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In Cleveland, a single mother with two small children was facing foreclosure and eviction. Nothing new there; happens all the time. But this time, Occupy Cleveland heard about it.
Some of them went to her house and pitched a few tents in the dead of night. They brought in legal counsel, who went to a local magistrate. Just a day before the Sheriff was scheduled to evict her and her family, the magistrate issued a 30 day stay on the foreclosure.
The single mom homeowner appeared on local TV news outlets in tears, saying this bought her the time to pack properly and to come up with the funds to rent an apartment that would take her kids and allow them to continue to go to the same school. The Cleveland OWS folks pitched in, cleaning out the trash, and bringing back boxes to help her pack.
While this is a small victory, it does show the power that people have if they just stand together and stand up for members of their communities. Meanwhile, the bank will eventually foreclose, and then probably let the house sit vacant until it becomes truly uninhabitable(after it’s stripped of all its copper and metal and the windows are broken out and the electrical system too dangerous to turn on), but hey! it’s on the bank’s books as an asset and will inflate its stock prices by means of a lie. Until the next bailout.
At least, that’s what they’re banking on(all puns intended).
Little actions like these can really help the OWS movement in the eyes of local people everywhere. If nothing else, it was well done. This was a good thing, even though it solves no longterm societal problems.
6 Comments
Good for them.
Beautiful. recc’d.
Inspiring!! Think globally; act locally.
Thanks for posting this.
Beautifully done and wonderfully told.
One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. It is more important than landing on the moon.
Recommended!
Pretty cool thing to do. But IMO, this is a perfect microcosm for the movement itself: flashy gestures that don’t seem to actually fix anything … and in the last analysis don’t really even challenge the underlying system they are, by this point, pretty much enabling and accommodating. They didn’t help save the woman, they bought her time to do exactly what the banks want. Essentially just gave her a minute to hand her home over to with some shred of dignity.
It’s going to be interesting to see where this goes … it seems as if over the last couple days there has been a coordinated national effort to shut down all of these sites pretty much simultaneously.
I don’t think it’s going to be possible to just occupy much longer. By and large this protest – and the bulk of it’s participants – has been entirely working within the system they say is broken. It is totally stacked against them. Maybe the NYC folks will hold out for another few weeks on injunctions – but the truth is the trustafarians and aging flower-power set simply don’t have the stomach for the task at hand. When the authorities seriously tell them go home … my bet is 99% of the currently involved 99% will be heading home and settle into a routine of waving signs at the local park on alternate Saturdays and occasionally pulling Sheehan-style peaceful arrest stunts that ultimately just start to annoy the shit out of everyone in their ineffective lameness.
Park’s empty. They’re waiting for Bloomberg to recognize court injunctions and haven’t really responded in force in any way shape or from. I don’t ultimately see this being won in court. People who refuse to genuinely and successfully engage in resisting arrest will not be staying anywhere that the people who call the shots say they won’t.
It’s been fun, but OWS is increasingly looking like it’s rapidly approaching a dead-end to me. A legal quagmire while nothing changes and the represented are worn down in the same war of attrition we’ve been losing for decades. If the flagship occupations don’t show the strength to hold ground – they will cease to inspire the nation. If that happens, OWS lost. Begging for scraps before a judge isn’t change … we’ve been beat down by that for quite some time now. The inspiration they originally provided through standing up to it and refusing the game.
Not trying to put down their action … which genuinely was an awesome thing to do. Just feeling a bit cynical.