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Massachusetts Alliance Against Predatory Lending
www.maapl.info
Contact: Grace Ross, 617-291-5591
For immediate release, June 23, 2023
Will Judge Fields uphold the Constitution and his own orders for King and We the People?
Friday, June 23, 2023, 9:00 AM; in person at Western Housing Court (WHC) 37 Elm Street, Springfield, MA – OR via WCH ‘bridge line’ by calling (646) 828-7666.
A press conference will be held immediately following the hearing on the steps of the WHC.
This morning Mr. Alton King and Interveners hope to be heard and have their extensive evidence examined by Judge Fields, WHC demonstrating that Fields’ order was completely disregarded by foreclosing “securitized trust”, Sheriff’s office, Moving and Warehouser Race Street Properties – that First Amendment rights were stripped and no legal eviction occurred.
Mr. King, an 80 y.o., disabled, black man, stated: “I call on the world, right now, to stand on the right side of justice and recognize that it is only a matter of time now, that the wealthiest institutions are going to have to face justice regarding decades of knowing discriminatory lending (race, age, disability, and gender) and equally illegal treatment of homeowners by the state and its agencies.”
On April 14, 2023, the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department used an order Judge Fields had recognized as unconstitutional to remove King’s belongings with no notice at all of removing his person. The Sheriff’s Department failed to follow the most recent order of court and hired Race Street Properties, an unlicensed mover and warehouser, to remove Mr. King’s personal property.
Now, for two over two months, Race Street Properties has had Mr. King’s property at an unlicensed and uninsurable location and has not allowed Mr. King to obtain his passport, birth certificate, and important documents from this location, OR verify the list of purportedly inventoried items.
Grace Ross, one of the six interveners in Mr. King’s case, stated: “The First Amendment of the United States Constitution promises the rights necessary for the people to work together, gather the evidence, and petition our government for redress.”
The Intervenors have a right to intervene as Judge Fields recognized their First Amendment rights were violated by his original order, but the Sheriff, as a representative of the executive branch of government, illegally carried out an “eviction” on Judge Fields’s rescinded order of 3/21/23, in defiance of the 4/13/23 statement by the Judge and Plaintiff’s lawyer that it would be carried out under the revised order preserving First Amendment rights.
Those present sought to address the ongoing rights violations of not only Longmeadow resident Alton King, but those who have a right to freedom of association to try to expose to the Western Housing Court repeated and systematic violations of Alton King’s right to own and to occupy his home (legally known as “possession”) and have those rights equally as guaranteed under Article I of the Massachusetts Constitution and also First Amendment Rights of the People in protesting the violations of those rights.
The nonexistent securitized trust and their agents, the Sheriff and Race Street Properties, went ahead with an attempted eviction on April 14th not using the amended Western Housing Court judge’s order. Instead, they rampantly violated the First Amendment rights that the Western Housing Court judge had tried to preserve. The Western Housing Court judge did not address the use, again, of a Race Street Properties warehouse location that is, under the law, clearly not legally licensed.
“We just want to know,“ explained Grace Ross, one of the persons seeking to intervene for the First Amendment Rights of ‘The People’, “if Judge Fields, having told the Plaintiff evictor that his first order was unconstitutional, if he will now insist that intentional violation of our rights and his order must be completely reversed or if he will let the world know that his orders, especially if against the rich mortgage industry, are meaningless and toothless.”
BACKGROUND
Thanks to research and reconnaissance by Alton King and some of his fellow concerned citizens, the location that Race Street Properties had said that they were going to move King’s belongings to in March 2022 was exposed, as not even pretending to have ever been legally licensed through the state of Massachusetts. The location was on Meadow Street in Chicopee. Further, King and his associates had evidence not only of that unlicensed site being attempted to be used in his case, but exposing that the location wasn’t even locked when King and a friend went to visit it. There were a number of other household’s belongings already in this unlicensed, illegal location.
In October 2022, this same nonexistent securitized trust then tried to use an eviction execution against Alton King. Again, the Hampden County Sheriff was hired. He was given a letter asking him not to be party to the foreclosure industry’s predatory and transparently illegal racist mortgage; the ensuing alleged foreclosure (which was predictable, since the mortgage was written as “doomed to foreclose”); and the illegal court cases that have ensued. The Sheriff never even responded about his public elected official obligation to enforce constitutional equal protection.
Instead, the Sheriff again hired Race Street Properties, knowing that they had tried to use an illegal, unlicensed location before. The Sheriff’s Office attempted an eviction that, given the size of King’s house, was guaranteed to take more than one day; however, the Sheriff scheduled the move-out on the very last day when their eviction execution order sunsetted. They were guaranteed to be trying to physically remove his belongings on the next day, when they no longer had a court order. Therefore, they no longer had the Housing Court’s authority to remove anything.
The Housing Court eventually ruled on December 6, 2022 that, indeed, no eviction had been completed and that the securitized trust was going to have to start over again. But, even when told by the Housing Court that they had no right to have done what they did, they never returned the half of Alton King’s belongings that they had already taken.
They had illegally and criminally (see federal law) taken Alton King’s passport. To this day, they have never returned it, even though it is a crime not to, along with the rest of his belongings.
The October “warehouse” location, 460 Race Street, is also not legally licensed; although Race Street Properties have a paper claiming that it is a legally licensed warehouse, they had to advertise to the public but they did not. The warehouse licensing law states that they don’t have a license, “unless and until” they have done such advertising. So even if they have a piece of paper, it is no good because Alton King, again, with his concerned citizen associates, spoke to the local papers and looked at the online public legal notices website. There are no such advertisements. Now we know that they never even applied for a moving license from the state, so all of the moving has been completely illegal. Again, the lawyer of the non-existent securitized trust and Court were warned. Again, the Sheriff used this 460 Race St., Race Street Properties’ location.
Most recently, given all of these violations of the law, the Western Housing Court gave out a new execution to evict with an even more draconian order. It was challenged by First Amendment rights activists in court that the order denied them the right to the fundamental rights promised, again, to allow them to work together, collect the evidence, and petition the government—in this case, the Western Housing Court.
First Amendment activists had warned the Court, not only that their rights would be violated, but that part of the reason that their rights were going to be violated was so the Sheriff and warehouse company could try to hide that it was (1) not going to provide on site, as required, to the occupant, Alton King, a list of his belongings, and (2) was not even going to take his belongings to the 460 Race Street warehouse location (the one not legally licensed) at all. They needed the ability to follow the trucks with their cars to find out where King’s belongings were going to actually get taken.
Having been told by the supposed securitized trust’s lawyer at hearing on 4/13/23 that the securitized trust and their agents would carry out the amended order of the judge, The Western Housing Court judge, apparently, relied on that and did not stop them, even with the clear evidence of failings in the eviction notice and that Race Street Properties had a track record of illegalities and could not be trusted.
Unfortunately, not only for Alton King and those who stand up for our First Amendment rights, but for the validity of our entire judicial system, the amended order of the Western Housing Court was disregarded; the agents of the supposed securitized trust violated in all aspects that the judge had tried to preserve First Amendment rights. All of the predicted ways in which the Sheriff and the Race Street Properties would violate the law came to pass on 4/14/23.
Will the Western Housing Court judge finally insist that its orders, the Constitution, and the rights of the people matter most?
(END)
On May 6, 2024, the Massachusetts Alliance Against Predatory Lending (MAAPL) convened a press conference and release of a study that reveals a scam affecting homeowners across Massachusetts who are facing foreclosure or have been foreclosed on. The event took place in Brockton, MA at the Main Street entrance to the Courthouse and was also streamed live on Zoom.
As the giving season approaches, please remember the Mass Alliance Against Predatory Lending (MAAPL): we are situated to reverse not only the largest foreclosure crisis in U.S. history (with a massive land and wealth transfer to the uber-wealthiest) but also stop practices that were first instigated to keep Black men from ever owning property post-emancipation. Lenders have just perfected and expanded predatory wealth-stripping from there.
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