Season of Protest
Three thousand Bostonians protested Bank of America’s predatory policies, resulting in two dozen arrests. “Two-thirds of Bank of America foreclosures have been in minority communities,” said Rachel LaForest, executive director of the Right to the City Alliance. “They targeted these communities from the outset with bad loans, and now they have more homes in foreclosure than any other bank in the city.” Grassroots activists’ analysis is “clearer and sharper” these days, said LaForest. “They are calling out who the enemy is.”
New Bottom Line: An Economy that Works for All
The Boston demonstration was part of a larger, ten-city campaign by The New Bottom Line, a coalition of 1,000 community organizations, congregations and labor unions, to challenge banking interests, according to co-director Tracy Van Slyke. Activists blame “big banks for bankrupting our economy, draining wealth from the most vulnerable communities,” said Van Slyke. “We’re all fighting together for a new bottom line – and economy that works for all of us.”
Liberate Freedom Plaza Oct 6
The Wall Street occupation has spurred increased interest in planting the people’s flag in Washington, DC’s Freedom Plaza, starting October 6. The “core demand,” says national organizer Margaret Flowers, is that the U.S. “stop using our resources for war and exploitation of the planet, and start using them to serve human needs and clean up the planet.” Flowers said activists will address “about fifteen core crises” affecting the nation and world, and then try to design solutions at the Plaza or online, at www.Oct2011.org.
“Filibuster” Against Racism at USDA Oct 5
Minority federal employees kick off an open-ended protest against the U.S. Department of Agriculture on October 5, calling the agency “the last plantation” where “an ante bellum kind of culture” rules. Lawrence Lucas, president of the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees, said “this agency, even under the present administration, has been allowed to conduct reprisals, racism, sexism, sexual assaults, intimidation, and bullying” against agency workers and minority farmers. The daily filibuster, said Lucas, will not end until “someone from the White House or USDA comes out there and says, We’re willing to meet with you and fix the problem, once and for all.”
Prison Hunger Strike Renewed
Supporters of inmates on hunger strike against torture and inhumane treatment at California’s high-security prisons say 12,000 inmates in 14 facilities have joined the protest. Ed Mead, editor of Prison Focus magazine and himself a former inmate, said there is “some possibility that this might spread to the general population mainline in the form of a work strike.” Activist Clive Young, also an ex-prisoner, reported that “prisoners in Palestine who are on hunger strike have sent solidarity messages to prisoners in the California system.”
Obama Needs “Time Machine”
“The only way he could possibly get [his current ‘jobs’ bill] passed, is if he could go back in a time machine to when he had a Democratic majority in the House and Senate,” said South Carolina activist and writer Kevin Alexander Gray. Obama’s bill is actually a “poison pill” that bleeds payroll tax money from Social Security, said Gray. “In the end, you can claim there’s an emergency” in Social Security funding “and turn it over to Wall Street.”
UN Anti-Racist Process Affirmed, But U.S. Still Resists
Although the United Nations General Assembly has affirmed the language of the Durban Declaration and Program for Action against racism and xenophobia, worldwide, the U.S. and its “crony,” Israel, continue to resist implementation. Efia Wangaza, of the U.S. Human Rights Network, says America’s “toxic” influence led the UN to allocate only a “paltry” $97,000 for commemoration of the ten-year-long Durban process. The miserliness was doubly insulting, said Wangaza, in that the UN has proclaimed this the Year of Persons of African Descent.
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