A Day Of Action

I woke up excited about the possibilities of today.

When I got to the meeting place for the US Uncut demonstration, there were already a couple of my elders gathered with signs.  We began to talk and it was clear that the fire of their youth was still in full display!

Eventually the organizer, Leslie, got there and she was really organized.  She had fake Bank Of America name badges printed out on address label stickers!  She also had a bunch of fun chants.  She also had these “checks” that protesters were going to try to “cash” at the different bank tellers.  Here it is:

I had received an email from her a couple of days ago asking me to wear a suit and pose as a banker.  The plan was:  Protestors carrying these fake checks would enter the bank and try to cash them.  Hopefully they would then be able to talk to a manager about the off-shore tax havens that Bank Of America has set up in order to avoid paying taxes on their income.

I like the plan.

Here we are in the bank:

During this time, I spent my energy trying to persuade bank employees to unionize and walk out.  There was such a swift dismissal of this idea that it quickly became clear to me that these workers had either been thoroughly discouraged to unionize or their contracts forbid it.

This is a shout out to a courageous Bank Of America employee:  Unionize!  Gather a critical mass and stand up to your employers and demand a fairer piece of the pie.  Don’t demand more for greed or revenge, but instead demand more for equality!

Eventually we succeeded in stopping the business happening in the bank.  The tellers all went back to their offices and abandoned their cash drawers.  It was shortly thereafter that the cops came and asked us nicely to leave.  So we went and stood in front of the bank on Mission St.

There were sixty-five of us, give or take, and even a few of us were younger folk.

It’s my hope that more of my generation will begin waking up to the great inequality of our current cultural context.  We need your voice!