They did need a place to stay for the night.
"Protesters turn to foreclosures; Occupy movement tries to reclaim empty homes" December 07, 2011|By Manuel Valdes, Associated Press
SEATTLE - The Occupy Wall Street protests are moving into the neighborhood.
Finding it increasingly difficult to camp in public spaces, Occupy protesters across the country are reclaiming foreclosed homes and boarded-up properties, signaling a tactical shift for the movement against wealth inequality. Groups in more than 25 cities held protests yesterday on behalf of homeowners facing evictions.
In Atlanta, protesters held a boisterous rally at a county courthouse and used whistles and sirens to disrupt an auction of seized houses. In New York, they marched through a residential neighborhood in Brooklyn carrying signs that read: “Foreclose on banks, not people.’’ Los Angeles protesters rallied around a family of six who planned to reclaim the home they lost six months ago in foreclosure.
And here the paper was making me think it was over.
“It’s pretty clear that the fight is against the banks, and the Occupy movement is about occupying spaces,’’ said Jeff Ordower, one of the organizers of Occupy Homes. “So occupying a space that should belong to homeowners but belongs to the banks seems like the logical next step for the Occupy movement.’’
The events reflect the protesters’ lingering frustration over the housing crisis that has sent millions of homes into foreclosure after the burst of the housing bubble that helped cripple the country’s economy. Nearly a quarter of all US homeowners with mortgages are now underwater, representing nearly 11 million homes, said CoreLogic, a real estate research firm.
Protesters say that banks and financial firms own abandoned foreclosed houses that could be housing people.
See: Banks Acting Like Israel
They call it thinning out the housing stock to adjust market value. I call it destructive insanity, and you can count me out.
Seattle has become a leader in the antiforeclosure movement as protesters took over a formerly boarded-up duplex last month. They painted the bare wood sidings with green, black, and red paint, and strung up a banner that says “Occupy Everything - No Banks No Landlords.’’
While arrests have been made in a couple of squatting cases in Seattle and Portland, it remains to be seen how authorities will react to this latest tactic.
What a laugh having them chasing people around all over the place, from one foreclosed property to another.
In Portland, police spokesman Sergeant Pete Simpson said he is aware that the movement called for people to occupy foreclosed homes, but said it is difficult to distinguish between the people who would squat in homes as a political statement and those that do it for shelter....
It is nice to see the thin blue line backing off a bit. I think they understand the impossibility of what I described above.
In Seattle, protesters took over a boarded-up warehouse slated for demolition last weekend.
Oh, how were they going to take that down?
In an announcement, the protesters said they planned to make the warehouse into a community center, and hosted a party the night they opened the building. Police moved in, arresting 16 people in clearing it out.
Party-pooping police.
Seattle police spokesman Sergeant Sean Whitcomb said his department sees squatting in private properties as the same violation of trespassing Occupy Seattle made when it camped in a downtown park.
“It’s no different than when people were trespassing (in the park),’’ Whitcomb said. “We went nights and days, letting people camp in the park. We relied on education and outreach, rather than enforcing the law to the letter.’’
New York protesters introduced members of a homeless family at the end of their rally and said they plan renovate and clean up the house so the family can live in a house they said had been abandoned by a bank.
We have all been abandoned by the banks.
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