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‘We Are the 99%’
Steve Stallone, secretary of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, sends us this from a San Francisco Occupy Wall Street demo.
Chanting “We are the 99 percent” and calling for democracy and economic justice, participants in Occupy Wall Street West targeted foreclosure champion Wells Fargo bank in recent days, the second big demonstration in San Francisco in two weeks. The action came as the movement is gaining momentum and spontaneously combusting coast to coast, throughout the heartland and in the reddest of states.
Gathering near the foot of Market Street at the Federal Reserve Building, more than 500 “occupiers” marched noisily through the financial district. The San Francisco action reflected the recent trend in New York and around the country—the presence of union members, their colors and banners ablaze in the dim early morning light, swelling the ranks of the young, bold occupiers. Union members, including teachers, janitors, longshoremen and telecommunications and electrical workers and many more, were welcomed as natural allies.
As the march approached the Wells Fargo headquarters, occupiers quickly blocked the entrances on all four sides of the bank building before workers arrived in the morning. The police moved to the back alley entrance, arresting almost a dozen blockaders—who were cited, released and back at the action within an hour.
Protesters continued unfazed, holding with rallies at the two main entrances of the bank. They posted foreclosure notices on the doors, claiming the trillions Wells Fargo has stolen in foreclosures and cost communities because of the resulting destruction of neighborhoods and cities is now due and payable.
Oakland resident, Mateo Nube said he was there for, “Everyone who’s struggling to make ends meet, and who’s in one of those foreclosures maybe because they lost their job recently or they’re fighting high health care bills.”
They should get to stay in their homes. It’s unconscionable that owners are getting big new bonuses when people are losing their homes.
Maria Poblet of Causa Justa/Just Cause (CJJC), a multi-racial grassroots housing and immigrant rights organization said “Wells Fargo has been the poster child for discriminatory lending, especially targeting people of color and low-income communities in California.”
Banks are a clear example of how corporations have evaded taxes and profited from the current economic crisis, while regular people like our members are struggling just to survive.
In response to the media’s constant and dismissive drumbeat that the movement doesn’t know what it wants, the occupiers listed specific demands:
- Banks, corporations and the rich must pay their fair share.
- Wells Fargo must implement an immediate moratorium on foreclosures.
- Wells Fargo must divest from private prisons.
- Wells Fargo must cease predatory loans.
The police kept up a large and visible presence in the area, as if this movement has ever been anything but completely nonviolent and disciplined. But they stood back, mostly just directing traffic around the crowds and not moving in for more arrests.
Kevin Christensen of the California Labor Federation’s Labor’s Edge blog contributed to this report.
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7 Comments
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Again with the 99% slogan!? At least union folk should be wise enough to avoid using this highly misleading term. We don’t want an economy that accommodates the additional 9% in the top 10%. Or probably even the top 20%. Has the upper-professional middle class just taken over everything? Look what happened earlier this year with the protests in Wisconsin. Maybe it was because many, or at least the most vocal of the public workers were white-collar, that the call went out and has ever since to save the “middle-class.” What ever happened to the “working-class”? Sure, the labor movement is proud of bringing so many working people up to middle-class standards of living, but it had never forgotten before that its origins were and are working-class.
Don’t be at all surprised if that top 90-99% does not end up taking advantage of all the good press we’re giving them!
–jack what do you get from the 99% slogan? I believe that the slogan is derived from the fact that 1% of the population has amassed the majority of the capital that is available in our present economy. The fact that they have most recently used an increase in productivity of the American worker to enrich themselves whilst simultaneously denying any increase in wages or benefits to the workers belies their sinful greed. Add to that this 1% concocting and executing the grandest financial scam ever yet conceived to skim off the savings and equity of hard working people throughout the world for ever more personal wealth, then calling upon the victims for a public bailout. After rewarding themselves with obscene bonuses they continue the rape and pillage of their countrymen by shifting the entire tax burden on the workers while simultaneously bankrupting local governments and shifting blame unto who? You guessed it the working class and their sole protectors, their unions. Thanks to the treachery of the FCC allowing the media monopoly by scum like Rupert Murdock, the gross ignorance of conservatives, the blindness of the religious right, and democrats without any moral fiber, our democracy has become a fascist state. Don’t believe it? Look around at the endless wars against a pitiful enemy for the glory and profit of Empire! Is this for you? Or me? Or freedom? It is for the 1% who must be stopped before they take us all to hell. PS In the 21st century “good press” is an oxymoron!
Well Jack, what we need is Democracy and I do not know if you have been following me in my postings, but I have been saying all along that if We The People will just embrace and endorse and advocate and educate and PARTICIPATE in Democracy then we will be able to work on solving our problems.
The trouble is, there are so many people in our nation who are UNFAMILIAR with Democracy that they haven’t the slightest idea how Democracy WORKS. So we need education, because this is NOT a pro-Democracy nation! Instead, our nation has stomped on Democracy every chance it has gotten. So we need to start with anti-propaganda education and then inspire our people to PARTICIPATE in Democracy in a rational and honest way.
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I just returned from the Iowa City march of Occupy Iowa City from the College Green Park to the Ped Mall in downtown Iowa City, where a rally against the local downtown Wells-Fart-go bank and rally against Wall Street and The Establishment was conducted.
The signs carried by demonstrators were numerous and I could not copy them all as I was holding my own “We The People” protest sign. But here are a sample of the great variety of signs carried by marchers and demonstrators:
This Is Your Future Occupation We Must Stand United
The Money Changers Have Disgraced The Temple
Education Is Not A Business
Do You Have To Choose Between A Job And A Voice?
I Support Main Street
I Am 18 Years Old And I’m Already $7,500 In Student Loan Debt As A Freshman
I Voted For Change And Got The Opposite What Happened To Democracy ?
Will Eat Cake For A Job
How Is The War Economy Working For You ?
The People Are Too Big To Fail
Can You Feel The Trickle ? I Can’t !
Legalize Liberty
Never Fear That I’m A 99%er Here
We Are The Only Miracle We Are Going To Get
Dissent Is The Highest Form Of Patriotism
In Capitalist Amerika It’s The Big Banks Who Robs You
Foreclose On This !
(this was on a baby buggy:) 1 in 5 Grew Up In Poverty Bail Out Babies Not Banks
Inequality Or Democracy — You Can’t Have Both
Some Jobs Are Jails
Why Are So Many Out Of Work When There Is So Much To Be Done ?
UnWells Fargone
Bank Local — Be Local
The People United Can Never Be Defeated
Debt Deal = Jobs Cut
(and of course my own sign:)
DEMOCRACY Only Comes From We The people And Never From Any Government Or Court
As I was walking back to my apartment from the rally, I held my sign up at the intersection for the traffic to see, and an SUV stopped right in the intersection and a back-seat passenger rolled his window down and said:
“Hey, I’m a Republican!”
I responded, “Well I hope you support Democracy!”
He said, “What?”
That brief impromptu conversation actually happened, and that is typical of a Repugnican.
Check out the teach-in on this website. It’s nothing less than
inspiring.
The website didn’t show.