A little over a year ago, I wrote an article in Network News about my involvements here in Milwaukee with issues having to do with poverty or economic justice. Because that is the justice issue I choose to focus on, I think I balance out other members of the Presbyterian Voices for Justice Board (yes, that’s our new name), whose concerns for justice are focused elsewhere. In addition to being coordinator of Milwaukee Presbytery’s Ghana Partnership, and a member of the Board of the Washington Heights Neighborhood Association, I am also a foot soldier for Southeast Wisconsin Common Ground, which is a relatively new "franchise" of the Industrial Areas Foundation (Barak Obama’s one-time employer/organizing trainer).

So, the other day I was on a bus to the state capital to lobby for a bill being introduced into the legislature, which would prohibit the State of Wisconsin from doing business with any bank that is holding 100 or more foreclosed homes, and not selling them to buyers who want to purchase them as their home. A Common Ground research team discovered that three banks each have over 1100 foreclosed homes on their books. For the most part, they are not taking care of the properties and prefer to do mass sales to speculators, rather than sell them to individual buyers. In Milwaukee, it is causing a decline in our property values, as some of the abandoned homes have become drug houses and others have been so stripped of everything that they need to be demolished.

So Common Ground (an organization of 50 groups, mostly churches) has voted to launch a campaign to get these three banks to do three things. Deutsche Bank, US Bank, and Wells Fargo Bank are being challenged to do the following:

Last month Common Ground threw down the gauntlet at a Delegate Assembly of 350 members. It was at that meeting that we heard that these three banks (and there are more) took a total of $42.6 billion in bailout money from the government. We also heard from the State Representative from Milwaukee who was introducing the aforementioned legislation. Last Tuesday, about 60 of us went to Madison to lobby for the bill among those representatives from the four counties in Southeast Wisconsin represented by Common Ground. We asked those whom we visited to co-sponsor the legislation and also to write a letter to each of the three banks asking them to enter into negotiations with Common Ground on the three demands.

Interestingly, Wells Fargo (the biggest bank) has agreed to a meeting in March to discuss the demands. Common Ground has other steps it will take in ratcheting up the pressure on these banks to do the right thing.

In a week we will be having a briefing meeting for our church members on the campaign. At that meeting, those attending will be asked to fill out forms listing where they and other family members do their banking. The Common Ground chapter at Marquette University is planning a separate action, where if the negotiations become stalled, they will on a certain day, withdraw their checking accounts from two of these banks and march down the street to another bank. It will be interesting to see how this campaign plays out over the next year.

Well, that’s the news from Milwaukee, where a lot of families have lost their jobs and homes, and their children go to school in a struggling urban district. In this issue of Network News (some names we have not changed) you can read articles on other points of focus, as we give voice to a variety of justice concerns in our church and in our world.