"This is Our House Now": ACORN Home Defenders Campaign Sees First Arrest in Baltimore

It took four days, but the first arrest to result from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) Home Defenders Campaign took place in Baltimore yesterday when protester Louis Beverly turned himself into Balitmore Police after a calculated publicity stunt where approximately 30 ACORN protesters, surrounded by media including 2 radio stations, 2 local news teams, and reporters for The Huffington Post and other organizations, flanked Beverly as he used bolt cutters to break the padlock off of a home and proclaimed "This house belongs to us now!"

But does it?

This event and the planned offensive by ACORN calls into question the ethical foundation for the Home Defenders Campaign.

ACORN spokesperson Bertha Lewis stated this in regards to the rationale for the Home Defenders Campaign, "a campaign to force the question of moratoriums and to press the urgency of this crisis into the consciousness of elected officials on the state and national levels...The Homeowner Affordability and Stabilization Plan (HASP), announced in Phoenix on Wednesday by President Obama, which will help up to an estimated 9 million families, is a good first step - and the first serious effort by the Federal government to confront the challenge. But just because there was an announcement does not lessen the urgency of the problem. We are still in a situation where four families every minute enter the foreclosure process. We believe there must be a moratorium on foreclosures until HASP is fully implemented. This is a campaign of refusal and resistance, refusal by distressed homeowners to cooperate with the foreclosure process and resistance to attempts to evict them from their homes. And in some cases it is a campaign of getting people back into their homes."

Indeed, ACORN is intimately aware that the vast majority of the people they represent will not be effected by the HASP, and in fact, that HASP may have little effect for anyone.

ACORN, in the rush to make headlines, instead of waiting patiently for the next Sheriff in one of the 22 organized cities involved in the Home Defenders Campaign to arrive and face the difficult proposition of doing his job or not, chose to push the matter by breaking into a long foreclosed and abandoned home in Baltimore.

In Houston, ACORN member Pennie Saldivar said, "We are willing to go to any means necessary".

In New York, Adrienne Hayes, an ACORN member, stated, "What we want is a [foreclosure] moratorium for just one year."