Fight-back meeting maps plans to stop foreclosures

After being hammered by an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions, some 75 poor and working people from Detroit and southeastern Michigan packed a Dec. 8 organizing meeting here. The meeting ended with unanimous approval for resolutions and actions demanding a moratorium on foreclosures and utility shutoffs.

Abayomi Azikiwe speaks at Detroit housing crisis meeting. Also pictured are Pat Johnson, Alfreda Weathers, Bryan Pfeifer (standing), Rev. Ed Rowe, Maureen Taylor, Jerry Goldberg and Vanessa Fluker. WW photo: Kris Hamel

The crowd included activists from a number of labor, community and student organizations, among them the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, Green Party, Morningside Community Organization, Operation Rainbow/Push Coalition, the American Federation of Teachers, the Michigan Nurses Association, the United Auto Workers and Workers World Party.

Detroit City Council member Joann Watson attended and Rev. Ed Rowe of the historic Central United Methodist Church, a center for many progressive struggles, welcomed the participants to his church.

Meeting chair Abayomi Azikiwe of the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice (MECAWI), sponsor of the meeting, stated: “What’s actually being advocated by the mortgage companies, what’s being published in the Wall Street Journal, what’s being talked about by the federal government through President Bush, is far too little, far too late. What they’re talking about is allowing these same bankers, these same financial interests who are responsible for this crisis, to determine who is to get a fixed interest rate, who is to get some semblance of relief.

“The only real solution to this crisis is a moratorium. We are in depression-like conditions in the state of Michigan. We have to put a stop to this. This is what we’re here for today,” added Azikiwe.

Progressive attorney and MECAWI leader Jerry Goldberg explained that three separate Michigan laws—MCL 10.31, 10.85 and 30.401—mandate that the governor declare a state of emergency during periods of crisis, natural or “man-made,” and provide special powers to meet the crisis.

MECAWI is demanding that Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and governors throughout the country immediately declare states of emergency in their respective states and use their emergency powers under the law to invoke a moratorium halting all foreclosures. MECAWI organizers point out that such a moratorium on foreclosures was enacted in Michigan and 24 other states during the 1930s and upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“This crisis is an emergency and it’s only the tip of the iceberg. It affects everybody. The Bush plan this week has already been exposed as a joke. It’s a voluntary plan. Well, that’s great. It’s like the prey going to the vultures and asking them for relief. It’s going to barely touch the problem. This is an enormous crisis. It has been brought on by many factors, including the racist predatory lending, the fraudulent practices of virtually every finance company in Michigan,” said Goldberg.

A Nov. 27 Detroit News article documented that at least 72,000 homes went into foreclosure in metropolitan Detroit over the last two years. Some Detroit neighborhoods had foreclosure rates of 17 percent. Although Black homeowners have been hit the hardest, this devastation continues to slam the white working class as well.

In Detroit 85 percent of mortgages are subprime and charge higher rates. And this is only the beginning, as tens of thousands more subprime mortgages are going to reset in the next few months, even as plant shutdowns and layoffs continue.

About 400,000 jobs have been eliminated in Michigan in the last six years, according to a recent University of Michigan study. Forty thousand households in Detroit have had their water turned off due to inability to pay and thousands more have had their heat shut off. These shutoffs are ongoing.

“The banks don’t need to be bailed out and they are the ones this government wants to bail out. The banks are the problem and they need to be attacked. We’re not talking about anything to bail them out. We’re talking about bailing out the working and poor people of Michigan and to hell with those banks,” said Goldberg.

“We say the people come before the corporations. The preamble to the state constitution says the health and welfare of the people are of primary concern. It doesn’t say the health and welfare of the rich. It doesn’t say the health and welfare of the banks. It doesn’t say the health and welfare of the corporations. It’s the people. And it’s time that the people get organized to assert our rights, that we come first.

“We have a right to housing. It’s a fundamental human right just like a job is a right. Just like food is a right. And the fact that we have to fight for these rights in the context of the U.S. today shows how criminal this system is and we better organize because it isn’t going to get any better unless we do,” concluded Goldberg.

During the comments section of the organizing meeting, many Black people described how, induced by racist predatory lenders and banks and largely through subprime loans, they or their loved ones had been foreclosed on and are now out on the street or subsisting as best they can. Those present heard of how seniors who had worked for decades to pay off their home are now out on the street or deep in debt.

Others, from predominantly white working class and multinational neighborhoods, described how foreclosures were also increasing daily in the suburbs as well as in Detroit.

Community activist and former Detroit School Board candidate Sandra Hines described how she and her loved ones had been thrown out of their home just one week earlier because of a foreclosure. The movers callously threw her and her sister’s household items—many brand new—in a dumpster as the women were being removed from their deceased mother’s home, which has been in the family since 1969. This scenario is playing out every day in Michigan and throughout the country.

Hines, Maureen Taylor of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, MECAWI activists and many others called for bold actions to win the moratorium and utility shutoffs.

Proposals that passed unanimously included demonstrations to protest bankers’ and lenders’ meetings the week of Dec. 9; planning for other militant actions such as blocking sheriffs from throwing people out of their homes, disrupting home auctions and more.

This fightback movement will build for a statewide protest at Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s State of the State address on Jan. 29, 2008. Community outreach and media committees were created at the meeting for this work to move forward.

People’s attorney Vanessa Fluker closed the meeting with an educational presentation about using legal rights to challenge predatory loans.