“

Per the homeowners request, the Colorado Foreclosure Resistance Coalition did not engage in any direct actions to resist this eviction

Homeowner wrongfully being evicted from home, Now!

Marcie Jacobs, a homeowner who was caught up in a banking fraud case and has been fighting lenders from wrongfully taking the home her husband and father in law built will be at her home when she is evicted at today. Colorado Progressive Coalition and Occupy Denver as part of the Colorado Foreclosure Resistance Coalition strongly condemns this action by Ocwen loans.

The CFRC has asked for activists to respectively ask the Chief Justice of the 18th district court to immediately stop the eviction and allow Jacobs her day in court. Jacobs is asking for aid to move her belonging from the home her family built.

While the Jacobs family never missed a payment to Taylor, Bean and Whitaker (TBW), when the company was shut down for selling notes to her family’s, and thousands other family’s, home loans to multiple entities, it became impossible for Jacobs to determine who to pay. Despite her research and persistence in working to discover who the appropriate entity to pay was. However, despite her willingness to pay, to her surprise, Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC, began foreclosure proceedings – a company with no standing to do so.

Though she asked Ocwen who owns the note for her home, Ocwen has refused to answer. Today she still does not know who owns her loan.

We never missed a payment when our lender was shut down for fraud and went into bankruptcy,” said Jacobs. “While the majority owner of Taylor, Bean and Whitaker was put in prison for 30 years, it is as if my family is also in prison,” said Jacobs.

Jacobs has filed complaints with multiple federal agencies but has yet to receive relief in either the TBW’s bankruptcy settlement or in the foreclosure process. Instead, though a victim of circumstance, Marcie is now being evicted due to no fault of her own.

“We have lost our property without ever knowing who to pay,” said Jacobs.
The eviction was to take place at 10 a.m. today, but has not yet occurred.

To see a speech by Jacobs on the case please view: http://www.colorado-frc.org/

What: Wrongful Eviction
When: Today, December 14, 2012
Where: 305 Rolling Hills Place, Parker CO.
Contact:
Corrine Fowler
Economic Justice Director
Colorado Progressive Coalition
720-296-8389
corrine@progressivecoalition.org

Dance Party and Protest Against the Naughty Members of City Council and a Celebration of the Nice Ones

When: Monday, Dec. 17th 3pm-6pm
Where: Civic Center Park across the street from the City and County Building.

Featuring: a performance by The Raging Grannies

It’s a Charlie Brown Holiday and the psychiatrist is in. For the considerable sum of five cents, Lucy will be happy to help Charlie Brown, Albus Brooks, and all the city council members who support the inhumane “Urban Camping Ban” with those fear-of-the-homeless issues that keep them awake at night. Gone will be the night terrors, the calling of the cops, and missing that all-important field goal kick. ARRGH!

Join Occupy Denver for a holiday dance party and protest against the criminalization of homelessness. The Raging Grannies will be performing Christmas carols for both the naughty public officials and the nice people who think that some politicians sound like squeaking rodents who care more about getting a hula-hoop for Christmas than the well being of their fellow humans. Good grief! There will be costumes, music, dancing, and fun for all ages as we share our list and check it twice. We’ll also have free food, hot cocoa, and cookies!

Why All the Hoopla?

Targeting the homeless with criminal sanctions places an already vulnerable community at greater risk and complicates efforts to help individuals find their way out of homelessness. This is especially acute for homeless youth who are forced into the shadows by this ordinance, pushed away from outreach workers and exposed to even greater harm. This ordinance explicitly ignores the expert advice of The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty and The National Coalition for the Homeless in addition to the United States Interagency on Homelessness and is a violation of international human rights standards.

Mayor Michael Hancock, Councilman Charlie Brown (District 6) and Councilman Albus Brooks (District 8), with pressure from the Downtown Denver Partnership, led the effort to pass an ordinance in the Denver City Council targeting the homeless with criminal sanctions for sleeping anywhere in the City of Denver with any coverings or belongings other than the clothes on their body. The “Urban Camping” Ban, now Sec. 38-86.2. of the Denver Municipal Code, passed on May 14, 2012 and supersedes Sec. 38-86.1. which provided the homeless a safe sanctuary in the Downtown Denver Improvement District between the hours of 9:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. The 16th Street business community wanted the homeless out of sight before the tourist season began.

Not only was all expert advice ignored in drafting this ordinance, but it was introduced into the Land Use, Transportation & Infrastructure Committee before consulting with the Denver Homeless Commission, a commission appointed by Mayor Hancock himself. It was introduced into the Land Use Committee instead of the Health, Safety, Education & Services Committee where it belonged so that it would garner enough votes to clear the committee to the full City Council. It became clear early on in the process that the ordinance had a predetermined outcome that would provide a quick solution to serve the individual interests of Denver’s 16th Street business community who felt the presence of the homeless in the downtown harmed them economically.

The ordinance was introduced with promises that it would help connect the homeless to shelters and services while all the experts repeatedly said there were simply insufficient resources for the homeless. John Parvensky, President of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, told the Denver Post, “It is even more inhumane to make [homelessness] illegal while acknowledging that there is not sufficient shelter or housing alternatives. There is a significant lack of adequate emergency shelter to meet the needs of our citizens in Denver, such that tonight, after every shelter bed in the city is full, there will be hundreds of men and women sleeping on the streets, in their cars, or in abandoned buildings. Compounding the problem is the lack of health, mental health, and substance abuse treatment services for those experiencing homelessness, which creates multiple barriers to housing and employment. Last year, more than 2,000 individuals who are homeless and mentally ill in Denver were on the waiting list for mental health services at the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless’ Stout Street Clinic due to lack of capacity to serve them.”

Many people who opposed the ordinance during public hearings stated that there were serious issues that needed to be addressed, and that a more appropriate way of addressing them was to convene a problem-solving conversation with the homeless, the 16th Street business community, people concerned about Civic Center Park, organizations that offer shelter and services to the homeless, the faith community and other interested individuals and organizations. A number of City Councilmembers offered amendments to the ordinance to make it safer for the homeless.

Not a single change to the ordinance was made to address the concerns of the large number of speakers who opposed the ordinance. To quote Councilwoman Shepherd on the evening of the final vote, “I know the way this vote is going to go. I know it. And I think you all know how this vote is going to go too. And unfortunately, the sad thing about it is that it has been like that from day one.”

The process was an affront to democracy, transparency and accountability. The ordinance was passed in the Denver City Council by a vote of 9 to 4:

Voted Against Ordinance
Susan K. Shepherd (District 1)
Paul D. López (District 3)
Robin Kniech (At Large)
Deborah (Debbie) Ortega (At Large)

Voted For Ordinance
Jeanne Faatz (District 2)
Peggy Lehmann (District 4)
Mary Beth Susman (District 5)
Charlie Brown (District 6)
Chris Nevitt (District 7)
Albus Brooks (District 8
Judy H. Montero (District 9)
Jeanne Robb (District 10)
Christopher Herndon (District 11)

When: December 12, 2012 @ 7pm to 9pm
Where: Flobots.org space 2705 Larimer St., Denver, CO, 80205

To hold a preliminary meeting about the potential of STRIKEDEBT & Rolling Jubilee In Denver. The scope of this meeting will be wide ranging but focusing around STRIKEDEBT, and developing a culture of debt resistance/elimination in Colorado. For more information check out the Debt Resistors Manual at Strikedebt.org

https://www.facebook.com/events/418458418223425/

When: Thursday December 6th, 2012
Where: Castle-Stawiarski Law-ish Firm, 999 18th Street, Denver, Colorado 80202

Press Action Noon – 12:30
Foreclosure On-The-Street Town Hall – 12:30 – 1:30

December 6th is the one year anniversary of Occupy Our Homes movement and, in celebration, the Colorado Foreclosure Resistance Coalition will be joining a great number of Foreclosure Resistance Activists throughout the nation in a coordinated effort to highlight the foreclosure fraud crisis.

We will hold Castle-Stawiarski, the law-ish firm that has defrauded so many families out of their homes in Colorado, to account for their efforts to continue this fraud. Castle-Stawiarski performs more foreclosures in Colorado than any other law firm.

We will meet at the entrance below Castle-Stawiarski’s offices, at the corner of 19th and Curtis Streets–at the northern corner of the block.

Why Castle-Stawiarski?

In 2006, supposedly before anyone knew the foreclosure fraud crisis was unfolding, the mortgage industry, with the help of Castle-Stawiarski, passed laws removing homeowners’ right to defend their homes from fraudulent foreclosure.

Anyone being foreclosed on has had a chance, since 1989, to demand the foreclosing bank produce the original mortgage note in a free court proceeding called a Rule 120 hearing. If the loan (or note) had been sold to another bank, a homeowner going through foreclosure could demand the bank show the transfer document or assignment.

Beginning in 2002, and then finishing in 2006, Castle-Stawiarski was able to change the law, without regard for Colorado’s unique public trustee system, to state that the foreclosing bank’s attorney only needed to sign a statement that the bank had the right to foreclose. No longer did the banks have to produce any original documents.

The attorney that, presently, signs off on the statement of default suffers no legal repercussions if they are, in fact, wrong! They are a “rubber stamp” for the banks and an affront to Colorado homeowners.

Castle-Stawiarski is central to the foreclosure crisis in Colorado. Caren Castle, of Castle- Stawiarski, is legal counsel for MERS here in Denver. The Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, is the company that has moved mortgage notes from trust to trust, without any public recordation of documents, making it possible for the banks to use our mortgages as gambling chips.

Her husband, Lawrence Castle, is on record telling legislators that changes to Colorado foreclosure laws were drafted largely by Colorado’s top foreclosure lawyers in conjunction with the public trustees.

Who are we there for?

Sahara Donahue lived in her home for over 20 years, before it was fraudulently foreclosed on by Castle-Stawiarski. We want to know how Castle can justify stealing her home, which resulted in the endangering of lives by SWAT teams as depicted in the statement below.

On October 30, 2012, a highly militarized police force arrived at the home of 63 year old Sahara Donahue to evict her from her residence of 24 years. She was petitioning US Bank for an additional 60 days to remain in her home, so she could have some time to find a new place to live, secure her belongings and leave her home with dignity. She came to the Colorado Foreclosure Resistance Coalition and Occupy Denver General Assembly to ask for our help. She knew no one in Occupy Denver prior to reaching out. We immediately started mobilizing to try to get her the assistance she needed and a group went up to her house for the first rumored eviction on Thursday 10/25. When that eviction didn’t happen, we planned an in-town action at US Bank on Monday for Sahara to try to find someone to speak with about her situation, with carpools up to her house later that day as the eviction was said to be scheduled for Tuesday 10/30. Occupiers laid barricades from fallen trees to prevent moving trucks and workers from entering the property and were able to stave off the eviction for a few hours. At 2:45pm ten or more truckloads of police in full combat gear armed with live-ammo AR-15’s, and grenade launchers arrived on the scene & forced occupiers to the ground at gun point. Police then made their way to the house, broke down the front door, threw Sahara to the ground in her own kitchen and pointed their guns at the heads of a mother and son who were in the house with Sahara along with others. They continued to break items in the house as they searched it. They unplugged the modem, which was the only mode of communication as there was no cell phone coverage in the area, in order to stop the livestream and all communications. After the livestream cut out, the occupy denver legal team spent a harrowing hour in communication blackout wondering if they would be receiving calls from the hospital instead of the jail this time. This psychological violence did not stop one brave activist from jumping into the bucket of the bulldozer that was going to tear through the barricades and forced the operator to stop for several minutes. Three arrests were made, two activists were assaulted and all have been released. Many of the people on the ground have survived multiple occupations and riot cop lines but all agree that this was the most surreal and violent state repression they have experienced protesting. There has been overwhelming community support as other activists and concerned people watched the unnecessary militarized drama unfold online. Everyone is asking “Seriously, why are they in military gear?”

Marcie Jacobs

Everyone is tired of hearing stories about how the servicer ate my note, the foreclosure mill attorneys treated me unjustly or the banks foreclosed on me illegally. Many have become foreclosure fatigued and are tired of hearing how their neighbors have been battered.

Let’s instead talk about how foreclosures are affecting every one of us and how our country can’t move forward until we fix the foreclosure mess, the cancer as one commentator calls it. If we continue to blame homeowners and investors it will prevent us from understanding that the banks, the servicers and the foreclosure mill attorneys are ruining our economy and taking us down an economic abyss where recovery becomes less likely with each additional foreclosure. Each day we do nothing about it is another point on the scale of no return. The banks and their minions, the foreclosure mill attorneys and servicers are the black snakes of our society that prey on homeowners and investors. Our economy is in the grip of these black carnivorous snakes that strike at moving objects. Having secured us as their prey they are squeezing us to our economic death. They are coiled around us tightening their grip until our freedoms are gone and our economy suffocates.

Highly sophisticated products permit them to extract a larger share of assets than they are entitled. Inside their rigged system their backward curving teeth pull us down their throat as the jaws work separately on our principles and on the very soul of our existence. They have us fighting against each other, but as prey we have the ability to not only break away from our predator but mobilize a counter-attack. Together we can restore sanity by forcing the snakes to change and make them pay for what they have done. Do not give up, stand up and make a statement. We will not let them ruin our country or our prosperity. We will take back our country and we will change the laws of our state and give the citizens of Colorado their property rights back. We will no longer allow Larry Castle to write our laws or install software that makes it easy for them to take away our property without the right to do so.

My husband and father-in-law built our house in six months and it has been our home for sixteen years. Our daughter was raised here and attended Douglas County schools. We never missed a payment when our lender was shut down for fraud and went into bankruptcy. Our last payment and escrow balances became part of the bankruptcy and although we have a claim in the bankruptcy we have not recovered those funds to this day.

If you are being foreclosed on by ANY big bank, or need to get started saving your home do not lose hope, get prepared; contact the CFRC and start the fight today.

Colorado Foreclosure Resistance Coalition
Phone: (720) 663-0656
http://www.colorado-frc.org/

Facebook event
https://www.facebook.com/events/107111552789338/

Due to time constraints, this event has not gone through the GA consensus process.

When: Tuesday, December 4 @ 2:30pm
Where: Boulder County Courthouse on 1325 Pearl St., Boulder, CO

Boulder county has recently approved a large number of fracking permits to Encana, a company which has wreaked environmental havoc through its fracking opearions in nearby Weld county. If fracking is allowed in Boulder county, every historic water well in the county will be at risk of pollution from fracking fluid. While Boulder currently has a moratorium on fracking, a County Commissioner’s hearing this Tuesday may allow this moratorium to expire. We call on all concerned citizens in the Boulder-Denver area to occupy this meeting and make a strong show of community resistance to fracking in Colorado. The hearing is at the Boulder County Courthouse on 1325 Pearl st and begins at 4 PM, but to secure seats at the hearing you must arrive at 2:30.

Private Water Wells (Blue) and Oil and Gas Wells (Red) Don’t Mix!

Daily Camera article:
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/ci_22004944/boulder-county-commissioners-courts-would-likely-overturn-county

Information from local activists on current and upcoming fracking
projects in Boulder:
http://www.fractivist.blogspot.com/2012/11/wake-frack-up-boulder-colorado-youre.html

Maps of fracking sites, oil and gas wells, and toxic waste pits in
Boulder:

http://www.fractivist.blogspot.com/2012/11/wake-frack-up-boulder-your-about-to-be.html

County website with info on the commissioner’s hearing:
http://www.bouldercounty.org/pages/eventdetails.aspx?eventid=1518

When: Black Friday 11/23 @4pm
Where: The Walmart Super Center (Colfax Avenue and Wadsworth Boulevard)
What: We are #GlobalNoise! All around the world we march in solidarity with others who care about the issues bearing down on our global society. Here in beautiful Denver Colorado we are burdened with the knowledge of a growing global inequality. The calls of the Walmart strikers, the Tar Sands Blockade, and ceaseless chanting of the Debt Strikers of the world will be amplified. We will be that voice.

Walmart Black Friday Strikers
We stand in solidarity with the exploited indigenous peoples and local communities of the world. The children of Indonesia and China scream for our support. Walmart is the epitome of a corporation without conscience that degrades its workers all over the world. Our collective support of this conglomerate of incalculable cruelty has to be recalled!
makingchangeatwalmart.org
Support Walmart Strikers Facebook Group

Tarsands Blockade
Hold your heads high and bang your pots proud for the protesters of the Keystone Xcel pipeline!!! We must bring awareness to the abuse and exploitation of our home planet! For too long we have allowed for these entities of evil to continue the ongoing ecocide. For the 200 species that go extinct every day we say enough! No longer stand idly by, take your stand!
“Tar Sands Blockade has joined with people from a wide variety of backgrounds who believe that the extraction of tar sands in Canada is “game over” for the climate”
tarsandsblockade.org

Strike Debt
“The system of mafia capitalism has made it difficult, if not impossible, for us to meet our basic needs, whether we have debt or not, whether we pay it back or not. We recognize that it is not easy to fight this system, that it is not easy to withdraw consent from a financial world gone mad. Make no mistake: the odds are stacked against us. Laws surrounding debt lending, collection and buying are notably complex, designed to keep debtors confused and afraid.” – The Debt Resistors’ Operations Manual strikedebt.org

“Throughout its 5000 year history, debt has always involved institutions – whether Mesopotamian sacred kingship, Mosaic jubilees, Sharia or Canon Law – that place controls on debt’s potentially catastrophic social consequences. It is only in the current era, writes anthropologist David Graeber, that we have begun to see the creation of the first effective planetary administrative system largely in order to protect the interests of creditors.” – Debt the first five thousand years.

We can no longer afford to play with a system of induced scarcity and unnecessary competition. We rally around our humanity, and our community. We urge you! Take your stand! Fight with tools! You will not lose. We have already won.
rollingjubilee.org

Whether it’s exploitation of Walmart workers, exploitation of the earth or exploitation of those in “debt”, the bottom line is that we live in a shakedown system that is not based on human need but rather an insatiable financial appetite of liars and thieves. These global financial vampires will no longer move unchecked. They bring the weapons we bring the noise!

Many voices, one struggle
“The focus of the protest is intentionally left open to be filled by local organizers and participants. The result is a turbulent cacophony of issues and slogans: “Don’t owe, won’t pay” in Spain, “Fuck the Troika” in Portugal, a clear message against war from Istanbul, a protest in front of the annual IMF/Worldbank meeting in Tokyo. One common theme running through all the #GlobalNoise events is the targeting of political and financial elites who are held responsible for destroying our communities and the planet, resonating the ongoing wave of anti-austerity protests in Europe and around the world. At the same time #GlobalNoise is a symbol of hope and unity, building on a wide variety of struggles for global justice and solidarity, assuring that together we will create another world.”
globalnoise.net

Join the Fair Food Program!
Saturday, November 17, 12:00noon
King Soopers, 9th & Corona
Set the Table and call on King Soopers’ parent company Kroger to join the 11 other food corporations who have joined the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program
A new era of human rights and fair wages – for which farmworkers have been fighting for so long – is taking hold in Florida’s tomato fields. Yet Kroger, the nation’s largest supermarket chain and owner of Denver-based King Soopers still refuses to adopt the Fair Food principles which would allow these changes to spread and thrive, despite that 11 other fast-food and grocery chains have already joined. It’s time for Kroger to come to the table and join the Fair Food Program!

Background:
Florida’s farmworkers have long faced brutal conditions. They earn sub-poverty wages, have no right to form unions or to over-time pay, lack traditional employment benefits such as health, sick leave or pensions, and have not received a significant raise in nearly 30 years. At the current rate, a Florida tomato picker must harvest over TWO TONS just to earn the equivalent of minimum wage for a typical 10 hour. In the most extreme situations workers are held in modern-day slavery and forced to work against their will.
However, there is a new hope on the horizon, thanks to the hard-fought campaigns of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a community-base organization of Haitian, Latino and Mayan farmworkers in Florida. Today, eleven leading food corporations (including Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s) and over 90% of the Florida tomato industry have joined the CIW’s Fair Food Program, which includes a penny-per-pound piece rate wage increase, a strict code of conduct, a cooperative complaint resolution system, a participatory health and safety program, and a worker-to-worker education process.
However, Kroger – the nation’s largest supermarket chain and owner of Denver-based King Soopers – has yet to do its part. Now it is time for Kroger to put its support behind the Fair Food Program so that we can put an end to Florida’s “Harvest of Shame” once and for all.

To join the Facebook Event

For more information:
denverfairfood@gmail.com
DenverFairFood.blogspot.com
www.ciw-online.org