[Marxism] A Roof Over Our Heads and Other Inalienable Rights

[Bonnie Weinstein]

A Roof Over Our Heads
and Other Inalienable Rights
By Bonnie Weinstein
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/mayjun_09/mayjun_09_01.html

In an April 22, 2009, article in The New York Times by David  
Streitfeld, entitled, “An Effort to Save Flint, Mich., by Shrinking  
It,” the first two paragraphs read:

"Dozens of proposals have been floated over the years to slow this  
city’s endless decline. Now another idea is gaining support: speed it  
up.

"Instead of waiting for houses to become abandoned and then pulling  
them down, local leaders are talking about demolishing entire blocks  
and even whole neighborhoods."

In other words, instead of allowing families to remain in their homes  
during this severe economic crisis, the city of Flint intends to  
demolish the homes outright, leaving homeless families to fend for  
themselves.

Meanwhile, a gripping and heartbreaking MSNBC.com Dateline  
documentary has been circulating on the Internet. It follows the  
evictions of families from their homes. Some were evicted as the  
result of being swindled into subprime mortgages with balloon  
payments; others because they could not afford to keep up rents or  
mortgages for various reasons, such as work injuries, sickness,  
cutbacks in hours, or job loss.(1) An FDIC government resource,  
ForeclosureHelpandHope.org, provides this information from the  
Mortgage Bankers Association:

One out of every 200 homes will be foreclosed upon…. Every three  
months, 250,000 new families enter into foreclosure…. One child in  
every classroom in America is at risk of losing his/her home because  
their parents are unable to pay their mortgage.(2)

The Dateline crew accompanies sheriffs, with guns pulled, backed by  
other officers and flanked by a “moving crew,” as they break open the  
door of a home. Finding no one there, they proceed to move all the  
belongings of a full household out into the street and change the  
locks on the doors; then they move on to another eviction. They do  
around 20 a day. The family has 24 hours to pick up their belongings  
from the street, and then the stuff is carted off to the dump. No  
security is left to protect the family’s belongings for those 24  
hours; they’re simply left out in the street, free for the taking,  
and the house left abandoned and uncared for.
Evictions up close and personal

The first family the documentary focuses on is a family of four, the  
Alvarezes: Junior Alvarez, who works for the city of Coral Gables,  
Florida, his wife, Maureen, their two children—a two-month-old son  
and a two-year-old daughter—and an elderly grandmother. Their  
mortgage payments ballooned from $2,000 to $4,000 a month—an amount  
Junior could no longer afford. After being evicted they stayed for a  
short time with friends, sleeping on their living room floor, until  
they found a small apartment they could afford to rent.

The second family featured were renters, Lea and Porey Niscieri,  
their 11-year-old daughter, Hanna, and her two cats. They did not  
fare as well as the Alvarezes. When the sheriff came to her door, Lea  
told him that they were up to date on their rent—that they didn’t owe  
a dime, she was sure of it.

Upon returning home, Porey confessed to the Dateline reporter that he  
hadn’t told his wife that they were three months behind in the rent.  
He had had an accident on his job and was unable to work for about  
seven months. He just couldn’t afford the rent on his disability  
income. He didn’t tell his wife because he thought he had 30 days  
after the notice to make a payment, and hoped he’d be able to make it  
on time since he’d just gone back to work.

Luckily, their next-door neighbor took them in temporarily. But then  
the generous neighbor himself was evicted the very next week!

Their daughter Hanna, had to give up her cats to an animal shelter.  
The family moved into a Howard Johnson’s, but it was too expensive so  
they moved again, into a cheaper motel.

Porey admits that he wanted to kill himself. He felt like a complete  
failure. They were having a hard time finding a place to live. Their  
credit rating was by that time so bad no one would rent to them. They  
finally found a landlord willing to give them a chance in spite of  
their credit rating and they now live in a small, two-bedroom  
apartment about half the size of the home they were evicted from.  
Hanna still misses her cats terribly. “I don’t have them, but they  
are in my heart forever. They were a part of me,” she said.

Other families are moving from place-to-place, shelter-to-shelter,  
couch-to-living room floor—or out onto the streets. The bankers are  
leaving perfectly good homes to rot—or worse, to the mercy of the  
wrecking ball.

This is the chaos that exists under capitalism, a dictatorial  
economic system that puts profit over people; that tears down homes  
as homelessness soars.

Shelter from the storm

The crux of the issue is whether or not human beings have a basic  
right to a roof over their heads—shelter from the storm. Directly  
connected to housing is the right to education, jobs, and healthcare.  
These are all inalienable rights that belong to everyone, because we  
can’t thrive without them!

Youth hit hardest

While millions of adult working people are finding themselves  
teetering on the brink of economic annihilation, joblessness, and  
homelessness, it’s much worse for our youth.

Young people today will earn half of what their parents earned, and  
even now find it nearly impossible to leave the nest, let alone  
support families of their own. Fewer youth are able to attend  
college. The mass entrance into college by working-class youth in the  
’60s and ’70s is in high-speed reverse.

Our children are forced to endure overcrowded, police-occupied public  
schools that more closely resemble juvenile detention centers than  
educational institutions, and have failed to give them the most basic  
skills and knowledge they need to develop their individual talents,  
skills and interests. Increasingly our schools are more likely to  
funnel youth into jail or the military than into higher education or  
gainful employment.

This economic crisis did not appear suddenly out of a void. It has  
been taking its toll on working people—especially youth—since the  
1970s. Women didn’t join the workforce because they were bored; the  
steadily increasing cost of living forced the necessity of the two- 
income family.

The confidence game

The “conventional wisdom” of the politicians and mass media tell us  
we must learn to “tighten our belts,” to “live more simply.” We are  
told we must have faith that the government is doing everything  
possible to keep things from getting even worse.

They especially emphasize how “everyone is hurting,” including the  
wealthy, and that bailing out the wealthy is the essential key to  
bailing out the poor! We’re told that the wealthy bankers, who have  
emptied the wallets of working people to line their own with gold,  
have to regain the confidence to invest money back into the economy.

And we are told that the only way for them to regain that confidence  
is for us to pay them trillions of dollars from our own pockets—-to  
keep them confident that they can continue to steal more from us!  
It’s we who must tighten our belts not them! They implore us, “How  
can we save this economy without the sacrifice and support of everyone?”

But working people know what this means. The wealthy endure  
“restricted retention bonuses” while working people sacrifice their  
jobs, their healthcare, their pensions, their homes—and their  
children’s future—for the sake of banking and corporate confidence.

My youngest son’s girlfriend commented to him that the economy seems  
to be doing better after she saw some upbeat story on the local news.  
(They’re both currently unemployed, with two children and rent coming  
due again at the end of the month.) My son explained to her:

“You have to understand that they mean the economy is better for some  
people. Not for most people. They’re talking about making things  
better for the top wealthiest one percent or less of the population  
at the expense of the bottom 99 percent. The top wealthiest one  
percent or less owns 80 percent of the Earth’s wealth. The government  
is bailing out those people at the top using trillions of dollars of  
our money. The rest of us have to scramble for a share of the crumbs  
the wealthy drop from their plates. And at this time they’re not only  
wiping their plates clean but stealing the food right out of our  
plates!”

A fightback begins

But there is some good news. All across the country and around the  
world, working people are beginning to mount a fightback and they are  
winning real victories!

Not all families are taking it on the chin. In an April 10, 2009,  
article in The Times, “With Advocates’ Help, Squatters Call  
Foreclosures Home,” John Leland wrote:

"Ms. Omega, 48, is one of the beneficiaries of the foreclosure  
crisis. Through a small advocacy group of local volunteers called  
Take Back the Land, she moved from a friend’s couch into a newly  
empty house that sold just a few years ago for more than $400,000.

"Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the  
Homeless, said about a dozen advocacy groups around the country were  
actively moving homeless people into vacant homes—some working in  
secret, others, like Take Back the Land, operating openly.

"In addition to squatting, some advocacy groups have organized civil  
disobedience actions in which borrowers or renters refuse to leave  
homes after foreclosure."

The groups say that they have sometimes received support from  
neighbors and that beleaguered police departments have not  
aggressively gone after squatters.

“We’re seeing sheriffs’ departments who are reluctant to move fast on  
foreclosures or evictions,” said Bill Faith, director of the  
Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, which is not engaged  
in squatting. “They’re up to their eyeballs in this stuff. Everyone’s  
overwhelmed.”

In an article in the March/April issue of ColorLines (reprinted in  
this magazine), “Hitting the Pause on Foreclosures,” Valeria  
Fernández wrote:

"In the last year, Goldberg and his staff at Moratorium NOW!, a  
coalition of activists and union and religious leaders, have brought  
at least 50 cases to courts in Detroit on behalf of homeowners. They  
have been fighting to save homes literally one house at a time  
through picketing at the banks and legal action."

The article ends with a quote from Max Rameau, founder of the group  
Take Back the Land, a grassroots volunteer organization in Miami,  
Florida:

“This is a solution coming from the community,” said Rameu. “We value  
the human rights of housing over the right of a corporation to make a  
profit.”

As the economy tanks, and evictions and unemployment increase, such  
organizations and actions will grow across the country.

In addition to the anti-eviction/foreclosure organizations and  
actions sprouting up, there have been sit-down strikes and  
occupations in jobsites around the globe, in England, Ireland,  
Scotland, Greece, Canada, and here in the U.S., to name a few.

Most recently, coalitions are forming that incorporate all these  
issues—including those of immigration and war—with demands such as:

•Money for jobs and social services, not for war

•Tax the rich/progressive taxation

•Single-payer healthcare for all

•Pass the Employee Free Choice Act

•Immediate moratorium on foreclosures and evictions

•No more bailouts for Wall Street—bail out working people

•Stop the ICE raids and deportations

These are the demands of a newly formed coalition in the Bay Area. A  
broad organizing meeting was held in San Francisco on April 11, 2009,  
at the Plumbers Hall, and was attended by over 70 people. Most  
attendees were representatives of labor organizations, including the  
heads of the San Francisco and Santa Clara Central Labor Councils and  
the President of the AFT 2121 (community college teachers), and of  
grassroots, community-based groups.

Many of these groups are funded to help with such things as tenant  
and landlord mediation or police-community dialogue, etc. They are  
being cut out of the budgets of most cities and towns, leaving the  
poor to fend for themselves.

The meeting was called to organize a teach-in based upon the above  
demands. The outcome was very encouraging and positive; its work is  
ongoing.

The strongest consensus among the participants of this meeting were  
the demands, “Bail out working people, not Wall Street!” and “Tax the  
rich, not working people.” The goal of the teach-in is to plan a set  
of actions, including a mass mobilization, and the establishment of  
independent, labor/community committees to build ongoing, proactive  
responses to the crisis for the interests of working people.

In other words, they intend to organize a real fightback against this  
current economic program of open season on working people, our homes,  
healthcare, housing, schools, and all of our social safety nets.

Unite and fight back!

We don’t have to point out to working people that our future and the  
very future of our planet are in jeopardy. This is abundantly clear.

Our most important task is to build a broad, democratically  
organized, and independent labor movement that unites working people  
across the board—-that can organize the unorganized, employed and  
unemployed, “documented” or not—-into a movement powerful enough to  
carry out the kind of mass, unified actions necessary to win decisive  
victories for working people anywhere and everywhere these attacks  
occur.

Our unity here and with workers across the globe will fortify our  
weakest links with our strongest protection and defense—-our massive  
numbers and our solidarity of action against these assaults.

We can keep that wrecking ball from our homes and our schools; we can  
force the hospitals to tend to the sick; we can keep factories from  
closing; we can move the homeless into homes; we can stop the  
deportations and the war machine.

Together in unity and solidarity we can ensure our own inalienable  
right to happiness—-to a life of liberty, democracy, economic and  
human equality, justice, and a peaceful and healthy world for all.

We, the majority of working people across the globe, have an  
inalienable, democratic right to choose people over profits, to bail  
out working people not the banks—-to choose socialism over the brutal  
chaos and profound inequality of capitalism!

(1) Watch the video at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/28303876#28303876

And the update at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/28303876#29684262

(2) http://www.fdic.gov/about/comein/files/foreclosure_statistics.pdf