Peace and Freedom Party

Posted on August 29, 2011 by the Solano County Central Committee

The Solano County Peace and Freedom Party support Hands Off Our Homes (HOOH). Download, print and distribute this flyer.

Hands Off Our Homes (HOOH) is a newly founded organization in Vallejo seeking to reach out and assist homeowners and renters who are in jeopardy of loosing their homes due to foreclosure andeviction, educate the public on the practices of the banking system in regards to property loans andrepossessions, and organize with all who are willing to stand up for themselves and their community. We support a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions, and are working with a number of other housing andrenters groups in the Bay Area and California to initiate city and county wide moratoriums on foreclosures and evictions. On July 5th we held a public action in front of the trustee sale auction at the city hall steps in Vallejo in order to make a statement against the auctioning of peoples homes here in front of city hall. HOOH seeks to bring together home owners and others in the community around the particular issue offoreclosures, and how this effects us all in this time economic recession. According to Real Estateindustry data, there are currently 1,100 homes in some stage of default in Vallejo alone and 2,200 inSolano County. The shear numbers alone underline the important nature of this problem for everyone.

The bankruptcy of Vallejo, California, attacks on public sector workers, and what it means for the working class.

By Joel Schor

Posted on February 18, 2011 by the the Solano County Central Committee.

In May of 2008 Vallejo began to make the news in the Bay Area and world by a unanimous vote of its city councillors in favor of filling for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in San Francisco Federal District Court. In the weeks and months to come Vallejo's city manager Joe Tanner would support the case for bankruptcy by blaming the public sector unions - police, fire department, and electrical workers for pushing the cities general fund into the red. While the federal judge had ruled in favor of allowing the city municipal bankruptcy protection in September 2008, the rapidly downward fall in real estate prices would also entail a fall in property tax revenues for the schools and county services - which are supplemental to the city such as with sherifs who assist local law enforcement. Further, the real estate crisis is leading to a population flight from Vallejo due to foreclosures, which in turn lowers the city's revenue base from local economic activity. The push for bankruptcy was entirely focused on the unions as the culprits of Vallejo's economic troubles, and Stephanie Gomez emerged as an anti-union political force on the city council. In the midst of the bankruptcy proceedings, the unions came to the city offering $10 million in wage and benefit cuts. The offer was refused, and the cities negotiator claimed that employee wages and benefits were completely responsible for the $16million deficit in the general fund. The judges ruling in favor of bankruptcy, granting the city protection against its creditors, would make evident that dissenting views and a participatory dialogue over the cities priorities would not be tolerated.

The Peace and Freedom Party, founded in 1967, is committed to socialism, democracy, ecology, feminism and racial equality. We represent the working class, those without capital in a capitalist society. We organize toward a world where cooperation replaces competition, a world where all people are well fed, clothed and housed; where all women and men have equal status; where all individuals may freely endeavor to fulfill their own talents and desires; a world of freedom and peace where every community retains its cultural integrity and lives with all others in harmony.

Peace and Freedom Party members in Solano County have been involved in activism around the Iraq-Afagahnstan invasion, the foreclosure crisis, and education in California. We are seeking to reach out to activists in the Solano community, who have an interest in coming together around the pertinent issues facing working people and the environment here as a result of county and state budget cuts. Contact us if you are interested in getting involved around any particular issue, or in running for local or district office.