The eviction/foreclosure resistance movement in the Twin Cities is strong and growing. It represents not only the spreading of direct action tactics against corporate greed, but also a rare and important development in community solidarity.
As nearly anyone in Minneapolis, and quite a few outside of the area, knows, a person named Rosemary Williams has become something of a touchstone for this resistance.
It’s a familiar story to anyone paying attention. Rosemary — a community-minded older person, Black and female-bodied, who, incidentally, lives not but a few minutes from me, as the bicycle rolls, over in the Central neighborhood — has lived on her block for over 50 years and in her current house for over 20. She fell on hard times and had to refinance to get by, and then found her monthly payment jacked over $1,000 a month. She couldn’t pay. She tried in vain to work out some sort of deal, but the mortgage company was having none of it. Because her story found itself on the TV and in the papers, the local councilperson intervened (or claimed to do so). For a brief period, it appeared a deal was imminent.
Last Friday, with no notice, Sheriff’s deputies arrived — along with representatives of GMAC, the lender — and locked the doors with all of Rosemary’s stuff inside, hung up no trespassing signs, threatened to mace concerned neighbors, and then left.
We — the plural is appropriate, so you know where I’m coming from — broke back into the house and removed the locks. We helped get Rosemary’s stuff out and stored off-site. And we then began an occupation of the property that continues to this moment, its sixth day.
At a time when banks and corporations receive enormous and unscrutinized amounts of public funds after years of record-breaking profits built on the backs of poor folks and made possible by nearly limitless graft, duplicity, and greed, it is unconscionable that members of my (or any) community find themselves homeless for totally reasonable inabilities to make payments.
Banks do not need a place to sleep; banks do not get hungry; banks do not have children; banks do not dream; banks do not have desires, loves, passions; banks do not hurt.
The latest word — from both reliable and less reliable sources (I’m looking at you, Elizabeth Glidden, in the latter case) — is that the cops are not interested in raiding the occupation (tough year, MPD?) and that GMAC is coming back to the table to hammer out an acceptable deal, like they would’ve done in the first fucking place if they weren’t so tone-deaf to public sentiment. So, good.
The coalition of anarchists, housing rights activists, poor folks, anti-bailout people, and concerned citizens created out of this seems to show signs of some larger possibility, though time will tell. The Sister’s Camelot truck rolling through the neighborhood, providing free organic produce and fruit; the Food Not Bombs meals; the children in the backyard or the long conversations between people who otherwise might never talk in the front. Something is happening. Its endurance is a question worth debating, its meaning something that we might have to wait and see.
But in the meantime? We fight until Rosemary and her family gets their house back for good.
And then we move on to Linda’s, and whoever’s up next.
No more dancing around the issue. No more half-steps. Occupy every home, fight every eviction, protect and defend every community member. Not another empty house!
