USUncut New York Holds Sleep-In At Bank of America’s Brooklyn Branch
Happy to see that USUncut NYC isn’t slowing down their efforts to educate people: On Saturday, June 11, 2011, US Uncut NYC, joined by members from NY Communities for Change and Coalition for Public Education, brought their pillows, sleeping bags, and pjs to Bank of America at 880 Quincy Street in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The sleep-in/teach-in was an expression of solidarity with the millions of taxpayers who have been driven from their homes, in many cases illegally and in all cases immorally, by the same banks that received trillions of taxpayer dollars when their fraudulent lending practices and reckless investments threatened to bring down the world financial system. Symbolically representing the dispossessed, participants arrived with sleeping bags, blankets and pajamas to take up residence (however briefly) in the bank that has been the worst offender of all the big banks. As disclosed in literature given to clients of the bank, passers-by, and even the police, Bank of America has used “robo signers” who perjured themselves in foreclosure proceedings and is facing numerous lawsuits, including a class action suit involving homeowners in 17 states and suits by the federal government and the attorneys general of Arizona and Nevada. It has also been accused of violating the False Claims Acts and defrauding taxpayers by their handling of foreclosures on homes purchased with government-backed loans. The teach-in was conducted by Jonathan Tasini, a long-time labor activist, writer and strategist and the former president of the National Writers Union. Mr. Tasini reviewed the causes of the financial meltdown of 2008 and how those responsible ended up even stronger than before while average Americans fell further and further behind. He spoke of how the “crisis” was being used as an excuse to slash public services instead of requiring the banks and other major corporations that had been starving public coffers to pay their fair share of taxes. Tasini reminded those gathered that it is incumbent on ordinary citizens like themselves, uniting together in direct actions like the one today, to inform and energize the public and thereby to force the politicians to respond to public rather than corporate needs. The protestors left the bank when ordered to by the police, and the teach-in continued outside. Local residents in Bedford Stuyvesant were uniformly supportive of the action, taking literature, pausing to hear the lecture and offering their own stories of encounters with the bank .
USUncut New York Holds Sleep-In At Bank of America’s Brooklyn Branch
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on June 14, 2011. Filed under