December 10, 2011

Protesting foreclosures, Occupy Atlanta storms Chase Bank branch

As foreclosures increasingly become a new front in the Occupy movement, the group that occupies the biggest city in the south is not only protesting against banks but also advocating for people in danger of losing their homes.

The activists have for a week occupied the front yard of a home on Glen Iris Drive in the old Fourth Ward, a transitional neighborhood near downtown, that Chase Bank is threatening to repossess.

And last night, the occupiers marched from there to a bank to demand that the loan be modified.

“This is a very large family for whom this house has been a very special and loving home,” mic checked Graham Fellers, as he read a letter signed by the family that might lose their home inside the bank. “Now, we the Pittman family come to Chase Bank asking who will do the right thing and forgive this unfair and immoral debt.”

The Pittman family says their matriarch, Eloise, a retired school secretary who died last week of cancer, was given a predatory loan before she died that she couldn’t possibly pay back on her pension. She owed $3,000 a month even though the Pittmans’ bought the house in 1953 for $10,000.

Thomas Jones, Eloise’s son-in-law, one of eight adults who live in the house, said she had become gullible in her old age and shouldn’t have been allowed to sign for the loan, which came with an 11 percent interest rate.

“I feel like she was taken advantage of real bad,” Jones told me prior to the action. “I talked to the bank manager today, he still wants cash or keys. We’re not even going to attempt to pay $3,000 a month.”

Tim Franzen, with Occupy Atlanta talks with a police officer inside Chase Bank.

About 20 Occupy Atlanta activists entered the bank, after initially being locked out, and demanded the local manager accept a letter from the Pittmans. Initially, the manager, who declined to give her name, refused to accept the letter and instead called the police.

For more than 20 minutes bank personnel conferred with five police officers as activists chanted inside the bank while customers continued to do business with tellers. Then, an officer announced the manager “has been instructed to accept the letter.” He did not say who the instruction came from – police or bank executives. She spent much of the time on the phone, possibly talking with Chase higher-ups.

Although at least six activists had agreed to be arrested if need be prior to the action, Occupy Atlanta declared victory after the letter was accepted, left the bank and marched back to the home on Glen Iris, where about 10 tents adorned the front yard.

Protesting against foreclosures has become a new front for the Occupy movement as of late, as evidenced by this action, an Occupy Wall Street march in Brooklyn I attended earlier this week in which a family moved back into a foreclosed home as well as  other events across the country.

The actions dovetail well with one of movement’s more popular and resonant chants: “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out.”

Michelle Snyder, who had camped in Zuccotti Park since the early days of the protest, told me while I was in New York that foreclosure actions would play an important role for the Occupy movement as more and more occupations leave or are forced out of city parks and public spaces.

She said foreclosed homes, and even farms in the midwest, could likely become the next spaces to be occupied in mass.

— Bob Plain