MARC MORIAL AND THE NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE: Head man reveals how NUL helps home owners with bad mortgages via 'Economic Empowerment Tour.'

“Home ownership and building home ownership is the new civil rights movement," Morial says. "It’s about economics, it’s about education, it’s about health, and it’s about closing the disparities that exist in this nation."

       *In his sixth year as President and CEO of the National Urban League, Marc Morial is continuing the organization’s mission to secure economic self-reliance, parity, power and civil rights in urban communities.

      As the head of what is considered the oldest and largest community-based civil rights organization in America, Morial is showing off the “Path to Power” at the 2009 National Urban League Conference in Chicago July 29-August 1 in addition he's involved in the organization's economic empowerment tours around the country.

      “Our plan is a very important initiative that we call the 'Economic Empowerment Tour,'” Morial said. “It’s through our homes initiative. We’re providing direct services to people in a number of key areas. First, we will provide foreclosure counseling assistance to people. Second we will provide job placement assistance to people. Thirdly, we will provide health awareness information to people as a part of the tour.

      Economic empowerment is one of Morial’s mantras. The former New Orleans Mayor saw first-hand the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the importance of rebuilding wealth and prosperity in black communities. Some of the main focuses of the tour include renegotiating mortgages and foreclosure information.

      “The purposes of our services are to help people renegotiate their mortgages,” he said, and then commended President Obama on creating a number of initiatives which allow people to just that, “but we’ve got to be very aggressive in helping people take advantage of those initiatives. The Urban League in action in the 21st Century is focused on providing services to people during this economic recession.”

      Morial explained that while the seminars and conferences toured around the country, the services are provided on an on-going basis at all National Urban League offices and affiliates.

     “The same services are being provided each and every day. One part of the economic empowerment tour is to make people more aware that they can get help if they’re in trouble with their mortgage through an Urban League office and the service is free,” he said.

      He also said that the organization is also working to make people aware of scammers, those that would take advantage of people, and those that are asking people for money under the guise of helping them save their mortgage.

      “The Urban League is a HUD-certified counseling agency and that means that our services are provided by certified housing counselors and as such, the services in this area are free and available to anyone who might need that assistance,” he added.

      Morial told EUR’s Lee Bailey that the he believes the sub-prime crisis was a greed initiative by a number of financial services.

      “They set up a system where they made a lot of money and they took advantage of a lot of people,” he said. “Yes, some people bet on a house they couldn’t afford, but the fact of the matter is that many people were duped into signing mortgages which had what I called ‘tricky provisions’ – accelerated provisions, increases in interest rates, balloon payments, things that were highly difficult imbedded in the fine print of these mortgages.”

      According to Morial, the Urban League will continue to work with the Congress and the President to give people an opportunity for a simple easy to understand, easy to read mortgage. In fact, he said that the organization has been ahead of the curve on this issue. It’s been on record for the past five years urging Congress to pass anti-predatory lending legislation.

      “Those calls and that advocacy fell on deaf ears primarily because the getting was so good for so many that they said, ‘Oh, we don’t need such legislation’” he said. “Sometimes in this country, when you are challenging the status quo, you don’t get the attention deserved.”

      “Home ownership and building home ownership is the new civil rights movement,” he said. “It’s about economics, it’s about education, it’s about health, and it’s about closing the disparities that exist in this nation. We support the stimulus – and want to take aggressive steps to make sure that urban communities and black communities and brown communities do not get bypassed by the jobs that are going to be created by this stimulus.”

     “The objective is to get beyond and turn the corner and build an economy that is different,” he said. “Capitalism is a system that has great features, but capitalism needs to be reformed to a capitalism that produces jobs and economic opportunity for all.”

      For more on the National Urban League, the empowerment tour and the “Path to Power” Conference in Chicago, visit www.nul.org.

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