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Anti-War Movement Protests Home Foreclosures

By Meredith Aby

Minneapolis, MN – Anti-war activists from across the Twin Cities gathered at Rosemary Williams’s house, Aug. 27, to say “Foreclose the wars! Not people’s homes!”

Rosemary’s Williams and her supporters re-entered the home following an eviction notice Aug. 7. A resident of South Minneapolis for over 55 years, Rosemary Williams and her family decided to fight against home foreclosures when their own home was at risk. Members of the Minnesota Coalition for a People’s Bailout have joined with Williams in her fight back for justice

At the rally, anti-war activists from the Anti-War Committee, Women Against Military Madness, Students for a Democratic Society-UMN, and the Minnesota Iraq Peace Action Coalition spoke about the contradictions of spending billions of dollars on wars abroad while people within the U.S. are struggling to keep their homes.

Jennie Eisert of the Anti-War Committee says, “Here at home because of the recession, the foreclosure crisis has devastated our cities, our state and our country. People are unjustly being driven out from their homes. In Iraq and Afghanistan the U.S. driven wars are causing more and more people to be displaced. U.S. aggression is creating a housing crisis on the other side of the globe.”

Mary Beaudoin of Women Against Military Madness agreed, “The United States wars on Iraq and Afghanistan alone have rendered millions of people homeless by bombing their cities and countrysides, destabilizing and destroying their infrastructures, breaking down their doors in house-to-house searches for so-called ‘suspected insurgents’ and, in general, terrifying them and creating uninhabitable living situations. To date, the total cost of this, allocated by Congress, is $915 billion. At the same time, the U.S. government and taxpayers have bailed out banks and created a situation in our own country that is destroying our city neighborhoods and rural communities by forcing people out of their homes through foreclosures that would not be taking place except for a system enabling the reckless greed of financial institutions.”

Many anti-war groups are a part of the Minnesota Coalition for a People’s Bailout and will continue to make the issue of foreclosure tied into their work around peace with justice.

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