Inglewood Workers Say: Banks Can Do More to Fix Our City

Above: Talai Smith, Mary Rouzan, Peter Nguyen and Selma Salausa (front) with Mayor Danny Tabor and Councilman Ralph Franklin

Inglewood city workers and residents are talking about solutions to the city’s financial crisis that would protect city services. One of those is an idea to raise new revenue and hold banks accountable for the damage foreclosures have caused in Inglewood.

“There are alternatives besides laying off people and hurting the city. We need city leaders to step up and do something about foreclosed homes that are not being fixed and polluting the city,” said Selma Salausa, an administrative aide in the City Clerk’s office who attended the meeting.

At City Council on September 28, they held signs calling on Wall Street to do more to help out Inglewood. Today in California tens of thousands of hardworking families have lost their homes through foreclosure, tens of thousands of workers face layoffs and unwanted furloughs because of the budget crisis, and hundreds of thousands are suffering from cuts to services, decreased property values, decreased lending to small businesses, and other careless and heartless decisions made by banks.

City Council members pledged to take the issue on and posed for a photo with city workers.