Occupy Foreclosures, Not Afghanistan

Radiantly soggy Codepink Mel and friends at a Brooklyn action to Occupy Foreclosures today, Dec. 6. Her report: “Huge crowd..ppl leaning out of windows cheering us on.”

Right on, Mel. What are we funding right now, as news rolls out of the militarization of U.S. municipal police who get “free” -- i.e. paid for by federal taxes rather than local -- tanks, guns, tear gas and pepper spray? (Note: After I published this post the original article I linked to in Business Insider was taken down. Now it's back up again. Read it here.)

And in the  U.S. taxpayers are also funding the ruling military council in Egypt, whose next big shipment of tear gas was blocked  by heroic workers in Suez. What are we funding as your Congress and mine vote this week on annual "defense" funding of a size so gargantuan it almost defies human scale?

our" /> een" value="true">

Occupying Foreclosed houses makes perfect sense at this point in the nascent Occupy movement. They both literally and figuratively make visible “the problem” between the banks and the 99%. So many folks were fraudulently turned out of their homes after their mortgage was sold repeatedly at no profit or benefit to them – while others lost their housing when a family member became ill and they fell behind in the payments – causing the U.S. corptocracy's failure to provide adequate health care to hit home in a doubly cruel way.

I think a performance of "I Will Survive (Capitalism)" would go just right at a foreclosure occupation, don't you? The t.v. crews would love it.

It appears there may be a partial retreat during winter of occupying outdoor spaces, at least once it gets truly cold. (50 and rainy today at the 45th parallel. Reminds me of Decembers in the SF Bay area, not New England.) Maybe some occupiers will even get locked up on purpose like freedom fighters have been known to do – housed, heated and fed at the government's expense while studying nonviolent methods, and planning for spring.

And when we re-emerge instead of grabbing rifles we will grab our friends and head out to follow the fine example of these Garfield High School students who occupied Seattle City Hall. "NO MORE CUTS!" "FOR THE FUTURE OF OUR NATION, PUT BACK FUNDING IN EDUCATION." As hundreds of chanting kids filled the stairs and flowed through city hall's doors, one observed, "This took 72 hours on Facebook."