Occupy Wall Street shifts focus to US housing crisis

Anti-Wall Street protesters, looking for new issues to focus on after authorities across the US shut down the two-month old Occupy encampments, in a fresh wave of activism yesterday rallied around homeowners as they tried to resist evictions from foreclosed homes.

Protesters  assembled near a home in a depressed San Francisco neighborhood, while in Oakland nearby, they took over vacant bank-owned property and offered it as shelter to homeless people. In Los Angeles, protesters helped a former marine move his belongings back into his foreclosed home.

In Philadelphia, protesters said they were converging towards a similar strategy and hoped to focus public attention on big banks and other lenders who had enormously benefited from taxpayer-funded bailouts only to turn around and foreclose on taxpayers.

The shift came after authorities across the US cited health and safety conditions to dismantle protest camps that sprang up as part of the Occupy movement against economic inequality and excesses of the US financial system.

According to Vivian Richardson, speaking in front of her home in a San Francisco neighbourhood where she was fighting eviction, people were refusing to leave. She said today was national reoccupy our homes day.

Activists said they would launch a coordinated series of actions in several large cities organised by a dozen loosely affiliated housing rights groups. The announcement came after a series of attempts to take over vacant or foreclosed property in the San Francisco Bay area failed when police evicted protesters.