This important victory is just the beginning. We will continue organizing to hold the big banks accountable and work to ensure that the banks who profit from our money benefit our communities.
Last summer, insiders pronounced banking reform “dead.” They said ‘everyone’ had forgotten about the Wall Street bailout and the obscene bonuses — and that Congress was too dependent on bank money as it approached election season to do anything that would actually make a difference. But a series ofmobilizationsacrossthe country kept the heat on Congress and an important step towards breaking the power of the banks is within our grasp.
Let’s be real: The Dodd-Frank bill, already passed by the US House, is not the end of the struggle. The big banks are still too big. They still need to be broken up and reined
Yesterday was an exciting day of education and action at the U.S. Social Forum!
JwJ coalitions convened and spoke at a variety of workshops, including: Uncovering the Truth on Police & ICE Collaborations (DC JwJ), Social Networking for Social Justice (KY JwJ), Writers’ Circle (Missouri JwJ), The Impact of Financial Restructuring on Michigan Workers and the Union Response (SE Michigan JwJ), Good Jobs for All: Winning Full and Fair Employment for a New Economy (National JwJ), and The TRADE Act as a Tool for Global Justice (Southern Oregon JwJ).
Jobs with Justice members participated in the Excluded Workers Congress People’s Movement Assembly which focused on how we can expand workers’ rights to organize. We heard inspiring testimony from a variety of workers who are fighting for their rights on the job (stay tuned for more on this, including video).
In the evening, JwJ co-sponsored a march and rally with AFSCME Council 65 and the Metro Detroit AFL-CIO to demand, “Money for JOBS, not Banks!”
On May 17, thousands of union members, community activists, and allies from across the country came together on a rainy Monday morning to send a message to Congress & the corporate lobbyists on K Street: Wall Street reform now!
The protest was organized by National People’s Action, SEIU, the AFL-CIO, and Jobs with Justice.
The crowd rallied in McPherson Square park before shutting down K Street and then marching to the Bank of America. Check out the video & photos from the action below.
In Washington, D.C. today, Jobs with Justice Executive Director Sarita Gupta joined Wall Street and economic experts and consumer, development and global health advocates for a press conference to push for a Financial Speculation Tax.
“Jobs with Justice will be in the streets today in over 40 cities demanding that Congress tax Wall Street to pay for jobs,” said Gupta. “Wall Street bankers recklessly gambled away our economy, and they should be made to pay for recovery programs like the Local Jobs for America Act.”
The group called on President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to embrace this tax and called on Congress to move swiftly to enact it. The tax is a very small levy on financial short-term transactions, which will curb excessive speculation by Big Banks, but with minimal impact on long-term investors. It also would raise an estimated $100 billion a year for job-creation, important public goods like investment in rebuilding our nation’s crumbling infrastructure and clean energy, and providing global health and development aid.
John Fullerton, a former Managing Director at JPMorgan, explained that the tax is needed for three reasons:
The income gap between the richest 10% of Americans and the rest of us has been widening for 30 years.
Unemployment rates are still hovering around 10%. If Wall Street paid it’s fair share, we could put millions of people to work fixing our infrastructure, teaching our children, making our factories more sustainable and improving our public services.
For 30 years, corporate CEOs and Wall Street speculators have put the squeeze on workers with globalization, privatization and union-busting.
They used their rising profits to buy Congress, convincing them to hand out tax breaks to the rich and gut banking regulations and consumer protections. Then they invented unscrupulous mortgage and investing practices, turning our financial system
While the banks may not see the error of their ways, there is evidence that our government is beginning to recognize that banks do not always play a positive role in our economy. Earlier this week, President Obama signed into law the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. This legislation includes the historic student aid reform proposal originally passed by the House via the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), whicheliminates wasteful government subsidies to private lenders to issue student loans. It appropriates over sixty billion dollars towards increases funding for the Pell grant, community colleges, Minority-Serving Institutions, and access and completion programs – money that previously was being spent to make private banks into middlemen for student loans. This is a huge victory, but it is just the beginning of reforms needed to rein in Wall Street.
Goldman Sachs’ speculation and profiteering was a major cause of the recession and now their CEO is giving out $16.7 billion in bonuses. They got a bailout, what do all of us get?
On January 21, Boston community leaders and activists marched on Goldman Sachs to demand that Executive Bonuses be used to fund the Ellison Jobs Bill. The amount of Goldman Sachs’ bonuses would cover more than half of the $30 billion jobs bill that would put unemployed people to work improving our communities.
Senator Sanders of Vermont is following the lead of the people in introducing a bill to break up the banks that would be “too big to fail.”
The bill would give the Treasury Department 90 days to identify any financial institution that might be ‘too big to fail,’ and then a year to break up all those institutions.
“Trust Buster” Teddy Roosevelt broke up about 40 mega-institutions (his successor President Taft more than doubled that number), understanding that they were a threat to both democracy and the economy.
Let’s hope our leaders follow the people. Now THAT would be change we can believe in.
Activists will be in the streets of Chicago tomorrow to protest the American Bankers Association meeting. These banks took bailouts that add up to $15,000 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. They claimed they were “too big to fail.”
The reality is that these corporate criminals are too big and powerful politically. Explaining why even minor reforms have been bottled up in Congress, Senator Durbin from Illinois admitted that the banks “frankly own the place.”
They used their rising profits to buy Congress, convincing them to hand out tax breaks to the rich and gut banking regulations and consumer protections. Then they invented unscrupulous mortgage and investing practices, turning our financial system
