Chase: Don’t foreclose on Helen Bailey – In Memory – Black History


                                                              JPMorgan Chase launched a new website associating the company with Martin Luther King. But it’s planning to foreclose on Helen Bailey, a civil rights hero, in just weeks. Tell Chase to stop the foreclosure immediately.

A new Chase website honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and declares: “the values he espoused are the values that JPMorgan Chase also tries to stand for around the world.”

But as the bank wraps itself in the King brand, Chase planned to kick Helen Bailey (a 78-year-old grandmother who marched for civil rights and spent her life working with disabled children) out of her house on February 15th — right in the middle of Black History Month.

Occupy Nashville is fighting back. And they know that enough publicity on Chase’s hypocrisy will embarrass the bank into letting Ms. Bailey keep her home. Nearly 50,000 Change.org members have already spoken out, and Chase moved back Ms. Bailey’s foreclosure back one month in response — more people can speak out now and stop it completely.

Click here to sign the petition demanding that Chase stop foreclosing on civil rights activist Helen Bailey.

Helen and her attorney have struggled to find any solution that would stop Chase’s drive to foreclose. When Helen asked to modify her high-interest loan, Chase refused. When Helen found another lender who’d buy the home for just $9,000 less than what Chase said the home was worth, letting her live there for free, Chase refused. When Helen found someone else who’d buy her home and let Helen rent it, Chase refused again.

This isn’t an isolated incident. A former Chase banker — James Theckston — told Nick Kristof of the New York Times that his bank repeatedly pushed dangerous subprime mortgage loans on minority borrowers, then tried to cover up the racial disparity. Now, 25% of all minority borrowers are in foreclosure or deeply behind on payments. It’s a crisis.

But it’s one of our best opportunities to fight back. You can help Occupy Nashville keep Ms. Bailey in her home, and highlight the growing movement of communities standing up to foreclosures.

Click here to sign the petition.

Thanks for being a change-maker,

Jess and the Change.org team

P.S. Ms. Bailey isn’t alone in fighting for justice in a tough economy. Can you sign these other urgent petitions from Change.org members?

1820 – Senate passes Missouri Compromise – Black History


The Senate passes the Missouri Compromise, an attempt to deal with the dangerously divisive issue of extending slavery into the western territories. From colonial days to the Civil War, slavery and western expansion both played fundamental but inherently incompatible roles in the …read more

1983 – General Motors agreed to hire more women and minorities for five years as part of a settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.


Today in labor history: General Motors agrees to end employment discrimination

On October 18, 1983, the General Motors Corporation, the largest automobile manufacturer in the U.S., agreed to hire more women and minorities as part of a settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The turnaround came ten years after the commission had filed a complaint that African Americans, Latinos, other minorities, and women were being unfairly treated by the corporation. The commission filed a lawsuit against the company, and General Motors agreed to pay $42.5 million in what was at the time called the largest out-of-court settlement of an employment discrimination case.

The company simultaneously agreed to spend another $8.9 million developing a program for hiring, training, and promoting minority and female workers. General Motors also agreed to give those workers preference in the distribution of education assistance funds.

In addition, the company spent $3 million on training for African America, Latino, and female clerical employees; $2 million training them for highly technical positions; and another $2 million training them in mathematics and other areas that would qualify them for apprenticeship programs.

source: peoplesworld.org

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