Race a growing factor in foreclosures, layoffs, wage cuts

Double whammy: Blacks in the grip of foreclosure/wage-concession vice

By: Doug Miller, Contributing Writer

Posted: Monday, March 21, 2011 12:39 pm

(Special to the NNPA from thedefendersonline.com) - African Americans may find themselves in the middle of a potentially devastating financial squeeze play, disproportionately pressed from one side by foreclosures tied to the ongoing U.S. mortgage crisis and constricted on the other by growing government demands for concessions from Black-heavy public employee unions. As governors and legislatures from Wisconsin to Indiana and Ohio continue to focus on fewer public-sector employees as the centerpiece of plans to slash the cost of government services, the upshot could be more downsized Black employees with no regular income to pay mortgages that already may be in danger of foreclosure. According to Steven Pitts, a labor policy specialist with the University of California-Berkeley Labor Center, about 14.5 percent of all public-sector workers in the United States are African-American, which ranks that sector second only to health and education services in terms of a workforce that is heavily Black. More than one in five Black workers is employed in public administration in particular, either on a local, state or federal level. Blacks More Likely to be Union Members An Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report released last year added credence to those figures, showing that 18 percent of people employed by the federal government in 2009 were African-American.  A separate report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released earlier this year disclosed that Black workers also were more likely to be union members than whites, Asians or Hispanics. Asked about the potential impact of widespread cutbacks in the number of workers employed in the public sector, Pitts said "the danger is that it would have a disproportionate effect on Black workers." At the same time, African Americans find themselves bearing an unequal burden in what has become a prolonged national crisis in mortgage foreclosures. Research published last year by the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) in Washington, D.C., revealed that Blacks and Latinos are nearly 75 percent more likely to experience foreclosure than whites. A separate study published last fall by Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs went so far as to call the foreclosure mess "a highly radicalized process." Researchers Jacob Rugh and Douglas Massey contended that segregation created a unique bloc of minority clients who were differentially sold risky subprime loans. According to Rugh and Massey, the outcome of the crisis "was not simply a result of neutral market forces, but was structured on the basis of race and ethnicity through the social fact of residential segregation." "Ultimately," they concluded, "the racialization of America's foreclosure crisis occurred because of a systematic failure to enforce basic civil rights laws." Reaffirming that the mortgage foreclosure problem continues to have a disproportionate impact on Blacks and Hispanics, Kathleen Day, a spokesperson for the CRL, added: "To the extent that someone loses their job, they can't pay their mortgage. That compounds the problem even more." This article was originally published in the March 21, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper

Venue, program, meetings set for Housing and Hunger Crisis Conference

The L.A. Housing and Hunger Crisis is set for Friday, April 8 through Sunday, April 10. Friday evening April 8, there will be a "Culture of Resistance" event at the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, 6120 S. Vermont Ave. in Los Angeles.

Saturday from 10 AM to 4:00 PM, the conference will shift to Angelus Plaza, a senior center at 255 S. Hill Street in downtown L.A. (at the foot of Angel's Flight and near the Pershing Square Metro Red Line station between 2nd and 3rd Streets) for a plenary and educational, skill-share, know your rights and other workshops. These will take place in the auditorium and cafeteria on the 4th floor. The plenary will feature speakers from "Take Back the Land" in Miami, FL, Bilal Ali, an activist in the LA Housing is a Human Right network, and a speaker from the American Indian Movement. Workshops will cover dealing with foreclosures and the banks, tenants' rights, resisting privatization of public housing, challenging the PPPs (public-private partnerships) taking over LA parks and recreation centers, the Community Redevelopment Agency and gentrification, food and water sovereignty including community supported agriculture and urban gardening, using street art and Internet graphics work in human rights organizing, organizing the working poor, homeless community self-defense, and other related topics. There will also be informational tables from a number of community organizations involved in housing and hunger issues. Lunch will be provided to participants courtesy of the South Central Farmers and Food Not Bombs.

On Sunday, April 10, the conference will shift back to the Southern Cal Library, 6120 S. Vermont, from noon until 4:00 for strategizing and alliance building workshops and a closing plenary, designed to bring together people dealing with foreclosures, evictions, privatization, slum housing, homelessness and urban environmental justice issues to chart a course for future action and solidarity.

The final few planning meetings for the conference will be taking place on Fridays at 3:00 PM at the Southern California Library, 6120 S. Vermont -- Friday March 25, April 1 and April 8 just prior to the start of the conference itself. For more information, call 310-495-0299 or email h2c2la@yahoo.com.

Sponsoring Groups

GrassrootsKPFK, Anti-Racist Action L.A., South Central Farm, Coffee Party, Food Not Bombs, Workers Solidarity Alliance, Sierra Club Echo Park, Union de Vecinos, Coalition L.A., Black Riders Liberation Party, Brown Riders Liberation Party, WaterCorps, MLK Coalition for Jobs Justice & Peace, Free Association of Anarchists, LA Community Action Network, Community Services Unlimited, Inc., Making Change Human Rights Newspaper, Venice Justice Committee, Puerto Rican Alliance, Green Party, POWER-LA (Santa Monica) People Organized for Westside Renewal, ISO, Bail Out the People Movement, more to come...

Add your endorsement - call 310-495-0299 or email h2c2LA@yahoo.com or housing.hunger.crisis.conference@gmail.com 

Los Angeles Housing and Hunger Crisis Conference

The impact of the Great Recession on existing oppressive conditions and situations, such as gentrification, homelessness, displacement, lack of open space and malnutrition, has produced a crisis in housing and hunger that exposes the brutal nature of class society and colonialism within the U.S. and the southern California region.

The conference will bring together people facing critical survival issues in the L.A. area:

• Gentrification and the "spatial deconcentration" of poor people of color
• Foreclosures and evictions
• Privatization of public housing
• Gang injunctions, sweeps and "biased policing"
• Commercialization and corporatization of public parks
• Lack of food and water sovereignty
• Denial of indigenous sovereignty and land rights
• Attacks on migrants' and undocumented residents' right to housing

Groups involved in planning the conference include GrassrootsKPFK, which initiated the effort, Venice Justice Committee, LA Food Not Bombs, the South Central Farm, Union de Vecinos, Coalition LA, Anti-Racist Action L.A., Community Services Unlimited, Making Change, the Martin Luther King Coalition for Jobs Justice and Peace, and LA Community Action Network.

The planning committee is meeting weekly at the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, 6120 S. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles. For more information, contact us by email at housing.hunger.crisis.conference@gmail.com or call 310-890-7104. Or you can sign up for our low volume list serve, http://groups.google.com/group/h2c2. The conference will include a cultural component, educational as well as skills-sharing workshop and an action orientation towards follow-up organizing.

Our goal is to build unity among all sectors of society impacted by this crisis, including homeowners, renters and unhoused people, and develop an effective fight back strategy for direct action to develop food and water sovereignty and defense of the human right to housing, food, water and shelter.