The hiring hall and home defense
San Francisco activists are standing up against evictions and foreclosures in the African American neighborhood of Bay View, with several actions organized in recent weeks to get residents back into their homes.
, director of organizing for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, makes the case for union members helping to organize the resistance to foreclosures and evictions, in this article that originally appeared at BeyondChron.com on November 4.
INSPIRED BY the Occupy movement, over 100 people showed up this week outside the homes of two African American families in the Bay View, one of the traditional Black neighborhoods of San Francisco.
A year ago or even two months ago, this home defense led by Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) would have scraped to enlist one to 20 people to be present. Now buoyed by the effervescence of the Occupy moment, unionists, community leaders and politicians all swarmed Quesada Avenue in San Francisco.
A high point was when a jubilant and visibly moved Black homeowner came out her door and called the assembled group "her angels of mercy." Then, the banners of Occupy San Francisco arrived to cheers of all present. "They got bailed out, we got thrown out!" rang through the streets as we marched to two of the 14 houses on the same street being foreclosed.
The New Bottom Line reports that in California alone there are 2,107,984 mortgages underwater. Many of those drowning in debt and in danger of losing their homes are our union members. When our building trades leaders say that 40 percent of their members are on the bench, they are talking about the 40 percent of their members most likely to face foreclosure.
The link can be graphically made between unemployment and foreclosure by using our hiring halls for mortgage workshops and mobilizing centers for home defense. The dispatcher announces to the hall: "If you do not go out on a job, you go out to a home defense."
Recently in San Pedro, I sat in on a meeting between ACCE and the leadership of our powerful International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 13, whose members work the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Many of our members are not getting their hours and are underwater.
ACCE offered to do a mortgage workshop and home defense seminar at the union hall. That will lead to education and inevitably action on the streets. One of our Local 13 members already joined ACCE because they worked with him to save his house. The "job tape" which tells our members in a recording about the prospect for work on the coming shifts can also announce the latest home defense in the area.
Home defense should become part of the daily routine of the hiring hall. Many of our members have been ashamed to admit they are struggling to keep their homes. The 99 percent frame is giving them space to come forward.
The hiring hall-to-home defense nexus is a way to spread concrete working-class participation in the Occupy movement and to the benefit of all. Unions with hiring halls can hook up with ACCE and other groups fighting foreclosures to make a graphic emotional statement about the crisis and actually do something about it
With the technology of today, there's no reason why the hiring hall couldn't be conducted outside a home in foreclosure while members fend off the sheriffs before some of them go to work! Justice for Janitors used to dispatch from protests outside non-union buildings 20 years ago! Let's roll! Time to spread home defense to the hiring halls of America.
First published at BeyondChron.org.
