ORGANIZE OAKLAND
From Occupy to Organize Phase Two

There is no need to write this as an urgent call to action.  This transition has already begun…we are just naming what we are talking about in meetings, and actions, and booze fueled tirades with our fellow activists, occupiers, and freedom fighters. We have Occupied; we have been pre-occupied with Occupying.

We have begun to forget how to spell the word Occupy because we have written the damn word so many freaking times that we can barely take it no more… Or at least that’s how I feel sometimes. All the more reason to start looking at this as an organizing time.  The Occupation’s got the attention, we will Occupy again, but right now is the time to ORGANIZE!!

I know the word Organize sounds scary, and boring, and reformist, and somewhat monumental, and any other excuse we can find to not get serious about it.  But we all know that we need to reach the folks where they are, and join them in the struggle.  This is tough, though.  Many questions should be thought through deeply. What is organizing?  What is the goal?  How do we organize people we don’t know well?  How do we deal with the undeveloped political minds of many of our folks inside and outside of the movement?  Do we approach all people the same way?  How do we change our approach for different people?  How do we keep it interesting?  How do we delegate responsibility? And many more details of course.  Luckily we have the people here to get the job done; you, and me, and the rest of the community.  Whatever the obstacles, we all need each other, and that is the point that builds the unity.

So what does it mean to Organize Oakland and how would we Organize Oakland?  And why are we trying to organize Oakland?  My initial answer as to the how, is by thinking things through and taking some chances, but most of all by being strategic and ethical.  We are not roping people into things that have little relevance to their daily struggles.  We don’t assume we know more than “them”.  We don’t try to serve them out of some class or race guilt.  We don’t serve crappy food, or bring foul mouthed entertainers to community events.

We don’t get all serious and uptight over politics when we are hanging out.  Find a place where you can have fun.  There is plenty of work for everyone.  But the work needs to have purpose and thought put into it, so that we can reach cohesion and maximize our chances to find a way out of this mess that we are in.  Tactics, actions, events, and strategies should all build ongoing campaigns that lead to tangible changes.  The campaigns added together are “the movement”.

So where are we moving, who do we need with us right now, and what do we already have going?  I have a bunch of ideas of course, and I am sure that many other people do as well.  It seems to me that May 1^st  is a perfect vehicle to begin to formulate some of this stuff.  I wanted to put out some ideas, most of which I am not necessarily wedded to but just to possible start some discussions.

Why Organize?

In my view the main goal of organizing should be to increase the participation level both in numbers and commitment of the people in our communities.  So finding ways that we can involve people to help out and even take the lead as quickly as possible makes sense.

We are seeking to build connections, involve people, break down barriers, exert collective power, and change material and psychological conditions that lower our ability to reach our true potentials.  We really have no idea what this will look like, we just know that we have to find a way to empower and involve as many of us as we can to push the inevitable shift forward.  To organize is to bring together.  And we know that the 1%, or whatever term you would like to apply to the shadowy elite that wield insane power over our lives, seeks to keep us divided.  Unity is what we seek.  Unity is why we organize.

I am hoping that this can be built into an interactive conversation that can serve as a manual of sorts for our preparation for the coming months and years of struggle that we hope is coming.  Basically a so-called “living document” which helps us hone our organizational abilities.  Since there are so many different aspects of this undertaking, I figured that for now I would just tackle the issue of effectively organizing for May Day, and put forward some ideas that I have had.

MAYDAY!! MAYDAY!!…. Even more so than the proud history of struggle that the international workers holiday May 1^st represents, May Day has meant the international cry of distress or emergency. and that is what we face right now.  I really don’t like using certain language outside of more familial settings but…this is a motherfucking emergency! Right here, right now.

That is why I feel that it is truly important to make wise use of this May 1^st general strike, (which has global participation, let us not forget).  May Day needs to be viewed in the continuum of activity that precedes it and should be used to further whatever campaigns we plan on building for the summer and beyond.  May Day should build local support and increase participation.  It should be used to clarify our message and our goals.  We all agree that we are not at the point yet where a true General Strike can be achieved merely through our own organizational efforts.

Outside factors, such as changes in the global political climate, could increase or decrease participation, but realistically we know that there are limitations to our ability to bring the system to a complete work stoppage.  A one day work stoppage is not what we want anyway.  We want changes in the conditions, the process, and the mindset, of our society.  We know that only a certain segment of our citizens feel confident about taking a risk in unsettling the balance of our society even though they recognize the dire straits the race is in.

So under these conditions, how do we organize for May 1^st?  To me there are a few clear cut approaches.

1) We build on our successes.  What was learned from the OO Community BBQ’s and how can we build on that?  What can we learn from the Foreclosure Defense work?  Those are two areas where the vibe is good, and we may be able to bring more people into an activated state by continuing to build on that.  What would this mean for May Day?  Perhaps we should serve another big meal on May Day, and we can highlight our desire to feed the community healthy food.

Foreclosure Defense helps us in uniting across class and race lines, and reveals the callousness of our system.  We need to bring attention to this struggle and call out the forces that have destabilized communities, and thrown people to the wolves through manipulation of property ownership for pure profit.  How can this be done as part of the May Day actions? Can we tally the amount of people that each bank has foreclosed on in Oakland?  Can we demand housing as a human right in Oakland?  What else can be done to further this struggle?

2) I also feel that we  need to tie our May Day actions into the International struggle.  We need to ask people to Strike in solidarity with the people of the world who are also rising up.  Success should not be determined by the numbers in any one city alone, but by the increase in Global solidarity amongst the oppressed classes.  How can we connect with what is happening on a global level?  Speakers, solidarity marches, live stream global press conferences?  We gain the moral authority when we make this a global struggle, in my opinion.

3) We have a chance to get a clear message out ahead of May Day through strategic use of media and social networking.  This is a chance to re-brand Occupy Oakland.  We should align our goals more along the lines of the anti-corporate message that people want to hear, and redirect our efforts at the most egregious corporate criminals in our midst.  It is time for a series of well-organized, and strategic press conferences.  We should also use May Day as a force to settle some differences and re align our disparate forces so that we can work more cohesively together.  Workers of the World Unite!

4) It is important to look at events leading up to May Day that we can use to get the message out, enlist volunteer support, and survey the political climate in our communities.  There are many Earth Day celebrations coming up which we should have teams of outreach folks attending.  What else is going on?  I know that there are usually some 4:20 events right around now as well.  We need an outreach plan and a push to enlist more help in the May Day activities.  I believe that we might want to focus on getting people from surrounding areas to come out in force and also focus on the unemployed folks and students here in Oakland.   What other groups might we want to target for outreach?  We know that it is tough to ask people to skip work right now, so we should expect that many of our supporters will be at work on May 1st.  Let’s make the discussion about unemployment, cutbacks, and the eroding rights of workers.

5) We need to plan for after May Day now and use May 1^st as a launching point for our Spring and Summer campaigns.  What should our post-May 1^st focus be, and how can we get people involved?  Personally I think that school closures and education failures is one area that we should pursue.  Can we start a violence prevention campaign for the summer?  Can we continue the BBQ’s and get more community involvement in the planning?  Can we issue surveys to people and get information and ideas from them that can help focus our work?  Can we start a volunteer database?  Can we get the buy local campaign back in gear?  Can we organize nomadic camps for various parts of Oakland so that we can continue to meet outside and exercise our right to assemble throughout the summer?  What else can we do?

I hope that this might be helpful in starting a conversation, getting input, and hopefully actually creating systems and solutions for Organizing Oakland and the rest of the world against the tyranny of a system run amok.  Of course this is only a beginning.  I plan on writing more in-depth about some of this, and to take on more specific issues soon. I invite others to join in, to critique, and to question this undertaking.

 

Thursday 12 April 2012
616 Almanza Drive, Oakland 94603

Ms. Marquinita Saucier, daughter of now deceased Marquinita Stajuana Hoyt, left her home at 616 Almanza Drive in Oakland when she was seventeen.  She returned at 21, left again at 25, then returned after having experienced domestic violence and street problems including drug and alcohol addiction. She was again away for a time, and is now living back at her childhood home, trying to keep it from being taken from her.

Clean and sober since 14 sept 2001 (just after 9/11 tragedy woke her up), Ms. Saucier has had a very tough existence, and has spent time in hospitals and treatment facilities in recovery.   She has been clean and sober for almost twelve years. In 2004, Ms. Saucier lived in San Jose in a women’s boarding house.  She had been visiting her mother by bus, then used her first car to visit since 2005.  Her mother passed away in 2009.

Ms. Marquinita Stajuana Hoyt was found dead on the thirteenth of September of that year.  According to Marquinita Saucier, years previous, her brother, having been left to care for the house while mother was away, had tried to sell the house out from under his mother. On 23 October 2010, Ms. Marquinita Saucier moved back into mother’s house to prevent her brother from selling the house.  She came in with support from friends through an open door in the back, to claim ownership of the property. According to her, her brother has taken most of their mother’s valuables.

Recently, court papers are stating the wrong dates as to when Ms. Saucier moved back into the house.  She is on disability social security, and attending school taking general studies. After having been forced to take a break from school to try to manage her life and reclaim her mother’s house, Ms. Saucier is again enrolled, and now missing classes to defend the home. Her brother had sold the refrigerator and was trying to sell the house, and the courts are listening to a court appointed executor by the name of Duane M. Leonard, who was appointed because the mother’s will was a handwritten note, not notarized, which left everything to the youngest daughter, Marquinita Saucier.  The existing will was thrown out by Alameda County on 14 November 2011, leaving ownership in dispute.

Occupy Oakland has arrived on the scene.  About a dozen people spent Wednesday night out in the rain, holding the house against a locksmith and six sheriff officers who came at around 8 o’clock this morning.  Home defenders had made a banner saying ‘save nita’s home,’ blockaded the door with furniture and people, and refused entry to sheriffs.  After thirty minutes of the sheriffs trying to enter, they left. Multiple neighbors from several households have been supporting the defense of this home by delivering coffee, offering to be witness, and offering up prayer blessing Marquinita and Occupy Oakland, and asking for her to be able to stay in her home.

Though Alameda County Sheriffs have stated that they will call before returning, at this time Occupy Oakland defenders and Ms. Saucier are requesting continuous physical support.  Please come to this address intending to peacefully prevent sheriffs from taking the home.  Defenders need a few tents, warm, dry clothes, coffee, and food.  Bring your cameras and video cameras.

On Monday, April 2, 2012, Occupy Bernal and ACCE (Alliance of Californians For Community Empowerment) and two San Francisco City Board of Supervisors, David Campos (District 9) and John Avalos (District 11) announced their intention to vote on a foreclosure moratorium at a 2:00 p.m. meeting of the Land Use Committee.

At a 1:30 p.m. Press Conference on City Hall steps, several homeowners, whose houses were at risk or had been foreclosed upon, spoke passionately about the pain and suffering big banks, specifically Wells Fargo Bank, brought to their own and their neighbors’ lives.

Ross Rhodes, foreclosure fighter from Bayview Hunters Point boomed passionately, “These predators loans … were singled out for us minorities. You came into our communities and bull-jived us about the … predator loans you put out. They knew the properties were going to fail.  We want the American Dream like anybody else.  We bailed them out when they were in trouble. Now it’s time for them to bail us out!

Inside City Hall during the Land Use Committee hearing, Kathryn Galves spoke about the powerful health impacts on her of Wells Fargo evicting her, her sister, and their dog from her valuable Noe Valley Victorian home of 40 years the prior week.

Thanks to Vivian [Richardson] of Occupy San Francisco — she took us in.  She took in three orphans on that same day that we were evicted.  Otherwise we’d be drenched and wet and soaked because we had no place to go.

Please! Please! Please!  Stop these foreclosures!” Kathy insisted she didn’t want others to “throw away their memories, their emotions, their treasures.”

Through Spanish interpreter, ACCE’s Erin Franey, Maria Villareal’s raw, sore voice spoke of the health stress of Wells Fargo’s foreclosure threat on her and her husband who underwent recent surgery.

The hearing was divided into three parts.

First, Supervisors Campos, Avalos, Olague and Cohen sponsored a presentation of Assessor-Recorder, Phil Ting’s commissioned report, “Foreclosure in California: A Crisis of Compliance,” an audit in which Equitas Corporation researched statistics and found irregularities in a majority of foreclosures focused on communities of color, particularly in the South – Southeastern part of San Francisco in District 9, 10, and 11.

“The system is completely broken,” said Ting.

Then, Avalos, Kim and Cohen sponsored a presentation of “strategies, policies, administrative actions, and other potential steps that the City and County of San Francisco can take to address the foreclosure crisis affecting our residents and disproportionately impacting certain neighborhoods.

Ed Donaldson, housing counselor for the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation, emphasized, “It’s hard for a counselor or anyone that’s a human being not to care for another human being as well as to internalize the pain and suffering that folks may be going through.” Counselors like him are so deeply affected by the pain and suffering of their clients, he reported, that the counselor burn-out rate is approximately 12 to 18 months. “SFHDC is down to one counselor. and that’s me.”

Mr. Donaldson suggested the possible efficacy of a Boston model, including a two-part solution addressing San Francisco’s foreclosure crisis. One: Lease the home back to the client. Two: Create a loan pool that allows the client to buy the house back.

Finally, Avalos, Campos, Chiu, Kim, Mar, Olague and Cohen sponsored a resolution “supporting the California Homeowner Bill of Rights; urging City and County officials and departments to protect homeowners from unlawful foreclosures; and urging City contractors and all mortgage and banking institutions, especially San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, to suspend foreclosure activities and related auctions and evictions until State and Federal measures to protect homeowners from unfair and unlawful practices and provisions for principal reductions are in place.”

After a brief debate in which Scott Weiner and Malia Cohen questioned targeting Wells Fargo above other predator banks, a six-member quorum of the Board unanimously passed the resolution for a moratorium on foreclosures.  This resolution was then sent to the whole Board of Supervisors which could potentially pass the resolution during the next Board meeting, April 10, 2012.

Photo & Story by Carol Harvey

Today, Occupy Fights Foreclosures (OFF), an official sub-committee of Occupy Los Angeles, responded to an emergency call about an illegal eviction at a fraudulent foreclosed home. The family has a disabled daughter and had no where else to go. On Friday, members of OFF helped this family get back $4,500.00 that Golden Globe investment had taken from the family saying they would help but they never helped and tried to keep all the money and the documents. So, members of OFF went over to their business and demanded they return the money and the documents. And they did.

So, today we responded to help the family and the LAPD were called on us by an employee of Matrix Property. Supposedly, he is a “security guard” that they pay to live in another unit on the property. He was leaving the house, so we followed him. He said we’re making it worse for the family. Eventually he came back and called the police on us.

The first time the police came out, they left and said we could be on the property to protect the families belongings.

But then two other guys from Matrix Property came and they called the police on us again. So the same cops came back. They called their supervisor. The Sergeant didn’t know what to do either. He was talking to all of us. I was explaining to him that we have the right to file complaints against law enforcement officers, all complaints have to be investigated, and all complaints stay on officers recorders for five years.

Sgt. White said I was excused from the investigation. I didn’t accept his dismissal and he had me handcuffed and put in the back of the cop car. But he let me go without citation. They LAPD left and the workers from Matrix opened the home for the family and they went back in. Occupy LA helped move the family back inside. We have occupiers in the front yard. Some folks from Occupy Miami have joined us.

We are having a press conference at the home today/Tuesday at 5pm. Please spread the word and join us. Telemundo was the only channel to cover it tonight and they said they would be back tomorrow.

Occupy Fights Foreclosures

http://www.occupyfightsforeclosures.org/

Emergency Eviction on Rimpau LIVE

Video streaming by Ustream

EMERGENCY EVICTION: Sheriff’s Deputies came to try to evict a mother with a disabled child now for a fraudulent foreclosure at 2759 Rimpau Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90016. Please come out and help save their home!

UPDATES

7:33pm/ Our member who was streaming got detained by the police and her livecast ended.

8:18pm/ Sheriff illegally ordered everything out of house. We called occupiers to come in.

8:40pm/ Sheriff took the house but Occupiers took it back. The bank’s rep took off letting the resident stay for now. Our detained streamer got released.

Video streaming by Ustream

9:15pm/ NBC contacted the streamer.

10:00pm/ Occupy helped the family move back to her house.

Video streaming by Ustream

This report was gleaned from publication at the Occupy Fights Foreclosures website linked above.

On 16 March 2012, ACCE, Occupy SF and Occupy Bernal helped a man reoccupy his foreclosed home. As protesters dropped 2 banners from the roof, Dexter and his friends held a rally outside his house, documenting the predatory loan practices and misleading statements from the banks that are trying to clear out the Bayview District of San Francisco. Afterwards, Dexter and his friends went inside.

As the vultures gathered on Thursday at the Alameda County Court House at 1225 Fallon Street in Oakland in anticipation of the auction of yet another foreclosed upon home, the long time resident owners of the home arrived with support from Causa Justa: Just Cause (CJJC http://www.cjjc.org/), Occupy Oakland, and other groups in the area dedicated to the well being of the community.  Just Cause is a multi-racial, grassroots organization building community leadership to achieve justice for low-income San Francisco and Oakland residents, where one of the owners of the home works diligently on behalf of the people in the Bay Area.

Martha Nell Myhand has made this statement regarding the ownership of her home:

On March 8, International Women’s Day, my partner and I are refusing to be made homeless or exploited for the profit of the 1%. We are about to be foreclosed on by Chase Bank and their thieving friends after two years of runaround and refusal of the bank to work with us to modify our home loan. We have lived at 1329 E. 32nd St. for eleven years. A series of events impacted their ability to sustain the house payments of over $2100 per month. My mother developed dementia, requiring full-time caregiving  until her death in this home in 2009. Synthia had a stroke, was forced into early retirement, denied disability but ultimately won her rights and is now blind. The unwaged caregiving work increased while my family’s income dropped.

I have spent hundreds of hours tied up with loan modification paperwork and being sent between the bank and other entities who “may hold the deed to their home.” In the end our applications were denied twice for no credible reason. Even with the auction pending we are in the middle of another modification request and still trying to find out who has the title to the house.

As is the case with many families of color, the Bank has no concern for our economic hardships. In spite of this, I am active with Women of Color@Global Women’s Strike, continuing to help others with similar problems and to build campaigns to defend everyone’s right to justice. Both Synthia and I are determined to see the world become a better place and to this end they intend to remain in the home which they have paid over $150,000 for, with its lovely garden that we both love.

I am employed as a half time housing counselor and Synthia, is a retired teacher living on STRS disability retirement income.

Having been refused entry to the courthouse , but also having learned that the scheduled auction would be performed outside on the courthouse steps, the gathered crowd proceeded to locate, then noisily follow the auctioneer, challenging him to forego the auction, and even to get a new job.  Passionate conversations erupted between protestors and some who had come with intent to bid on the property.  While posing no threat to the auctioneer or the investors come to benefit off the loss of a community member, protestors did create a loud enough scene to disrupt the auctioneer, forcing the company to reschedule the attempted sale to today at noon.

It should be noted that police presence at this action was fairly high, but that police refrained from over reacting to the circumstances.  Having ordered photographers off the steps and been admonished that the people have a first amendment right to freedom of the press, Alameda County Sheriff officers conceded the truth of this, and allowed photographers to continue, with agreement that access to the building would not be obstructed.

A local wordsmith offered up his assessment of the situation in support of homeowners facing foreclosure by banks who refuse to negotiate mortgage terms.

Just Cause and Occupy Oakland have plans to disrupt any attempt to auction off the property and will be gathering again today to do exactly that (Alameda County Court House, 1225 Fallon, Oakland Lake Merritt BART, 40 bus stop).  They are calling for community support.

Update 10 March ::: due to this action of support from the community to disrupt the sale of this property, the auction has been postponed until 9 April.