Category: Power to the People

Punk’d

~ susie

What a wonderful idea for a protest. Check out the New Bottom Line Coalition, and see what’s going on near you:

As the old saying goes, “another day, another dawn.” But in this case it was another dawn, another bad day… for Bank of America. Footage and report courtesy of MASSUNITING.

Less than 24 hours after announcing a planned mass layoff of more than 30,000 employees, local residents crashed a posh company-sponsored breakfast at the Seaport Hotel in Boston. The event, billed as a “government affairs forum,” was chaired by Robert Gallery, President of Bank of America-Massachusetts.

A pair of local residents made a breakfast delivery of their own to event attendees, handing out muffins ornamented with “Bank of America: Bad for America, Bad for Massachusetts” flags. The activists distributed one muffin for every thousand pink slips the financial giant will hand out in the coming months.

And as Gallery took the podium, more than a dozen concerned citizens took to the parking garages and streets surrounding the hotel and convention center. Within twenty minutes, local residents had leafleted the cars of every event attendee, as well as hundreds of commuters passing by the hotel and convention center.

Last week’s actions marked the second day of protests against Bank of America and its corporate leadership. On Monday, dozens of protesters descended on bank branches in Fields Corner and Grove Hall, calling on the financial giant to take concrete steps to clean up the economic mess it helped to create.

Organizers promised to continue demonstrations against Bank of America and other big banks throughout September.

If you have a home printer, you can do leaflets. Use your imagination!

Forgetting the Spirit of ’89

~ susie

1789, that is…

The blonde in the purple dress would be excellent in the role of Marie Antoinette, while the pig-faced man with the thinning hair and the smirk is a passable Louis XIV if you dress him up in silk, powder his face, and drop a wig on his head.

Some people have forgotten that their wealth rests solely on a social construct: the fact that the masses allow them to be wealthy.

Silver lining

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Looks like unions have found the silver lining in the Citizens United ruling – namely, Super PACs and the ability to go after non-union voters:

But the ruling also changed the rules for unions, effectively ending a prohibition on outreach to nonunion households. Now, unions can use their formidable numbers to reach out to sympathetic nonunion voters by knocking on doors, calling them at home and trying to get them to polling places. They can also create their own Super PACs to underwrite bigger voter identification and get-out-the-vote operations than ever before.

As part of this overhaul, Richard L. Trumka, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., has said organized labor will be more independent of the Democratic Party, sitting out races where unions are disappointed with the Democratic candidate’s positions on issues important to them and occasionally financing primary challengers to Democratic incumbents.

The unions said they even intended to back a few Republicans they judge to have been generally supportive of their agenda, like Representative Steven C. LaTourette of Ohio.

Mr. Trumka said unions were tired of Democratic politicians taking them for granted after labor shoveled millions of dollars into Democratic campaigns. In distancing themselves, at least a bit, from the Democrats, unions are becoming part of a trend in which newly empowered outside groups build what are essentially party structures of their own — in this case, to somewhat offset the money flowing into conservative groups that are doing the same thing.

What do you think? Good idea or not?