Afro-Netizen

Upload Real Change: What Activists Must Learn From the Obama Campaign

By Roberto Lovato
Courtesy of ColorLines Magazine

WHILE CRISSCROSSING CRACKED STREETS to knock on the rickety doors of rundown row houses in Philadelphia’s 14th Ward, Liza Sabater also found herself crossing the overlapping lines of political and technological history late last spring as she canvassed for Barack Obama’s campaign.

“I got to spend some time with these Puerto Rican mechanics—guys most people wouldn’t expect to have Internet access,” said Sabater, an Afro-Puerto Rican technologist who blogs at culturekitchen and The Daily Gotham. “But there—among the wrenches and jacks—were their cell phones and handheld devices they use to surf the Web.”

Sabater, who helps nonprofits use technology to further their missions, canvassed in Philadelphia with her two sons and coordinated work in the 14th Ward with three Latino volunteers from the Obama campaign. She saw in the mechanics’ mobile devices proof of her belief that “the ‘digital divide’ is a crock when we realize that laptops and desktops aren’t the only ways to access the Web.” But was the Obama campaign reaching these mechanics on their cells?

As they write future narratives of Obama’s astounding rise, historians will likely foreground how skillfully the “change” candidate maneuvered around the racial, geopolitical and economic terrain of our crises-ridden time. Lost in the background of most of these narratives will be how Obama, the former community organizer, took what he learned about mobilizing working- and middle-class residents on Chicago’s South Side and combined it with the stuff that actually wins elections: money, organizing and technology.

Obama’s campaign for the White House deployed in unparalleled ways Web. 2.0 tools—the set of technological developments that turned the World Wide Web into the ubiquitous, mobile, wireless and interactive Web we use today. As this issue of ColorLines went to production in late August, Obama’s Web site, Mybarackobama.com, was as interactive as any online social networking site. More than 10 million people had signed up at the site, and the campaign had raised millions of dollars. The Web site was the centerpiece of an online and offline political strategy that defeated the Clintons—one of the most powerful Democratic political dynasties—and, in the process, Obama took community organizing to new territory as he redefined the practice of electoral politics in the United States. Whatever the election results, Obama’s campaign demonstrated that it’s possible—and necessary—to go online and move people to action offline.

Sabater, who was born in New York’s El Barrio neighborhood and raised in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, was one of the many who responded to the campaign’s appeal. She is still fascinated by how Obama’s team fused state-of-the-art media and technology with the community organizing that the candidate learned in poor communities. Yet while she thinks community-based organizations can learn from the online organizing methods innovated by the Obama campaign, she also sees reason for concern in the cracked streets of Philadelphia.

Sabater noted, for example, that although her fellow Obama campaign volunteers were by definition “Latinos,” it was a poor decision on the part of the campaign to send three middle-class Chicanos from the west coast to a predominantly working-class, Spanish-speaking, Puerto Rican neighborhood.
“When my colleagues told me ‘we don’t speak Spanish’ and couldn’t interact with the people, I saw the interface problem,” said Sabater, adding, “I saw the disconnect between the online and offline strategies, both of which are focused on middle-class people. Nobody’s reaching out and targeting these working-class communities of color with technology. They don’t think that the mechanics and maids use technology or vote.” The Obama campaign fell through the cultural cracks in the street, while members in the community fell through the technological cracks of the campaign’s Web strategy.

They weren’t the first to use the media in this way, but he came along at that precise moment when the technology had matured, when the audience of media users had reached critical mass.“The (Obama) campaign created a fantastic interface for people to join the campaign,” Sabater said. “But it didn’t do as well in reaching people who don’t have laptops and whose technology is primarily their cell phones. There’s an age and class and race gap.”

Read more

Roberto Lovato is a writer with New America Media based in New York City.

Striving for a smooth election

By Miles Rapoport
The Boston Globe

Over the last several weeks, a fierce argument has broken out over voter registration, particularly the registration efforts of ACORN, accusations of voter fraud, and the ability of the election system to handle the surge of voters on Nov. 4.

First, the expected record turnout is a cause for celebration. When I served as Connecticut's secretary of the state in the mid-'90s, my colleagues and I bemoaned low voter participation, especially among young people, and the disengagement it reflected from politics and democratic life. Not this time. Registrations have poured in, turnout in the primaries achieved record levels, and all indications are that the wave will continue through Tuesday. Democracy is vibrant and very much alive.

It is therefore a shame that the issue of ACORN's voter registration work has dominated the news about voting.

To be sure, ACORN bears some responsibility. It had quality controls in place, but should have leaned even further backward to ensure that problems would be minimized. Still, 900,000 valid registrations, including new registrants and changes of address, is an important accomplishment. Of course, all groups doing voter registration would be better served by reporting their results with more precision and a little less hype.

But overall, this is a trumped-up controversy. There has been no attempt by ACORN to encourage fraudulent voting, and on close reading the critics do not even make such a claim. ACORN has done a service by reaching out to people who might have been left out. Why, then, the ferocity of the attack?

In part, it is an element of a coordinated campaign directed against Barack Obama, demonizing ACORN and then linking Obama to the organization as a way to raise doubts about him.

In addition, raising doubts about the validity of registrations fits a pattern of efforts to discourage people from voting - from lawsuits to shut down early voting centers in Indiana and stop same-day registration in Ohio to efforts to purge people from voting rolls because their houses were foreclosed or their names didn't perfectly match error-ridden databases like Social Security. Worse, it could lay the groundwork for wholesale challenges to the results, seeking to throw the legitimacy of the election into question and the results once again into the hands of the courts.

What is needed is action by election officials to ensure that next Tuesday goes as smoothly as possible. Many deserve real credit for doing just that. This preparation includes:

• accurate lists from which eligible voters have not been purged
• adequate numbers of machines to avoid long lines, and an ample supply of paper ballots as backups
• sufficient numbers of poll workers, with trained problem-solvers at each precinct
• preparation for extended hours if required, to ensure that every voter has a chance to vote
• fair counting of provisional ballots, so that valid votes are not discounted

After the election, Congress, the new president, and state legislators and election officials need to realize it is time to get the election systems right. The nation needs an expansive and reliable voter registration system, which includes Election Day registration (which Massachusetts almost passed earlier this year), proactive implementation of the National Voter Registration Act, "pre-registration" for 17-year-olds, and steps toward universal registration.

Voting options need to be expanded, including more accessible voting by mail and early voting. Thirty-four states have utilized early voting this year, widening voting opportunities and taking pressure off Election Day itself; others should follow suit.

Also, strong national standards are needed for election administration, with sustained federal funding to assist states in carrying them out and the enforcement authority to make them stick. We need machines that voters can have full confidence in, list management systems that delete outdated names but protect eligible voters, clear rules for poll workers, and clear standards for counting provisional ballots.

People care about voting as they haven't in 40 years. By taking the steps needed, officials can capture the surge in participation and give Americans the democracy they deserve.

Miles Rapoport is the president of Demos, a New York-based public policy center.

Working class Black and Brown folks caused the housing crisis & the global economic meltdown. Huh?!

Such baseless, blame-the-victim allegations are nothing less than scapegoating of Jim Crow proportions.

Blaming inner-city dwelling "high-risk borrowers", ACORN, CRA and others for America's housing crisis is akin to charging rape victims for the rape kit. It's simply unconscionable.

Did the working class own predatory lending outfits?

Did the working class dream up the Adjustable Rate Mortgage?

Did the working class own the media conglomerates and other institutions who since the end of World War II have pounded into every American's skull that home ownership is part and parcel of the increasingly elusive American Dream?

Did the working class run the real estate industry? The insurance industry? Wall Street? Madison Avenue? K Street? 1600 The White House/Capitol Hill? Hollywood? Or Silicon Valley?

Oh, one last thing:

Did the working class buy all those now-foreclosed McMansions in suburbia?

The following Lending Tree commercial from a few years back was a (now not-so-humorous) augur of America's precarious house of cards that rested on good old-fashion industry- and government-fostered consumerism and addiction to credit.

See for yourself . . .

Behind McCain’s ACORN gambit: The fraud of voter ‘fraud’

By Jonathan E. Kaplan
Courtesy of The Minnesota Independent

John McCain’s attempt to magnify allegations of voter registration fraud could mitigate the impact of a Barack Obama victory and deter black Democrats from turning out to vote in future elections.

Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) and his allies have seized on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN, which has worked to register more than 100,000 lower-income and minority voters. Some of the registrations have been faked and investigations are underway in some key states.

Even though Republicans have leveled the same attack against Democrats in recent election cycles, accusing Sen. Obama (D-Ill.) of stealing the election could preemptively undermine the legitimacy of his presidency.

It’s part of the Republican DNA to accuse Democrats of stealing elections just as Democrats accuse Republicans of intimidating minorities. It has been ingrained in the GOP’s neurons since John F. Kennedy eclipsed Richard Nixon in 1960 when there were allegations of cheating in Illinois and Texas.

“Republicans tend to believe that Democrats tend to cheat.  The belief is nothing new,” John Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College, said.

But the allegations are more ferocious because the Obama campaign has registered millions of new voters. In Minnesota, ACORN claims to have registered 42,581 voters, which could give Obama a one or two point edge in a close race.

While Obama’s voter registration effort is a part of his presidential campaign and entirely separate from ACORN’s, the McCain campaign and its surrogates have continued to falsely link Obama to ACORN.

“The reason that it is [more intense] is because Obama is black, that’s the difference,” former Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Calif.), said, adding that the attacks have longer-term implications. “This is a good way of raising the race card without raising it.”

“If [Obama] loses, two things happen. [Republicans] still have the race issue and then the black community becomes turned off” to electoral politics, Coelho said.

“I think they are doing that to build a case against Obama if the left tries to steal this election, which clearly they are trying to do,” John Feehery, a Republican strategist, said in an email.

McCain has created a campaign committee to examine allegations of voter registration fraud. On Monday, GOP volunteers handed out flyers at a McCain rally in Virginia urging reporters to link ACORN to the $700 million rescue package (something that McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis also said last week).

McCain has continued the line of attack even after being reminded that he attended an ACORN rally in favor of an immigration bill he was working on in 2006.

The McCain and Obama campaigns held dueling press conferences on Tuesday to accuse the other of acting in bad faith.

“If left uncorrected, these numerous investigations and accusations of voter fraud with ACORN could produce a nightmare scenario on Election Day,” Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, said in a statement.

David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, said McCain’s tactic was “a strategic and cynical ploy to sow confusion and a deliberate attempt to decrease turnout. It is a smokescreen to challenge people inappropriately. Throwing anything they can at the wall to create a diversion.”

The GOP’s outrage erupted last Friday when the McCain campaign released a web-only advertisement insinuating that Obama worked for ACORN in the early 1990s (he did not) and argued that McCain killed the initial bailout package because ACORN’s partners would have been able to apply for government money to invest in low income housing. In fact, House Republicans objected to such a provision and it was dropped before McCain took a position on the bill.

Top GOP lawmakers also believe that Democrats are trying to steal the election. Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) told reporters on Friday that a Democratic lawmaker – who he would not name – told him jokingly that, “We got the votes, we’re just looking for the bodies.”

“We could lose, I suppose, if they cheat us out of it. I think the only way we lose a state like North Carolina or Indiana is to get cheated out of it,” Sen. Lindsay Graham (D-S.C.) told the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette last week.

And there are multiple ongoing investigations into voter registration fraud in several swing states.

ACORN, not surprisingly, has a different take on the situation. “Not only is this a preemptive strike to try to attack Obama, it’s a strategy to try to justify challenging the basis of the election,” Brian Kettenring, an ACORN spokesman, said in a phone interview.

Moreover, there is no evidence that a falsely registered voter have cast actual ballots.  To Democrats and independent analysts, the entire story is contrived.

“In almost every case where you’ve heard about fraud by Acorn, it’s because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that’s been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers,” Brad Friedman, the author of the blog, BradBlog.com, which reports on voting rights issues, wrote recently in The Guardian. “None of this is about voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it’s voter registration fraud and has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent votes.”

Robert Bauer, Obama’s election law attorney, said on Tuesday that Republicans had put “enormous amounts of pressure on criminal justice system” to ferret out voter fraud and reminded reporters that the U.S. attorneys firing scandal started because some U.S. attorneys did not prosecute voter registration fraud to the Bush administration’s liking.

“The only fraud that has affected the governmental process is the one that has been launched on the other side looking to establish a fact that does not exist,” Bauer said. Despite the torrent of accusations, Democrats remain confident that the accusations will disappear by the wayside if Obama wins.

“Post election, all of this will be swept away,” Bob Shrum, a longtime Democratic strategist and speechwriter, said. “Having gone through 2000, where Republicans did steal the election, everybody moves on.”

“Obama is on his way to such a huge electoral win, at least as things look today, that this will not work after the election,” Joe Trippi, a Democratic political strategist, said. “And there will not be fraudulent voting that is provable in any case.”

Beyond the political calculus of winning or losing, the next president will confront larger and more complex issues.

“Obama will have much bigger problems than that—because he’s a liberal Democrat, because he’s black, and because he faces challenges far more vexing than those that confronted most of his predecessors,” G. Calvin Mackenzie, a political scientist at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, said.

Others argued it was unlikely that the McCain campaign, like most campaigns, is incapable of thinking so far ahead.

“That notion assumes way too much long-term thinking on the part of McCain and the Republicans.  Their time horizon goes no farther than Election Day,” Pitney said.

Unless McCain – assuming he comes up short on Election Day – raises questions or contests the vote, the issue likely will disappear. Even in previous elections where there was no clear winner, the loser has often helped establish the winner’s legitimacy.

“That Al Gore did not cry foul about the way the election was decided probably contributed to Bush’s legitimacy,” Mackenzie said, “in the same way that Nixon’s refusal to cry foul in 1960 when there was genuine cheating in Illinois and Texas helped Kennedy.”

Jonathan E. Kaplan is the Center for Independent Media’s Washington correspondent.

The green collar economy, Blackfolk & America's future

Afro-Netizen has promoted books before. However, the timing of the publication of "The Green Collar Economy" by GreenForAll founder, Van Jones, the presidential campaign and what's going on between Wall Street, Main Street and MLK Boulevard highlights the importance of Jones' book.

You have heard Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi -- even Republican political figures reference "green collar jobs" in the rally cry for a new economy built on energy independence and a heightened environmental stewardship that for the next generation of American voters may become an inviolable non-partisan issue like Social Security or, dare I say, Israel.

Beyond the political rhetoric whose growing lexicon has now subsumed "green collar" this and "green economy that, is the actual substance and context that every voter -- every American -- should understand. Most especially, we as people of color must commit to understand and advocate for our integral inclusion and leadership in the shaping of the social policy and business development in the emerging "green economy".

As Jones articulates so well, the green economy's success depends on our early and broad involvement as people of color to ensure that the fruits of our country's labor in this area produce not just a more vibrant workforce, but secure the type of "eco-equity" that the mainstream American environmental movement has been conspicuously silent on.

So, without further ado, here's a taste of a groundbreaking book we all should read and spread the word about with as much zeal as we do the chain letters that (rightly or wrongly) compel us to think, feel or do something away from our computer screens.

Still not sure what the heck "green collar jobs" are and why we should care?

Read on . . . (and BUY THIS BOOK TODAY!)

The possibilities are endless. Someone says “green jobs,” and our minds go to Buck Rogers.

Let’s be clear, the main piece of technology in the green economy is a caulk gun. Hundreds of thousands of green-collar jobs will be weatherizing and energy-retrofitting every building in the United States. Buildings with leaky windows, ill-fitting doors, poor insulation, and old appliances can gobble up 30 percent more energy.

That means owners are paying 30 percent more on their heating bills. And it often means that 30 percent more coal-fi red carbon is going into the atmosphere. Drafty buildings create broke, chilly people—and an overheated planet.

Another bit of high-tech green technology is the clipboard. That tool is used by energy auditors as they point out energy-saving opportunities to homeowners and renters. This job does not require much training and can be an early entry point into the booming world of energy consultation and efficiency. And one consultation can save an owner hundreds—or even thousands—of dollars annually.

Other green-collar workers can then follow up with other tasks for building owners: wrapping hot-water heaters with blankets, blowing insulation, plugging holes, repairing cracks, hauling out old appliances, replacing old windows with the double-glazed kind.

Other pieces of green tech are ladders, wrenches, hammers, tool belts, and nonslip work boots. Those are the space-age gadgets used by solar-panel installers every day.

The point is this. When you think about the emerging green economy, don’t think of George Jetson with a jet pack. Think of Joe Sixpack with a hard hat and lunch bucket, sleeves rolled up, going off to fix America. Think of Rosie the Riveter, manufacturing parts for hybrid buses or wind turbines. Those images will represent the true face of a green-collar America.

Why Congresswoman Barbara Lee (and other progressives) opposed the Wall Street bailout

The following is a press release issued today by one of Congress' most progressive members, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), on the failure of Congress to pass H.R. 3997, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. (H/T to PublicMarkup.org & the aggressively innovative Sunlight Foundation!)

Legislation Would Have Rewarded Predatory and Subprime Lenders

Washington D.C.- Today Congresswoman Barbara Lee delivered the following statement on the House floor in opposition to the financial bailout bill considered today. The Congresswoman voted against the bill, which failed by a vote of 205-228.   

“Thank you Madame Speaker and thank you Mr. Frank, the Chairman of the Financial Services Committee, for his efforts to improve the administration’s $700 billion blank check proposal.   

“As a former member of the House Financial Services Committee for eight years, I can tell you that the situation we find ourselves in is the direct result of the deregulation happy, turn a blind- eye approach of this administration and its allies in Congress.

“Now we see the horrific price of these reckless deregulation policies.  More than 600,000 Americans have lost their jobs since January.  People need jobs to obtain credit and to pay their rent.   They need jobs to pay their mortgages or to put money in their 401k or retirement account.  Millions of people are living paycheck to paycheck, if they have a paycheck.

“Home foreclosures are skyrocketing, and home values are plunging, banks are failing and we are still spending more than $10 billion every month on a war in Iraq that should never have been waged.

“So there is no question that we are confronting an economic and financial crisis.

“But I’m convinced that this bailout plan is not the solution to this mess. 

“First, it does little to address the underlying problem – the foreclosure crisis. We need a moratorium on foreclosures and bankruptcy reform to help people stay in their homes.

“Second, this bill should be paid for by the high-flying industry that created this problem.   $700 billion should not be given to Wall Street and the Bush Administration unless those who cause this mess pay for it. We should also prohibit the tax deductibility -and my bill the Income Equity Act (H.R. 3876) would do this across the board -  of executive compensation in any company where the highest paid corporate officer is paid more than 25 the times the pay of a bailed-out company’s lowest-paid worker. 

“And third, we need an economic stimulus package to deal with the crushing reality of the recession that is hitting people hard and growing every day.

“I cannot vote to reward those predatory and subprime lenders who are creating such havoc in the lives of millions of Americans.

“There is a better way.”

What is this elusive "better way" that corporate media and Congressional leaders have refused to include in the recently failed legislation, you ask?

Click here to read about what we should echo throughout all media outlets, courtesy of the good folks at the online journal, ShelterForce .

NAACP's new president wastes no time reaching out to the Black netroots

On only his second day on the job as the NAACP's new president, 35-year old Benjamin Todd Jealous convened a conference call where members of the Black press and some Black bloggers were given the opportunity to ask him questions about the NAACP's response to Hurricane Ike as well as its new online voter registration drive called Upload to Uplift.

Veteran journalists and neophyte bloggers were afforded the same access and respect -- a perhaps prescient dynamic of which other venerable Black institutions should take notice.

Mr. Jealous, a Generation X'er and himself a fifth-generous NAACP member, follows the brief tenure of Corporate America refugee Bruce Gordon whose outgoing memo to the NAACP's bloated board of directors was leaked first to Afro-Netizen earlier this year.

It is true that over the years, Afro-Netizen has been critical of the NAACP and its waning primacy in the lives of African Americans on a national level. However, as the proud grandson of a former national board member for 12 years (Dr. Maurice F. Rabb, Sr.), I am neither prepared to -- nor want to -- eulogize this historic civil rights organization. I recognize, however, that when some people read "historic" they think "relic". This is as much a problem of perception that Mr. Jealous will have to strategically address as it is an organizational one that is not likely to change overnight -- or in an election cycle.

After all, change is on the lips of many Americans these days. But as an organizational productivity consultant (my day job) as well as from my perspective as a former, long-serving board member of a 115-year old family business, I know quite well that indeed most people fear change -- and organizations tend to loathe it. It goes without saying that old, traditional and highly hierarchical organizations loathe change that much more -- even when they know it's inevitable.

That said, I am confident that Mr. Jealous' vision and activist credentials will help put the NAACP on a path towards fully leveraging 21st Century assets and tactics while honoring the long, proud traditions that represent the best of what our community has accomplished when we have kept our eyes on the prize and marched steadfastly towards social justice.

Republicans recant plans to foreclose voters but admit other strategies

By Eartha Jane Melzer
Courtesy of The Michigan Messenger
A Center for Independent Media site
(Originally published on 9/11/08)

The Macomb County Republican Party chair who told Michigan Messenger earlier this week that Republicans planned to challenge voters at the polls using a list of foreclosed homes has changed his story.

James Carabelli now says the party has “no plans to do anything,” according to a story in the Macomb Daily.

Reports of the plan for foreclosure-based challenges have spurred outrage and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) planned a demonstration today at the Macomb County Republican headquarters.

Eric Doster is former counsel for the Michigan Republican Party and a lawyer who plans to represent GOP election challengers on Election Day.

Doster returned a call Wednesday afternoon and in a 30-minute conversation told Michigan Messenger that while he is unfamiliar with plans to use foreclosure lists to challenge voters, he does expect party volunteers to challenge voters in other ways.

When asked whether Michigan Republicans plan to create a challenge list based on returned direct mail, a practice known as “vote caging,” Doster replied, “I think so. I know this has been done in years past … both parties may be doing this.”

Doster said that the party’s deputy political director, Kelly Harrigan, would have more information about the challenge lists. Harrigan did not respond to a call from Michigan Messenger.

“Voter caging” is controversial because it can be used to target certain groups of voters. Some say that a piece of returned mail should not be enough to challenge a person’s claim of residency.

Last week Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner acknowledged that the use of mail for vote caging has disproportionately affected poor and minority communities and she instructed that returned mail should not be considered reasonable evidence that someone has moved.

Dear Corporate Media: Do your job!

Wonder why in "the world's oldest democracy", Americans receive such awful "news" coverage?

Could it be due to the fact that corporate media in this country represents the vast majority of what Americans consume via TV, radio, publishing and newspapers -- and that corporate media are owned by a half dozen conglomerates?

And because of this corporate strangle-hold on public airwaves, the electorate and society-at-large are woefully uninformed and misinformed.

Democracy does not meaning the freedom to choose which TV channel to watch -- particularly if most of them are owned by the same corporations. Democracy is not solely about "freedom to . . .", nor is it about freedom of consumption. Democracy must also incorporate certain "freedoms from". Freedom from media hegemony, for instance, directly relates to the quality and practicality of our First Amendment rights. The former prevents the latter.

How can Americans truly have freedom of expression in this all-consuming media age when there is less and less local ownership of our TV and radio stations and newspapers and the population of the owners of these outlets in no way resembles demography of the United States?

Simply put, there can be no true democracy without media justice.

So, as we build a media justice movement that can impact Congress and the administration of whoever wins office on November 4, click here to check out the good work of our friends at Brave New Films (since we're not going to see good, consistent reporting on this by the mainstream news media any time soon).

Fraud Worsens Foreclosure Crisis

Scams to Stave Off Foreclosures Victimize Home Owners Again

By Mary Kane
Courtesy of The Washington Independent

ACCOKEEK, Md. - At The Barber’s Chair, in the small, quiet community of Accokeek at the far end of Prince George’s County, Md., the talk often turns to the foreclosure crisis — for good reason. Here, in the nation’s most affluent majority black jurisdiction, a remarkable example of the growing wealth of the new black middle class, foreclosures are growing at one of the fastest rates in the country, and foreclosure fraud is increasing right along with it.

With locals constantly in and out, Leo Harrington, the owner, hears it all. How people who bought homes once valued at $800,000 down the the road at upscale subdivisions like The Preserves or at the one- and two-acre home sites of St. James have friends and relatives living in their basements to help pay the mortgage.

How lenders pushed deceptive and high-cost loans on first-generation homeowners, without disclosing the consequences, assuring them that home values only go up. How people bought expensive cars, timeshare vacations and boats — and put their homes at risk. How lenders continue to target the community and push loans. And how homeowners, with years of mistrust in mainstream lenders, wait too long to get help when they fall behind on their loans, wary of trying for a short sale or a loan workout, and so fall prey to foreclosure scams.

“A lot of people moved out here from the District because they wanted to be in the ‘burbs and raise their kids here,” said Harrington, 49, who also is an associate minister at a nearby church. “You find you can get a bigger house that’s in pretty close, and a yard. But there were all these predatory loans. That’s all it was. They didn’t realize how the loans worked because when folks are lying to you, you don’t know any better. Then, when they find out they are in trouble, they start to panic, and they end up losing their homes.”

Harrington’s views are one explanation of many for the unexpected rise in foreclosures in Prince George’s County and in other Washington-area communities, which had, until recently, been largely immune to the housing crisis. Overall, foreclosures in Prince George’s and in the Washington area remain lower than in national hot spots, like Florida or California, but the area experienced a six-fold increase in foreclosures from February 2007 to last spring — a jump that has local officials worried and perplexed. Why here, and why now?

All told, Prince George’s and Prince William counties, in suburban Virginia, outpaced the rest of the area in foreclosures. And in Prince George’s, Accokeek, of all places, has been hit the hardest, said John McClain, deputy director of the George Mason University Center for Regional Analysis, who wrote a report detailing the foreclosure rise. It has so puzzled the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond that its members and economists drove around Prince George’s and Prince William, home to a large immigrant population, to see the crisis for themselves.

They found no easy answers. Foreclosures here are spread across all income levels, from $150,000 houses to $750,000 McMansions, from newly built townhouses to refinancings of long-time residences.
To make it worse, foreclosures aren’t even the biggest problem right now. As more people lose their homes, foreclosure fraud scams have spiked, with Prince George’s recording the most cases of fraud in Maryland, said state mortgage fraud investigator Stephen Prozeralik.

Most scams involve a “helpful” buyer who promises to save a troubled homeowner’s property, by purchasing it from him to stave off foreclosure. The buyer usually collects rent up front and promises to sell the house back to the homeowner eventually, but instead strips any equity and fails to pay the mortgage, victimizing the owner once again. “We were surprised,” Prozeralik said. “We figured most of our cases would come from Baltimore. But the majority of the cases were are investigating are in Prince George’s County. PG County is at the top of our list.”

That Prince George’s should wind up at the top for foreclosures, and the resulting scams, is particularly troubling to many. At the start of the housing crisis, subprime loans were seen as a problem largely for low-income and minority communities. But as the crisis continues, there’s increasing evidence that for minorities, the higher up the income ladder, the worse it gets — with racial differences in lending more pronounced as income increases. New research by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition found blacks in upper- to middle-income neighborhoods were more than twice as likely than whites in similar neighborhoods to have high-cost subprime mortgages.

In Prince George’s, housing counselors began complaining as early as 2005 about a proliferation of subprime loans. Roughly 43 percent of the county’s homeowners who refinanced three years ago wound up with a high-cost subprime loan, compared to 24 percent of homeowners nationwide, The Washington Post reported last year — using an analysis of Federal Reserve data. About 43 percent of new homeowners also took out the higher-cost subprime loans, compared to 20 percent of buyers nationwide. Yet credit scores in Prince George’s rank higher than the state and national averages.

While it hasn’t received much attention during the housing crisis, places like Prince George’s County were targeted aggressively by lenders. These lenders heavily advertised loans on black radio stations and other minority media outlets and used unconventional methods like selling these loans door-to-door, housing advocates and residents said. This marketing continues unabated, despite the downturn.

Florence Thomas, a single mother from Upper Marlboro, Md., who had to turn in July to the Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, a housing-advocacy group, for help in saving her home, said she tells lenders she’s unemployed and they still want to sell her loans and foreclosure help. “They call three for four times a day, and they leave something in my mailbox almost every day,” she said. “Sometimes I end up talking to them, because they say, ‘Florence, how are you?’ and I answer before I realize who they are. They’ve called on my cell phone. It just doesn’t stop.”

This kind of marketing goes far beyond the selling of loans and foreclosure assistance in upscale white neighborhoods, said Gregory Squires, a George Washington University sociology professor who has studied redlining. “This is clearly disproportionately a minority problem,” he said. “And it’s striking that despite all the news about this problem, we still see people going out and using these high-pressure and predatory tactics.”

A sign on the side of the road saying “I pay cash for houses” might be the extent of the foreclosure advertising in a white community. In Prince George’s, by contrast, at the same moment housing counselors at a recent meeting were warning worried homeowners of the dangers of foreclosure scams, the people perpetuating the fraud plastered the windshields of cars in the parking lot outside with fliers for their services. A counselor taking a break for fresh air noticed the fliers and rushed to remove them before the meeting ended. “We do have our share of foreclosure fraud in white neighborhoods, but it doesn’t seem to be the same frenzy we have in Prince George’s County,” said Prozeralik, the state fraud investigator.