Occupy Wall Street on Your Street | Astra Taylor

Though Americans are fed up with income inequality and generally disgusted by the bad behavior of big banks, the task Occupy Wall Street has chosen isn’t exactly an easy one. Even though public sentiment on economic issues may align with the movement, organizing against something as abstract as finance capital is a challenge. How do you launch a campaign against something that is everywhere and nowhere? For those who don’t live near Lower Manhattan, it’s not obvious what the proper protest target should be.

This is why focusing on the mortgage crisis—which a recent study suggests is only half over—is a brilliant next step. “To occupy a house owned by Bank of America is to occupy Wall Street,” said Ryan Acuff, who has been working with Take Back The Land in Rochester, NY doing these kinds of actions since Sept 2010. “We are literally occupying Wall Street in our own communities.” The reclamation of foreclosed homes and defense of individuals facing unfair eviction helps make arcane economic issues like deregulation and securitization, local and personal.

Occupy is certainly not the first group to engage in these sorts of actions, which can even be traced back to the squatters movement of the late ’70s and ’80s (in fact, some of the pioneers of that movement are deeply involved in the recent upsurge of this kind of activism). But Occupy has the power to bring public attention to this kind of civil disobedience, which has so far gone mostly under the radar. Indeed, the overwhelming positive response to yesterday’s actions in the mainstream media proves this is the case.

As George Packer recently observed in The New Yorker, “There’s no powerful D.C. lobby supporting Americans in Foreclosure, no mass movement of underwater mortgagees.” With foreclosure filings showing no sign of slowing down, the people must become their own lobby through direct action. The victories can be swift and tangible. In Rochester, Catherine Lennon returned to the house she was evicted from and has been living there since Mother’s Day. So far court proceedings have ruled in her favor. The banks, it seems, are softer targets than one might expect because so many cases are rife with legal irregularities and outright fraud: it’s not uncommon for customers to be mislead, crucial paperwork lost and documents robo-signed. While banks often refuse to negotiate with individuals, taking advantage of those who are intimidated or can’t afford legal counsel, they often change their tune when threatened with serious scrutiny. Once a bunch of people show up on a lawn to form a blockade and have a press conference, once intransigent institutions are suddenly willing to compromise. In Rochester, one bank called off an eviction when they got wind of plans for direct action.

For many activists working as part of and in solidarity with Occupy, the reclamation of foreclosed homes isn’t just about Wall Street malfeasance—it’s about housing as a human right. Acuff estimates that there are around 3,000 empty homes in Rochester and 500–1,000 homeless people on any given night. “There’s no real housing crisis,” Acuff explained. “When you have three times more housing than homeless people, it’s not a housing crisis, it’s a political crisis. Something’s happening systemically to have all these empty houses and people sitting outside on the street.”

via www.thenation.com