foreclosures – Engaging Peace

If you know what a robber baron is, and have noticed them lurking around recently, go to the head of the class.

Cartoon of child labor supporting robber baron. Image in public domain.

As Merriam-Webster reminds us, “robber baron” refers to:

“1: an American capitalist of the latter part of the 19th century who became wealthy through exploitation (as of natural resources, governmental influence, or low wage scales)
2: a business owner or executive who acquires wealth through ethically questionable tactics”

The barons are definitely back, and more powerful than ever. Only we call them Wall Street, the Military Industrial Complex, and the Top 1% now.

Check out some of the revealing documentaries:

As history so often shows us, when the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. That has been particularly true for people of color and immigrants following the recent great shift in money from the poorer to the richer.

A recent book from Laura Gottesdiener, A dream foreclosed: Black America and the fight for a place to call home, provides many of the horrendous details:

The current unemployment rate for blacks is 13.7%
The median net wealth of black families in 2010 was $4,900, compared to $97,000 for white families—a number that is itself inflated by multimillionaire and billionaire whites
Since 2007, corporate corruption and loan-sharking have led to at least 4.8 million completed foreclosures, disproportionately to black and Latino families.

Gottesdiener also provides some heartening examples of Occupy movement and other community organizers’ work to stop the plunder of poor.

The labor movement learned long ago that individual and community efforts can bring about important change—although preserving those changes demands constant vigilance.

Most members of American labor have to work this Labor Day “holiday,” but we would all do well to remember the value of activism.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Today we welcome guest author Jean Gerard for the final post in her series on Quaker reflections.]

I read recently of the Occupiers’ attempts to redirect their efforts toward multiple current problems. In particular, I feel an affinity toward “Occupy Homes,” which helps people move back into houses from which banks have ejected them. It takes me back decades to our small but determined efforts in Southern California.

We worked and lived for years in a typical provincial conservative suburb in the San Gabriel Valley northeast of downtown L.A. The first “housing heist” occurred when all Japanese Americans (most of them citizens) were summarily removed from their properties around the West Coast at the beginning of World War II to isolated “camps” inland.

Later, racial prejudice reared its ugly head again in the form of “restrictive covenants” – illegal promises made among white citizens, promising not to sell or rent properties to “non-whites.”

On the eastern outskirts of Los Angeles County, a tract of inexpensive houses had been built and put up for sale. When black and Asian families tried to buy these homes, banks were willing to lend them money (at no doubt exorbitant rates of interest) but militant and reactionary organizations “hazed” them after they moved in. They were shunned by the white majorities, threatened with mysterious warnings, snubbed, or had garbage thrown on their front yards at night.

When a Japanese-American couple returned from “the camps” and needed a place to live, my husband and I succeeded in supporting their purchase of a house next door.

Encouraged by that success, we joined a small group of neighbors to form an “inter-racial club” in order to support a black couple by helping to calm a neighborhood of white owners. Spending time with them, having picnics together on front lawns, inviting their neighbors, talking over feelings, we succeeded in defusing resistance and fear. Together we reached what might be called “provisional acceptance,” which turned out to be a permanent solution in that community.

Naturally,”Occupy Homes” went straight to my heart when I watched a video of a house in Brooklyn being reclaimed by OWS action. The moment I heard a child’s laughter coming from his “reoccupied” bedroom, I remembered a similar voice from years ago when I first learned that peace with justice is not only possible; it is imperative. But people have to engage in the process to achieve and maintain it.

I am with you, you are with me, we are with them and they are with us. I had almost given up! “Occupy the Future!”

Robber barons, redux: Labor Day

Housing justice–then and now (Quaker reflections, Part 4)