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It’s been an N.P.A. kind of week at work and in the media. We had a very successful training with some of our newest leaders, facilitated by James Mumm–director of organizing for National People’s Action. The focus of the meeting was organizing: how leaders can help recruit new members, strengthen the organization and win on our issues.
Great turnout, lots of participation–this wasn’t a lecture, but a workshop. Laughter, learning and lasagna (well–sub sandwiches and salad actually!)
Also, our national coalition is getting a lot of press:
as a key member of the new Americans For Financial Reform, a coalition of groups that was formed to push the Obama Administration and Congress to re-regulate the banking and finance system.
A great article in The Nation entitled Naming The Enemy describing both the direct action protests at our annual Washington, DC conference and N.P.A.’s intentional decision to target the shadowy political power of corporations, rather than the more showy hits against elected officials.
N.P.A. founder and legendary housing activist, the late Gale Cincotta, is featured prominently in a new book by Alyssa Katz Our Lot: How Real Estate Came To Own Us.
In an interview about the book on Salon.com, Ms. Katz is asked: “Is there anybody in this whole saga who stands out as both well intentioned and well informed, who was prescient about what was going to happen and said stop?”
The kind of conscience and hero in my book is a now-deceased activist named Gail Cincotta, who is really central to all these progressive policy changes to help fight discrimination in mortgage lending, get the Community Reinvestment Act passed, urge more lending to credit-worthy and qualified low- and moderate-income people. She would go and testify in Congress year after year about how these programs were going and she would just call them out on it constantly and say, What are you doing? These loans are not helping people, they’re proving really harmful and you have a responsibility to do something.
Wow. We’re exhausted. Many of us have blisters on our feet and hoarse voices . . . but the smile just will not leave our faces. Yep, SUN is back from another power-packed National People’s Action conference in Washington, DC with 600 of our organizing brothers and sisters, from 24 neighborhood groups from across the country.
NPA was created to fight the redlining of home mortgages by financial institutions, aided and abetted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. NPA has expanded over the years to include issues such as education, immigration and access to health care–the issues that residents of poor neighborhoods face every day.
The conference is equal parts leadership training, strategic planning, accountability meetings, legislative briefings and direct action protest. No time for sightseeing, the work starts when you sign in at 4 PM on Friday and isn’t over until you pull out of DC at 4 PM on Monday (although there is a party on Sunday night.)
This year, a leadership team of residents met with Ben Bernanke and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. Last year we protested at his home and office. This year we were at the table. He agreed to a series of meetings in our cities to discuss plans to ease the burden of mortgage foreclosures. We’ll let you know when he comes to Syracuse!
NPA also released a report on the discriminatory lending practices of Wells Fargo, a company that targets African-Americans for high interest, high fee loans. For example, 41% of African-American borrowers in Syracuse who received a loan from Wells Fargo received one of these sub-prime loans.
The direct action protests were high energy and always a highlight of the trip. Check out some footage taken by SUN member (and chair of our Board) Dick Breland. These videos were in the lobby of the building housing Wells Fargo’s top DC lobbyist, Ted Doremus. The firm agreed to receive a copy of the NPA report on Wells Fargo’s lending discrimination. We are still working to get a meeting with top Wells Fargo officials–this was just the first step.
Then we moved on to the American Banking Association and its president Edward Yingling. The A.B.A. is lobbying furiously to gut all the programs proposed by President Obama to help rescue families in danger of foreclosure, while pushing for ever increasing amounts of money for bailouts of bankers. As The Hill newspaper reported on its website, NPA’s protest forced a lockdown of the entire office building housing their offices. A leadership team met with top officials and are working to schedule a formal negotiation meeting in the near future.
After the actions on Monday, we went up to Capitol Hill to participate in meetings with agency and Congressional staff. SUN member Amanda Pascall was a part of the leadership team that met with the chief advisor to the new HUD secretary to discuss both mortgage foreclosure prevention and more funding for programs such as the Community Development Block Grant. SUN member Maria Johnson was part of the team that briefed Congressional staff about a proposed bill that would fund a pilot program for rust-belt cities with populations under 150,000 struggling with economic decline and increases in vacant housing.
Our intrepid band of SUN folks are back home, energized to continue our mission of improving our neighborhoods.
The right-wing response to the community organizer backlash against the Republicans is in full swing. One such effort really made my day.
This is how Investors Business Daily (IBD) characterized National People’s Action, a national organizing network that counts SUN as a dues-paying member:
“National People’s Action, or NPA, a particularly thuggish group of Alinskyite agitators who sing the following ditty when picketing the homes of business and government leaders: “Who’s on your hit list, NPA? Who’s on your hit list of today? Take no prisoner, take no names. Kick ‘em in the ass when they play their games.”
N.P.A. is also the group that is responsible for the creation and passage of the Community Reinvestment Act, federal legislation requiring banks covered by FDIC loan insurance to make loans in neighborhoods from which they receive deposits.
What really made my day was how Investors Business Daily tried to discredit organizers and organizations of N.P.A’s ilk:
Some community organizers are well-meaning and harmless. But not the ones Obama threw in with. They intimidate and agitate for more government home loans, more government job programs, a ban on police profiling, more benefits for illegal aliens, felon voting rights, minimum wage hikes, “environmental justice” and so on.
Again, thank you for making my day IBD–spin doctors for the running dog capitalist oligarchs!
