The third "People's Bailout", a series of singing protests organized by activist group Organizing for Occupation that aims to disrupt the court foreclosure proceedings, took place this morning at 11am at the Queens Supreme Court. Forty-two people showed up for the movement and, in three separate batches, interrupted the auction process by standing and singing "Mr. Auctioneer".

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​Mia Yoo, Artistic Director of La MaMa E.T.C. (Experimental Theatre Club), responded to our story about Millenium Film Workshop being served an eviction notice from La MaMa on Wednesday night with this statement:

Since December 2010 La MaMa has been talking and meeting with Millennium Film to try and understand how we can help them as they continue to find ways to stablize their organization. We will continue to do so. We believe and support the mission of Millennium Film and consider it a very important cultural institution.

Tamara Greenfield, the Executive Director of Fourth Arts Block who has been mediating between Millenium and La MaMa over the past many months (including a long meeting yesterday) explained what the process has been like for the two non-profits, her belief that La MaMa wants to keep Millenium in its home (under a different configuration, where some of their current real estate can be rented out to increase revenue), and why she thinks there may have been an "overreaction" from Millenium to the eviction notice.

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Activists took up song to protest a "public" foreclosure auction in Brooklyn Supreme Court this afternoon. Many of those gathered (from FUREE, Housing Is a Human Right, Organizing for Occupation, and a new group called Occupied Real Estate) had taken part in another singing act of protest last October to temporarily halt foreclosure proceedings and bring attention to the fact that every week, week after week, foreclosure auctions take place which leave families homeless when members of the "public" successfully buy the homes.

But this time was rather different. Far more people participated, with the courtroom being filled with about 60 people initially, according to Michael Premo of Housing is a Human Right; we personally saw over 20 people arrested, and organizers say approximately 35 were taken into custody.

And, since after court resumed and everyone but people the guards thought were buyers were barred from the courtroom (including members of the press), it couldn't really be called a "public" auction at all.

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​An interesting story out of the East Village tonight: Millenium Film Workshop, the legendary film collective founded by director Ken Jacobs in 1966 (whose Seeking the Monkey King was just screened at Sundance and won an award from the National Society of Film Critics) is being evicted from the building it has occupied on East 4th Street since 1975.

The cause (a failure to pay rent for "about ten months," according to board member Jay Hudson) is not an unusual one leading to an eviction. Nor would the fact Millenium has had drastic cuts from the New York State Council for the Arts be an excuse a landlord would typically accept for such a large sum of unpaid rent.

But this is somewhat unusual: the party evicting Millenium is not a speculator, nor an investment firm, nor a international bank. In no way do they match the typical description of a profit driven greedy landlord.

Quite the opposite, in fact: the evicting landlord is another not-for-profit: it's La Mama E.T.C. (Experimental Theatre Club), Millenium's neighbor since it, too, set up on East 4th Street.

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