone in the area who may need it. The policy stands and departments are educating the group about what is and is not allowed and the mayor expects those who want to use the space to protest, to follow the rules.”

But OccupySF protesters say they have no intention of leaving the space, believing it’s their right to be there as part of a national movement spotlighting the greed and corruption of the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. And when I told Falvey that the encampment seems to defy the mayor’s stated position, she wrote, “The mayor has asked several departments to enforce the existing codes, and I understand a number of informational contacts have gone out daily to educate those using the plaza about what is allowable in addition to Fire and Public Health inspections to make sure open flames or dangerous materials are not being used or stored at the site.”

I told her that didn’t address my question, and I asked for a reaction to the Avalos legislation that would explicitly allow “tents, tarps, First Aid supplies, environmentally clean and fire-safe energy sources, and the ability to store, prepare, and serve hot food,” which is the reality now on the ground. I’ll update this post when I get a response.

In the meantime, here’s the full text of the resolution:

[Expressing Support for Occupy Wall Street Protest Movement and the People’s Right to Peaceful Assembly in San Francisco]

Resolution Supporting the Occupy Wall Street Protest Movement and Urging Mayor Lee to Uphold People’s Right to Peaceful Assembly and Collaborate with Occupy SF to Ensure Safety of the Protestors, their Supporters, and the Greater Public.

WHEREAS, “Occupy Wall Street” was formed by a broad spectrum of people coming together to protest the corporate-serving economic and political system controlled by the 1 percent, profiting at the expense of 99 percent of the people; and

WHEREAS, Three years after the current financial crisis caused by Wall Street speculators and profiteers, the unemployment rate in the United States is still at the highest level since the Great Depression with the unemployment rate in San Francisco currently at 8.3 percent; and,

WHEREAS, The United States’ major banking institutions, which have been bailed-out by the government and United States taxpayers, have done little to prevent massive foreclosure of residential properties or support the revitalization of local economies by sustaining small businesses; and,

WHEREAS, Since 2008, there have been 1.2 million foreclosures in California, with 12,410 homes in San Francisco alone; and,

WHEREAS, The “Occupy Wall Street” protest movement has struck a chord with the people of the United States and around the world, inspiring over 900 similar protests and solidarity actions across the country, where tens of thousands of people have come out to express their deep indignation against Wall Street greed and systemic socio-economic injustices; and,

WHEREAS, The “Occupy” demonstrations are a rapidly growing movement of people from all walks of life with the goal of occupying public space in order to create a shared dialogue and assert demands for economic justice; and,

WHEREAS, The “Occupy” demonstrations have been supported by the California Nurses Association/ National Nurses Association, American Federation of Labor -Congress of Industrial Organizations, Change to Win, International Longshore and Warehouse Union-International, Teamsters Joint Council 7, Services Employees International Union, Laborers International Union of North America, and many others; and,

WHEREAS, The OccupySF demonstrations began in September with small gatherings of people and have since grown and gained supported from thousands of individuals, community and faith-based organizations, and unions; and,

WHEREAS, On October 12, a 500-person march and civil disobedience organized by local community groups received national media attention, exposing the struggles of San Francisco residents against foreclosure, corporate control, and spiraling unemployment; and,

WHEREAS, The October march and protest action culminated in civil disobedience and, despite the arrest of 11 people, lacked any antagonistic conflict between the police and protestors; and,

WHEREAS, Similar to demonstrations in hundreds of cities across the United States, OccupySF demonstrators are asserting their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in order to create public dialogue around corporate control of the political process and public space; and,

WHEREAS, Numerous and various groups continue to join the protesters at OccupySF, including an interfaith clergy contingent and the California Nurses Association, which has set up a First Aid tent to support the protestors and help ensure public safety; and,

WHEREAS, The City of San Francisco has a right and duty to ensure the safety and security of the general public including the protestors and their supporters; and,

WHEREAS, Since the beginning of the protest, City actions have resulted in the confiscation of food, tents, sleeping bags, and other belongings from the OccupySF demonstrators as well as causing preventable injuries and arrests; and,

WHEREAS, The City has a lengthy and proud history of political protest and has upheld the rights of people to free speech, freedom of assembly, and peaceful protest; and,

WHEREAS, With clear leadership from the Mayor, City departments can set a tone of cooperation and collaboration with OccupySF protestors and supporters, help mitigate harm, and address any public safety, health and sanitation concerns, all while avoiding unnecessary conflict; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the Board of Supervisors supports the Occupy Wall Street protest movement and the rights of all who protest to assemble peacefully and enjoy free speech in the City and County of San Francisco; and, be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Board of Supervisors recognizes that Free Speech and Freedom of Assembly should not be limited to daytime nor short-term activities and we deem the need of protesters to have tents, tarps, First Aid supplies, environmentally clean and fire-safe energy sources, and the ability to store, prepare, and serve hot food reasonable; and, be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Board of Supervisors urges the Mayor, the Police Department, and other City agencies to uphold the rights of protestors to political speech and public assembly, and to recognize that the full exercise of such rights requires that participants are able to attend to the needs of everyday life, and have a space free from harassment; and, be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Board of Supervisors urges Mayor Ed Lee to direct the Recreation and Park Department, the Department of Public Works, the Police Department, and other City agencies, as relevant, to be flexible and to collaborate with protestors for the safe sharing of public spaces, in which demonstrators can exercise their political rights and the City can address legitimate safety concerns while avoiding unnecessary antagonism; and, be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Board of Supervisors urges Mayor Ed Lee, in order to prevent further harm and conflict to any members of the public, including protestors of OccupySF, to direct the Police Department to ensure that there will be no use of force to dislodge the OccupySF demonstrators and confiscate their belongings.

Oakland is hella occupied

The Occupy Oakland encampment at Frank Ogawa Plaza is about 150 strong at any given time, and with a march, rally, and live musical performances on Oct. 15, the protest zone in the heart of Oakland was buzzing with energy.

Oakland is home to hundreds of seasoned activists who’ve made headlines in the past for organizing mass demonstrations against police violence, pushing back against cuts to public education, and moving to save Oakland public libraries from closing their doors in the face of budget cuts. Now, in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy movements that have sprouted up across the country in recent weeks, they’ve staked out a tent city in front of Oakland City Hall to join the national chorus condemning income inequality, corporate influence in government, and the role of major banks in unleashing a tide of unemployment and foreclosure that has swept working-class and middle-class Americans.

In just a week’s time, the occupiers have managed to create a community space governed by consensus that has the feeling of being an established space. Wooden pallets create walkways that criss-cross through the tents, which are staked close together. A kitchen area has been set up, with industrial-sized pots and pans piled high, and regular meals served to more than 100 people. There are portable toilets, portable outdoor sinks, a library supplied with zines and radical literature, an arts and crafts area, a kids’ area, a first-aid tent, and a makeshift stage in the plaza near the entrance of the 12th Street BART station.

The space is continually evolving, several activists told me when I chatted with various people at the camp. A few small arguments have broken out here and there, but on the whole things have been extraordinarily peaceful despite the close quarters and wide-open vibe. This past weekend, a tall structure with a pointed rooftop materialized overnight, adorned with colorful fabric and curtains. Tables and chairs had been brought in so people could play cards, hay bales served as structural dividers between encampment spaces, and the plaza was adorned with posters bearing statements like “The First American Revolution Since the First American Revolution.”

What sets the Oakland occupation apart in some ways is the diversity of people who’ve been drawn to participate. From black youth born and raised in Oakland, to Muslim women donning traditional headscarves, to white anarchists, to parents of young kids, to college students, to people in wheelchairs, to aging hippies, to transgender people, Occupy Oakland reflects the diversity of the city — and it’s bringing together a group of people who might not necessarily share the same space at the same time on a regular basis.

Boots Riley of The Coup performed at Occupy Oakland on Oct. 13, and other musicians have treated occupiers to live music as well. Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Josh Fattal — the three activists who were imprisoned in Iran and are now back on the West Coast — were scheduled to speak on Oct. 17. At one point just before dark on Oct. 15, a group of bikers blew past the camp in what seemed to be a show of support, performing tricks while everyone applauded.

On Oct. 15, Move On staged a Jobs Not Cuts rally at Occupy Oakland, but because activists decided by consensus beforehand that they did not want any politicians speaking at their encampment, several elected officials whom the group had invited to speak were struck from the roster. (However, a representative from the office of Congressional Representative Barbara Lee did deliver a prepared statement, which some occupiers characterized as going back on their agreement with Move On.)

Danny Glover delivered a passionate speech at the rally, telling the crowd, “We are here because it’s the right time to be here.” He spoke about transforming and reinventing the system so that it could work for the people and the planet, asking, “What does it mean to be a human being in the 21st Century?” He urged the activists to hold their ground, and then said, “What it’s going to look like, I don’t know.” But he asked people to believe that a new system could come out of this grassroots movement, “based on our faith in humanity.”

All photos by Rebecca Bowe

OccupySF protesters shut down Wells Fargo HQ

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At 7 a.m. this morning (Wed/12), protesters against corporate greed were poised for one of the most impactful actions since OccupySF began.

About 50 people associated with the Foreclose Wall Street coalition were seated in front of all the entrances to the Wells Fargo corporate headquarters on California and Montgomery streets. Back at the site of the OccupySF camp in front of the Federal Reserve Bank on Market Street, protesters gathered. They held a rally there that included a speech from Sup. John Avalos, the only mayoral candidate to actively support the movement.

When the march started off to join those blockading Wells Fargo, there were about 1,000 protesters present, according to estimates of those present. They stopped off at the Hyatt across the street from the Fed to support Unite Here Local 2 hotel workers who are involved in a boycott against the Hyatt before continuing in the march. Protesters chanted, “make banks pay” and “we are the 99 percent.”

The march reached the Wells Fargo building and began rallying there. The sit-ins in front of entrances were still going strong. There, activist and author Naomi Klein addressed the crowd.

When Wells Fargo employees began to arrive at work. According to Max Bell Alper, one of those involved in the blockade, “a number of bankers were trying to get in and yelling at us.” Then they called the police.

When the police arrived, Alper says, “at first, the people from the march were physically blocking them from arresting us.”

Around 8:30 a.m., 11 were arrested. They were brought to the North Beach/Chinatown police station, were they were cited for trespassing, held for about an hour and then released. When I spoke to Alper, he was back from the police station, chanting and marching with the crowd.

He told me that when his parents’ home was foreclosed this year, they moved in with his uncle, whose home was then foreclosed. Currently his grandmother is facing foreclosure. He listed Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America as the banks involved in his family members’ foreclosures.

“Enough is enough. Banks need to recognize that they need to pay,” said Alper.

Protesters continued to block every entrance besides the employee entrance on Leidesdorff Street with sit-ins, as well as march in picket lines, chant “banks got bailed out, we got sold out”, and cheer as organizers spoke. The bank was unable to open until they chose to leave around noon.

SFPD Lt. Troy Dangerfield said that no more arrests were made because Wells Fargo did not request them- apparently, they preferred to wait it out. Said Dangerfield, “It would make it worse if they had to remove them. It doesn’t look good.”

Dangerfield insisted that he “had no stake whatsoever” in what will result from the Occupy movement throughout the country. He has noticed, “it seems like it’s growing nationwide.”

Activist Lucia Kimble sat helping to block the bank’s California entrance from 7:15 to noon. She says protesters voluntarily left at noon because, “We’ve been out here five hours. We successfully shut down the bank. I think our message has been heard.”

Kimble, 27, is a Bay Area resident and housing counselor with Causa Justa :: Just Cause, a group that works to advocate for housing and tenants rights for low income and African American and Latino communities in San Francisco and Oakland. Kimble said that her group was part of the coalition that put on this event “to give a voice to those most affected by our economic crisis.”

Kimble listed the Foreclose Wall Street West coalition’s demands with this action: an immediate moratorium on foreclosures, fixed annual interest rates, an end to Wells Fargo’s financing of high-interest Pay Day Loans, and that they “pay their fair share – pay taxes and give them to the community.”

Shaw San Liu of the Chinese Progressive Association – which just voted to endorse OccupySF and today joined the movement – was an energetic and inspiring speaker throughout the event. Said Liu: “A lot of folks have been saying there’s no diversity in the Occupy movement…In San Francisco it’s becoming clear the diversity of groups that support this movement. Youth, community groups, anti-war, we’re all coming together”

Liu maintained that the problems she was fighting did not start with the financial collapse in 2008. “In my work in Chinese immigrant communities, I know that even before the recession, we were already suffering from unemployment, low wages, and poor housing. I’m excited to see how the country is waking up to oppose a system that allows 1 percent of the people to control 42 percent of the wealth.”

The California Nurses Association, one of the many labor organizations that have showed support for OccupySF, was present at the protest. Said Pilar Schiavo, 36, a CNA organizer from Oakland, “I’m fed up with social inequity. I’m tired of corporate America buying politicians and passing laws to benefit the rich.”

“Patients are foregoing treatment and losing their healthcare. The nurses are here fighting for everyone,” she said.

Schiavo’s father, Bill, drove from Sonora to be at the protest today. A 65-year-old retired electrician, he says that the medical benefits he felt fortunate to have after retiring from a secure job have become unaffordable. “My medical benefits went up $300 a month this year. Who can afford that? Does anyone get a $300 raise? But Wall Street has benefits galore.”

Schiavo made his opinion clear about the Wall Street crisis and bailouts: “It was unbridled theft. We’re angry.”

 

SF’s foreclosure crisis

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OPINION Foreclosures are still ravaging San Francisco neighborhoods.

As steward of the city’s property roll and head of the department that appraises every home in San Francisco, I see every day the toll the mortgage crisis is having on real estate values and the city budget.

Thousands of Notices of Default have been filed with my office in the last few years, and every Monday there’s a vivid reminder San Francisco is far from out of the woods on foreclosures as homes are auctioned off on the steps of City Hall.

Two Mondays ago, lifelong Bayview-Hunter’s Point resident Curtis Warren’s home — which my office assessed to be worth $165,000 — was scheduled to be auctioned because he had fallen behind on a $15,000 debt.

Imagine having your home foreclosed upon over a loan less than 10 percent of the value of the property. Imagine a family in your neighborhood being put on the street and a home in your community sitting vacant under such circumstances.

Fortunately, the foreclosure sale of Curtis’s home was canceled. Curtis is a member of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) — a grassroots organization working to help victims of the mortgage meltdown.

Unfortunately, cases like Curtis’s are all too common. That is why I am fighting foreclosure as your Assessor-Recorder and working to get Sacramento to act, too.

ACCE recently published startling findings in their “The Wall Street Wrecking Ball” report.

San Francisco homeowners are estimated to lose $6.9 billion in property values as a result of foreclosures.

Foreclosure costs San Francisco government an estimated $42 million in lost revenue.

Local government spends an additional $19,229 on increased safety inspections, police and fire calls, and trash removal and maintenance for every foreclosure. This costs San Francisco $73 million.

San Francisco LITERALLY cannot afford this foreclosure crisis, which is why I have joined with Supervisors John Avalos, Malia Cohen and Ross Mirkarimi in support of the following plan of action:

A foreclosure fee to ensure banks pay their fair share: The city should charge a $10,000 to $20,000 fee per foreclosure to defray loss of home values and costs to taxpayers. This fee would raise roughly $2 billion to $4 billion over the next year to partially reimburse local governments.

A strong AG settlement. Any agreement between banks and the 50 attorneys general must include 1) a monetary settlement commensurate with the harm caused by banks; 2) limited release of bank liability; 3) principal reductions fairly distributed to communities hardest hit by predatory lending and foreclosure; and 4) homeowner restitution for irresponsible and illegal foreclosure practices.

Stop preventable foreclosures: The city should require court-based mediation programs to help homeowners modify loans and end the “dual track” process, whereby banks continue foreclosure proceedings while simultaneously negotiating loan modifications.

Wall Street must pay for foreclosure-related blight: Banks must maintain and pay for the cleanup of blighted, vacant homes in neighborhoods.

As long as our economy and housing market is being hampered by foreclosures caused by banks and Wall Street, we must continue to fight for common-sense solutions that protect our neighborhoods and the city.

Phil Ting is assessor-recorder of San Francisco.

On the streets with Occupy San Francisco

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The messages sounded yesterday on the streets of San Francisco – delivered in speeches, chants, signs, songs, interviews, and the petition handed to Chase Bank officials by a half-dozen protesters before their arrest – should resonate with most Americans. After all, while rich corporations and individuals have been accruing ever more wealth, the vast majority of us have been falling behind.

“Banks get bailed out, we get sold out,” was one of those chants by the several hundred people who marched through the Financial District – our OccupySF effort building off the two-week Occupy Wall Street events – targeting some of the villains of the economic meltdown: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Charles Schwab, the Federal Reserve, and Goldman Sachs.

They may be relatively small and easy to ignore, these “occupations” of Wall Street and San Francisco and other cities that are entering their third week, but they’re being driven by a palpable anger and stirring critiques of economic and political systems that exploit the powerless. But as the foreclosures, layoffs, and other hardships continue, this nascent movement could have some staying power.

“I think it’s starting to wake people up out of their complacent distraction,” Robin Kralique, a 26-year-old SF resident holding a sign that read “Let’s have the GDP measure happiness,” told the Guardian. “We’re planting the seeds for a better future, and I’m hoping it wakes some people up.”

Like many of the young protesters gathered outside the corporate office building at 555 California at the start of the march, she was inspired by Occupy Wall Street. They’re angry watching their economic opportunities evaporate as more and more of the country’s wealth accumulates in fewer and fewer hands.

“There’s an insane amount of greed in this country,” 24-year-old Erin Kramer, a dancer and performance artist stuck in a corporate job she needs to get by, told me. Her sign read, “Don’t be afraid to say revolution!”

And many weren’t, with calls for revolution on the tips of many lips, albeit tempered with healthy doses of realism. “Even if it isn’t at critical mass yet, it sets the stage for the next revolution,” Kralique said when I asked her what she hoped this moment would accomplish.

Sup. John Avalos, a progressive mayoral candidate who spoke at the rally, is pushing legislation to create a municipal bank in San Francisco, one that would invest far more money in local projects and small businesses than Bank of America, which manages most of the city’s money.

“We have to figure out new ways to use our local dollars to help our economy,” Avalos told us. “The message here is we’re pulling our dollars out of these banks unless they help us.”

Before Avalos spoke – asking the boisterous crowd, “Have you ever felt like you’ve been had?” – activist Bobbi Lopez was on the microphone decrying the “lack of accountability for the people responsible for this decline.”

And then, the march was off – flanked by dozens of San Francisco Police officers on motorcycles, riding bicycles, and in cars – to deliver creative forms of protest around the Financial District, including a funny song and dance routine by Fresh Juice Party in front of the Schwab office, singing, “Land of the free, home of the brave, this is the street our labor paved.”

In fact, that was almost literally true at the San Francisco march, which was shepherded by off-duty city workers from SEIU Local 1021.

“This Wall Street thing is really spreading. The message of a small group of people in New York has really spread…Wall Street is a symbol of all this corruption, cronyism, and greed,” Gabriel Haaland, an organizer with SEIU Local 1021, told me at the start of the march. “It’s really resonated with our members…It’s been picking up steam as things have been unraveling over the last year.”

An hour or so later, Haaland was one of six people who staged an occupation of the Chase branch at Market and 2nd streets, along with two women in his union who have been unsuccessfully battling bank foreclosures on their homes – Brenda Reed and Tanya Dennis – and three other activists: William Chorneau, Manny S. Tucker, and Claire Haas.

Tipped off by Haaland, I was inside the bank lobby as the march approached and a police officer on a bicycle came inside to warn bank officials, “The protest is headed your way, you may want to secure the premises.”

He and another officer helped prevent protesters from getting inside, but the six protesters had already infiltrated the building. They began chanting and pulled blankets out of a suitcase, laying them out and placing them on the ground.

Reed spoke for the group, demanding to meet with JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimond to present a petition calling for a halt to the bank’s foreclosures. Through tears, she told the story of her long struggle to protect her home from foreclosure by Chase, which had taken her loan over from another lender.

SFPD Lt. M.E. Mahoney told the group, “You’re not going to be able to camp out here and wait for the CEO to come talk to you,” asking store managers whether they wanted to make a citizen’s arrest. They did, but Mahoney also told Reed that he would watch as she handed the petition to store managers.

“I’m here today because for two and a half years, I have desperately tried to get Chase to work with me,” Reed told a bank employee as hundreds of protesters outside looked on and chanted their support. “You have put me through hell. You’ve destroyed my health, you’ve destroyed my business, and it’s not fair what you’ve done.”

After she was finished, another bank manager (who refused to give his name) told Reed, “Just to let you know, we are compassionate to your cause,” drawing from the protesters the frustrated retort, “No you aren’t!” Through the day, protesters noted that the banks have been profitable and don’t need to be foreclosing on so many homes, sitting on so much capital, and funneling their profits out of desperate communities and into the accounts of wealthy investors – particularly after being bailed out by taxpayers in 2008.

Outside, the crowd chanted “Go, Brenda, go!” and “Let those people go, arrest the CEO!”

The crowd remained outside for more than an hour as police tried to wait them out, finally arresting the occupiers on trespassing charges and quickly citing and releasing them, apparently in the hope it would clear the people out of congested Market Street. “That was my quickest arrest ever,” Haaland, a veteran of many labor actions and progressive protests over the years, told me afterward.

Reed addressed the crowd on a bullhorn, explaining that she refinanced her home in 2007 with a shady “pretender lender” who misrepresented what her monthly payments would be. They ballooned to a level she was unable to cover and she sought a loan modification from Chase, which had taken over the loan from the now defunct Washington Mutual.

“Chase Bank is trying to steal my home of 38 years,” she told the crowd. “Jamie Dimond, come out from under your rock and let me talk to you.”

She decried how government bailed out the banks and then allowed them to aggressively foreclose on homes whose mortgages they didn’t originate, but who acquired the title out of the complex financial derivatives that has sliced and diced mortgages into complex financial instruments.

“It’s government-sanctioned fraud,” she said. Despite what she said were Chase’s plans to auction her home in Oakland next month, she pledged, “You will not get my home. You will not get what belongs to me.”

But whether that kind of fierce resolve – voiced over and over again, by hundreds of activists fed up with economic injustice – translates into any kind of real change is yet to be determined.

Six arrested protesting bank foreclosures during Occupy SF

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Six activists protesting bank foreclosures were arrested after occupying Chase bank on Market Street in downtown San Francisco this afternoon (Thurs/29) as part of a broader action organized to mirror the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City.

Brenda Reed, Tanya Dennis, William Chorneau, Manny S. Tucker, Gabriel Haaland, and Claire Haas were all arrested inside Chase on Market and Second streets while hundreds rallied outside, according to Guardian City Editor Steven T. Jones, who is there at the scene. The occupation was staged following a march that originated at San Francisco’s Goldman Sachs offices at 555 California Street and then progressed to the offices of CitiBank, Charles Schwab, and Chase.

The arrests prompted protesters to chant, “Let those people go! Arrest the CEO!” They also chanted, “Go, Brenda, go!” and “Shame on Chase!”

When they first entered the downtown San Francisco bank, Reed, who has battled a Chase foreclosure for two years, demanded to speak to the CEO. “You have put me through hell, and devastated my health,” she told the bank manager.

“Just to let you know, we are compassionate to your cause,” the manager responded, but was greeted by shouts of “No, you’re not!” from the crowd.

When Reed and her small group of supporters were asked to leave, they refused. As of 5:20 p.m., there was still a crowd of hundreds protesting out front.

UPDATE: They’ve been released, and Reed made the following statement to the crowd: “Chase Bank is trying to steal my home of 38 years.”

She said, “It’s government-sanctioned, nationalized fraud,” and added, “there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people like me, all over California.”

Video by Steven T. Jones

 

 

SF’s foreclosure crisis

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EDITORIAL Here’s a great issue for the San Francisco mayor’s race: The big banks that the city uses to hold nearly half a billion in cash deposits are part of a group of financial institutions that are costing the taxpayers $115 million.

That’s the amount the city will wind up paying to cover the lost property taxes and other costs associated with home foreclosures, according to a new report. And the authors of the report, the Community Reinvestment Coalition and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, estimate that San Francisco homeowners are going to lose a total of $6.9 billion in value because of the foreclosure crisis.

Most of the discussion around foreclosures has focused on the national picture — but there’s plenty the city can do.

The numbers are alarming: 16,355 San Francisco homeowners are underwater on their mortgages, meaning they owe more than the house is currently worth. By 2012, the report estimates, 12,410 local homes will be in foreclosure.

That means 12,400 families facing displacement — which adds to the homeless crisis, puts more pressure on the rental housing market and most likely will force many people who work in the city to find housing a long commute away.

Foreclosures also drive down the value of neighboring property — which means the city collects less property tax. The cost of sending deputy sheriffs out to evict families, of patrolling and monitoring vacant houses, dealing with increased crime in the area — all of that adds up. According to the report, every foreclosure costs the city $19,229. Add up the loss of property taxes and the direct costs to taxpayers and the bill exceeds $115 million.

Two of the top four banks involved in foreclosures in California are Wells Fargo and Bank of America. Those just happen to be two of the three banks that have to contract to handle the city’s cash accounts — which contain $406 million, according to an Aug. 16, 2011 report by Budget Analyst Harvey Rose. So the city is giving its money to banks that are costing the city money.

The banks aren’t paupers, either — and have accepted huge amounts of federal tax money. B of A and Wells together received $270 billion in bailout money — and both are now making nice profits (enough that the CEO of Wells, John Stumpf, earned $17 million last year). They can afford to write down the underwater mortgages and arrange for foreclosure relief for people behind on the bills.

The report suggests that the banks be charged a fee — between $10,000 and $20,000 — for each foreclosure. That would offset the costs and provide a disincentive for throwing families out on the street. The candidates for mayor ought to be pushing that — but the city can do more.

The supervisors ought to call a hearing on the crisis and demand that the B of A and Wells executives come down and explain why they’re moving so slowly on write-downs and relief. And they should be told, in very clear terms, that the city will no longer put a penny of its money in banks that are damaging, instead of investing in, San Francisco.