Time, she was 11 and it was in the middle of a massive heat wave. It was at least 100 degrees, people had died in the city for lack of having airconditioning. No airconditioning in their home so all the lights were off, trying to keep the home cool. She is standing in the middle of her living room in the dark sweating, and i asked her could you tell me about your familys egyptian two years ago . She closes her eyes. This is the story she told me and it is important to say when children tell stories it is important for journalists to fact check them and verify some stuff because childrens memories are not necessarily always the most factual and every single one of her details checked out. It was probably the most powerful telling that i heard throughout reporting this entire book. The police were at the door running footsteps on the stairs and martha biggs, this is big as. Then Gemayel Biggs remembered the founding of this followed by the deliberate side of a battering ram. She and her 7yearold sister justice had just finished eating cereal and playing barbie in the living room on the west side of chicago. It was the weekend. She and her two sisters planned to pick up from Salazar Elementary School. Outside the door the pounding grew louder. There were half a dozen police cars parked below and all their lights were flashing. The girls mother, martha biggs, rushed to the door. She opened it. Only to see seven Police Officers, a blinding flash light and her dreams exploding once again. The year was 2010. The year that for the first time in United States history bank seized 1 million homes evicting 3,000 families. And flew into the bathroom, and shoving them into the familys minivan. The girl emerged from the bathroom, a female Police Officer and meltdown to remind them to put on shoes and clothes. It was the winter. Martha roused her only son, 3 mack baby and coaxed him into the car. Altogether the family felt like it was tight. Marissa in the front seat, justice, crowded in between clothes and quote in the back. As martha drove away from the house that had been their home and 5ed to Salazar Elementary School where the archives were good as they hoped, she knew this eviction was not only part of the 2008 housing crisis. She knew it was part of a much longer story, one that stretched back to marthas child attend further, all the way to the founding of the United States. She knew was the story of housing, race and freedom, that wed to the stations history like the crisscross stitches on the fabric of the quilts. Finally she opened her eyes and said to me when i was homeless in wasnt like i was dirty because my mom made sure i wasnt. Then i was going to school with everything on my mind of what had happened the other night. Last night i had gotten a house, what about tonight . I had to sleep in the car tonight. I might get a good deal tonight. What will happen . How will i get home today . I want to thank everybody, a few people to thank. I want to thank the festival of the book. I want to thank amnesty international, a lot to help me get here. I want to thank bill for the introduction, and my one man publishing super power team. And an incredible other book, the black history of the white house. Max and so many other activists across the country, take back the land and other housing disorganization as i definitely the reason i am here because they educated me to everything. I want to thank the family that are struggling, actually fighting back against one of the worst crises, financial, social, physical that this country had gone through. Without their willingness to talk to me. None of this would be here. So i am going to speak about my first book a dream foreclosed, black america and the fight for a place to call home. Is traces the story of four families during the lead up to and aftermath of the worlds worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Families in detroit, michigan, Michael Hutchins in chattanooga, tenn. In stanford, North Carolina and Marissa Biggs in chicago, with the mother of onea and jimeyea. Sometimes there is confusion, i am not a financial reporter. More than the foreclosure crisis, they choose to organize this society and the way it can be different. We will travel from burned out buildings in chicago to liberated blocks in between, living rooms and families across the country. Lets begin. You want me to chill . Hold on. We are chilling. Great, okay. Can you also hear me . Cool. Thank you. I want to start with a very simple question. What is home . It is such a simple word but almost impossible to define. The power of this word is nearly unrivaled. Think back, think back to when you were in schools like this a you will remember home was the prize of epic heroes. And the homecoming of odysseus, after decades journeying across the entire mediterranean, and finally reach the shore. Finally reacheds the house and is not quite home yet for those who remember the ending. Doesnt really become home until penelope, whose wife was besieged by suitors in his absence tests him, she says why dont you just bring out that bed from that room. I dont want a stranger sleeping in my bedroom and he says no, you cant do that because he was the only ones that new said that bed was built into that room, into a live oak tree and when she when he had that recognition, was really passed the test, that was when he was home and be long in the house, not when who can remember moms yearning for a decent home in raisin in the sun, the iconic play, perhaps one of the best place of a 20th century. The family was cooped up in this subdivision in chicago. And in the 1950s, the massive red lining, the African American families were cooped into tiny sections of the city and as a result of the incredibly predatory practice of white landlords there were four five or six families, and one of the daughters chasing down the hallway, in the bathroom is unoccupied. And i will work 20 hours a day in all of the kitchens in chicago, strap my baby on my back and scrub all the floors in america and all the sheets in america if i have to. We have got to get out of here. They move to a white neighborhood and challenged incredible violence. The United States, home is nearly synonymous with the idea of equality, upward mobility and freedom, and although everyone knows it, there is probably no more contested a word in the entire boeing which language as law professor anita hill right about the housing crisis, she writes at the heart of the crisis, an ideological disconnect between home as a basic element of the American Dream and halfway to eat quality and home as a market product. What is going to happen to our homes and what is happening since 2007 when the housing crisis century since late 2007, and plunged the country and the worlds into disaster. A lot about the numbers of the crisis. We let a lot about the amount that evaporated overnight, but a lot about the number of people lost their jobs and the gdp decline. And the amount of money the banks needed to be stabilized. We didnt hear about a lot, almost at all about the number of actual people, not loans, not houses, since 2007 as a result of foreclosure and being pursued. It seemed like a Pretty Simple conversation about the housing crisis i learned there was not a single Government Agency at any level whose job was to how many people were trashed out of their homes . There was not even a private company chargedh. Which should be funny. Through interviews, economists and journalists, and this is the conservative estimates. 10 Million People forced from their homes since 2007. How big is 10 Million People, 227 in the virginia. Of the population of new york city, it is roughly equivalent to the entire population of the state of michigan which is the tenth most populous state in the entire country. In other words in tht bankers had evicted every single man, woman, and child, and their pets, from the entire great lakes states. How is it possible that the entire population of michigan was forced from their homes and we never really even heard about it . So i started thinking that maybe its not just a reflection of government oversight but its more a reflection of how we value this crisis, that we valued it and quantified it more in stock prices rather than missed school days, that more than anything, we talked about it in terms of shareholder profit, rather than the shuttered schools schools and cs across the country. And man we havent only suffered from an economic crisis, but maybe were in a crisis of values and meaning and the definition of our own lives. I was glad you mentioned Martin Luther king, jr. , because i think it is probably impossible, especially here in jefferson school, which used to be an allblack school during segregation, probably impossible to talk about this topic without referencing that earlier this year we celebrated the 50th 50th anniversary of the hoytic historic march on washington and the i have a dream speech and i went back and actually read it, and i noticed a portion that hasnt gained as much attention so i want to read just a small segment of it for you today. And he said, in a sense we have come to our nations capitol to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the mag enough send words of the constitution and the declaration of independence, they were signing a promissory note that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He continued, it is obvious today, he said, that americans have defaulted on this promissory note as far a is . Citizens of color. Instead america hat given the anything row people a bad check, a check marked insufficient funds. In reading this now i cant help but think and if people caught the hundreds of thousands of foreclosure checks sent out by the banks as compensation after the massive robo signing settlement. This massive legal settlement an the banks, all of them, had been caught forging and signing all of these foreclosure documents in order to accelerate the mill. They didnt have enough people to sign up on these documents. Nevertheless, actually check whether the documents were in order, and they had multiple employees making minimum wage, signing the same name, linda green barks it was shorter then their real name. After the banks were cause in thus massive forgery and fraud scandal, they were required to send out checks, compensation checks to the families who had been foreclosed on as a result of this fraud. And so they sent out checks, hundreds of thousands of checks, and most of them were really small, 5,000, 2,000, vowed inadequate compensation, but the families went to the bank and were going to cash the checks, and the checks of bank of america, wells fargo, citibank, well, they bounced, and nothing to me signaled not just the insolvency of our u. S. Financial system, but the irony of the way at that time we have treated people during this crisis. But to also return to Martin Luther kings words, perhaps the entire racially slanted foreclosure crisis is the best evidence, maybe, today, of the United States continued default on its constitutional promise to africanamericans. And im not just talking about the fact that africanamericans were twice as likely to be foreclosed on, although they were. Or that africanamericans with high credit scores, good credit, were three times more likely to be sold a subprime predator loan than a white family. Or talking about the fact that a wells fargo loan officer testified in court that wells fargo, quote, put bounties on the heads of minority borrowers. Or that everything single major bank has been demonstrated of the fair housing act, although none have been penalized for it, though there is a lawsuit and Morgan Stanley is undergoing in detroit over violations of the fair housing act. And im not even necessarily talking about the fact although i think at it incredibly important and very little understood this entire foreclosure crisis is an outgrowth of the nations period of redlining and institutionalized racism in housing, and the very fact these major banks could go into communities of color and peddle the worst of the worse mortgages is the natural outgrowth of the fact that the u. S. , the federal government, had a policy of redlining, and if you dont not what it is, it means the federal government printed huge maps of the United States, put them on the walls, and drew red lines around any of the communities in which people of color live. And what those lines signified was that there was no federal lending or no federal guarantee for private lending, in those communities, and as a result, and these laws were not repealed until the late 60s and 70s as a result these communities were starved of capital, and so when these laws finally were taken off the books, the private banks said, oh, here is an opportunity to make a lot of money. Really quickly. Like capitalizing on this nations history of institutionalized racism. But i also think its important to talk about the unique impact that africanamericans have experienced throughout the course of this crisis because, as Margaret Armstrong writes africanamericans have had an historical relationship with property that differs from that of other americans. Our introduction to the history was as a form of property in contemporary relationship between africanamerican and properties are still impaired. What she is saying is that the only thing at stake is not simply houses, because Holding Private property and achieving the full rights of personhood, of citizenship, have been directly tied since this countrys founding. What is really at stake in this quest for homes is freedom. In other words, home and Land Ownership gave one access to the original American Dream. Of democracy. Its fitting to seek a little bit about democracy because this project began while i was on a plane to a place that postlost their local democracy and thats detroit, michigan. It was a summer of 2011 and i was going to see things id heard only whispers about. Id heard about masses of people stopping evictions and squatting in bankowned houses. Whole blocks taken over by artists. I was hearing about people, in other words, setting up communities outside of the control of capitalism. Communities they were calling liberated zones. And when i was there, and i had, remember, a very obviously radical whispering of what i might find in detroit. There i met a woman named berth that garrett and. Met her in her living room on a sunday afternoon. It was maybe 7 00 in the afternoon, and she just gotten back from church. I need to explain what bertha looked like. I group up in suburban massachusetts, outside of boston so i wasnt accustomed to meeting women that had dressed like bertha, were as brave as bertha. So she wore a white pressed suit with ruffles, embidded shawl, cream colored smock and this impossibly large, brim white southern hat. She told me she might be living in poststruggle detroit but her home was a refuge and she was from the south, and here she had full control. And then over the course of a number of hours she told me her story, which made local headlines but didnt seem like anybody fully understood what had driven her to do what she did. After 22 years she and her husband had fallen into foreclosure. The result of a second predator mortgage. She started with a mortgage of 40,000 and ballooned to 190,000. Although every single month she was making her mortgage payment. So she tried to fight her foreclosure in court and hired a lawyer, called him a very sweet man, and at the end of the day he couldnt do anything for her. Her husband was cycling in and out of the hospital, and her sons and daughter all relied on this home as the family roz home base, and finally, days before her scheduled eviction, she called up her oldest daughter and said, im not going anywhere. And later she told me it wasnt that she didnt understand that the banks owned the piece of paper. She said, it was that the banks didnt understand that i owned my home. And this is a deeply religious woman, appealing to a moral law, higher law, law that in her mind completely invalidated this contract that the bank was holding. They called for her and her family to leave. So she called the papers and called her neighbors and the church, and the morning the city of detroit had scheduled to send a contractor to park a dumpster in front of her house and then have contractor essentially haul out every single item that she and her family had amassed of the last 22 years of her life, all of those items, to haul them out of her house and throw them in the dumpster. Well, that morning, the contractor couldnt deliver that dumpster because there were hundreds of people amassed in the street and on her front lawn in front of the place he wanted to park. And he said, get out of the way, and ammann stood in the middle of the street and he said, you get out of the way. And so the man with the dumpster tried to park it in front of the neighbors houses and the neighbors said, dont park that in front of my house. I know what youre here to do. And so again, remember, this is a contractor. He was probably making slightly more than minimum wage, and he said im not going to benefit of kicking this family out so he went back, and later that afternoon, bertha went down to downtown detroit, went to the dime building, huge office building. Its the wall street outpost in detroit. And she marched up to the floor where the new york bank of melon, which holds her mortgage, was located, and she said can i have an appointment in talk to somebody about my mortgage . Hundreds of people just lost the dumpster and i dont think er going to be able to four, on me, so lets work something out. And the sect said, im sorry, you cant come in because you dont have an appointment. And so bertha took a deep breath and wearing, again, pressed, perfect suit, wide brim hat, she laid out in front of the door of the office, and when the secretary said, what are you doing . She said, well, if i cant come in, none of you people can come out, and she stayed there for a very long time, and the next day the banks lawyers called her lawyer and said, could you please call off the dogs . She wants her house, she can have it. And when i met wi