Occupy Atlanta takes on the banks — and wins!

Higher Ground Empowerment Center is a 108-year-old church located in the Vine City neighborhood of Atlanta, one of the most neglected areas of the city. It has long been a community resource, offering vital assistance, including a food pantry, youth summer camps and Saturday tutorial programs to the Black residents, many of them poor, who live in this struggling community.

Located just blocks from the Georgia Dome, home to the Atlanta Falcons, the area has drawn the attention of speculators and developers looking for cheap land and big future profits. Vacant lots and boarded-up houses can be found along its narrow streets.

In 2008, a massive tornado swept through this area and continued through downtown Atlanta. National news showed pictures of skyscraper hotels and business towers with hundreds of shattered windows. Yet, there was next to no coverage of the devastated neighborhood of Vine City. Falling trees crushed many of the small wooden-frame houses in the neighborhood.

Ferocious winds had toppled the steeple off the church sanctuary and severely damaged the building. For weeks after the storm, Higher Ground provided temporary shelter in other church buildings for many people who had lost everything in the tornado.

When the church’s insurance was insufficient to make all the needed repairs, it took out a $1.1 million loan from BB&T bank. However, the church was unable to keep up the loan payments, as it was impacted by the economy’s downturn, the loss of congregants during the 18-month reconstruction and the bank’s onerous interest rate.

Despite the pastor’s multiple attempts to modify the loan, in December 2009, BB&T took possession of the church and the surrounding properties. The bank tore down the rental buildings and small stores that had supplemented the church’s income and leased the sanctuary back to them in an amount still too high.

Facing imminent eviction on Jan. 13, church leaders contacted Joe Beasley, Southeast regional director of the Rainbow/Push Coalition and active participant in Occupy Atlanta. Within hours, activists pitched tents on HGEC’s grounds. Before a well-attended press conference on Jan. 12, it was declared “Occupied.”

On Jan. 17, following a 3-hour contentious negotiating meeting with BB&T management arranged by Beasley, HGEC Senior Pastor Dexter L. Johnson, members of the church, Occupy Atlanta, the National Action Network and others left the bank building with the deeds to all the church properties back in hand. BB&T had agreed to resell the church and surrounding land for $175,000 at 1 percent interest on a 25-year mortgage.

This is the second victory that Occupy Atlanta has won in recent months.

On Dec. 6, the organization came to the assistance of injured Iraq War veteran, Brigitte Walker. Her home in Riverdale, Ga., a southern suburb of Atlanta, was scheduled to be auctioned off on Jan. 3. Following well-publicized press conferences, a neighborhood cleanup and a community organizing meeting with other distressed homeowners, within 2 weeks, JPMorgan Chase modified her mortgage to an affordable amount.

Occupy Atlanta is in another struggle with Chase Bank over the foreclosure of the Pittman’s home in Atlanta. The house is in the Old Fourth Ward, the area of the city where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth home is located, and has been in the family since 1953.

Chase foreclosed on the house and moved to evict the Pittmans as Dr. Eloise Pittman, the head of the family, died of cancer. Activists with Occupy Atlanta have been camped out in tents in the front yard since Dec. 6. The bank has started and stopped negotiations several times.

Occupy Atlanta is urging supporters to call James “Jamie” Dimon, the chairperson and chief CEO of JPMorgan Chase, and demand a satisfactory conclusion to this blatant example of predatory lending. Call 212-270-1111 or fax 212-270-1121. More information is available at www.occupyatlanta.org