Illustration by Caetano Santos.

A world of ever-growing media conglomerates has created a situation in which media ownership and influence has been concentrated into the hands of an elite group. “The Big Six,” — GE, Viacom, CBS, News Corp., Disney and TimeWarner — now own nearly 90 percent of the media Americans consume. In 1983, 50 companies shared this amount.

Though there was a considerable amount of journalistic disapproval of the Nov. 15, 2011 police raid on Occupy Wall Street, the ensuing abandonment of the issue by media was far too swift. This mass disregard for a violation of the constitutional right to peaceful assembly is a subtle, eerie reminder that the nation is rapidly losing avenues for expressing dissent. It’s not surprising that a September 2012 Gallup poll revealed 60 percent of Americans have little to no trust in the mass media, an all-time low. We didn’t succeed at occupying Wall Street, but the next step should be obvious: occupy the media.

The media landscape must be a forum for putting pressure on corrupt and underperforming representatives, not a shield or weapon for the 1 percent. When such a small group of people controls what the news covers, it can become impossible and/or dangerous to report on things that could negatively affect their image. A diversity of perspectives is needed, a redistribution of publishing power to a wider group of people from all walks of life could greatly increase media accountability.

The current state of the media industry is looking a lot like what made Wall Street so repulsive to the protesters in Zuccotti Park. Just as the capitalists on Wall Street became “the 1 percent” by accruing money at the expense of those who had less, the moguls at the top of the media world are accumulating corporate mergers with equal ferocity.

The Occupy Wall Street movement and its countless offspring protests illustrate how the American people are not afraid of expressing the sentiment that Wall Street is reifying capitalism’s highest stage, imperialism. This activistic energy should be shifted to the new 1 percent that is forming in the media business.

The Occupy Movement may no longer be active in the news, but the spirit of protest that occupiers renewed will never be destroyed. Occupying the media means more than an occupation of Times Square Studios or Rockefeller Center (though this could be a good start due to the increased visibility it would provide). This occupation will require a widespread change in consciousness and a rise in individual and group initiative.

The first thing activists can do is get involved in the media. Here at UCSC, students can choose from 16 different student media organizations with many varying focuses and approaches. Determined activists can also write letters to editors or pen their own investigative features and share them with other concerned students.

The free market’s potential hasn’t yet been completely monopolized, so another avenue is to be a media entrepreneur. A group of friends with unique perspectives and a lot to say can make their own commentary and/or news site together. Now publication can be as simple as clicking the ‘submit’ button on Twitter or a blog, or as risky as initiating a startup. In either case, we have the potential to take journalism back to its roots by recording the events of our lives and communities and how those in power affect them.

It’s clear there is no correct way of seeing things. True objectivity — the mainstay of most journalism — would require that all subjective perspectives be represented and shared. If we all make journalism a way of life and share our individual stories, we can prevent these perspectives from being lost or obstructed from the record of history. Occupying the media cannot be a revolution that takes place overnight, it will need to be a determined, painstaking evolution in thought and practice.

For our diverse country to be free, our information must be free and diverse as well.

Illustration by Leigh Douglas

“In the least f—ed up way that this can sound, it was my drug. It was the revolution, it was the meaning, it was the purpose that I had been waiting for since my late teens.”

This is how one activist, who goes by Wildcat, remembers the initial months of Occupy Santa Cruz (OSC). A former resident of the OSC encampment in San Lorenzo Park, Wildcat stayed until it was cleared out by Santa Cruz Police on Dec. 8 of last year.

Along with other OSC members, Wildcat helped to organize SubRosa café’s “One Year Later” Occupy-themed open mic night on Thursday, Oct. 4. In conjunction with a potluck and general assembly at Laurel Park on Friday Oct. 5, the event celebrated the one year anniversary of OSC and provided its members the opportunity to share memories, stories, and strategies.

Attended by roughly 30 people ranging in age from 19 to 60, the open mic included musical performances, poetry, personal stories and informational presentations.

One attendant, who wished to be identified simply as “an anarchist,” listed a series of best practices to observe when protesting or engaging in other acts of civil disobedience.

“People go down for things as small as a mark on their shoe, a hole in their sweatshirt, a sliver of a tattoo showing. You’ll go to jail for years. You have to plan ahead,” the anarchist said.

Another attendant expressed concern over the personal privacy implications of the National Security Agency’s “Utah Data Center,” a two billion dollar, one million square foot data storage facility slated to come online in 2013.

After the event, participants filtered out into SubRosa’s courtyard to reminisce and share their OSC experiences with one another over coffee and cigarettes.

“For me it was a cleansing,” said Isaac “Lyrical I” Collins, an OSC member and poet. “When I came to Occupy I was working a job, I had a place to live. I walked away from everything to join it. On a personal level everything in my life didn’t make sense, but after I joined, it made much more sense. This movement changed me.”

Collins was the only person arrested at last year’s unsanctioned “420” event in Porter Meadow located at UC Santa Cruz, in which hundreds of students and locals gather to celebrate the cannabis-themed holiday by smoking marijuana. He is charged with a felony for possession of marijuana with intent to sell.

Several OSC members have joined together to raise awareness about Collins and his felony charge, asserting that he was targeted because he is black and was prominently displaying an Occupy sign at the time of his arrest.

Wildcat is one subject of a similar awareness-raising campaign OSC has undertaken. A member of the “Santa Cruz 11,” a group of 11 individuals who participated in the occupation of a vacant Wells Fargo on Dec. 1, 2011, Wildcat and the others have each been charged with two felonies and two misdemeanors. Four of them have since been acquitted, and the trials for the remaining seven are ongoing.

“This is handicapping my life,” Wildcat said. “I’m terrified of cops, I’m terrified of doing anything that might be perceived as illegal, because I know a cop can get me in trouble for anything if they want to.”

Becky Johnson is also a member of the Santa Cruz 11. She said she did not enter the bank but faces the same charges as Wildcat.

“I lost my housing, and I’m unable to work,” Johnson said. “I was planning on working as a teacher in September but I’m unable to do that with felony charges hanging over me.”

Three Santa Cruz Police officers watched from across the street as tables, signs and banners were set up at Laurel Park on Friday for the potluck and general assembly. Roughly 40 people assembled to chat and report on what OSC has planned for the future.

Joy Hinz, a member of the OSC Foreclosure Working Group (FWG) told the gathering about the two complaints the FWG filed with the Grand Jury of Santa Cruz County regarding foreclosure fraud. The Grand Jury informed her that the complaints had been forwarded to “the appropriate investigative committee.”

The FWG has also been working with other Occupy groups around California and former real estate broker turned activist C.J. Holmes to sponsor a series of town hall meetings to discuss various solutions to the wave of foreclosures that hit California in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008.

“One of those solutions that we’re pretty excited about is eminent domain, which is currently spreading like wildfire across the country,” Hinz said.

That approach involves activists petitioning cities and counties to use their powers of eminent domain to seize mortgages from banks and then renegotiate them with homeowners.

Roxanne Evans, who spearheads the Food Justice Working Group (FJWG) informed those present about the group’s recent creation of an “edible vertical garden” the FJWG constructed on an outside wall of India Joze restaurant on Front Street.

Evans said the FJWG also has plans to sponsor several events during the winter where they will distribute free hot meals to Santa Cruz’s homeless population.

The general assembly also agreed to reestablish a visible presence in front of the county courthouse, the site of the previous OSC encampment.

As darkness fell, a projector was set up to screen “What Are You Doing Here? Inside Occupy Santa Cruz,” a documentary about OSC, while its members reflected on what the camp and movement had meant to them.

“Right now we don’t have an encampment, but it’s still affected me dramatically, on a personal level,” said Freedom, who declined to give a last name. “Since the movement has started I have rejected my car, cellphone, laptop, rent, even money. I stopped using money altogether because I believe in this movement so strongly.”

Nevertheless, Freedom plans to remain an active member of the group.

“We’re at a definite lull after all the police oppression we’ve been facing, but there’s no instant gratification in any movement,” Freedom said. “We just have to continue the struggle and keep working and organizing together.”

That’s Ken Foster. The soft-spoken son of two Quaker parents, he has lived in Santa Cruz his whole life and in 1985 completed an apprenticeship with the UC Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS). Now in his 50s, Foster runs Terra Nova Ecological Landscaping, which specializes in creating “beautiful, ecologically-based living environments for public and private lands using permaculture techniques.”

When he bought his Westside home in 1999, Foster wanted to create a space that would serve as a living, breathing example of those techniques in action. For the last three years, however, he has been fighting to keep it.

“Picture this: The economy goes south and your business is flat-lined. I had to start making some tough decisions,” Foster said. “I had to make the choice of either keeping the business alive or making payments on my mortgage.”

On the advice of several friends, Foster decided to stop paying his mortgage until he could get a loan modification to keep his business afloat. Foster thought it sounded like a reasonable idea at the time, but over the past three years, he became so disillusioned with the process that he decided to take action.

Foster is a member of the Occupy Santa Cruz (OSC) Foreclosure Working Group (FWG). Formed shortly after the OSC camp at the courthouse was taken down, the Santa Cruz FWG is one of a number of similar groups cropping up in cities across the nation — from Tucson, Ariz. to Louisville, Ky. — all working to address and bring attention to fraudulent foreclosure practices.

Sitting in his bedroom and looking out over the backyard he has spent the last 13 years cultivating, Foster recounts a speech he gave in front of a Chase bank on March 11 during a rally organized by the FWG.

“So now, picture this: You start applying for a loan modification, and applying and reapplying, and applying and reapplying, over and over, for two years,” Foster said. “And then, November of last year, the house was foreclosed on and a trustee sale date was set for later that month. So I called them and said, ‘What’s up? You guys just set a date to sell my house five days from now.’”

Foster’s mortgage had been securitized, bundled up in a package with thousands of other mortgages and sold to an unknown investor. Chase no longer owned the mortgage it had issued to him, and as result it was no longer their call on whether or not to accept his petition for a loan modification. However, this last bit of information was only revealed to Foster after he had spent two years in negotiation with Chase, trying to get the loan modification.

“For 24 months, I talked to them,” Foster said. “They’d say, ‘Talk to this guy, get this form, we lost this, send us another,’ and then when it’s all over they say, ‘Well, your investor doesn’t do modifications.’”

Foster is not alone. Since 2007, there have been over 6,000 foreclosures in Santa Cruz County and over 8 million nationwide. A recent article by the Huffington Post found that the length of the foreclosure process nationwide has nearly tripled since 2007, going from an average of 253 days then to an average of 653 days now.

As these foreclosures make their way through the courts, they’ve ignited a series of legal battles at both the local and statewide levels, culminating in a $26 billion settlement last year among the five largest banks in the country and the attorney generals of 49 states.

Most of these foreclosures have their origin in mortgage-backed bonds, which lay at the heart of the recent financial crisis. In order to create these bonds, tens of millions of individual mortgages like Foster’s were packaged into groups, or “pools,” and then sold as investments.

This was made possible by the creation of the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) in 1995, “an innovative process that simplifies the way mortgage ownership and servicing rights are originated, sold and tracked,” according to its website. Until MERS, it was necessary to record on paper each time the deed to a house and its accompanying mortgage was sold, and to pay a fee to the county in which the sale occurred, a slow and potentially costly process when dealing with millions of mortgages.

To achieve its trademarked slogan of “Process Loans, Not Paperwork,” MERS allowed parties trading in mortgage-backed bonds to do all of the necessary record-keeping instantly and electronically. When the housing bubble burst in late 2006 and homeowners started going into foreclosure en masse, however, it became apparent that there were problems with tracking down who actually owned the titles of the mortgages that had gone through MERS. In addition, the MERS system greatly reduced judicial oversight of the foreclosure process.

“Given the numerous problems I see in nearly every non-judicial foreclosure case I preside over,” wrote Owen Panner, a federal judge in Oregon, in a ruling last year, “a procedure relying on a bank or trustee to self-assess its own authority to foreclose is deeply troubling to me,” he wrote.

Due to these legal and technical problems, delays and a lack of communication between banks and frustrated homeowners have become commonplace. Furthermore, a series of recent audits and lawsuits have thrown into question the legality of many of the loans processed by MERS, and by extension the foreclosures associated with them.

An audit last month by San Francisco Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting found that out of 400 recent foreclosures, 84 percent contained what appeared to be clear violations of the law, according to an article by the Associated Press.

Following last year’s $26 billion settlement with the banks, California attorney general Kamala Harris recently proposed a set of legislation, titled the “Homeowner’s Bill of Rights,” which would give greater protection to homeowners facing foreclosure. One of the proposed laws would put an end to “dual-track foreclosures,” referring to the practice of banks saying they are negotiating a loan modification while simultaneously moving forward on a foreclosure, much like what happened to Ken Foster.

Given the scale of the issue in Santa Cruz and across the nation, several members of OSC decided to get together and see what they could do about it.

“When the OSC camp was taken down and the dome was taken out and all of that, it became clear that we were going to have to approach things in a different way,” said Joy Hinz, a founding member of the FWG. “And so foreclosures seemed like the thing that was the most egregious and the most obvious to me, the thing that needed immediate work. So we formed the [Foreclosure] Working Group and started thinking about what we could do and how we could make a difference.”

Starting with a handful of OSC members, the FWG now has about 20 regulars who meet weekly to discuss foreclosures and plan ways of addressing the issue at the county level. Hinz sees moving forward on foreclosures as an essential part of Occupy’s overall goal.

“Many Occupy groups have done the same thing, so it’s actually a national thing, starting a foreclosure working group,” Hinz said. “And [they’re] moving forward on having foreclosures be a very significant part of what they’re doing, perhaps even the tip of the spear.”

Their first course of action was to start gathering signatures for a petition to Santa Cruz County Sheriff Wowak, asking that he abstain from carrying out evictions until the foreclosures he’s enforcing can be shown to be legal. The FWG is currently planning to meet with Wowak within the next week to discuss this.

Another plan has been to address the County Board of Supervisors and ask them to impose a moratorium on foreclosures in Santa Cruz until they have been subjected to the type of audit performed by Ting in San Francisco.

While the supervisors haven’t gone so far as to impose a moratorium, they have pledged their support of the issue. On March 6, John Leopold, First District Supervisor, announced that he would direct the Santa Cruz County District Attorney and the Santa Cruz County Administrator’s Officer to look into what could be done by the County to fight fraudulent foreclosures. They are due to report back to the Board of Supervisors on April 10.

Leopold also pledged his support of the proposed “Homeowners Bill of Rights,” and has asked the county’s legislative delegation to draft a letter supporting the bill, while also urging that the state laws “not prevent further action by local governments interested in enacting additional programs of support for vulnerable homeowners.”

“We have a crisis on our hands,” Leopold said. “I’ve been looking into it, and it’s a very difficult issue to address at the county level, but we need to do something.”

Ernesto Munoz, another member of the FWG, is well versed in those difficulties. A graduate of Cuyo University in Argentina with a degree in accounting and a doctorate in economics, he’s talked with Leopold at length about measures it might be feasible for the county to take, but has seen several ideas that appear promising be scuttled by complicated bureaucracy. This has led him to focus his efforts on more immediate concerns.

“When the crisis came, I started by giving some conferences explaining the economics of the financial crisis,” Munoz said. “But then I decided to do something practical. I had heard that there were a lot of people in Watsonville losing homes; I am a Spanish speaker, so I found my way there. I went to a meeting at a church, and there were like 40 or 50 families there. They were desperate, disoriented, the banks were turning them down, they were being abused by people who charged them money and didn’t help them, so I decided to start helping.”

Munoz said that many families in Watsonville were fighting a war on two fronts. In addition to dealing with the complicated process of getting a loan modification, many residents were being sold faulty legal advice by unscrupulous lawyers and realtors, who charged upfront fees and then either did nothing or quickly disappeared.

“For many people, especially in Watsonville, trying to seek help is like walking through a minefield,” Munoz said.

After becoming a Certified Foreclosure Counselor, Munoz began providing free assistance to families facing foreclosure in Watsonville. Working with Communities Organized for Relational Power in Action (COPA), Munoz has helped over 50 families receive loan modifications since then, mostly by guiding them through the process of filling out Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) forms.

HAMP is a federal program designed to help homeowners who are behind on their mortgages reach an agreement with their bank that allows them to keep their house and renegotiate their mortgage. Still, Munoz said, the program isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be.

“Technically, [the process] shouldn’t take more than three weeks. In reality, it takes on average about a year,” Munoz said. “The banks, I would say, drag their feet. In my opinion, they are basically only doing the loan modifications because of pressure from the Treasury Department and the media. But the program was supposed to help 4.5 million people and so far they have given loan modifications to 900,000. So they have set up this system where things go very slowly.”

Mark Reed, a member of Occupy Monterey who has been working closely with the FWG in Santa Cruz, said he can attest to that.

“It’s very frustrating. Because you actually get all the paperwork together, and you know, we had it kind of planned out, we had the whole package,” Reed said. “And then they keep on losing paperwork and sometimes I think it’s on purpose, because it’s odd that they’d lose one piece out of all the other stuff that you sent. And then they need more paperwork and this and that, it’s always constant delaying action on the bank’s part.”

Reed went into foreclosure in 2010, after the construction company he’d been working at for 22 years made the decision to close its doors. After nearly a year of back and forth phone calls and faxing of paperwork between Reed and his bank, he was granted a three-month trial period, after which he would receive his loan modification.

“I made all my payments the first three months,” Reed said. “Then they said it was going to be a six-month trial period. I made all those payments. Then they said it was going to be a nine-month trial period.”

Reed said his experience, like Foster’s, has inspired him to speak out and try to do something about the state of the foreclosure process.

Reed participated in the same FWG organized march as Foster on March 11, and told his story to the crowd assembled outside of Bank of America that day. Numbering about 200, the marchers made their way through downtown Santa Cruz carrying signs and banners, and stopped in front of banks to put “foreclosure notices” on them.

The outcome of this and the other measures that the FWG is working on remain uncertain for now, like the petition to Sheriff Wowak and the county’s ongoing investigation into foreclosures. Reed and Foster’s situations are in a similar place.

Reed is still waiting for his trial period to end and his loan modification to go through. Foster is trying to arrange a sale of his house while he continues to negotiate with Chase, in the hopes that his investor might change its mind.

Munoz is confident that progress is being made.

“First of all, whether Occupy accomplishes any one specific strategy, is not that important. What is important is the pressure,” Munoz said. “The office manager here, Bank of America in Santa Cruz, he has no real power, but he can bring it to the central offices and say ‘Hey, I am having this pressure here.’ See, and if there is Occupy in Denver and Occupy in New York and Occupy in Reno, that are asking for the same, then the pressure starts building up.”

Protesters gather in front of Wells Fargo Bank on Feb. 15 to support the 11 individuals who have charges against them for actions taken during an occupation of a vacant bank in November. Photo by Toby Silverman.

As the Occupy Santa Cruz encampment in San Lorenzo Park entered its final stages in late November of last year, an estimated 20 to 30 demonstrators who claimed to be “anonymously, autonomously acting in solidarity with Occupy Santa Cruz” broke into and occupied a vacant bank building at 75 River St. for three days, beginning on Nov. 30. That was nearly three months ago.

Today, 11 alleged members of this group, known as the “Santa Cruz Eleven,” are facing a total of 22 charges after local authorities completed an investigative identification process. All were charged with felonies except for Gabriella Ripley-Phipps, who was charged with a third-degree misdemeanor for delaying an officer.

“Three people were arrested in their homes and taken to the county jail,” said Tom Jones,* who is currently facing charges. “Others like myself were able to get ourselves to the county jail and turn ourselves in.”

The November occupation racked up an estimated $35,000 in damages, according to police records.

Among the charges filed against the 11 are claims of conspiracy to commit a crime, felony vandalism, trespassing, and refusing to leave private property at the request of police and the building’s lease owners, according to court records.

The list of defendants includes long-time Santa Cruz activist Robert Norris Kahn, also known as Robert Norse.

District Attorney Bob Lee announced the indictments on Feb. 8. One member of the group was “arrested, handcuffed and taken from her home with pancakes burning on the stove,” according to an Occupy Santa Cruz report.

Only four arrests have occurred as of Feb. 22, as the remaining defendants continue to seek legal advising in addition to attending their scheduled arraignments. The sheriff’s office’s jail records show not all of the 11 warrants had been served as of Feb. 22. Those listed in the complaint are all expected to appear in court for their scheduled arraignment dates.

In late December 2011, Santa Cruz police announced they had identified 13 demonstrators who had occupied and vandalized the vacant Wells Fargo-owned building, and subsequently submitted the names to the district attorney’s office. At this time, police claimed much of the information regarding the 13 proposed suspects came from community members who viewed photos from the incident.

Eleven of the 13 suspects charged with felonies were allegedly identified in this manner. Information on the other two suspects was not released.

“I think [the claim that community members helped identify those involved] is very misleading,” Jones said. “All the testimony I’ve seen in the documents was of police identifying people.”

The Santa Cruz police department’s Deputy Chief of Police Steve Clark said all accused were accurately identified as participants in the incident.

“There are no mistaken identities in this particular case,” Clark said. “We have photo or video evidence of each of the individuals who have been charged.”

A counter-protest in support of the defendants was held on Feb. 15 in front of the Wells Fargo Bank, across the street from the still-vacant building where the initial occupation took place. The counter-protest began at 3 p.m., and after 40 minutes of demonstrations forced closure of the bank for the remainder of the day. One person was arrested.

“I don’t think people should be arrested for expressing their views,” said Santa Cruzan Courtney Oberholser, who observed the protest while making a trip to the ATM.

However, not all community members were in support of the occupation back in November.

“The feedback we got from community members is they felt a much higher sense of violation, especially business owners, property owners, homeowners,” Clark said. “They felt that ‘if people could do that in this building, they could come do that in my house or in my business. What are you, the police going to do about it?’”

Among the attendees of the Feb. 15 protest were some of the 11 people charged in the indictments, who came to vouch their support for the cause.

“It was a non-violent civil disobedience action,” said Becky Johnson, one of the 11 charged. “The people who did enter the building knew they were breaking the law but did it to draw attention to the greater good.”

Johnson, a local activist and 1988 UC Santa Cruz graduate, taught in Santa Cruz for nine years. While Johnson is currently working as an in-home support service worker, she hopes to return to teaching in the future. The charges filed against her could mean more than fines and jail time.

“I am in a very bad position,” Johnson said. “Even though I am completely innocent, a single police officer identified me inside the building. It really comes down to this officer’s word against mine, and in my experience juries tend to side with the police officer. If I am convicted of these charges I will lose my teaching credentials.”

Of the 11 defendants named by the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s office, Judge Ariadne Symons has arraigned seven, including Johnson and Norse. All but Norse pleaded not guilty. Norse was scheduled to continue in court on Feb. 29 after asking Judge Symons for time to hire an attorney.

Those who plead not guilty are required to obey all laws, cooperate with police, and stay away from the 75 River St. location. A preliminary hearing for several of the accused defendants is scheduled for
March 5.