By Elaine Brower
In New York City the downtown area was on fire yesterday. At lunchtime
over 2,000 workers from various unions protested the Bush plan to bail
out Wall Street, after making bad investments for the last 5 years.
unionists railed against the U.S. government’s proposed bailout of Wall
Street on Thursday in a protest steps from the New York Stock Exchange. Several hundred protesters yelled their enthusiastic support as
union leaders decried a proposed $700 billion plan aimed at
reinvigorating the credit markets by relieving financial institutions
of distressed debt.
"The Bush administration wants us to pay the freight for a Wall Street
bailout that does not even begin to address the roots of our crisis,"
said AFL-CIO National President John Sweeney.
"We want our tax dollars used to provide a hand up for the millions of
working people who live on Main Street and not a handout to a
privileged band of overpaid executives."
Signs read "No Blank Checks For Wall Street" and "Our Hard-EarnedPensions Are Not Up For Grabs." Protesters cheered repeated calls for
the government to spend money on education, health care and housing as
freely and readily as it was proposing to do for Wall Street.
"We know that the economic situation has to be solved. But we want a
responsible rescue, not an opportunistic bailout," said United
Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.
"And that means, just like every single boss says to me, that there
should be accountability for the teachers, then there should be
accountability for Wall Street," he said.
"The bailout is a sellout unless it includes the victims of the
tyranny," civil rights activist the Rev. Jesse Jackson told reporters
after the rally. "The homeowners need long-term, low interest rate
loans and the restructuring of loans, not the repossession of homes."
"This is a Roosevelt moment," Jackson said, referring to former
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s program to lift the United States out
of the Great Depression. "It’s time for reconstruction of manufacturing
law, trade law and banking transparency."
After Wall Street faced the wrath of unions, the streets filled again
at 4 PM with other concerned citizens who piled up their "junk" at the
famous "Bull" at the foot of Broadway. Over 1,000 people, ranging from
children to students and working people, showed up and showed their
anger. From the rally at the "Bull" people took to the streets to
march up to Wall Street where workers were exiting the buildings. The
chants ranged from "You Broke it you bought it!" to "No Bailout for
Wall Street," and some others that signified how angry the crowd really
was. One sign read "Jump, f**ckers!"
Students were outraged that they soon they would have to pay more for
college tuition since CUNY is now threatening to raise fees, are
steeped in college loans, and trying to work to just get buy. New
Yorkers who are just working class stiffs showed up to let the
I-bankers know that since they had to work hard just to buy food, they
wouldn’t agree to bailing out anyone.
Protesters took over the steps across the street from the New York
Stock Exchange enraged over what this government is planning to do with
a $700 billion buyout package, no strings attached. One young man was
yelling the entire time as we marched screaming that he "had had enough
of Bush and the rich" in this Country, and that "they need to go
down!"
Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson are trying to ram the "no strings
attached $700 billion" proposal down the throats of hard working people
in this Country, who have had just about enough of being told what’s
good for them.
It was inspiring to see the crowds and hope that Washington is paying
attention because this could just be the beginning of the awakening of
the masses.
As I watched the various protests against the bailout unfold on TV, I thought about how we got into this mess, and it struck me that it\’s not just the bankers who are addicted to debt, we, the People of the United States, are just as addicted to debt as the bankers and other Wall Street parasites who are crying out for \”one more fix\” of cash to prop up a financial system which is imploding from within.
Our national addiction to debt is killing our families, communities and, quite literally, ourselves, and our toleration of the wholesale destruction of our manufacturing and production capabilities which took place during seven U.S. Presidencies should be our badge of shame. Because of our own inaction and illiteracy concerning finances and real economics, household incomes collapsed at an alarming rate, and yet we tolerated — if not wholeheartedly approved of — such schemes as NAFTA, which promised us \”free trade\”, but which has exacted a very high price from us in terms of collapsing family incomes and increasingly lower standards of living.
The real awakening of the masses will come when they see that the era of \”free and easy\” credit is over, and if they want to have a future for themselves, their children and their grandchildren, they must take concerted political action by demanding that Congress get some backbone ro invoke and use all of the powers of our Constitution to dral with this crisis, because our Constitution has within it all of the needed remedies which can and must be used in order to get us out of this economic collapse which has been of our own making.