Five and a half miles from Dewey Square, a small crowd gathered on Fowler Street in Dorchester on a windy Friday afternoon. The forty people represented a range of young and old, a mix of those from the Four Corners neighborhood and those from outside it.

While the ousted occupants of a trapezoid-shaped Financial District parcel once filled with tents consider their next steps, some members of the controversial movement known as “Occupy Boston” are joining up with City Life/Vida Urbana, a tenant advocacy group that has similar aims. Bryan MacCormack, a 22-year-old Northeastern University student, is one of them.

“It was my obligation to participate,” said MacCormack, a New York native who now lives in Mission Hill.
As the crowd waved signs and chanted slogans slamming banks, MacCormack said he was there to “stand in solidarity” with City Life and learn from what the group has been doing.

MacCormack was among the hundred or so Occupy Boston members who were arrested in October when members of the group attempted to expand their Dewey Square footprint. The parcel was later cleared of tents and everything else by Boston police, a sweep that effectively ended the 10-week encampment, leading members of the movement to find somewhere else to gather.

While people like MacCormack were engaged with Occupy Boston, City Life teamed up with the Greater Four Corners Action Coalition for a “take back the block” rally as part of a longtime effort to educate homeowners and pressure banks into easing up on foreclosures and allowing families to refinance and reduce home loan payments.

“Without this movement, they [the banks] would get away with this totally,” said Marvin Martin, the action coalition’s executive director.

As the rally outside of 40 Fowler St., at one point a foreclosed home, wound down, Martin pointed to the houses that are in foreclosure. “Ten on this street,” he said. “This one there. That one there… It’s destabilization.”

In front of him, activists brandished signs reading “Beat Back the Bank Attack” and “Pain for the Many/Profits for the Few!” while yelling “Shame on the banks!”

“We are working to end the bank practice of foreclosure evictions and spreading the drive for alternative approaches to keeping families in their homes and communities all over New England and all over the country,” Curdina Hill, City Life’s executive director, said in a statement.

The three-family home at 40 Fowler has a complicated history: It was illegally foreclosed on by Deutsche Bank, according to City Life organizers. The owners were forced out under threat of eviction, and it was vacant for a year.

Worth $439,600 in 2007, the 2,900-square-foot home’s assessed value was $268,000 three years later, according to city records. The owners are listed as Johnnie Hendricks and Michael Hendricks Jr.
City Life organizers cleaned up the house and occupied it while attempting to locate one of the owners, but after the incorrect paperwork was fixed, the owners didn’t want to move back in, according to Brandon German, a City Life activist and organizer. Last Friday, City Life moved the St. Simon family, which had been evicted from a home in Hyde Park by Aurora Bank, into the building.

“At City Life, we tell people, ‘Don’t leave,’ ” said German. In other words: Occupy.