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Protesters take "hate mail" to NYC banks
A coalition group of activist and clergy supporters of the Occupy Wall Street Protest, march from Zuccotti Park to Wall Street dressed in Robin Hood costumes on Friday, Oct. 28, 2011 in New York. / AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews
NEW YORK - About 400 Occupy Wall Street protesters carrying what they said were 7,000 letters of complaint marched Friday in groups to offices of banks they accuse of corporate greed.
The letters, collected through the occupytheboardroom.org website, were written by people including some who had lost their homes through foreclosures during the economic crisis, said protester Harry Waisbren, of Milwaukee.
"We're hoping the banks will see the damage they've wrought," Waisbren said.
He spoke as demonstrators gathered next to the stone lions on the steps of the New York Public Library in Manhattan. He wore a cheese-shaped hat, a symbol of Wisconsin, and carried a sign that said one bank "spread bad mortgages, then foreclosed on thousands."
A nearby sign told another bank: "Withdraw your money, cut them down to size."
One protester was dressed like a drum majorette. Four others were costumed as pirates; they rode bicycles decorated like pirate ships, complete with anchors, masts and pirate flags.
Occupy-ers: This is our "Valley Forge moment"
"Aargh! We're the people's pirates, and we're going to get the money from the corporate pirates and give it to the credit unions and the good banks!" shouted Barbara Ross, wearing a frilly dress and a tri-cornered hat and waving a plastic sword.
Ross, of New York, said she was laid off last year from her job as a personnel manager at the U.S. offices of France Telecom.
Richard Kershenbaum, a retired information technology manager from Lawrence, Kan., said he decided to join the march while visiting friends in New York. He said he had seen workers' rights eroded during his time as a manager at the University of Kansas and was worried that politicians were increasingly influenced by corporate interests.
"They're running the government for their own benefit, not the benefit of the people," he said. "We have to do something about it if we want to protect democracy in this country."
One group of protesters headed down a Fifth Avenue sidewalk, chanting, "You've got mail! You've got mail!" About 50 police officers accompanied them, on foot and in vehicles.
The marchers stopped at a Citigroup office on Park Avenue. A building employee accepted a few letters but declined the rest. So the marchers folded them into paper airplanes and tossed them at a Citibank sign out front.
One message, from LaShuna Garcia, in the Tucson, Ariz., area, told how her parents lost their jobs through downsizing and budget cuts.
"Savings are difficult to accrue when the ends don't even come close to meeting," Garcia's letter said. "Please help keep the American people alive."
Jeremy Wattles, in the Geneva, N.Y., area, wrote that he was concerned about a U.S. Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing the free speech rights of corporations, which many protesters say has encouraged corporate campaign donations.
"Corporations ought not be equal with a person under the law," Wattles wrote. "There ought to be a way for us to coexist financially. For you to make a profit and for responsible citizens to have a fair opportunity to achieve a middle class lifestyle."
The marchers chanted, "Everybody pays their tax, everyone but Goldman Sachs!"
Reaction was mixed from passers-by.
Jason Patel, an analyst at a bank, said he sympathized with the protesters but said they should be directing their anger at lawmakers. He said reforms are needed to ensure banks pay interest on bailout money loaned to them by taxpayers.
"This is fantastic, but I think there's a better way," he said as he watched the protest. "I think it would help if they went to Washington. Those are the people to talk to."
Earlier Friday, authorities said safety hazards at the protest encampment in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park were removed during a fire department inspection. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said protesters voluntarily surrendered six generators and a dozen gasoline cans, which he called illegal safety hazards.
Protest volunteer Iana Dikidjiea said the generators were used for a kitchen, emergency lights and media equipment.
The protesters were "rethinking how that's going to work," she said, but "we'll deal with it."
Many of the protesters were still sleeping when the inspection began around 8 a.m.
Bloomberg, speaking on his weekly show on WOR Radio, said the protesters can stay as long as they obey the law. But he added: "Quality of life is something that we worry about."
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For example,
When you have a problem with your Verizon FIOS service (which includes TV, internet and telephone) and call for assistance you are probably going to get a technician in India at the other end of the line. What does this mean? It means that call center employees in India have the ability to go into our communications network in the United States in order to be able to fix a trouble.
I also notice that when I call my bank and many credit card companies I am not reaching a person in the USA. This means call center employees overseas have access to my bank accounts,credit card accounts etc...
I don't think that America is very popular in some of these countries that we are outsourcing to.
Are you comfortable with this setup in the age of terrorism we live in? I'm not.
Terrorism does not have to be a bomb going off, it can be the downing of our financial or communication network.
Why should Verizon and the banks even have to outsource at all with the BILLIONs of dollars in profit they make every quarter?
Who are the politicians that think that this is ok to do?
Why are the people on the right who are usually very concerned with national security not opposed to this?
I am not a commie, hell I'm not even a Democrat, but the game is rigged and that's why I sympathize with these protesters.
THE CRIMINAL FINANCIER/PARASITES,INVESTMENT BANKERS...
...who take so much and give little or nothing back to country and community.
Since the 'authorities' are in bed with;
the investment bankers
the brokers
the corporate execs
and other of their cash-feeders,
laws, rules and regulations are structured to wrongfully license continuation of the abhorrent complex, misleading, non-transparent, swindling, Wall St and banking system.
Such laws and regulations must be changed.
If not, the natural response of the swindled victims will be to bring their ideas of justice, to those dishonest financier/parasites who wrecked financial futures and lives of so many Hundreds of Millions of real working people.
When the laws protect the criminal financiers, and permit them to keep what they have wrongfully taken by systematic cheating and misleading, we cannot expect such unfair laws to be respected. Consequently, the victims tend to justify taking the law into their own hands during such times. Doing so will be attributable to government inefficacy and/or corruption.
It's long overdue that justice visits the financiers who not only stole our money and ruined our financial futures, but these economy-wrecking and nation-wrecking parasites have indeed inflicted extreme injury to all of America, as well as to the entire Western Free World!
Conclusion:
Nothing short of lengthy prison terms with hard labor and seizure of wrongfully-acquired monies, assets, properties, secret or overseas accounts, etc, can be substituted, if we are to achieve genuine justice.
The Banksters conspired to get rid of Glass-Steagle in 1999 and then created credit default swaps aka derivatives that ended up LOSING 20% OF THE WEALTH OF AMERICA in 2007-2008. Wealth that was created over the course of over 2 centuries.
Enrique, get a grip, why are you defending Bankster gangsters? Do you work for them? Are you part of the Top 1%?
Oh and don't forget to move YOUR money.
That is the influence of money on our government Reps.
The reason the economic crash of 2008 hit us so hard was that there was NO SAFETY BUFFER through regulations and safeguards and staff to carry them out!
Why?
Because the financial industry had all regulations removed.
How?
By buying House and Senate members to do their bidding.
Why?
The US financial industry set their sights on making as much money as fast as they possibly could.
Written by Phil Gramm...
"Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999"
"Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000"