Occupy Wall Street Groups Protest Foreclosure, Try To Halt Eviction

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November-16-2011 Huffington Post “On Sunday evening, 15 or so protesters came to Elizabeth Sommerer’s home in Cleveland. They’d heard via Twitter that Sommerer, a mother of two, would be evicted on Tuesday.”

“We’d been talking for a few weeks about ways to draw attention to what’s going on with the foreclosure crisis,” said protester Chris Soboleski, a 29-year-old web developer from Painesville, Ohio.

Sommerer’s home went into foreclosure in 2009, Cuyahoga County records show. Her husband postponed the sheriff’s sale by filing for bankruptcy. But they couldn’t keep up with their Chapter 13 payments, and then, Sommerers said, she and her husband split up. Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage company, bought the property in August.

“Soboleski and other Occupy protesters helped Sommerer connect with her local representative on the Cleveland City Council, Brian Cummins, whose staff helped her get to court on Monday to file a request to postpone the eviction for 30 days. Her request was granted, court records show.

“I think it was a huge day for the movement,” said Cummins, a member of the Green Party. “This is really great because it got them out in the community and in touch with someone in a very real life situation.”

“They stand up for the little guy,” Sommerer said of the protesters in a video uploaded to YouTube on Monday. (Soboleski said Sommerer did not want to do another interview about her situation after already providing details to local reporters. Independent attempts to reach her were unsuccessful.) “This is Main Street. Wall Street can take care of itself. Main Street needs everybody.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/16/occupy-wall-street-foreclosure_n_1097974.html?ref=tw

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