from In These Times:
5,000 Protest Bank Power, Abuses, as ‘Showdown’ CulminatesTuesday
October 27
4:13 pm
By David Moberg
CHICAGO–Angenita Tanner faces tough times. Her home-based child care business is threatened by potential Illinois state budget cuts to programs subsidizing care for children of low-income workers. Already her clients have found it hard to pay for her services, leading her to fall behind on her mortgage. But her bank refuses to re-negotiate the mortgage, even though losing her home would also end her business and income.
“America has bailed out the banks, but the banks aren’t bailing out the people,” she told a crowd of about 5,000 unionists and organized community activists on Tuesday as they protested outside the American Bankers Association conference on the third and final day of what was billed as the "Showdown in Chicago."
It was the common theme of the protest, the largest focused on the financial industry since the banking crisis pushed the whole economy into deep recession, echoed in marchers’ chants: “the banks got bailed out, we got sold out.”
The protest, which relied heavily on unions–especially the Service Employees (SEIU)–and Chicago community groups fighting foreclosure, delivered a strongly worded but programmatically diffuse message calling on banks to serve real needs of people, not the greedy speculative aims of their executives. ...........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5103/5000_protest_bank_power_abuses_as_showdown_culminates/
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