By: Les Christie
— Occupy Wall Street and other housing activists are heading to neighborhoods hit hard by foreclosure Tuesday to protest the mistreatment of homeowners by mortgage lenders.
Occupy Our Homes said it has scheduled a day of protests for Dec. 6, with events scheduled in 25 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities.
Among the actions expected to occur is so-called foreclosure defense, where protestors try to stop police from evicting residents of homes that are being foreclosed upon. Protestors also plan to occupy homes that have already been foreclosed on and currently lie vacant.
“The Occupy Wall Street movement and brave homeowners around the country are coming together to say, ‘Enough is enough,'” said an Occupy Our Homes press release. “We, the 99%, are standing up to Wall Street banks and demanding they negotiate with homeowners instead of fraudulently foreclosing on them.”
Protestors in New York are expected to march to Brooklyn’s East New York neighborhood, an area that has been hit hard by foreclosure. The demonstration, which will be led by New York Communities for Change (NYCC), will end with the protestors occupying a foreclosed home that has been vacant for several years.
Occupy Our Homes is charging that the big banks made billions of dollars off of the housing bubble by designing predatory loans that included balloon payments, variable rates and other features that would yield short-term profits from families that were least capable of paying.
Max Rameau, an organizer with Take Back the Land, said his organization has been taking these actions for years but it has gotten a boost from Occupy Wall Street. He expects a large turnout tomorrow.
“We think it’s going to be huge because of the energy of Occupy Wall Street,” he said. “The size and scope will be considerably bigger because of that.”
