Most readers have probably heard the stories from earlier this week about Occupy protesters occupying foreclosed homes.
This piece will demonstrate even further proof that ACORN tactics and local ACORN affiliates with new names are a large part of Occupy protests.
Excerpts from CNN:
In more than two dozen cities across the nation Tuesday, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement took on the housing crisis by re-occupying foreclosed homes, disrupting bank auctions and blocking evictions.
Occupy Our Homes said it’s embarking on a “national day of action” to protest the mistreatment of homeowners by big banks, who they say made billions of dollars off of the housing bubble by offering predatory loans and indulging in practices that took advantage of consumers.
In Atlanta, Occupy Our Homes activists went to the courthouses in three of the area’s largest counties, DeKalb, Gwinnett and Fulton, Tuesday morning to disrupt the foreclosure auctions happening there.
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Hundreds of demonstrators slogged through the rainy streets of East New York, Brooklyn, stopping at the foreclosed homes that are littered throughout the low-income community and covering the “For Sale” signs with Occupy police tape.
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The protesters’ ultimate destination was a home that has been vacant ever since it was repossessed by the bank a couple of years ago. The plan was to take it over permanently and give it to a homeless family to live in.
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In Minneapolis, protesters are trying to block the evictions of several area owners who fell behind on their mortgages because of illness or income loss.
One homeowner they’re trying to help is Bobby Hull, an ex-marine and a master plasterer and contractor who has lived in his home since 1968. Hull still has income and access to financial help from family members, just not enough to pay his bloated mortgage principal.
“I can afford $800 or $900 a month; I can’t afford $1,200 to $1,500,” said Hull.
Foreclosure in his case made no sense, said Anthony Newby of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change. His mortgage balance was $275,000 but the auction of his home only fetched $80,000, less than one-third of the amount he owed. Everybody, including the bank, would have been better off reducing his balance to an affordable level, said Newby.
“The bank should have come up with some solution that would have kept him in the home,” he said.
A spokeswoman for Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) said the lender tried to help.
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“We have worked with Mr. Hull for the past two years to help identify a home retention solution,” she said. “During that time, we offered him a modification and later reviewed him for HAMP, but unfortunately he did not meet the guidelines for the program.”
Protesters converged on Hull’s home Tuesday, where they pitched tents and put up signs. The plan is to prevent his eviction, which is scheduled for February, by using a crowd of several hundred people to block an eviction order from being served.
In Chicago, activists are taking over homes left vacant due to foreclosure. In one of the houses they’ve taken command of on the city’s South Side, they’ve moved in a homeless mother and child, an evicted homeowner and a college student.
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According to organizer Willie J.R. Fleming, the house was abandoned by its owner and has been severely vandalized since April. The Occupy forces have repaired it and they are putting the finishing touches on the rehab today.
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Today’s demonstrations were just a warm-up for a major push starting in a few months, said Max Rameau, a housing activist with Take Back the Land, one of the organizations that has aligned itself with the Occupy Our Homes movement.
“This is an important practice round for our 2012 spring offensive,” he said.
Note the use of the term “spring offensive” as if they are the Taliban or some other guerilla group going to ground for the winter. Also note the tactics of theft of bank property and redistribution of that property to occupants other than the original owners in some cases. Additionally, many of these group names seem to have a familiar ring to them.
In 2009, WJZ reported, via Inside Charm City, that ACORN activists were breaking into foreclosed homes in Baltimore and 6 other cities:
A community organization breaks into a foreclosed home in what they are calling an act of civil disobedience.
The group wants to train homeowners facing eviction on peaceful ways they can remain in their homes.
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Near Patterson Park, the padlock on the door and the sign in the window tells part of Donna Hanks foreclosure story.
“The mortgage went up $300 in one month,” said Hanks, former homeowner.
She says the bank refused to modify her loan and foreclosed, kicking her out of the house in September.
The community group ACORN calls Hanks a victim of predatory lending.
“This is our house now,” said Louis Beverly, ACORN.
And on Thursday afternoon, they literally broke the foreclosure padlock right off the front door and then broke into the house, letting Hanks back in for the first time in months.
“We are actually trespassing, and so this is a way of civil disobedience to try to stay into our house,” said Beverly. “Legally it’s wrong, but homesteading is the only means that she has left to stay into her house. And we feel as though this is the right thing to do at this particular time to save this family.”
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The group says it was staging similar demonstrations in six other cities nationwide while urging a moratorium on foreclosures.
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“As you all can see, Don is reclaiming her home, and she’s putting a lock on her door at this time,” said Beverly.
But that padlock won’t stay there for long.
The current property managers told Eyewitness News they were unaware of ACORN’s actions Thursday and were contacting the police and their lawyers.
As Matthew Vadum points out:
ACORN Housing Corp. changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America Inc.
State-level chapters that have incorporated as new nonprofit corporations:
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Minnesota: Minnesota Neighborhoods Organizing for Change
Vadum also points out at Big Government that ACORN activists have been heavily involved in organizing Occupy Wall Street:
The Working Families Party, an infamous ACORN front group notorious for corruption, was instrumental in organizing the Occupy Wall Street protests, according to radical journalist Laura Flanders of Free Speech TV.
The protests, which have spread to several other large U.S. cities, are part of what ACORN’s neo-communist founder Wade Rathke calls an “anti-banking jihad.”
Working Families Party (WFP) organizer Nelini Stamp has “been here since day one and she is part of the organizing team and the outreach team that has managed to bridge the distance between that first day and this day and between the grassroots folks here and the labor movement,” Flanders said at the protest in lower Manhattan.
We are “actually trying to change the capitalist system we have today because it’s not working for any of us,” Stamp told Flanders in an interview. Demonstrators are asking “how do we really reform and bring revolutionary changes to the states?”
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it is indeed a duck. ACORN groups rebranded under other names are involved in these actions towards foreclosed homes and have been since well before they came under the Occupy Umbrella. Additionally, ACORN luminaries have been involved in organizing the larger movement.
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[...] == "undefined"){ addthis_share = [];}When the radical group ACORN was shut down, Jeff Quinton at Quinton Reports reminds us, the state and local chapters of ACORN reconstituted themselves as new non-profits. And guess what [...]
[...] recently indicated support of ACORN tactics that I previously wrote we’re being employed by occupiers. In meetings, on marches, on social media, and in snippets [...]
[...] that ACORN is back in the form of the Occupy Movement. When the radical group ACORN was shut down, Jeff Quinton at Quinton Reports reminds us, the state and local chapters of ACORN reconstituted themselves as new non-profits. And guess what [...]