Code Pink rescues mother of Iraq casualty from foreclosure

How a Victim of the Housing Crisis Was Saved from the Brink of Eviction

By Linda Milazzo
AlterNet
October 20, 2008
video

Code Pink, American News Project, and community organizers worked together to save a woman's home from the auction block.

Jocelyn Voltaire is an émigré from Haiti who has lived in this country for 45 years. She's a United States citizen, a college graduate, and the mother of four. She recently suffered the unbearable loss of her eldest son -- a Marine who had served in the Gulf. Atop the unthinkable pain of losing a child, Jocelyne's Queens, New York home of twenty years was set to be auctioned on Friday (October 17th), due to a predatory lender scam.

But miracles do happen! Thanks to the brilliant work of independent media, American News Project (ANP), which captured Jocelyn's story in the video below, and Codepink Women For Peace, who after seeing ANP's video launched an appeal for funds to stop the auction, Jocelyn's home was saved. Miraculously, in one day, Codepink raised $30,000 from 650 patriots who stepped up to "spread their wealth." Below is the incredible video produced by American News Project that captured the "heart" of Codepink and inspired Jocelyne's patriotic "angels."

Needless to say, corporate media was much too busy camped out at the home of plumber Joe to pay Jocelyne Voltaire any mind. It took the efforts of independent media heroes ANP, generous spread-the-wealth patriots, and the inspired community organizing of Codepink to let humanity prevail. As Codepink says,

While our government has taken billions of our tax dollars to bail out the wealthy, we came together to bail out a desperate mother We modeled exactly what we want our government to do -- bail out families facing personal disaster, not financiers...