May 052011
 

Bancroft Middle School Science teacher Raleigh McLemore was arrested Tuesday at a protest at Wells Fargo’s annual shareholder meeting in San Francisco.  Wells Fargo is criticized for rushing to foreclose on homes without working with owners to help them keep them.  According to McLemore the foreclosure crisis has deeply affected students and teachers at Bancroft.   Parents are ashamed to talk about the troubles, and students can be suddenly gone from the classrooms.

Protestors are asking Wells Fargo to “place a moratorium on all foreclosures until the bank negotiates with the coalition to establish comprehensive loan modification reforms.”  They also want the bank to stop  “illegal evictions of tenants in foreclosed properties.”  Wells Fargo, which received $43.7 billion in federal bailout funds, reported $12 billion in earnings in 2010.  However, it has given the run-around to the hundreds of thousands of homeowners trying to modify their mortgages under federal law.  Out of over 350,000 homeowners that qualify for the program, only 77,000 have had their loans permanently modified so far.

Personally, I want to applaud Mr. McLemore for standing up for what he beliefs and for the rights of so many people across America.  I am proud that he is a teacher in our schools, and I hope that our students will learn from his example.

Update

There will be a protest at the Civic Center Wells Fargo in Oakland tomorrow, Thursday May 12 at 4:30 PM “to demand that the bank take some responsibility for their reckless destruction of the economy”. Please join the protestors!

  2 Responses to “San Leandro Teacher is Arrested – Good for Him!”

  1. I’m with you as well. The housing situation is a tragic crime.The banks created a system where the people who were bundling loans made billions and this is what drove subprime.The number of loans securitized into these exotic packages exploded in the 2002 to 2008 time period along with sub prime loans.To add insult to injury many people who were placed in subprime actually qualified for flat rate loans but were talked into adjustible rates, which paid the mortgage brokers a much higher commission.
    Now the banks who got bailed out are declaring war on consummers as well as the modest legislation which was achieved by the recent financial reforms.
    Some people advocate a state bank which could be a tremendous help for the poor as well as the state. Banks have also cast their fate outside the U.S. after the bailout in what is know as BRIC,Brazil,Russia , India and China.So they cost us trillions as taxpayers and home owners, they abused people who are going through hard times and they betray the ecomomic recovery with the new lover BRIC, and they have what one person called short term memory loss which will lead us into another crisis.

    • While that is not a picture of me being arrested at the Wells Fargo shareholders meeting it is a picture of Bill. He was one of the eight arrested in that action. It is important that we get active as people are really hurting due to the economic disaster caused in large part by the banks.
      It affects our parents and their kids.
      It affects our schools.
      It affects our jobs.

      We cannot allow ourselves to be passive.

      With firm handshake,
      Raleigh

Leave a Reply to Craig Williams Cancel reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)

Share via
Copy link
Powered by Social Snap