
Foreclosures are soaring. Some housing experts say 4 million foreclosures are possible in 2010. To fight back, organizations across the U.S. are engaging in “housing liberation” and “housing defense” to exercise their human rights to housing. Here are a few examples.
Outraged Bayview residents armed with signs that read “Bayview Not for Sale,” “Parks for the People,” and “Governor, Veto SB 792 – Save Candlestick Park” entered Sen. Mark Leno’s San Francisco district office on Friday, Oct. 9, and erected a cardboard condominium tower topped with a sign that read “Leno: Do you miss your office? We’ll sure miss our park.”

The first stop on the Ghetto to Gaza Speaking Tour was in Sacramento with the Hip Hop Congress at Capital Garage. The usual Wednesday event is their weekly open mic, but it was altered to feature M1’s experience in Cairo and Gaza. Then we went to East Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, West Oakland, San Jose, Santa Cruz and Sonoma.

The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) predicts a 16-inch mid-century sea level rise, covering Bay Area coastal lands and eventually swamping downtown San Francisco up to Market Street. The primary global warming gas is carbon dioxide. Methane gas, heavily implicated in global warming, has been emitted for years from the Bayview Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Sea level rise will release methane gas from wetlands and landfill, of which much of Hunters Point is composed.

On Thursday, Sept. 3, at their weekly town hall meeting, the leaders of SLAM (Stop Lennar Action Movement) reminded the audience of the kind of power they have in the battle to save Bayview Hunters Point. Minister Christopher Muhammad, Archbishop Franzo King and Francisco Da Costa shared the latest news of SLAM’s progress and urged the audience to understand that by staying focused and vigilant and not letting anything turn them around, they will win the war.

California’s phony bleeding heart liberal Democrats have just helped to pass a Republican budget deal that shreds California’s safety net by cutting $15.5 billion from the state’s service sector to partially close a $26.3 billion funding shortfall in state revenues. The Democrats supported a $1.3 billion cut to MediCal, a $2.8 billion cut to the statewide university system, and a $6 billion cut to California’s K-12 schools. The Democratic leadership also supported the Republicans’ push to slash the children’s health insurance program known as Healthy Families, as well as In-Home Supportive Services and the CalWORKs program by cutting $878 million or more in coming months.

Sen. Mark Leno’s Senate Bill 792 would give clean parkland at Candlestick Point to Lennar and replace it with toxic land. Lennar, the “toxic dust developer,” plans to build 10,000 luxury condos at the Hunters Point Shipyard. This toxic trade bill is now in the California Assembly, so calls opposing SB 792 should be made immediately to Fiona Ma, (916) 319-2012, and Tom Ammiano, (916) 319-2013.

Sadly, March 7, 2009, marked the 15th anniversary for California’s draconian Three Strikes and You’re Out law. Fifteen years is one and a half decades, 180 months or 5,475 days. No matter how you calculate it, 15 years is too long for non-violent humans to be “incapacitated” for petty, non-serious and victimless crimes.

Signs reading “Justice for Oscar Grant,” “Abolish the Three Strikes Law” and “Demandamos Justicia Ya!” floated above a sea of ralliers of different ages, religious beliefs, genders and ethnicities. From Bakersfield up to Sacramento, activists, teachers and family members came together to rally against laws that have failed to serve the betterment of their communities.