AOL Real Estate. December 6, 2011
Excerpt:
"We've developed a model that I hope will become a national model for how this works," says Anthony Newby, an organizer for Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, which facilitated the sit-in. "We want to identify homeowners who are going to foreclosure, and then we just leverage the momentum of Occupy to create community support for people in crisis."
Nick Espinosa, an organizer for Occupy Minneapolis, along with his fellow protesters, originally learned of Hull's situation after canvassing with Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, according to the housing group's executive director, Steve Fletcher. At Espinosa's request, Fletcher gave the protesters a crash course on canvassing so that they could reach out to foreclosure victims in a professional manner. After the training, Occupy protesters and members of the housing group used a list of locals facing eviction -- compiled by Neighborhoods Organizing for Change -- to track down struggling homeowners that were open to their support. That's how they found Hull.
Espinosa said Neighborhoods Organizing for Change has been an "incredible help in helping us to learn more what [protest of foreclosures] "looks like."
