A VOLUNTARY PROGRAM

There's this stupid woman in my landlords office who keeps saying this thing to me, which I find infuriating: "It's a voluntary program". Like, your bank is gonna tell you - "Oh, you don't have to pay your mortgage this month, it's a voluntary program...", (While they file foreclosure on you).

Does that make sense? No, not to me, either. When she says that - I think to myself a couple of things: #1: She's not very smart, #2: She must not be a parent, #3: That's a typically insensitive comment coming from that office, which shouldn't surprise me, except it does...

I'm brought back to that saying we used to chant during my activist days: 'Housing is a RIGHT, NOT a PRIVILEGE' !

I was telling my son the other day - this "new" 'Occupy' movement is NOT new, tent cities were set-up on the Mall in Washington DC during the sixties to protest basically the same sorts of things... Dissatisfaction with our government, and how it was being run; As well as to draw attention to the disgusting lack of affordable housing in this Country. So, this is all deja-vu for those of us who have been keeping track of our history.

Currently, the Occupy Wall Street Movement has morphed from local parks to abandoned and foreclosed homes, their rationale explained in a recent USA TODAY article:

'...Such occupations of foreclosed homes constitute trespassing, because the bank owns a property once the homeowner defaults on the mortgage.

"Some people say this is illegal," Patricia Malcolm, one of the march leaders, told the crowd outside the house at 702 Vermont St. "But let me ask you: How legal was it to take us out of our homes?"

Matthew Smucker of Occupy Wall Street also defended the move: "Peaceful civil disobedience is a proud American tradition in the face of large injustice. … The illegal behavior to be looking at is the illegal foreclosures by banks...."'

We're right, THEY'RE WRONG, it's not OUR fault - it's THEIR fault ! And, meanwhile - people are dying out in the cold streets every Winter. Now - how much sense does that make?!