A-Infos (en) US, Boston Anti-Authoritarian Movement Newsletter, BAAM # 31 - Banks Get Bailed Out, People Get Thrown Out! by Adrienne

As BAAM has covered in previous editions, there is a housing crisis afoot and banks are 
waging wars against tenants of foreclosed properties that have had the misfortune of 
falling into the banks’ hooked tentacles. Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and 
Deutschbank are among those leading the way in unconscionable policy against tenants of 
foreclosed properties, refusing to accept rent, refusing to sell the homes to families who 
are able to purchase them at appraised value, preferring to let the properties sit vacant 
and rot, which leads to further deterioration of neighborhoods already struck hard by 
poverty. ---- But when City Life/Vida Urbana gets involved, it is highly unlikely that 
families will be evicted from their homes.

Dedicated to economic justice and community empowerment since 1973, CL/VU’s tenant 
organizing has stricken many a blow against predatory banks.

Their negotiations to keep families in their homes take place on a number of levels, 
several of which are between lawyers and bureaucrats. But in the face of particularly 
obstinate banksters set on eviction, perhaps CL/VU’s strongest bargaining tool is its 
network of hundreds of people, scores of whom will turn out at a time to show up before 
the constable does. The very threat of such an eviction blockade, filled with singing, 
chanting rowdies with signs and banners who believe in housing as a human right, has, in 
most cases, kept the banksters at bay and willing to re-negotiate. Indeed, few evictions 
have taken place with CL/VU’s organized community intervention.

Had it not been for such an intervention, Friday, 19 February might have gone very 
differently for the Nguyen family. In the 02124 part of Dorchester, the zip code hit 
hardest by the foreclosure crisis, the ongoing economic shitshow adversely affected their 
family business. Bank of America [trustee] and JP Morgan Chase [servicer] foreclosed the 
home the Nguyens purchased 13 years ago. They would not accept rent and began eviction 
proceedings. Even after a local non-profit offered to buy the home in cash at real value, 
the banksters refused to back down. The constable was called to evict at 9AM on the 19th 
and an eviction blockade was called for 8:30AM to physically block the eviction. Lawyers 
negotiated fiercely into the night, eventually winning a partial victory and securing the 
Nguyens in their home for at least another week. And so the eviction blockade turned into 
an energizing rally and a demonstration of community strength in front of the Nguyens’ 
Dorchester home.

Though the struggle is not yet over for the Nguyen family or countless other families, 
when joined together with scores of Bostonians and the inspiring organizers of CL/VU, one 
can’t help but be convinced of the truth in the chanted assertion, ‘When we fight, we win!’
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