Movement swells to dump big banks
While Occupy Wall Street uses
tents and blankets to protest rule-by-
investment-bank, a parallel mass
movement is gaining steam to close
accounts in the big banks.
America’s biggest banks made bil-
lions of dollars issuing mortgage-
backed securities that helped inflate a
real estate bubble. Then when those
assets became risky, the big banks
were bailed out by the federal govern-
ment, yet continued to pay sky-high
salaries to their CEOs — even as they
initiated mass foreclosures and con-
tinued to jack up fees for depositors.
Now there’s a depositor revolt under
way, and customers are moving to
smaller local banks and credit unions
In Los Angeles, a small business
owner put out a call on Facebook de-
claring Saturday, November 5, to be
“Bank Transfer Day.” There’s so
much public anger at predatory prac-
tices of the big banks that her call
went viral.
Credit unions — not-for-profit
banking co-ops owned by their mem-
bers — are organizing a welcome for
big-bank refugees. In Portland,
Northwest Resource Federal Credit
Union, not normally open on Satur-
days, is offering a breakfast of
Voodoo Doughnuts and coffee Nov.
5 from 9 a.m. to noon.
Chase, Citibank, and Wells Fargo
are targets, but Bank of America,
headquartered in Charlotte, North
Carolina, may be the poster child for
“banksterism.” It took in $230 billion
in bailout funds, while paying its
tellers $11.11 an hour and cutting
30,000 jobs. It paid no federal corpo-
rate income tax in 2010, while paying
its CEO $10 million. And it was the
Nightmare on
Main Street
At a Halloween-themed
demonstration Oct. 28 at the
Southwest Fifth and Main
branch of Bank of America in
Portland, the Grim Reaper,
above, showed a 10’ long
printout of properties the bank
had foreclosed in Oregon.
Paid for and authorized by Require Local Vote on Urban Renewal, 2236 SE 10th Ave., Portland, OR 97214
first to announce that starting next
year it will charge $5 a month to its
bank customers for using their debit
cards — if their balances are under
$5,000. That’s on top of the 21¢ per
transaction that merchants are
charged when a customer uses the
debit card.
On Oct. 28, a demonstration out-
side a downtown Portland Bank of
America branch began with an an-
nouncement: 900-member Laborers
Local 483 is closing its account there.
“Too big to fail? We need to shrink
this bank down to size,” said Local
483 business manager Richard Beetle
The move was approved Oct. 18 in
a unanimous vote by members. Bee-
tle wouldn’t say the amount being
withdrawn, but acknowledged it is in
the six figures. [The demonstration,
called to protest Bank of America’s
foreclosure practices, was organized
by We Are Oregon. We Are Oregon
is a community organizing non-profit
supported by Service Employees In-
ternational Union (SEIU) that works
on unemployment, foreclosure, and
economic problems faced by working
(Turn to Page 11)
Please join Labor's Community
Service Agency, Inc. and the Hire
Oregon Vets program in honoring
our Veterans on November 11.
NOVEMBER 4, 2011
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
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