Category: Power to the People

Bank shut down by UAW

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

You would think at some point that the banksters would notice that we all have a pretty good idea that they conned the Congress and brought down the country’s economy — while they sat back and collected the cash. And you’d think that they’d understand that business as usual isn’t acceptable anymore. If the corporate boy wonders had thought to pull back the reins on their greed, or pushed to get the government to help all the people they forced out of work, they wouldn’t have to be quite so nervous right now:

At the end of the UAW’s three-day bargaining convention in Detroit, union president Bob King led more than 100 members into the Bank of America branch in downtown Detroit today and temporarily shut down its operations for about 30 minutes.

Afterwards, the group joined hundreds more UAW members at the corner of Griswold and Congress streets in downtown Detroit and continued the protest.

King criticized the bank for not paying taxes in 2009, overpaying its executives and opposing legislation such as credit card reform and the Foreclosure Prevention Act.

“Anything that would help the middle class, Bank of America opposed,” King said. “When workers are struggling to pay child care and feed their families, Bank of America in 2010 made about $17.5 billion from credit card and ATM fees.”

Bank of America spokeswoman Diane Wagner said Bank of America paid more than $40 billion in taxes from 2000 to 2009. However, she was unable to say how much the bank paid in taxes in 2009. Generally, companies don’t pay taxes unless they earn a profit.

Wagner also said Bank of America repaid the $45 billion it received in federal stimulus dollars as well as an additional $2.5 billion in dividends. And, in 2009, Bank of America’s outgoing CEO received no pay under an agreement with the government.

[…] King said the protest against Bank of America and corporate tax breaks is connected to the battle for collective bargaining rights and the need to broaden the union’s organizing efforts.

“Banks get bailed out, people get sold out,” King chanted as the crowd joined in.

Where are the angry mobs?

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

In The Nation, Frances Fox Piven, one of Glenn Beck’s favorite targets, raises an important question: How do we mobilize the jobless to political action?

As 2011 begins, nearly 15 million people are officially unemployed in the United States and another 11.5 million have either settled for part-time work or simply given up the search for a job. To regain the 5 percent unemployment level of December 2007, about 300,000 jobs would have to be created each month for several years. There are no signs that this is likely to happen soon. And joblessness now hits people harder because it follows in the wake of decades of stagnating worker earnings, high consumer indebtedness, eviscerated retirement funds and rollbacks of the social safety net.

So where are the angry crowds, the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs? After all, the injustice is apparent. Working people are losing their homes and their pensions while robber-baron CEOs report renewed profits and windfall bonuses. Shouldn’t the unemployed be on the march? Why aren’t they demanding enhanced safety net protections and big initiatives to generate jobs?

It is not that there are no policy solutions. Left academics may be pondering the end of the American empire and even the end of neoliberal capitalism, and—who knows—in the long run they may be right. But surely there is time before the darkness settles to try to relieve the misery created by the Great Recession with massive investments in public-service programs, and also to use the authority and resources of government to spur big new initiatives in infrastructure and green energy that might, in fact, ward off the darkness.
Continue reading “Where are the angry mobs?” →

On, Wisconsin!

~ susie

I must say, with so much bad news in the world right now, I can always count on the Wisconsin labor movement to cheer me right up. Last night, Wisconsin’s Republican muckety-mucks were in D.C. for a lovely little fundraiser being thrown by Haley “Heck, I’m No Racist” Barbour’s high-powered Beltway lobbying firm.

Guess what happened!

Wisconsin Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald along with Assistant Leaders Rep. Scott Suder and Senator Glenn Grothman; and Joint Finance Co-Chairs Rep. Robin Vos and Senator Alberta Darling are all in DC this evening enjoying a quiet evening of fundraising with their hosts the Barbour Griffith & Rogers lobbying firm. Or maybe not.

A few hundred protesters sought to make the GOP Representatives feel like they were back in the occupied Capitol building by taking over the atrium of the Homer Building where BGR LLC is headquartered. Our friends at First-Draft report that after 13th Street began to overflow, the protesters began marching toward the White House. Here’s video of the march.

Oh, and so many protesters gathered on 13th Street that the police shut down the block — because they wouldn’t all fit on the sidewalk.

On, Wisconsin!

‘Shut down the Fed’ rallies

~ susie

Anonymous calls for multi-day civil disobedience to keep anyone from entering the regional Fed buildings.

WHO: YOU
WHAT: THE SIEGE OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE
WHEN: MARCH 28+
WHERE: 12 DISTRICT FED BANKS PLUS BOARD OF GOVERNORS IN DC
WHY: FREEDOM

These protests are in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the UK and all those fighting for their economic and physical freedom in the world. The United States is need of a vocal and physical front. A demonstration that is too broad will fall short. Target the Federal Reserve. Organize protests at the 12 Federal Reserve banks. Our goal is to picket the Fed so that there is no movement into the building, and thus to paralyze their operations. We are under siege by the banks and their cohorts; we are entrapped in moats of debt, and they have turned our government against us. Democracy and liberty erode in the face of their assault. Thus it seems that there is no way to break the insidious monster that slowly strangles our economy, throwing millions into poverty and desperation. Class and money are irrelevant in the eyes of eternity. Stand up for your brothers and sisters who have no voice. Stand up for those who are being silenced. On March 28 we will place the great instrument of those who assault liberty, the Federal Reserve, under siege. We will not back down, and the longer we hold out, the more our ranks will swell, and the more effective we will become. You are inspired, now be the inspiration.
Gather all the support you can. Reach out to friends. Spread the word. Are you Federally Disturbed by the Federal Reserve?
The Goal: multi-day protest beginning on March 28 (6 AM) that will shut down the Federal Reserve
The Means: Place the 12 banks under siege. Allow no one into the locations. Peaceful disobedience. BEGIN THE SIEGE ON MONDAY MARCH 28. STRENGTH IN NUMBERS.

WHERE:
Locations (courtesy of the Federal Reserve): http://www.federalreserve.gov/fraddress.htm

Demonstrations will take place at each of the 12 district banks and the Board of Governors in Washington, DC:
District 1: Boston: 600 Atlantic Avenue
District 2: New York: 33 Liberty Street
District 3: Philadelphia: Ten Independence Mall
District 4: Cleveland: 1455 East Sixth Street
District 5: Richmond, VA: 701 East Byrd Street
District 6: Atlanta: 1000 Peachtree Street NE
Distrcit 7: Chicago: 230 South LaSalle Street
District 8: St Louis: One Federal Reserve Bank Plaza
Broadway and Locust Streets
District 9: Minneapolis:90 Hennepin Avenue
District 10: Kansas City, MO: 1 Memorial Drive
District 11: Dallas: 2200 North Pearl Street
District 12: San Fransisco: 101 Market Street
Board of Governors:
20th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20551

Also: PLEASE PLACE THE BANK OF AMERICA HEADQUARTERS IN CHARLOTTE, NC UNDER SIEGE: THE ADDRESS IS 100 NORTH TYRON ST, CHARLOTTE, NC

If these locations are inaccessible to you, please look here for fed branches that may be closer:http://www.federalreserve.gov/branches.htm Branch locations: Cincy, Pittsburg, Baltimore, Charlotte, Birmingham, Jacksonville, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, Detroit, Little Rock, Louisville, Memphis, Helena, Denver, Oklahoma City, Omaha, El Paso, Houston, San Antonio, LA, Portland ORE, Salt Lake City, Seattle

SPREAD THIS MESSAGE

some fun facts: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/11-reasons-why-the-federal-reserve-is-bad

Rage against the machine

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

In case you were wondering where Anonymous got the speech you hear at the end of the video they just released, it’s the famous one given Dec. 2, 1964 by Mario Savio, leader of the Berkeley Free Speech movement:

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.

And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.

This is the time, really. Each of us has to look inside our hearts and decide. Are we passive victims of the oligarchy, or are we fighters against the machine? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have much faith that electoral politics can solve much of anything now.

I mean, think about this: The Republican governor of Michigan just gave himself the ability to suspend local governments at his whim. What does that tell you?

Where is our country headed? What are we going to do about it? How do we get the power back?

Maybe you’re not ready to be an activist just yet. Probably you still have something left to lose. But we’re getting dangerously close to the point where most of us don’t.

We’ve been living in a dream. Hear that alarm clock? Time to wake up.

A self-perpetuating system

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Labor activist/reporter Mike Elk in Alternet makes many, many good points and you should go read all of them:

Since the financial crisis and President Obama’s election in the fall of 2008, there have been two major actions taken by working people that commanded the attention of America’s financial elite — the 2008 occupation of Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago and the current Wisconsin State Capitol occupation. Both events won enormous public support.

However, these types of events not only threatened economic elites that run our economy, but posed a challenge to established progressive leaders in Washington; how to incorporate them. The mass, spontaneous civil disobedience and direct action allowed workers to take matters into their own hands and upset the normal function of the insider relationships the progressive elite tend to rely upon.
Continue reading “A self-perpetuating system” →

Michael Moore in Wisconsin: ‘America is not broke’

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Watch live streaming video from theuptake at livestream.com

Watch live streaming video from theuptake at livestream.com

I love Michael Moore, because the man is a real American. There was a time in the early days of the blogosphere when most liberal bloggers ignored him – he made liberals “look bad,” he “wasn’t our kind.” I wasn’t one of those bloggers, maybe because he was my kind — a fighting liberal from a blue-collar family. (It’s just hysterical when Sarah Palin calls this dyed-in-the-wool Michigander a “Hollywood liberal.”)

He marched with the Wisconsin protesters yesterday and spoke at their rally. He gave a wonderful speech called “America Is Not Broke”, and we all should memorize it so that the next time a Fox News-loving person starts spouting the party line, you can set him or her straight. From PoliticusUSA:

“America is not broke. Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages and settle for the life your great grandparents had. America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It’s just that it is not in your hands.”

He then called the great conservative redistribution of America’s wealth a heist:

“It has been transferred in the greatest heist in American history from the workers and consumers to the banks and portfolios of the uber-rich. Right now, this afternoon, just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined. Let me say that again, and please, someone in the mainstream media, just repeat this fact once. We’re not greedy. We’ll be happy to hear it just once. 400 obscenely wealthy individuals, 400 little Mubaraks, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer bailout of 2008 now have more cash, stock, and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined.”
Continue reading “Michael Moore in Wisconsin: ‘America is not broke’” →

Tug of war in Wisconsin

~ susie

Seems cops don’t like being used as the governor’s errand boys:

At the same press conference where Dane County, Wisc., District Attorney Ismael Ozanne told reporters he found nothing criminal in Gov. Scott Walker’s comments to a prank caller last week, Dane County Sheriff David Mahoney spoke about law enforcement’s role in the push and pull over access to the Capitol building in Madison. Mahoney revealed that yesterday he pulled his officers from a duty to guard the building’s entrances.

According to WisPolitics, Mahoney said that over the last two days, “we have placed those law enforcement officers in the position of being palace guards.”

The deputies had been told that the doors would be open at 8 a.m. yesterday, but that didn’t happen and the officers didn’t find out why until the afternoon, Mahoney said.

“When asked to stand guard at the doors that duty was turned over to the Wisconsin State Patrol because our deputies would not stand and be palace guards,” Mahoney said. “I refused to put deputy sheriffs in a position to be palace guards.”

Wisconsin

~ susie

Athenae, on what’s happening in the Madison capitol building:

I’ve got no official position on whether protesters should stay or go; that’s up to them. I’m sitting in front of a keyboard typing stuff. They’re risking arrest every day. And crowd control, how many people it is safe to have inside, that’s a different question. But the pictures of the locks and the scanners and the dogs, the sound of the chanting from outside, “Let us in,” that boils my blood. This house was open.  This house rang with joy and enthusiasm and speech of all kinds. You could walk up to this house and if the door was open you could go inside. It threatened no one. It harmed nothing. Fewer arrests have been made there than at your average football game. My First Draft colleague, Scout, was there last night and has been there the past two weeks (the video up there is hers and all the rest are here), and calls this “the most gosh-darn nicest protest ever.”

There was no “free speech zone.” People were everywhere. That was the point. The whole place was a free speech zone. The whole world is a free speech zone. People like to bag on Madison’s political history and liberal culture and act like it’s ridiculous. The idea of walling people off into a little area where they can act out the ideals we used to enjoy all over my country tis of thee the United States of America is what’s ridiculous. And it took being in a place, seeing a place, where that wasn’t the case for it to really hit me how absolutely insane it is that Wisconsin isn’t everywhere, that we aren’t all in a free speech zone all the time.

This house was open. This house was everybody’s, belonged to anybody who opened the door that day, anybody who could come and stay. And Governor Walker locked it down. Locked it away. Bolted it shut. They’re rifling through purses now, scanning briefcases. You have to take off your coat to come in. You have to wait in line.