Greetings:

At 12:00 noon today, February 23, Take Back the Land liberated a vacant house in order to move an extended family of 12, including six minors, back into the home they lost to foreclosure on Friday, February 20th. The foreclosure was a result of a fraudulent refinance scheme by a predatory lender.

The home is located at 849 NW 137th St. in unincorporated Miami-Dade County. As this message is sent, Take Back the Land is assisting the family in their move back into the home.

Take Back the Land identifies vacant government owned and foreclosed homes and moves homeless people into the people-less homes. The organization has been “liberating” foreclosed homes since October 2007, a year after liberating a vacant government owned piece of land and building the Umoja Village Shantytown, housing homeless individuals until a fire destroyed the community. Take Back the Land has liberated eight (8) homes to date.

After Mary’s husband lost his job, the couple and their two teenage children were forced to move back in with her mother. Soon after, the contracting job market forced Mary’s adult daughter and fiancee back to the house with their four children, all under 10. The crashing economy ultimately forced 12 relatives, spanning four generations, to cram into Grandma Carolyn’s two bedroom one bath house.

Unbeknownst to the families, almost two years prior, Carolyn fell victim to a scam predatory lender. The salesman convinced her that with a new reverse mortgage she would only be compelled to pay the taxes on the house, significantly reducing her expenses as she entered retirement age. When they started receiving the foreclosure notices, it was too late, even with almost every adult in the house regaining employment.

The family was evicted from their home on February 20, upon which they called Take Back the Land requesting assistance. Since then, they have been sleeping together in a van and bread truck in the parking lot of a local supermarket. Local homeless shelters are full and not fitted for families and, therefore, can only split the family between Homestead and Miami and then divide the men and women.

The house itself is in need of repairs and there are at least three other vacant homes on that street and numerous others on adjacent streets. As such, the home is unlikely to be sold or occupied in the next year or even two years and will only contribute to blight and unsafe conditions in the neighborhood. Furthermore, homes vacant for even short periods of time are often vandalized and stripped for valuable parts and fixtures. The vacant house, therefore, does not help the family, the neighborhood or even the bank who owns a structure rapidly decreasing value.

It is inhumane and immoral to evict a family of 12 human beings, who are left to sleep in a truck, and not even fill the house with another family, but leave it vacant, potentially for years to come.

Housing is a human right which is threatened by corporate demands to maximize profits. Take Back the Land calls on people of good conscience to defend their communities and fight for the right of human beings to housing, particularly during this economic crisis.

To receive email updates, sign up for the Take Back the Land listserve at: http://groups.google.com/group/take-back-the-land. You can also get more information about Take Back the Land at our website, TakeBacktheLand.org.

Max Rameau

takebacktheland.org

takebacktheland@gmail.com

By: Michael Prysner

Only end of occupation can restore self-determination!

The author is an Iraq war veteran and a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

On the heels of the Status of Forces Agreement, the Iraqi flag was raised for the first time since the 2003 invasion in a symbolic handover of the Green Zone to the Iraqi government.

The Green Zone is a 5.6-square-mile community along the west side of the Tigris River in central Baghdad. It is home to roughly 30,000 residents, including 14,000 U.S. and coalition forces. For nearly six years, the Green Zone has been used to paint a picture of stability and U.S. success in Iraq. When U.S. and foreign politicians visit occupied Iraq, they stroll around the Green Zone, being shown beautiful gardens and lavish palaces that paint a picture of a safe and successful occupation.

But the Green Zone itself is nothing more than a public relations prop and a headquarters for the military brass, private military contractors, and Western corporations to conduct their affairs in luxury. It is off limits to most Iraqi citizens.

Its relative safety is due to a 13-foot concrete wall, miles of barbed wire, machine gun nests every few hundred meters and tightly controlled entry points. Anyone entering the Green Zone is searched thoroughly with high-tech devices such as body scanners. While the Green Zone is frequently attacked from outside with rockets and mortars, there have been few attacks within its walls due to the overwhelming security measures.

The situation just outside the walls of the Green Zone is drastically different. The Green Zone sits in one of the areas where the Iraqi resistance is strongest. Residents outside its walls must cope daily with the severe manifestations of the occupation—extreme poverty and violence.

With U.S. officials coordinating every aspect of Iraqi governance from within its walls, the Green Zone has long been a symbol of U.S. colonial occupation in Iraq. But now, in a move to further tout the occupation, the Green Zone is being manipulated to become a symbol of Iraqi sovereignty.

The handover of the Green Zone, in fact, does nothing except place Iraqi guards in charge of security. Essentially, the “sovereignty” heralded by the handover only gives the Iraqi security forces backed by Washington the sovereignty to protect their occupiers as they continue business as usual within its walls.

Public spectacle changes nothing

Still, Iraq’s puppet president, al-Maliki, declared Jan. 1 a national holiday titled “Sovereignty Day.” A banner at the transition ceremony read in Arabic, “Receiving the security of the Green Zone is a major step toward full independence and the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country.” Once the ceremony concluded, the banner was taken down, and behind it was a sign listing a set of rules created by the U.S. military. (Washington Post, Jan. 1)

While the Iraqi security force in the Green Zone—the “Baghdad Brigade”—has supposedly been put in charge, that too is a farce. The Baghdad Brigade is under direct control of President al-Maliki—a U.S. puppet whose government would collapse without Washington’s backing. Furthermore, U.S. forces will continue to be in direct control of security for the next 90 days, at which point the arrangement will be “re-evaluated.” While the Status of Forces Agreement mandates that U.S. forces in the Green Zone come under Iraqi control, U.S. officials have acknowledged that how and when that will happen is uncertain, and unlikely for the time being.

Even if the Baghdad Brigade does officially control security in the Green Zone, it will only be under the strict watchful eye of the U.S. forces. Baghdad Brigade commander Brigadier General Emad al-Zuhairi said, “The Americans will supervise us.” (Washington Post, Jan. 1)

Majid Mola, a resident of Baghdad, commented on how he viewed the newly gained “sovereignty”: “Where are the government services? Where is the electricity? People want practical things.” (Reuters, Jan. 1)

The handover of the Green Zone serves only to improve the public image of a brutal occupation that has killed more than 1 million Iraqis, displaced 4.5 million more, and plunged the Iraqi population into deep poverty. The symbolic handover should be seen for what it is: a public-relations ploy detached from the reality on the ground. While the Iraqi flag now flies over the hub of the occupation, nothing has changed for the Iraqi people.

Raising the Iraqi flag is a symbolic step that brings Iraqis no closer to sovereignty, but is a real step towards cementing U.S. imperialism’s geopolitical and economic goals. Real sovereignty requires an immediate end to U.S. occupation and intervention—a goal the Iraqi people have bravely been fighting for, and for which they deserve our full support.

Andres Gomez, Editor Areito Digital

Miami. - Even though it is true that the economic and financial problems that confront the new administration in Washington are colossal – “catastrophic”, according to president Obama himself -, and that the process of approval of the new stimulus package into law in both the Senate and the House of Representatives has robbed the president of his available time, we, who support the end to the travel restrictions to Cuba, also call upon the new administration to decide as soon as possible the end to the restrictions.

It is also true that last week the chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, declared that the administration will authorize the trips of Cuban Americans to Cuba as well the sending of remittances. The question is then evident, if president Obama during his presidential campaign held that both restrictions would be lifted, and if his chief of staff also declared the same intention, why is it taking so long?

Every day that goes by, it is more and more expensive to travel to Cuba because of the supposedly religious licenses that the current restrictions, imposed in 2004 by the Bush administration, still require of someone to be able to travel, if one is not travelling with the licenses of the Treasury Department, that are granted only to travel once every three years, which are still required to make a trip to Cuba.

Why the delay in ending these terrible and unjust restrictions which only requires a presidential order?

The delay, no matter how brief, compels us, Cubans who live here, to insist in demanding this fundamental right.

And we will not stop demanding the end to the travel restrictions to Cuba when the new administration reinstates the right to travel only to us Cubans who live here. The end to the restrictions must include anyone who lives here and who would like to travel to Cuba. How could we allow that only us can travel but not everyone else?

In this way, last February 4th, nine Congress members of both political parties presented before the House of Representatives a new bill, the Freedom to travel to Cuba Act, which if approved would eliminate all the restrictions on travel to the island.

This is a government that promises to be profoundly reformist. It has formulated the necessity for a new American foreign policy that will better warrant the real interests of the nation as well as those of world peace. To achieve such endeavor it has declared itself willing to establish diplomatic contacts to work out old differences.

Among these is the official American rationale with respect to Cuba which for more than half a Century has reinforced its policy of permanent aggression against the Cuban people.

Therefore, for the same or even for more reasons than before, we stand firm in demanding that the government of the United States of America end its current policy against the Cuban people. That it end its genocidal policy of economic blockade against our people in Cuba. That it end its state terrorist policies against the Cuban people which for the last 50 years have caused the deaths of more then 3.400 Cuban men and women, including children and elderly people and also more than 2.000 incapacitated Cubans.

We demand then that the Obama administration begin the implementation of a radical revision of these policies and that it establish relations with the Cuban government with the purpose of founding a new policy which will really satisfy the true interests of both peoples.