Occupy Bank Houses

It is time to take back the houses.

Every day, most Americans drive by houses that stand empty. Houses foreclosed, their inhabitants moved on to a relative's couch if they are lucky, and a tent if they are not. Maybe the people who lived there made a bad choice, or did not fully understand what kind of mortgage they were getting into, maybe they even knew full well thy could not afford the house. But more often, they got hit with a medical bill that ruined them, or lost their job, or were talked into a predatory loan. The bank, rather than work out a way to work it out, foreclosed and took the house.

Every day, most Americans drive by homeless people, although we're getting to the point where we do not even notice. Begging at traffic lights, hidden and huddled in a tent tucked in the woods, or milling about outside food banks, shelters and churches. No job, and often as not no prospects, they are waiting. For veterans' benefits, for cans of beans, for a chance to take a shower, for enough money to buy something to dull the pain or ease the boredom.

These are two phenomena in need of a merger. While the Right rails about us being a Christian nation, they reveal their deeper devotion to Mammon by enshrining these empty homes as the domain of conniving corporations. Love thy neighbor? Well, if he has no house, then technically he is not a neighbor, so the logic goes, and the lucky ones (often as not thinking themselves Chosen or Righteous) feel no responsibility to the wretched, no compulsion to charity. Maybe the Bible should have been a little more clear in that requirement, like the Koran.

But I digress. The issue is more fundamental than religion. There are homes standing empty and people standing in the cold. Both are symptoms of the immense transfer of wealth over the past few decades from people who work for money to people who simple collect interest, dividends, capital gains, and of course, rent. If I thought the greedy were smarter than they are, I'd say this was by design, that loans were made with the express purpose of collecting interest for a couple of years before taking possession of the property. But instead, the housing market collapse has more to do with stupid greed than anything else, CDOs, derivatives that may have involved some high-dollar math, but no sense.

So should we reward mindless greed with property? No. Should we allow our neighborhoods to sink into the squalor of abandonment? No. Should we let people suffer when a solution is at hand? No.

Some of you will think this is radical, but it isn't. What is radical is to cut and cut and cut away at our social safety net the way we have for years, so that tax cut for the wealthy can become wealthier. Radical is insisting that a cold family stay cold because the global investor class not experience a minor decline of prospects.

Sheriffs across the country have decided that it's not radical, and are refusing to evict people. Some politicians have urged constituents being foreclosed on to stay put. Those of us commoners with common sense would rather see someone in a house than the house be abandoned and people be homeless.

I pay a monthly mortgage--to a credit union, and not a Wall Street bank--and don't plan on stopping. Houses should not be stolen, or taken by brute force. But as an interim measure, while people are out of work and houses are not selling anyway, house occupation seems both reasonable and humane. If five years from now there is a problem with people refusing to work and occupying someone else's property, then we can deal with it then, but now there is an urgency to our societal dilemma that justifies occupation.

Besides, as a political message, it works. It is easy enough to find out which houses belong to Wall Street, and occupying those houses is a far more direct confrontation than occupying public parks. Thus far, occupations of banks themselves end rapidly with arrests, but the legal process will be slower with bank-owned houses. The same muddled state of sliced-and-diced mortgage-backed securities that allows banks to say the cannot trace the actual mortgage holders to arrange a re-finance should be used to slow down re-evictions. Also, we are learning that the initial foreclosures often do not stand up to scrutiny, having by-passed some legal requirements before being robo-signed.

Not everyone wants to make a statement, and for them, I suggest the back door. Quietly move in. The banks have so many foreclosed properties that it will take them a while to notice you are there and arrange for your removal.

We live in an age rife with symbolic acts, and if we run out of people who need a house to occupy, we can still make a statement. Replace the "For Sale" sign with one that says "Foreclosed by Bank of America." Or "Property of Saudi Investors. Trespassers May Be Beheaded." Or just, "Your Neighbors Used to Live Here." Or "Abandoned by Citigroup." Call the banks that own the places and demand better upkeep.

We used to live in a nation where we knew our neighbors and helped them out. We raised barns together, and paid taxes that helped the poorest among us get a leg up. We expected those who were born well off, those who had money to spare, to spread the wealth and not try to maximize it at the expense of the rest of us. We did not stand by while people were kicked to the curb. It's time to move back in.

Occupy Walmart

One of the litmi of the Left is Walmart. "I Don't Shop at Walmart" stickers appear on bumpers of old Volvos, Prius's, and other awkward-to-pluralize brands preferred by progressives. Labor protests the poor wages (poorer still if you are a woman) and the anti-union stance of the company. Liberals smirk and giggle at that People of Walmart website.

And strangely enough, it works in the other direction as well. The Right--or at least the rank and file, the commoners with the votes, the LumpenRight--shops at Walmart. Scoop up them Asian goods, even though it meant your brother got laid off. Buy that beflaggled patriot wear and the disney princess crap. Squint and grunt at them commies who would let unions into Walmart. Swipe the card while Walmart swipes your paychecks. And for God's sake, vote Republican.

So, with this powerful symbol of piratical capitalism run amok, amidst every community with a 15 acre pad site and the critical mass of consumer households to offer, we are occupying parks? Parks?! Land that already belongs to the public?

Granted, marching into a Wall Street Bank or a Walmart Street retail establishment and setting up a tent invariably results in arrests, whereas most cops are just letting the protesters stay in the parks, entertaining themselves at the seeming cluelessness of some college kids, and the un-bra'd chests of others. Occupying private property is frowned upon in the US, and it's really hard to imagine Occupy Walmart lasting more than a few days, ending in the ozone and burnt hair aromatic aftermath of taser fests of the rent-a-cops and eventually the real ones.

But, we can protest outside. We can hold up signs about jobs outsourced and landfills bursting, about grandpa serving his country and working all his life only to be humiliated as Greeter because he cannot afford retirement. OK, that's a long sign, but you know what I mean.

And, stealthily, we can protest inside. Pick up something and replace it on the wrong shelf. Try on the maximum number of clothes every time, ask for assistance, do whatever it takes to make the workers work more, because that's the only way they'll get more hours and more cash, the only way Walmart will create more jobs (crappy though they may be). Get yourself hired there, and then invite in a union. Go in and apply stickers with "This Used to be Made in America" or some other clever shit I cannot think of right now.

Or not. You don't need to sneak and snivel. Get in their face. Rouse the rabble, yell crazy stuff or go all yippie-theater on them 'til they escort you off the premises, making everyone there a little freaked out, a little less inclined to hang around and spend more. You don't even have to go there physically, just write letters to the editor, blog, expend your own breath ranting and exhorting (or, if you are not a blowhard like myself, riffing reasoning). Talk to your Walmart-shopping friends about how the place sucks money out of localities (not just what you spend there, but jobs lost, taxes unpaid, resources expended on their behalf, not to mention that act that someone who works at Walmart is eligible for welfare because the pay is so shitty).

Occupy Walmart however you see fit. Squelching the flow of customers, shaming the company in the public eye (all you gotta do is tell the truth for that to work), or advocating for their workers. Whatever you want to do. Just don't buy anything there.