Carmen is a 23 year-old fighting to keep her family's home. Yesterday she was electrocuted by a taser at the Department of Justice while peacefully protesting with Occupy Our Homes and the Home Defenders League for her rights as a homeowner.
Occupiers, allies and community members from across the country came together in front of the DOJ to demand that Attorney General Eric Holder arrest the bankers responsible for upending the international economy through the housing crisis.
While Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf and his fellow banksters met in Salt Lake City, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) members mourned the damage they bank has caused the Bay Area with a protest at their Headquarters.
On Tuesday, April 23rd homeowners, tenants, faith leaders, and students from around the Bay Area demonstrated at Wells Fargo headquarters in solidarity with those at annual shareholder meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah. The memorial service in San Francisco focused on three themes: mourning lost homes, dreams, and lives as a result Well Fargo's predatory lending practices; standing in fellowship with protestors at the shareholder's meeting; calling for action and justice for homeowners, students, and all currently in the struggle against crushing debt.
While protesters gathered outside the San Francisco headquarters of Wells Fargo, other Californians went to Salt Lake City to protest at the company’s annual shareholders meeting.
“We recognize that there are a lot of predatory loan practices and racial loan practices,” said ACCE spokesman Melvin Willis. “They are making record profits while people are just struggling to have the 'American dream' — to live in a house and raise a family.”
He said foreclosures are still harming families, particularly in minority communities nationwide.
“That is unacceptable and that is why we are here today,” Willis said.
Thursday's event was part of a broader campaign of ACCE and the Home Defenders League to push Wells Fargo to change their practices in order to reduce foreclosures. The groups are calling on Wells Fargo to:
• Make principal reduction a core front-end strategy when considering loan modifications;
• Release data on race & income of the homeowners they foreclose on, evict or assist.
• Stop all foreclosures and evictions stop until these steps are put into place.
Protesters also called on Wells Fargo to end practices that profit from community losses, including foreclosure, payday-type lending and investment in private prisons.
Over the last few years, homeowners and residents around the country have taken a stand against the banks and fought foreclosures and evictions. The growing network of Occupy Our Homes supporters have signed petitions, made phone calls, and showed up to events to help families stay in their homes. Dozens of homeowners around the country have won their fights, but the crisis is far from over.
Communities have been destroyed as millions of families have already lost their homes to foreclosure, while millions more are underwater on their mortgages. The big banks are bigger and more powerful than ever. To date, no high level Wall Street executives have been prosecuted for their crimes, such as mortgage fraud and predatory lending. US attorney general, Eric Holder even admitted recently that in the administration's eyes, the banks are not only ‘too big to fail,’ they're now ‘too big to jail.’
As a new housing bubble fueled by Wall Street speculation is forming, it's clear that the financial industry didn't learn their lesson from the last mess. It's more important than ever for us to take action to demand meaningful relief for homeowners and prosecutions for the criminals at the top. Only through the power of thousands of organized homeowners taking action in the streets can we make the Attorney General and the President listen. Occupy Our Homes, the Home Defenders League, and others are joining fed-up homeowners who are ready to demand action-- join us the week of May 20th.
Over the next two months, Home Defenders from across the country will have an opportunity to tell their stories and fight back. Some will travel to Washington, DC the week of May 20th to make their voice heard directly at the Department of Justice. Join the fight! Sign up now to fight in your city. Scholarships will be available to attend the Department of Justice Action in Washington DC.
On Thursday, I posted about Lilly Washington, the woman who was visiting her son in a military hospital in Germany and returned to find her home had been foreclosed, and all her belongings sent to the city dump, including her son's Purple Heart. As part of the Home Defenders League launch, she hosted a barbecue at her home for 70 people, including her local City Council Member and news crews from four local TV stations. The above video is her local NBC affiliate coverage.
They took my home. Evicted me twice. Helped put me in the hospital six times. Threw everything I owned in the city dump. And when they sold my house out from under me back in 2010, I was in a military hospital in Germany, helping care for my son, who was in a coma from injuries suffered in combat in Afghanistan.
That’s crazy, right? But I never gave up. After Bank of America sold my home – I was already negotiating with them for a loan modification and they even told me that they would put the negotiations on hold while I cared for my son – I decided I wasn’t leaving and I reoccupied it.
The Home Defenders League fills in a lot of details here that weren't available in earlier reports:
Here’s what happened to Lilly when she came back from Afghanistan (her son, thankfully, emerged from his coma). She found a ‘for sale’ sign in the yard and a new lock on the front door. Her house had been completely emptied; the furniture acquired over years, the Purple Heart her son had earned when he was shot during an earlier tour in Iraq: all gone. Bank of America had illegally and fraudulently sold her house to Fannie Mae only days after she’d left the country. And, they’d thrown all of her belongings in the city dump.
So like David confronting impossible odds, she stood up and fought. She moved back in, fought the eviction in court, and replaced her furniture with donations from her church. When the Sheriff’s deputies came in January 2012 to evict her, Lilly won a stay of eviction. Then in April she found a judge who finally recognized that she had been robbed by Wall Street bankers and let her legally possess her home again.
The fight has cost her, though. Fighting the Sheriff’s deputies gave her a slipped disk. The stress caused her a heart attack. She’s gone to the hospital six times and is facing yet another surgery. She’s on disability. But she’s outraged that the banks can break the law, steal her house, throw away everything she’s ever owned, ruin her health without facing any consequences whatsoever. She’s headed back to court to force Bank of America and Fannie Mae to give her title to the house free and clear and make them pay damages.
A Phoenix, Arizona woman is taking on two mortgage giants, Bank of America and Fannie Mae, and the case is making its way through federal court. Lilly Washington is representing herself, and seeking ownership of her home and compensation for belongings that were thrown out when her home was wrongfully foreclosed.
Washington was in the middle of a loan modification with Bank of America when her son who is in the military was wounded and sent to a hospital in Germany. She informed the bank that she needed to go be with her son, and BoA assured her in a letter that they were aware of her trip and: "will await your return so that we can finish the loan modification process." She thought everything would be fine until her return.
But just days after leaving, the bank foreclosed, and Fannie Mae took ownership of her home:
"Everything was empty. Everything. Upstairs, downstairs everything was empty," says Lilly Washington.
Washington was stunned when she returned home and found a "for sale" sign in her yard. She managed to get back into the home and immediately started making calls.
"I said 'where did you put my stuff from the house. Which storage.' They said, 'we don't put in storage, it is at the city dump.'"
Washington had just returned from visiting her wounded son in Germany. She was gone for a month and half. Her son's Purple Heart was thrown away too.
"I said, my gosh how can you take that. He is fighting for this country. And you steal from his home, everything," says Washington.
Washington's church helped her refurnish the home as she wasn't able to recover any of her belongings, and she has been fighting for two years now to regain ownership.
