Thousands are protesting at the Bank of America shareholders’ meeting in Charlotte
Thousands have turned out to protest at the B of A shareholders meeting today, many of whom have been personally impacted by the bank’s practices:
My house was foreclosed by Bank of America after I lost my job… It’s not a joke to live without a job. My family depends on me. We don’t deserve to be put on the street. I’ve tried to modify my mortgage five times with Bank of America, but they’d rather put it in a short sale.
Latest updates and photos from the demonstrations here.
Islanders move love and money to their own credit union: Fed up with corporate indifference, a green haven in Puget Sound, Wash., finds a novel way to snub big banks.
It would be hard to imagine a place further removed from the brash intensity of Occupy Wall Street. This secluded island of fir forests and rolling lavender fields — home to 23 organic farms, a tofu factory and a monastery that markets its own gourmet coffee — has always been a counterculture retreat for those who bike to the sound of different drummers.
Yet a continent away — a whole world away, really — from New York, this small island of 11,000 residents has become one of the darlings of the Move your Money campaign, an Occupy effort to hit corporate banking where it hurts: the ledgers.
Photo: Community activist Bill Moyer helped lure a branch of the Puget Sound Cooperative Credit Union to Vashon Island, Wash., and now sits on the board. It has been a hit with islanders fed up with impersonal corporate banks. Credit: Kim Murphy / Los Angeles Times
Wall Street excess helped lead to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, inflicting untold economic suffering on millions and millions of Americans. In both rhetorical and substantive terms, the Obama administration’s response was by any reasonable measure moderate and restrained. Indeed, Obama clearly viewed himself as a buffer between Wall Street and rising populist passion, telling a group of bankers in April of 2009: “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”
Despite all the wailing, Obama’s subsequent Wall Street reform bill simply was not a threat to the established order of things in any meaningful sense…
Yet despite all this, many Wall Streeters have responded with an extraordinary outburst of resentment, grievance, and self pity. They’ve shoveled enormous sums of money in the direction of the [Republican Party] whose main driving objective is to roll back everything in the way of new oversight Obama and Dems have put into place in response to the worst meltdown in decades.
One wonders if there is anything Obama could say to make these people happy, short of declaring that rampant inequality is a good thing…
Shit just got real.
Andrew Breitbart Vs. Occupiers At CPAC: VIDEO
This is where Breitbart ambushed OWS protesters, had a total meltdown, and told them all to stop raping people.
Occupy Riverdale – It’s Happening, Here’s The Jill Thompson Art To Prove It
This is the planned artwork for Archie Comics #635 in July, leaked to Bleeding Cool. As earlier rumoured, it will tell the story of the global protest against massively unequal redistrubution of wealth and power, under the title Occupy Riverdale, echoing the Occupy movements present around the world.
This continued the further progressive storylines from Archie of late that recently culminated in an interracial gay military wedding. This time Archie moves from social politics to economic ones.
Outside the Washington Historical Museum on Monday night, Rick Santorum spent his 45-minute speech yelling over the chants of about one dozen protesters repeating “We are the 99%.” Despite the interruptions, he paused only once while police confronted some of vocal young people. By the end of the rally, three arrests were made, according to Tacoma police officials.
“I understand their frustration,” Santorum told the crowd. “For three years they haven’t been able to find work, they have a president who doesn’t care about them.”
Santorum’s claim is bogus but it makes a very good soundbite, and good soundbites unfortunately can sway more people than good policies. Fortunately, Santorum doesn’t have any of those — but he doesn’t need any to hurt what’s left of the Occupy brand.
Protesters at Friday’s “Occupy CPAC” event, organized by AFL-CIO and the Occupy DC movement, told The Daily Caller that they were paid “sixty bucks a head” to protest outside the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.
One protester told TheDC that all the “Occupy” activists were being paid to protest, and that his union, Sheet Metal Workers Local 100, approached him about the money-making opportunity.
The Daily Caller has no credibility whatsoever. Let’s look at its history of yellow journalism:
Daily Caller Now Publishing Anti-Islam Writer Who Pushed Obama-Is-Muslim Conspiracy
Daily Caller: Obama Praised The Troops Too Much
Daily Caller Polling On Imaginary “UN Gun Ban”
Daily Caller Hyped O’Keefe’s NPR Tapes, Now Won’t Acknowledge Doubts Surrounding Them
UPDATED: Daily Caller Compounds [EPA] Error With Bad Rationalization
Report: Daily Caller Employees Were Embarrassed By Their EPA Story Debacle
The Daily Caller: Still Wrong [about EPA]
Daily Caller Invents Factual Error In NY Times Holder Profile
The Daily Caller’s Terrible Holder Reporting… Continues
Daily Caller Doing Damage Control After Holder’s Call-Out
The Daily Caller: Or, Sen. Inhofe’s Transcription Service
Daily Caller Reporter Caught Taking Dictation, Again
Hey, Holzbach: Is Talk Straight your nephew, or something? Is that why he’s the only one whose idiocy you promote to #Politics? Or is he paying you?
“End the Fed” signs, and other Ron Paul-inspired sloganeering have been a staple of Occupy encampments from the birth of the movement. To an extent, that reflects the Occupiers’ diversity of ideas. But Paul, who wrote a book called End the Fed in 2009, has a spotty reputation among champions of social justice, which was made worse this week with the release of another round of racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic comments excerpted from a newsletter he published throughout the 1980s.
At many Occupy encampments, “End the Fed” signs are everywhere, and Paul supporters are becoming more and more vocal — using the language of the Occupy movement in service of their extremist anti-government agenda…
The Occupy movement’s evolving agenda is in danger of being sullied by association with Paul, whose position includes at its core a conspiracy theory involving the Federal Reserve — a decades-old right-wing bugaboo. On the web, a crucial battleground in the era of the online revolution, the Occupy Movement’s central critique of the obscene power of corporations is in danger of being slapped way off course. Ron Paul supporters dominated the conversation in the public forum on OccupyWallSt.org, the movement’s unofficial Web site, throughout the fall. A December post on the forum complained about the Paul-partisan spammers, and warned against forging an alliance with “Wall Street’s religious fanatics, the libertarians, espousing their predatory free-market religion.”
