Has the economy really gotten so bad that people want to take to the
streets and chant bank-busting slogans like “Nationalize, Reorganize,
Decentralize”? We’ll find out on April 11, when the Massachusetts-based
group A New Way Forward (www.anewwayforward.org) tries to pull off protests in
more than two dozen American cities—including one here in Seattle
at 11:00 a.m. in Victor Steinbrueck Park, 2001 Western Avenue—to
decry the behavior of the nation’s giant banking concerns and their
recent treatment by the federal government, which protest organizers
feel has been way too gentle.
“We need to break up the banks and sell them back to the private
sector,” said Chris Nuckols, 23, who works for an online phone company
in Queen Anne and will be participating in the Seattle protest. Nuckols
is mad about the series of multimillion-dollar bailouts to huge banks
in the wake of the subprime mortgage mess, and he hopes to be joined by
hundreds of like-minded people at the Seattle rally.
Danny Shaw, 27, one of the Massachusetts-based organizers, said one
aim of the protests is to give the Obama administration political cover
to get tougher on the banks at a time when any moves toward
nationalization—a step that a number of leading economists think
is the right one—would lead to charges by right-wingers that
Obama is a socialist. “There’s so much propaganda about socialism and
all that stuff,” Shaw said. “It’s ridiculous.”
The model for the April 11 protests will be similar to the
nationwide day of protest last fall against the passage of California’s
gay-marriage-banning Proposition 8. Using simple web organizing
strategies, the Prop 8 protesters pulled off simultaneous protests
around the nation on November 15—including a giant march from
Seattle’s Volunteer Park to Westlake Plaza that drew an estimated
10,000 people—and got quite a bit of media attention as a result.
A New Way Forward has somewhat smaller ambitions: Shaw believes the
largest protests on April 11 will be in Boston, New York City, and
Washington, D.C., and he hopes that each of those events draws 1,000
people.
Bank protests are a somewhat difficult sell. “Nationalize,
Reorganize, Decentralize” isn’t exactly the simple, standard lefty
protest cry of “No War” or “Save the Dolphins” or “Gay Marriage Now.”
On top of that, the ideas behind “Nationalize, Reorganize,
Decentralize” are complex and probably unfamiliar to even the average
populist that the group is hoping to get out into the streets.
Shaw says the movement—which only began organizing in
mid-March—is nevertheless gaining momentum. “There’s a lot of
anger, across party lines in the country, about the bailouts,” he said.
“The left really has an idea for what should change.” 
Jesus Christ, Enumclaw Eli, is this your best effort after the demise of the P-I? You require better and strict direction from a skilled, experienced editor.
You basically phoned in a press release from a bunch of wacko yahoos.
It’s about time someone stands up to the greedy asshats on Wall Street. Strict restrictions on the pittance given to the auto makers as opposed to absolutely no follow-through, transparency or even record keeping on the hundreds of billions given to Wall Street.
Right…who’s the wacko yahoo now?
I plan on attending, but at the same time, this story was a pretty weak snippet. Perhaps you could explain what it is the groups intend to accomplish rather than just mock their un-catchy battlecry.
I saw William Greider on Bill Moyers. Greider mentioned the April 11 New Way Forward demonstrations and discussed the need for public demontrations to provide support for the president and congress to reform banking and finance in a way that doesn’t simply hand more power to the fed and their cronies on wall street. Read more from Greider on this subject at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090413/gr…
Below is an article “Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Wall Street’s ownership of government” from Salon on the interview by Bill Moyer of Bill Black last week on Bill’s show. One quote from the article: “
Just think about how this works. People like Rubin, Summers and Gensler shuffle back and forth from the public to the private sector and back again, repeatedly switching places with their GOP counterparts in this endless public/private sector looting. When in government, they ensure that the laws and regulations are written to redound directly to the benefit of a handful of Wall St. firms, literally abolishing all safeguards and allowing them to pillage and steal. Then, when out of government, they return to those very firms and collect millions upon millions of dollars, profits made possible by the laws and regulations they implemented when in government. Then, when their party returns to power, they return back to government, where they continue to use their influence to ensure that the oligarchical circle that rewards them so massively is protected and advanced. This corruption is so tawdry and transparent — and it20has fueled and continues to fuel a fraud so enormous and destructive as to be unprecedented in both size and audacity — that it is mystifying that it is not provoking more mass public rage.”
Let’s express our outrage this Saturday, April 11. See you there.
Some sign ideas include:
Banksters are gaming the system
Break Up the Banks
If it’s too big to fail, it’s too big to exist
Bailout the people
Trustbusters 2.0
Fire Your Bank
Stop Blank Check Bailouts
Three Key Reforms
NATIONALIZE: Insolvent banks that are too big to fail must incur a FDIC intervention — no more taxpayer handouts.
REORGANIZE: Current CEOs and board members must be removed and bonuses wiped out. The financial elite must share in the cost of what they have caused.
DECENTRALIZE: Banks must be broken up and sold back to the private market with new antitrust rules in place– new banks managed by new people.
——————————————————————————–
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2…
check out gofireyourbank.com