Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things

On Friday Jocelyne Voltaire, a Queens Village resident, was sure her luck was out. She’d lost her oldest son, a Marine, in Iraq, she was unable to pay her skyrocketing mortgage payments, and was scheduled to lose her home – a home where she raised her four children in for 20 years – that very day. As her house was being put up on an auction block, CodePink received word of her story via a video on the American News Project and Jocelyne’s story quickly changed. After sending out an urgent call to supporters, CodePink raised over $10,000 within the hour! By 11am the mortgage bankers stopped the auction with a promise of $15,000. By the end of the day 650 donors had raised over $30,000 with money still pouring in!

It is the generosity of these ordinary people that got Jocelyne back on her feet. In these hard financial times, countless people just like Jocelyne are falling victim to the crippling economy and losing their homes, not to mention their sons and daughters overseas. Unfortunately, most of these people are not as lucky as Jocelyne was and many are finding themselves with no place to turn. It’s time for the government to step in and bail out these Main Street Americans, not Wall Street!