A Eugene V. Debs Moment -Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her vice presidential running mate Cheri Honkala were arrested during a protest at the offices of mortgage company Fannie Mae on Banker's Row in Philadelphia- A Challenge To The Republicrats.

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for early Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs.

Markin comment:

Every presidential candidate worth his or her salt (and vice-presidential candidates as well) should consider it an honor and a requirement to run for high office by being arrested as described below following in the tradition of Socialist party candidate Eugene V. Debs in 1920 when he ran his campaign from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. And why was Brother Debs in prison? For opposition to his generation’s imperial war, World War I. The one, to remind everyone, that was “to make the world safe for democracy.”

And here is a challenge to the candidates of the major bourgeois parties,
Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney (or is it the other way around?). Why were you not at that demonstration and subject to arrest for a righteous cause? They are more likely to be subject to arrest for other more heinous crimes. Barack Obama for his war crimes against the peoples of the world and Mitt Romney for simple tax evasion and being stupid and greedy in a public place. And tell everybody that is what Debs would say too.
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Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her vice presidential running mate Cheri Honkala were arrested today during a protest at the offices of mortgage company Fannie Mae on Banker's Row in Philadelphia.

Among those arrested along with Dr. Stein and Ms. Honkala were labor lawyer James Moran and Sister Margaret McKenna of the Medical Mission Sisters. An attorney who supports civil disobedience cases is providing legal assistance. All of those arrested are expected to come before a judge early on Thursday morning. At that time bail will either be set or they will be released on their own recognizance.

The protest was originally called for by the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign to demand that the giant mortgage company halt foreclosure proceedings against two Philadelphia residents in danger of losing their homes. Stein joined the protest after Cheri Honkala joined her as Stein's vice presidential running mate. Honkala, a former homeless single mother, has been confronting banks and mortgage companies for decades demanding that they adopt policies that will, "keep families in their homes."

At 1pm today about 50 protestors gathered outside of Fannie Mae's Philadelphia headquarters. They heard from Miss Fran and Rhonda Lancaster, the heads of two families evicted by Fannie Mae in its refusal to negotiate an alternative to foreclosure. Fannie Mae executive Zach Oppenheimer had previously promised in writing to meet with the two women in order to discuss other options. Yet no followup meeting ever took place, and so protestors today entered the Fannie Mae building and vowed to stay until Mr. Oppenheimer's word was honored.

At about 2:30pm, an hour after entering the building and beginning a sitdown protest, lower level Fannie Mae officials agreed to meet with Miss Fran and Ms. Lancaster. These meetings proved inconclusive, ending only with promises of more meetings. With Philadelphia police on hand with six paddy wagons and plainclothesman, a smaller subset of protestors stayed inside the building and risked arrest. Five were arrested, including Dr. Stein and Ms. Honkala.

In explaining why she joined the protest, Stein said that almost half of Americans now live in poverty or near poverty, eight million families face eviction from their homes due to foreclosures, and over a third of mortgage holders are "underwater" - meaning that they owe more to the lenders than their properties are worth on the market.

Said Stein, "The developers and financiers made trillions of dollars through the housing bubble and the imposition of crushing debt on homeowners. And when homeowners could no longer pay them what they demanded, they went to government and got trillions of dollars of bailouts. Every effort of the Obama Administration has been to prop this system up and keep it going at taxpayer expense. It's time for this game to end. It's time for the laws be written to protect the victims and not the perpetrators. It's time for a new deal for America, and a Green New Deal is what we will deliver on taking office. "

"The laws and the budgets and the procedures are designed to protect the lenders and to extract as much money as possible from the victims," Honkala explained. "This isn't the way it would be if we really had a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The first goal of government should be to keep families in their homes, and to provide restitution for the deception and fraud that has robbed millions of Americans of financial security."

Stein laid out a number of steps that will be part of a new deal for homeowners when and where the Green Party wins power. First, as President, Dr. Stein would issue an executive order establishing a moratorium on foreclosures of occupied dwellings. Second, municipalities governed by Greens will get homeowners out of underwater mortgages by seizing mortgages through eminent domain and letting non-profit community development organizations - not Wall Street banks - reissue the mortgages.

Noting that the Obama administration has only released 10% of the aid that Congress had promised to homeowners, Stein asserted that "There is much more interest in Washington in protecting the profits of banks than in getting this aid out to the families whose lives are falling apart. President Obama held a big press conference to announce a program that would supposedly help 1.5 million homeowners and so far it has actually helped only 1 per cent of that number. Real help goes to the CEOs who play golf with the President and the people get lip service. This will change only if the people stand up and say we're not going to put up with it anymore."

Statement from RHONDA LANCASTER (Excerpted from People’s Tribune):

My family has lived in this home in Germantown for over 35 years. When my mother got ill and could not afford her health care, a reverse mortgage idea was presented to me. They made it look like it was a great thing. It was going to take care of my mother, and when my mother passed away it would be just fine.

The nightmare started after my mom died. I notified the bank she had passed away, and two days later I was getting ready for her funeral. Relatives and friends were coming in from all over the country. The bank told me to stop everything and let them come in and do an appraisal.

The bank refused to accept me as the executor of her estate, although the proper papers had been filed at City Hall. From that point on it was a complete nightmare. I could get through to no one and no one could help me. They denied me my legal US rights as heir to my mother’s property.

Statement from MISS FRAN (Excerpted from People’s Tribune):

I have lived in Philadelphia all my life, and in this house since 1988. Once when I was forced to file for bankruptcy, my mortgage holder, Chase Bank, suddenly came to court and objected to my bankruptcy plan. Although the law requires them to notify me in advance, I had no warning of their action, so I had no lawyer and no time to prepare my evidence. The judge dismissed my file for bankruptcy and Chase began foreclosure proceedings.

I participated in Philadelphia’s Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Program, so I was able to keep my home off the sheriff sale list. Then they claimed I missed a Conciliation Conference even though they had never notified me about it. When I complained, the court rescheduled the sheriff sale of my home from July 1, 2008, to September. I attended that sale on July 1 and was shocked to hear them put my house up for sale anyway. I was in the back of the auditorium and ran to the front making so much noise the sheriff’s lawyer had to stop the sale. Finally they brought in a letter from the sheriff saying they had obtained a court order that same day to sell the house. They had gone to court without even notifying me. The same judge who postponed the sale in the first place had turned around and vacated his own order, all without telling me.

The sale of my home went through on July 1, but my battle was just beginning. Although Chase Bank foreclosed on my home, I found out the sheriff changed the name on the documents to Fannie Mae. There is no bill of sale from Chase to Fannie Mae and no record of any transfer. Fannie Mae has no legal standing to evict me. But that didn’t stop them from trying. They sued to evict me in April 2011. I filed an objection, it was overruled, I answered them, and we were supposed to go to trial in February 2012. Then they filed for a summary judgment against me, which is only supposed to be granted when there is no dispute in the matter. I told them we most definitely do have a dispute: a district court order was ignored and Fannie Mae has no standing. But the judge granted the summary judgment anyway. They obtained a writ of eviction and scheduled my eviction for June 12.


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From The Boston Globe-Green Party selects Jill Stein for presidential run

Click on the headline to link to the Green Party website for their complete program.

Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.
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Green Party selects Jill Stein for presidential run

July 15, 2012|Lisa Kocian-Boston Globe

Lexington physician Jill Stein was nominated for president by the Green Party of the United States at its national convention Saturday in ­Baltimore.

A third-party candidate for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, Stein easily won the Green Party nomination and will appear with running mate Cheri Honkala on ballots in 21 states. Green Party officials said they hope to increase that to 45 states by November.

Stein acknowledged in a phone interview that she is the underdog candidate in the presidential race, but said that her campaign will resonate with Americans who feel that the two-party system is not representing their interests.

“I think we have underdog voters, these days,” said Stein, 62. “We have underdog citizens. The 99% is the underdog. It’s not a bad position to be in.”

She received 193.5 out of 294 delegate votes Saturday, or about 66 percent, to win the nomination. Among Stein’s competitors for the nomination was comedian Roseanne Barr, but by the time of the convention it was clear that Stein would win easily, said Scott McLarty, a media coordinator for the Green Party.

“Dr. Stein, first of all, is enormously intelligent, and she articulates the platform of the Green Party of the United States very well,” McLarty said in a phone interview from the convention Saturday. “The United States desperately needs another party. We need a party that represents Main Street ­instead of Wall Street.”

This is the first time a Green candidate has qualified for federal matching funds, said McLarty. The party first gained federal recognition in 2001.

Stein supports the party’s Green New Deal, which outlines ideas to “create 25 million jobs, end unemployment, and transition the country to a green economy,” according to her website.

“The proposal also guarantees a halt to foreclosures and evictions, tuition-free public ­education from preschool through college, and Medicare for all, and an end to corporate domination of democracy,” accord­ing to her website.

Stein said she plans on running a traditional campaign, traveling around the country talking to voters. While her campaign does not have money to buy major television spots, she said, she will use social ­media to help draw Americans disenchanted with the current state of politics.

“The message is propagating itself,” she said. “People are very hungry for what we are talking about. They’re coming to find us.”

Stein won 3 percent of the vote when she ran for governor in 2002 against eventual winner Mitt Romney, now the ­Republican Party’s nominee for president. She ran as the Green-Rainbow candidate for state representative in 2004, and for secretary of state in 2006.

Honkala is an antipoverty activist who serves as national coordinator for the Poor ­People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, according to Stein’s website.

McLarty rejected the notion that Stein could be a spoiler by siphoning votes from President Obama this November. “We are unable to take any votes away from Mr. Obama, because Mr. Obama doesn’t own any votes but his own,” said McLarty. “It’s important we break away from this two-party system.’’