Fight against foreclosures, evictions

The following excerpts are from a talk given by Sandra Hines, an organizer with Michigan’s Moratorium NOW! Coalition, at the WWP National Conference, Nov. 14.

On Oct. 6, over 50,000 people lined up outside the Cobo Conference Center in downtown Detroit in an attempt to pick up 5,000 available applications that would have provided only $3,500 in assistance for mortgage and utility payments.

We know that the stimulus money is not reaching the people. We need jobs now! We want President Obama to bail out the people, not the banks. The homeless population is steadily growing. The number of hungry people is at an all-time high. Health care appears to be out of reach for many people. Shelters have unending waiting lists and our quality of life is at a standstill.

The state of our economy has affected every working person. Detroit is the hardest hit city in the United States with the highest unemployment rate. The Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shutoffs has declared Detroit and the state of Michigan as being in a state of emergency. Detroit is a “Katrina” without water.

Michigan’s governor, Jennifer Granholm, has the legal and constitutional right and duty to declare an economic state of emergency in Michigan; however, she has refused to do so. This has caused more hardship to the people as joblessness continues to rise and foreclosures and evictions have exploded out of control.

Yet the people in Detroit are fearless and courageous and we have not given up. The Moratorium NOW! Coalition has launched a battle against one of the most powerful bosses in Michigan, DTE Energy, which supplies all the power to the Detroit metropolitan area.

We fought alongside 65 tenants who were given 24 hours by the landlords to vacate the Wellington Commons, a 200-unit apartment building in Detroit. As a result of the efforts of Moratorium NOW! and the tenants, they were granted another 60 days to relocate and keep their power on. The tenants were allowed to move into other buildings supervised by the management company that took control of the bankrupt hedge fund’s property. This firm is based in New York and owns many other slum dwellings in the city of Detroit.

We also worked with the tenants at the Highland Towers, located in Highland Park, a city surrounded by Detroit. At the Highland Towers over 200 tenants were facing an illegal lockout after their power was shut off by DTE Energy.

We protested in front of DTE Energy headquarters downtown. We organized a sit-in at the building to demand that the power company restore services to the building. After the public campaign—which resulted in a court action—the power was restored and DTE was forced to pay the relocation costs for all the tenants.

Moratorium NOW! has continued to fight and help families stay in their lifetime homes. Our latest victory was on behalf of Ms. Belva Davis, a young woman who lives in the historic East English Village. Along with Moratorium NOW!, she gained the support of her neighbors and fought back until she reclaimed her home from Wachovia Bank, which is now owned by Wells Fargo.

Moratorium NOW!, in conjunction with the Bail Out the People Movement and other trade unionists and community organizations, helped to organize the Tent City and National Jobs March in Pittsburgh in September. This kicked off the protests surrounding the G-20 Summit.

The Pittsburgh Tent City followed the People’s Summit/Tent City in Detroit held in June 2009. Both events generated hundreds of people to testify and protest against the global economic crisis.

Moratorium NOW! supports the youth organization Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST), whose leader Josh is working to bring more young adults into the struggle. The group is an integral part of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition. FIST has led demonstrations, distributed literature, staffed the office and offered young people a revolutionary voice to be heard in Detroit.

Just recently, we organized a demonstration in protest of the ongoing occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and U.S. militarism around the world. Also on Nov. 5 we held a demonstration in front of the federal building to protest the assassination of Muslim leader Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, who was shot down and killed by the FBI on October 28 in Dearborn.

The demonstration brought together hundreds of Muslims and people of other faiths. The demonstration led to the reunification of African-American, Arab, South Asian and other Muslims. Imam Luqman worked with his followers to house and feed the poor and homeless.

The FBI story on his death has changed daily. Now they admit that there are no terrorism charges involved in the case. We know from history that the FBI is a racist and terrorist organization. We feel that the FBI is trying to cover up the death of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah.

We want to emphasize our continuing struggle to 1) organize tenant councils across Detroit, 2) demand a real jobs program that would provide employment to all, 3) demand quality education for all youth and to oppose the privatization of our schools, 4) uphold the right to reproductive freedom for all women regardless of social class, 5) demand fresh water, food and utility services and 6) Bring the troops home now! Money for cities, not for war! Moratorium NOW! Justice NOW!