Eviction on September 11

The Minneapolis Five and the Eviction on September 11
- by Becca and Lynette -

In the midst of the home foreclosure crisis, many homeowners succumb to feelings of guilt and inadequacy when they can't make mortgage payments, allowing banks to take back houses. The frequency of these land grabs by America's banks is a sign of deepening economic depression.
Still, some homeowners are fighting back. The Minneapolis Five have bravely emerged from the confusion of their foreclosures in the past year, and are publicly fighting to keep their homes.
They are long-term homeowners, unwilling to pick up and move in the middle of their lives, sick of being singled out either for being black or being women.
They are five middle-aged single women from metropolitan Minnesota, and, until September 11, they were all wondering if and when they'd be kicked out of their homes by sheriffs or police.
On September 11, 2009, beneath the hubbub of news surrounding the anniversary of New York terrorist attacks and a local policeman's death, the loud and proud Rosemary Williams was evicted from her house by police. She had made headlines twice before with the bold occupation of her foreclosed home, with family and local activists' support. Now she is the first of the Five to be escorted out of her house with all her belongings while police cover her windows and doors with sheet metal.
Rosemary Williams, 60, grew up on the Clinton Avenue block where her home was purchased 23 years ago. She lived there with her mother until she passed away 6 years ago, and Rosemary refinanced the home with an ARM so her siblings could
receive their portion of the estate. She became unemployed, found work again, and now continues her work and activism though homeless. She made a point of telling her story to the press, to nonprofits that purport to help people in foreclosure, to the unresponsive Mayor R. T. Rybak, and to First Lady Michelle Obama. When her home had already been once paid for, there was no reason for her to be kicked out over an ARM-- but GMAC, the mortgage company, seems to prefer its customers homeless and its assets revolving like musical chairs.
Rosemary's occupied house had become a hub of community gatherings, neighborhood watches, and activist press conferences. It was where the Five gathered to tell their stories to IndyMedia.

Linda Norenberg, also 60, lives on a Robbinsdale property that has been in her family since 1938. Linda's father built the home in 1944 on top of a basement where the family had been living for two years. Always a pillar of her community, she currently is employed and the grandmother of three, great-grandmother of three.

Linda refinanced once with a fixed rate mortgage. But the mortgagor kept calling: "Wouldn't you like to lower your rate?" So she refinanced to an ARM, not realizing until later that her minimum payment was not paying down the principal. After being laid off from her full-time job, she refinanced again in 2003 but was unable to obtain sufficient employment and began falling behind in payments. She received the foreclosure notice in November, 2007 and began looking for assistance right away.

She thought that the sheriff's sale had taken place Dec. 10 the of '08, but in fact it did not take place until Jan. 30, '09. Chase Bank didn't call back to to tell her this until February.she was told that their bank had put a freeze on foreclosures for the month of December. Linda's daughter Katie and her 3 kids ended up losing her apartment, so they all moved in at Christmas. Now three generations depend on this property that could be taken back at any moment.

Leslie Parks, 45, is resisting on behalf of her mother, Tecora. They both work full time. Leslie has lived in the upper level of her mother's duplex for 23 years. Tecora took out an ARM to cover upgrades to the windows in Leslie's duplex because the city ordered the improvements.
One night last winter well after dark, an employee of the bank who perhaps after knocking on the front door, went around to the back and threw rocks at her lighted window, shouting out "THIS BUILDING IS IN FORECLOSURE."
The experience threw Leslie into a high blood-pressure emergency. As she was coping, one night in May, before the sheriff's sale, she came home from work to find an illegal
lockbox on the door. She could not enter her own place even to feed her cats. She paid for a locksmith to break in and install new locks. PPEHRC paid filing fees so that she could press charges against Indy-MAC whose hired inspector made a big mistake, concluding that the property was vacant! The redemption period ends in late November and they are desperately in need of a pro-bono lawyer.

Barbara Byrd, 50, is a working woman whose duplex in Brooklyn Park was financed through EMC. The Bear Stearns Companies, LLC and its subsidiary, EMC Mortgage Corporation, recently agreed to pay $28 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they engaged in unlawful "predatory lending" practices in servicing consumers' home mortgage loans.

Barbara is to appear in Hennepin County district court Sept.16th to appeal her eviction. In March 2009 when Barbara lost her tennent and fell behind in her ever-rising payments, EMC made notary date-errors in the foreclosure documentation. During her June eviction hearing in housing court, the judge had assured her that should would not have to move. Still a 24-hour eviction was posted on her door July 6th, and Barbara spent sleepless nights for fear of being thrown out. Because she works nights, she isn't at home to witness when inspectors come peeking by to determine whether or not the property is vacant. She has to keep sticking her head out the window to prove that she is living there.

Ann Patterson, 40, is a mother of five. She worked for 19 years at the same hospital. She's never missed a payment on their house of 12 years. Looking ahead to see that six months down the road her ARM will balloon and they will not be able to make the payments, she has made several attempts to remodify with Wells Fargo without results. Any other programs including Habitat for Humanity turned her down because she is not yet in default. Scammers have approached her, and lawyers have demanded Two ( or more ) Thousand dollars up-front to aid her struggle for remodification to an affordable rate. The house supposedly is worth $169,000. The paperwork for each application is a burden, and clerks often lose some of the documents or claim that they never rececived them. The emotional toll of worry for her is heavy and she is losing hope.
http://www.youtube.com/user/glassbeadian#p/u/10/YGZCXaXSbbA

Inner City and White.

What distinguishes the inner city from the outer city? Why do we associate the inner city with crowded poor people who are stuck?
I believe that the distinguishing factor is the noise and the particles in the air. I know I'm in the inner city when I can't get away from noise, whether in a home or a park or garden. I hear traffic, trains, conversations, sirens, industrial loading docks, and the obnoxious buzz of electric parts constantly-- until I reach some pocket or edge of outer city, where crickets can chirp louder than the traffic, and solace is easier to come by.
It's harder to measure the particles in the air by myself, but I know that inner city environments create asthmatics according to generational studies that have been done. I know the inner city absorbs commuters' exhaust and the drafts of industrial fumes and particles from nearby commercial zones, without an amount of vegetation necessary to cleanse some of the carbon from the air. In the outer city, people breathe a bit easier, and property is allowed to be overgrown more often than in the inner city, so vegetation can help with noise and smog.
But besides those things, I don't think we should differentiate inner city from outer urban or suburban environments too much. There are parks & playgrounds in both places; poverty and riches take residence in both environments; there are stupid and mean people to be found anywhere; homes are crowded and homes are abandoned in both realms; safety and power are illusions regardless of the setting; people are accomplishing amazing things in both settings too.
Now.

What distinguishes someone white from someone European or Euro-American? Have you ever even thought about what makes someone white before? If you are white in America, you likely haven't.
I say being white is a mindset. Being European or Euro-American is a general ethnicity. The latter would know and care what their heritage is.
The white mindset is:

• taking racial privilege for granted
• questioning 'people of color' and not seeing any of your own color
• expecting to understand and be understood in every context
• waiting for someone to ask 'How may I help you?'
• never having to go to a special barber because you expect everyone to understand your hair
• identifying with the majority of your country without thinking about it
• considering crime a problem only when it happens to people like you
  
• having no pride or curiosity about your background, recent or ancient
• trying to figure out who's 'ethnic' and who 'passes'
  
• referring to your way of life as 'dominant society'
• never questioning your very identity because of biological factors
• thinking of the 'melting pot' as progress
  

That is a mindset that society could do without. Give up the white mindset and then there will no longer be white people, but rather, Irish-American, Hungarian-American, British-Canadian, and so on and so on, all of us.
If we could take pride in these little differences that make us uniquely who we are, then that would better unify the human race than assimilation, conformity, or hegemony. We could say 'We are truly all related,' and actually act like it.
Until then, I am researching my heritage and refusing the Caucasian label.
My ancestors didn't exactly come from the Caucasus, I'm not Caucasian, I'm Irish-German-Norwegian-Danish-American.
All of that is supposed to fit into the little 'Caucasian' box on every survey that asks your race. And what is with that extra box saying 'Hispanic- not Caucasian'? Why are they singled out for the separation of the Hispanics?
Anyway, I just check all the racial categories, every time. We are all related. And if the census-taker comes to my door, I'll say I belong to all races and all religions. My specific identity belongs to me, but I belong to the oneness of humanity.

Even Vacation Homes Come in Green

(I'm trying to publish this in Do It Green! Minnesota)

Whether canoeing on the lake or using the hot tub on the top floor of the cabin, residents relaxing at Rainbow Lake Cabin are still productive. It’s one of only a few green-certified homes in northern Wisconsin, producing much of its own power with 500 Watt solar shingles.

When ingenuity and a commitment to using recycled and on-site materials combine, you get grant-winning architecture like this cabin by the Minneapolis-based Archithesis firm. By developing land in rural Wisconsin, the firm got a rebate on its flexible photovoltaic shingles through the state’s Focus On Energy program, participating in the national One Million Solar Roofs project. The cabin is a candidate for the cap and trade program proposed under the Wisconsin Safe Climate Act. The state is now 5^th in the nation in commitments to energy efficency, according to a study by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

We can learn a lot from Wisconsin. Just visiting for a weekend at an affordable green cabin can teach the virtues of resourceful, on-site construction, like with Rainbow Lake Cabin’s native oak floors and stone foundation and redwood trim recycled from Napa Valley wine tanks.

The small and wild Rainbow Lake fills the view from the second-story living room’s expansive south-facing windows at tree-house-level. The slate floor on the ground level is warm in the morning, radiating the heat stored in the large thermal mass below the building, which also gives off autumn’s heat throughout the winter. This radiant slab utilizes cheap off-peak energy in the night to circulate hot water from the boiler throughout pipes in the ground floor. With the wood stove and vertical ventilation along the vintage spiral staircase, it’s easy to heat and cool the home without electricity, even if that’s not what you’re used to.

The green revolution can extend to every part of modern life, including Minnesotans’ hobby of getting away from it all “up north.” Vacationers who don’t want to “rough it” can still comfortably experience wild prairie and lake habitats without being rough on the environment. Architect Jim Widder thinks that this is part of America’s sustainability revolution: living in balance with nature—even in vacation homes with wireless Internet access.

Expressions of the Feminine at Van Brabson Gallery

The fourth annual Expressions of the Feminine Psyche
exhibit opened this May 2 with food, music, and many friends of the artists.
It's open until June 30, 2009.

At the Van Brabson Gallery in Minneapolis, a nondescript, gray, square building set back from the road, a celebration of spring and Mother Earth inside enlivened the white rooms full of framed photography, glittering cases of jewelry, and impressive oil paintings.
Visitors were greeted by Bonnie Brabson's dark abstracts, and welcomed to scribble their thoughts in the guestbook next to handmade cards and mixed media art by Pam Cox.
According to the gallery owner, who video taped the reception to show her mom on Mother's Day, anything that women artists thought of in relation to 'the feminine psyche' could become that theme. The feminine mystique is shifting and broad, and could include anything as its art-- even her video of crowds mingling and browsing the artwork.
Beneath a row of Untitleds, Marcia Soderman-Olson's strong, abstract oils with their energetic centers, Marcia and a couple of her fellow exhibited artists chatted and snacked. Her paintings' blue-green to black strokes seem to structure colored business within-- or, perhaps, frame the scraped color strokes of attempted paintings past, beneath them. Perhaps they are the structures of the present scratched away in their construction to reveal layers of past adventures, each color a layer. Lines where thumbnails had lifted up fresh paint from the middle of broad strokes made the audience conscious of their creation.
On an adjacent wall, Corean Komarec's clear, realistic photos provided contrast and focus for the show. Nature, balance, and representations of women in sculpture were the themes of her prints, reminding people that the feminine in art is everywhere; it is a major part of perceptions of beauty.
Besides Komarec's prints and Cox's cute cards for sale, Dragon Treasures bracelets and necklaces by Kelly Frampton, worth hundreds of dollars, are for sale at the gallery. Her materials are found and recycled treasures as well as semiprecious stones, which charmed the gallery space from each display case. Frampton spent enough time with each piece to describe the sort of energy boost coming from her jewelry's different sets of stones. From malachite to bloodstone, the whole variety had been cleansed by the four elements in the process of turning found parts into art.

Nancy Schwartz, with paint left over from home projects, created abstract portraits in her series, A Woman Becoming. Her paintings use balance, subdued colors full of the textures of many days of experiments: scraping, thinning, texturing, layering paint in representations of women with blurry faces that fill their frames. Everything about these works requires interpretation of colors, as shadows or flesh or clothes-- and then it seems to ask, 'Why do you think of me as that?'
Everything requires sympathetic interpretation, and that's part of the feminine psyche.

Representative Ellison's Record

What does it mean to vote 'Present?'
It's got to be better for a Congressman to vote 'Present' than to ditch work, or to submit themselves as 'Not Voting' because of emotional attachment or other concerns.
But isn't it better to take a stand on something than just to vote 'Present?'
My representative in the U.S. House was faced with a Resolution about Israel and Palestine early this year, and he chose not to take a stand.
On January 9, 390 Representatives passed this Congressional position saying that Israel has a right to defend itself against attacks from the Gaza Strip-- implying that this ally should send rockets back at the impoverished, sanctioned people trapped in the Strip-- and Rep. Ellison from Minnesota merely said 'Present.'
As the only Muslim in the House, why could he not say NO to the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people for their religion, their ethnicity, and their claim to the land? Is our well-armed ally, Israel, really so threatened by bottle rockets from little reservations, shooting over the 20-foot wall that separates these peoples?

A young woman at my workplace shared her insight about Rep. Ellison, as one of his former Muslim Minneapolitan campaign workers. She and fellow ex-campaigners visited Ellison at his office in the Minneapolis Urban League, asking simple questions about policy towards Palestine-- he yelled at them in response and ended their meeting. According to this angry young woman, he yelled, "DON'T PUT WORDS IN MY MOUTH! DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO SAY!"

He's our representative in the government, and that's all we can hope to do.

I also hoped to visit Rep. Ellison at his local office, concerning funding for green jobs. Along with some very concerned constituents and both MoveOn.org & H.I.R.E. organizers, we filed into his office in February and gave our petition to a staff member. She heard us out, but the Representative was not 'present.'

Perhaps when the numbers of dead and displaced in Palestine match the numbers killed and displaced in Darfur by Sudan, Ellison will step forward. In the middle of April, Ellison was arrested for protesting for the first time-- outside the Sudanese embassy in D.C. He and four other Congressmen and women thought that genocide in Darfur was worth crossing a police line and paying a $100 fine for.
According to WCCO:

"I have never done this before and its not the kind of thing I plan on doing in the near future. But given the gravity of the situation, the massive numbers of people whose lives were at risk, I thought it necessary to take this action," said Ellison after his release.

http://wcco.com/national/keith.ellison.arrested.2.995458.html

Minneapolis vs. Shrubs & Gardens

Published in the Twin Cities Daily Planet:
http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/article/2009/05/24/urban-farming-needs-you.html

One day a fastidious gardener and homemaker noticed that his well-groomed shrubs on the boulevard were cut down. He noticed-- when the City of Minneapolis sent him a bill for trimming his shrubs on the boulevard outside his house, though they weren’t in the way of the sidewalk.

A pattern had emerged in the City’s visits to his property, where he poured his heart and soul into raised bed gardens, a greenhouse, and custom heating and cooling for optimum energy efficiency.
When the Housing Inspector cited him for having a treated wood foundation for his house, sturdy but seldom employed in American homes, the City regarded it unstable just because it was different.
When police ticketed him for the inoperable vehicle left in his neighbor’s driveway, they didn’t bother to correct their error following his complaints.
Since he first put an anti-war sign up in his yard, the Housing Inspector routinely bothered him—perhaps that’s where it all began.
Activism can put someone on the City’s bad side, even when he or she just wants to grow herbs and vegetables to support his or herself—for activism is often wound up with community gardening, and vice versa.
The UrbanFarm in Southeast Como neighborhood has been a home for sage, spinach, collard greens, chives, and sustainable construction projects, as a dynamic community garden for the past ten years. Its resident farmer and food deliverer, Roger Peterson, now needs volunteers’ help more than ever.
Organic farming in the city is drawing a lot of interest, but unless the City steps in, it can’t pay any interest—or fees or back-taxes, for that matter. This summer back-taxes are due, and though weekly fundraisers have brought people to UrbanFarm this spring, the garage sales and plant sales haven’t raised enough to save the farm. The City may send police to block Peterson from his house as it decides what to do with his property in the middle of a middle-income neighborhood full of young families.
Who will step up to water the compost pile and weed the beds that span three back lawns, while Peterson is kept away? Who will continue the tradition of carrying buckets of fresh produce on a bike trailer around town, to donate to the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center and other charities?
As Peterson appeals the property taxes, neighbors and volunteers will likely decide the fate of UrbanFarm, by meeting up at its monthly bonfire and open house this June.

They too can appeal to the City-- for example, for the gardens’ adoption into one of many new ‘green’ initiatives under the umbrella of Homegrown Minneapolis. As part of the Department of Health and Family Support, the initiative’s four subcommittees could provide for proposed projects like small enterprise urban agriculture, locally grown foods in schools, and backyard gardening learning opportunities for youth. They could even integrate these aims—as Peterson did over the years at UrbanFarm.
It has been a place where neighborhood children and Dinkytown youth alike visit and help with the shoveling; where amateur musicians jam on Open House days and college students browse the numerous stacks of science books; where Peterson’s black Labradors greet new volunteers; where kindred spirits in the city meet each other and share produce they help to harvest. It still can be this way.
The super-insulated structures’ solar panels, circulation system, underground water storage and thermal mass stood as examples of innovative architecture for neighbors interested in sustainable living. Peterson himself has been an example of humble activism with his actions, teaching others how to continue the routines at UrbanFarm.

Review: Reaching Past the Wire

Here's some fairly old news I wrote, to remind us all to wake up to our surroundings.

The Human Face on War

How will Minnesotans acknowledge Iraq war veterans? At every gathering that recognizes those coming back from the war, there is likely to be a mix of people that are grateful, concerned, and critical.

One grandmother retired from the Army Reserves, and came home to Minnesota and a grateful church and group of friends, a concerned family, and a public very critical of her work at Abu Ghraib prison. Readers from human rights groups like Tackling Torture at the Top and sympathetic peers with military experience alike heard what Deanna Germain had to say at her book reading.

On Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2007, Army nurse and author Deanna Germain publicly read from her memoir, Reaching Past the Wire: A Nurse at Abu Ghraib, at McKawber's bookstore. The reading was hosted by St. Paul Public Libraries.

Deanna Germain served as an army nurse reservist in Abu Ghraib and Kuwait. Connie Lounsbury had approached Deanna about writing the book on her military service in the prison hospital, after she heard about it from Germain's sisters. Germain agreed to expand on the emails to her sisters that she'd written, hoping, as she said at her book reading, to “put a human face on war.” The proceeds of her memoir's sales go to the Fisher House Foundation. The national private-public foundation builds and keeps 'comfort homes' on the grounds of major military and VA medical centers, for family members to be close to a loved one in the military during hospitalization for an unexpected illness, disease, or injury.

She worked not in “the hard district” of the prison, but in a hospital, separated by an arm's length of razor-wire from about 4,000 detainees. Her patients came in from Fallujah and Ramadi and nearby villages. They were often injured in combat against US forces, according to Germain. Some prisoners didn't want to describe their injuries, perhaps because their past activities could have endangered their families if they had confessed them.

“I knew some detainees were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Germain said. She described the example of Sami, 15 years old, who was on a bus as “insurgents” blew it up-- and became one of her patients. “We tried to sort people, but it couldn't be done fast enough-- frustrating on all sides-- so a lot more ended up behind the wire,” she said, implying that there were a lot more there who shouldn't have been.

Reaching Past The Wire mostly details her relationships with coworkers, translators, and what she learned from the Iraqi prisoners and civilians she treated. The only section she read aloud at McKawber's was about her daily discomforts and weekly inconveniences: wearing armor all the time, seeing rats crawl over her feet as she tried to make a phone call, and having a cell of the prison for a bedroom. “War is hell,” she read.

Before publishing their book, Germain and Lounsbury sent it to the Judge Advocate General, in case they wanted to look it over. The office gave no response.

The small, crowded bookstore was full of questioning listeners. Germain grimaced as audience members bluntly brought the question of the Abu Ghraib prisoner maltreatment scandals up, just as they had been brought up to her so many times before.

She said that she knew no one at “the hard site,” and could find out nothing about it. Germain said, “I found out about the instance of abuse from my sister who emailed me, who said, 'WHAT IS HAPPENING OVER THERE?'

“We were watching BBC and any channel we could get, to find some information.

When we did have the reporters people coming through, it was obvious to the patients. We could not tell any of the prisoners or detainees what was happening, but it was pretty obvious that life had pretty quickly changed in our hospital.”

After piecing together snippets of information from whatever television and Internet time thy could afford, Germain and her coworkers reacted to the prisoner abuse with uncertainty and anger. “I haven't known soldiers who would do things like that!” Germain told the audience. “We did a lot of self-evaluation: What are we doing here? If we can change one heart or mind, that'll be our goal.”

Germain wrote one short chapter about prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, in the middle of her memoir: “When I came to Abu Ghraib, I realized that the soldiers here seemed of a different breed, a little independent of the whole, because we had to be, for survival...We just hoped the leaders would keep things in control....If I asked about anything outside the hospital or had questions about who else was in the camp and what they did, I got vague answers.”

She wrote of the possibility that the hospital distracted the International Red Cross, and other organizations that visited and checked on it, from torture interrogations not too far away: “I have wondered if the hospital where I served was set up as a response, a way to counterbalance it by providing better care for detainees.” This profound line of reason on page 79 was not revisited anywhere else in the book.

When asked about the conditions that prompted and allowed prisoner abuse, Germain said, “When strong...leadership presence isn't there, that can happen.” She added that a lot of medics were 19 or 20 years old, on their first job, “and a lot of young people need supervision-- people to guide them. And they didn't have that.”

Germain enlisted when she was young, in 1970. She provided care for soldiers in Vietnam, and then in America, in the Individual Ready Reserve during Desert Storm. “Thirty days before my retirement, I was called into active duty,” she said. She was called to Abu Ghraib, outside of Fallujah, Iraq, to serve 540 more days in the army than she meant to.

Germain expressed little regret, however. “I think I'm much more aware of what service and sacrifice [are], than before I went on this mission... The next chapter: we're a very rich country; we need to share more with those who have less.”

After giving many copies of her book personal autographs, Germain expanded on this idea of a new chapter for the soldiers, whom she looks on not as fighters, but as protectors. She “joined to protect and serve.” When asked what the military protects, she said, “What we have.” When asked what “we have,” she took a moment.

“Democracy, safety-- I guess that's subjective now. I can't... sorry, it's not a complete thought.”

Germain didn't understand what was going on at Abu Ghraib until outside sources caught the scent of scandal and told her, just as we often don't understand what's going on in the next block down from us, until an outside perspective is brought to our attention. Like Germain, we can wake up to our surroundings-- but are not likely to understand the deeper themes that cause our present dilemmas, which are outside and above and obscured from the news of what's going on.