On Saturday November 5th, the Alliance and its affiliates joined hundreds of thousands of activists from across the country for “Bank Transfer Day, a “deadline” of sorts calling for people to shift their funds from for-profit banking institutions to not-for-profit credit unions.
Beginning January One, Bank of America will be charging customers $5 a month to use their debit cards. Back in 2009, small businesses banded together to fight back against ever escalating fees levied by the banks. This was a monumental win for small businesses- these fees amounted to a $16Billion a year transfer of wealth from the nation’s businesses directly to Wall Street. Click here to see how small businesses beat back the big banks. Continue reading
On Thursday, May 12, 20,000 community members from New York City and beyond descended on Wall Street. Mayor Michael Bloomberg had just released his budget which cuts 6,000 teaching jobs and slashes vital social services the city relies on while keeping in tact tax breaks for his billionaire friends and the corporations that house them. This scenario is becoming all too familiar on the local, state and national level—and working people have had enough. That day on Wall Street, an unprecedented number of organizations (including Alliance members who traveled from Washington and Idaho) came together in belly of the beast to send a message to corporate America.
This year Uncle Sam pushed Tax Day back to April 18, giving us all a three-day tax filing holiday. It’s almost enough to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside. Until, that is, you hear about GE, which apparently is on extended vacation, paying essentially nothing in taxes for 2010 despite raking in $5.1 billion in U.S. profits and $14.2 billion worldwide. And who’s footing the bill for GE’s tax vacation? We are. Continue reading
In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicaid and Medicare into law.
At the signing ceremony, he spoke of the tradition of leadership that compelled the country to create such programs. He also spoke of another tradition, one embedded in our national identity and values. He said this value “calls upon us never to be indifferent toward despair. It commands us never to turn away from helplessness. It directs us never to ignore or to spurn those who suffer untended in a land that is bursting with abundance.”
Unfortunately, the recent actions of many Members of Congress fly in the face of this tradition. Continue reading
The big banks live in a parallel universe.
In their universe, the financial meltdown was beyond their power to stop. The recession that left more than 1/10th of the American workforce unemployed is a shame they had little to do with. The massive government bailout of the financial system was an opportunity to make a tidy profit so that you could give your executive hefty bonuses. And the budget deficit that was catapulted to its current highs because of the recession proves that the government has gotten too big. Continue reading
On Tuesday, October 26th, at 11:30 a.m., more than two dozen homeowners, friends, and community members marched into Chase Bank in downtown Burien, Washington and demanded an end to foreclosures in the state.
These homeowners represented just a handful of the 225,000 underwater homeowners in the state of Washington. The action, organized by Washington CAN!, was part of a national campaign to end foreclosures and to call for a write-down of principle for people at risk of losing their homes. Continue reading
Over the past several weeks Bank of America, Ally, and GMAC have announced that they have will be halting foreclosures in the 23 states that require a judge to sign off on foreclosures before eviction. Did this decision come from enlightened bank management who understand what is needed to stabilize the housing market and pull our economy out of the cellar? Of course not. Instead, it was done in response to the damning evidence that recently came to light that banks weren’t reading documents, were forging notarizations, foreclosing on homes that they didn’t own, and outright fabrication of loan documents. As usual the media is missing the real story during this ongoing foreclosure mess. Continue reading
Recent reports show the bankers in charge of approving the foreclosure paperwork weren’t even reading what they were signing. Wall Street has bought and sold our mortgages so many times, they’ve lost track of who owns what. And now they’re getting caught red-handed. In one state, two banks tried to foreclose on the same home. In another state, Bank of America tried to take a house away from a man who’d never even had a mortgage. Continue reading
In Washington state, big out-of-state banks such as Bank of America, Chase, Citigroup, KeyBank, and Wells Fargo are using the money from their hard-working customers’ accounts to kill legislation that would help local communities–including a renewal of a $67 million tax break for themselves. While thousands of vital state services are cut and state employees are laid off of work, big banks continue to reap profits. Continue reading
