by Juliana Birnbaum Fox

Marilyn Reynolds (speaker), a member of ACORN, announces the foreclosure crisis in East Oakland at a press conference. (photo by Jennifer Salgado)

Oakland members of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) held a press conference this Thursday to announce plans to address the local effects of the nationwide mortgage meltdown. They called on homeowners and tenants to attend a December 8th Foreclosure Crisis and Solutions Forum, which will discuss possibilities for providing relief to victims of predatory lending and others affected by the growing problem. The forum will be attended by Senator Don Perata and other elected officials and representatives of financial institutions, along with local residents.

“There are communities falling into devastation because of these foreclosures,” said Marilyn Reynolds, a local ACORN member who announced the group’s plan to address the problem. “We ask that banks restructure loans, working with existing borrowers and those in foreclosure.”

Other proposed actions include a temporary stay on foreclosures by lenders and long term, fixed-rate loan modifications that would replace the adjustable rate mortgages linked to the crisis. ACORN is also calling for continued support and resources for targeted outreach in order to educate borrowers and prevent the disaster from worsening.

“Banks could save someone’s credit, livelihood and self esteem by doing something as simple as a stroke of the pen,” Reynolds said. “I’m hoping they will have a heart and restructure these unscrupulous loans.” She expressed frustration at the misconception that the crisis was the fault of uneducated borrowers.

“I know a lot of collegeeducated young people whose credit is ruined and who are going to be without a place to live, or have to go back to live with parents,” she said. “The small print in their loans would be hard for the average lawyer to sort out.”

Dorothy Hicks, a victim of the crisis who is also organizing with ACORN, pointed out that tenants are also feeling the negative impacts of foreclosures. When lenders have foreclosed on the owners of rental units, utilities have been turned off and in some cases tenants have been evicted in violation of the law.

Californians of color are particularly vulnerable to foreclosures. A report released by RealtyTrak showed that five of the top ten cities for foreclosures in the third quarter of 2007 are in California. A previous ACORN study showed that minorities are disproportionately affected by the crisis; for example, higher-income Latino homebuyers were more likely to receive a high-cost loan than low-income whites.

“We must continue to make comprehensive reforms to the sub-prime industry now,” said Leslie Marks, a foreclosure victim and single mother living in Oakland who is among the organizers of the forum.

“We’re calling on people who have been affected by this crisis or know someone who has, and the community as a whole, to attend the December 8 meeting,” Hicks stated. The event will be held from 9:30 a.m. to noon at the East Oakland Senior Center at 9255 Edes Avenue. For more information, contact Oakland ACORN at 510-434-3110, ext.235, or at ­caacornoaro@acorn.org.

by the El Reportero news services

­Hugo Chávez

President Hugo Chávez narrowly lost both parts of the referendum to reform the constitution on 2 December.

The result does not mean that Chávez’s grip on the country’s institutions has been weakened.

No opposition leader called on Chávez to make good on his threat “to go” if he was defeated in the referendum.

Paradoxically, Chávez’s influence in Latin America may even have been strengthened because his ready admission of his defeat (before all the ballots had been counted) underlines his democratic credentials and demolishes the rightwing claim that free elections are not possible in Venezuela.

Calderón rethinks relations with Gordillo

MEXICO – President Felipe Calderón’s private secretary, César Nava, said on 24 November that the government is rethinking its relations with Elba Esther Gordillo, the hugely influential leader of the teachers’ union and leader of the Partido Nueva Alianza.

Felipe Calderón

The statement, by one  of Calderón’s chief advisers, has huge implications. Gordillo sees herself as one of the country’s power brokers: she claimed that she tilted the 2006 election Calderón’s way. This year, however, her importance in elections has been less meaningful.

Draft constitution “approved” in Bolivia amid bloodshed

Against a backdrop of violence which saw at least four dead and 130 injured, on November 24, delegates from the ruling Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) pushed a draft of the new constitution through the constituent assembly.

Jurisdiction ruling in Nicaragua-Colombia will be Dec 13

Whether it has jurisdiction  to decide a border dispute between Nicaragua and Colombia over a tiny group of Caribbean islands, will be decided on Dec. 13. The U.N.’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) will rule on December 13.

Nicaragua petitioned the ICJ, the United Nations’ highest tribunal based in The Hague, to grant it sovereignty over the archipelago and end the row that Colombia says started nearly 200 years ago and was settled nearly 80 years ago.

“The judgment will deal solely with the preliminary objections raised by Colombia regarding the jurisdiction of the court,” the ICJ said in a statement.

The two nations, separated by Panama and Costa Rica, lay claim to the isolated Caribbean Islands San Andres and Providencia off Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast, as well as several keys and some 50,000 sq km of fishing waters.

According to a Reuter’s repor­t, Colombia told the court in June border disputes were inevitable after the fall of the Spanish Empire in the Americas and the one in question was “definitively settled” in 1928, when Nicaragua and Colombia signed a treaty granting Colombia sovereignty over the islands.

But Nicaragua’s Sandinista government in the 1980s annulled the accord and argued it was signed while Nicaragua was under U.S. military occupation.

Many Nicaraguans consider the treaty a U.S. payoff to Colombia for arranging the independence of Panama from Colombia in order to build the Panama Canal.­

by Adolfo Flores

Antonio Núñez, a 14-year-old youth from California, paid a high price for his actions during a night out with older friends. He participated in kidnapping, 7and was behind the wheel of a subsequent high-speed chase by police. Núñez received the state’s most severe sentence after the death penalty, life without parole (LWOP).

Children of color, in particular, are disproportionately ­sentenced to LWOP in the United States, according to a study by the University of San Francisco School of Law.

California has the highest racial disparity in the nation, with Latino youth being five times more likely to receive life without parole than white children.

Núnez is one of 94 Latino youth out of a total of 227 sentenced to LWOP in that state, according to the study, Sentencing Our Children to Die in Prison.

The report attempts to raise awareness on the issue.

Plans are for it to be used as a lobbying tool to pass S.B. 999, a California bill that seeks to abolish the practice.

“There is severe racial profiling that goes well throughout the system,” said study co-author Michelle Leighton, director for human rights programs at the Center for Law and Global Justice. “This disparity continues across the country.”

In North Dakota, for example, Latino children are 16 times more likely to receive LWOP than white children. In Pennsylvania Latino children are three times more likely.

“Youth of color have a disadvantage at every stage of the criminal justice system,” Leighton said.

Children of color, for example, are held in custody, prosecuted as adults in criminal courts, given adult sentences and are more likely to do their time in adult prisons than whites.

The study claims the U.S. government is aware of the problem but has done little to address these disparities. It adds the government does not even collect data on racial disparity among juveniles receiving LWOP.

Experts argue these sentences have an adverse effect on their development.

“They’re subjected to violence and sexual violence at the hands of other prisoners and in some cases correctional officers,” said Alison Parker, senior researcher in the U.S. program of Human Rights Watch.

Parker, who has conducted past research on the issue, said the number of youths receiving LWOP in California alone has increased by 47 since 2005.

During her research she has spoken with authorities on these disparities. Their answer is that children of color commit more crimes than white youth.

“We can’t say conclusively that the fact that more kids of color are sentenced to life without parole is due to racism,” Parker said.

Through out the world there are 2,388 youth sentenced to die in prisons. Of those, all were sentenced in the United States except for seven in Israel. They are the only two countries that have youth serving LWOP.

The report claims the United States directly violates the International Civil and Political Rights Covenant, which states that juveniles can be tried in adult courts in “exceptional circumstances.”

Connie de la Vega, coauthor of the study, argued the thousands of juveniles sentenced to LWOP well exceeds its mark of “exceptional circumstances.

The authors argue the United States maintains that it only sentences juveniles to LWOP at the state level, not the federal level, and that states don’t have to follow international law.

Parker called the argument “ridiculous because states are obliged to follow international law. There are youths serving LWOP in federal prisons, I found one.”

She said that during her research she met one youth at the U.S. Penitentiary in Ellenwood, Pa.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics stated they had no data because there were no youths serving LWOP in federal prisons.
­Hispanic Link.