Facing foreclosure? Don’t panic!

BY ED FELIEN

Demonstrators outside the courthouse be-fore the Rosemary Williams trial on May 26.

If you and your family are facing oreclosure, don’t panic.  Stay in your home and call for help.  If your bank won’t talk to you, there are plenty of
other people who will.

Hennepin County is offering free workshops on foreclosure: “What happens during foreclosure? What do homeowners need to know? What rights do homeowners and renters have? What assistance is available?  These and other questions will be answered at a series of free mortgage foreclosure information workshops offered by the Minnesota Home Ownership Center—a counseling agency that provides foreclosure prevention education and outreach and pre-purchase information for homeowners—in collaboration with Hennepin County Taxpayer Services and the Hennepin County Library.  The workshops are for homeowners who are worried about making upcoming mortgage payments, are already behind on payments, or just want to learn more about foreclosure; and for renters whose landlords may be facing foreclosure. Participants can ask questions and get free, confidential advice from foreclosure counselors.”

The closest workshop is at the Augsburg Park Library, 7100 Nicollet Ave., Richfield, on Wednesday, July 8 at 6:30 p.m.  Call 952-847-5300 for more information, or call Ed Nelson, Minnesota Home Ownership Center, at 651-659-9336.

Hennepin County website http://hennepinmn.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?publish_id=12 So far, it seems, the banks haven’t got the message. They take billions of dollars from the public treasury, and, rather than restructure mortgages and help people stay in their homes, they spend it on big bonuses for company executives. 

When President Obama met with the CEOs of the biggest banks on April 3, he warned them about their excesses and told them, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” And there are people in the streets that are very angry.  They don’t have pitchforks yet, and they haven’t gone as far as the recent left coalition presidential candidate in Germany went in demanding that the head of the national bank be arrested, but they have had wide support and some success in slowing down the foreclosure process.

Rosemary Williams has been fighting her foreclosure in court with a little help from some friends. According to a report from Fight Back News Service (www.fightbacknews.org):  “In a packed Hennepin County Court room, May 26, District  Judge Lloyd Zimmerman decided to delay the foreclosure-related eviction trial of Rosemary Williams until June 22. A hearing on the legal issues to be considered at the trial is scheduled for June 16. Rosemary Williams, a longtime resident of the Minneapolis Central neighborhood, has won wide community support in her struggle to prevent her mortgage company from evicting her.
“Ms. Williams is contesting the foreclosure and eviction on several grounds. Hundreds of neighbors, friends and community members have signed legal requests to intervene in her case. Her supporters argue that her eviction, which will lead to another vacant home, would create a public nuisance for
the entire neighborhood.

Stef Yorek, of the MN Coalition for a People’s Bailout, said, “Low-income neighborhoods with high concentrations of people of color have been the hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis. Foreclosures and evictions destabilize communities, we need to keep people in their homes, not create more empty houses and more homelessness.”

Cheri Honkala, Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign said, “We are urging people to come to court on June 16 and June 22 to show solidarity with Rosemary Williams and her fight against foreclosure and eviction. The official plaintiffs on the ‘neighbors’ case are CANDO and dozens of physical neighbors. The two groups organizing in support of Rosemary Williams are the MN Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (267-439-8419) and the MN Coalition for a People’s Bailout (612-439-8419). Rosemary’s lawyers are Jordan Kushner and Bruce Nestor. The Bailout Coalition is taking donations to pay the lawyers. This is an important victory for Rosemary Williams.  It gives her added time to try to negotiate a restructuring of her mortgage.”

Another victory on May 26 happened when Tecora Parks took her mother’s mortgage lender, IndyMac Federal Bank, to Housing Court.  The lender had changed the locks prior to the sheriff’s sale with no proof that the foreclosed home was vacant.  This is in violation of state law.  The judge fined the lender $500 and awarded another $500 in attorney’s fees.

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Publisher’s Statement: The ethical questions raised by these banking practices seriously damage corporate banking’s value as a partner in our community.
The question, then, is, “What is the ideal bank?”  What should a bank do? Whom should it serve?  Who should own it? Henry David Thoreau begins his essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” by quoting Thomas Jefferson, “That government is best which governs least.” Thoreau then disagrees with Jefferson.  Thoreau says, “That government is best which governs not at all.”

In the spirit of Thoreau, we should want there to be no banks because everyone would be a banker.  Everyone would own the banks, and everyone would have a stake in running them.  They would be like the City-County-Federal Credit Union, a local savings and loan association that allows any resident of Hennepin County to become a member. In an ideal world, banking would be based on the proposition, “

From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.”  Does that sound like something out of Marx?  Try to find it in the Communist Manifesto.  It’s not there.

It IS in the Mayflower Compact.  It was the first social organizing principle for the first European settlers in North America. It IS in Acts of the Apostles (Acts, 4:34-35).  It was the organizing principle for the first Christian communities. But more than that, it is how we grew up.  Not just the Sunday school lessons and “learning to share” in kindergarten.  But it is how we grew up as human beings.  When our human family was a small tribe on the African plains, from each according to their ability and to each according to their needs was the meaning of tribal loyalty.  The rule of the jungle was not, “Everyone for themself,” but, rather, “Let’s stick together.” That’s a lesson that’s been hardwired into our consciousness for at least half a million years. But now we live in a world ruled by androids, automatons with human form. Corporations are not real people, yet they own our banks, our mortgages. They own our jobs, our factories.  They own our credit.  They are not human, yet the government and the courts have ruled that they have the same rights as human beings.  Their only job is to make money.  It is a science fiction nightmare.

Seventy-five years ago at about this time of year the Farmer-Labor Party held its State Convention.  Governor Floyd B. Olson gave the keynote address.  He said, “I am what I want to be.  I am a radical.  I am not a liberal.  I believe we need a definite change in the system.”  The Convention proclaimed in the preamble to their platform: “Capitalism has failed and should be abolished.  We mean to establish a Cooperative Commonwealth.”  These were the values of the major political party in Minnesota at that time.

What did the Cooperative Commonwealth mean to people in the Farmer-Labor Party back in 1934?  It meant the Finnish consumer co-ops in Northern Minnesota.  It meant the farmer co-ops and the savings and loan associations. The Farmer Labor Party believed all these co-ops could link up together, and the wealth they represented could be shared by all the people. I believe that is the lesson we have all been taught, even though we may have forgotten it.  I believe it is our history.  I also believe it is our future—but only if we work for it.

Ed Felien, Publisher