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APRIL 3 DEMO TO MARCH ON WALL STREET AND AIG
posted March 26, 2009
Thousands to March on Wall Street &
AIG on APRIL 3 as part of the Bail Out People, Not Banks Protest
Main focus of March:
- The need for a real jobs program
- A moratorium on foreclosures and evictions
The April 3 March on Wall Street will begin with an opening rally at
1:00 PM at Wall Street and Broadway, followed by a march to AIG at 70
Pine St.
The Bail Out the People Movement Statement on AIG and the
Latest Bank Bailout Plan
The new plan still bails out banks, not people
AIG outrage must fuel a struggle for a real jobs program
On Friday, April 3, the Bail Out the People Movement, a growing
coalition of hundreds of organizations and thousands of activists, will
march on Wall Street and AIG. Protesters on April 3 will bring demands
for a real jobs program, a moratorium on foreclosures, and other
necessary programs for bailing out the people, not banks and Wall
Street financial institutions.
The growing anger over the AIG bonus bonanza, outrageous as it is, is
really about the fact that trillions of dollars are being deployed to
rescue the wealthiest on Wall Street, while the unemployment and
foreclosure rates continue to head towards depression levels.
The mass anger at Wall Street will be wasted unless it is used to focus
on the real crisis.
At the April 3 March on Wall Street, the Bail Out The People Movement
will open a nationwide petition campaign for an emergency jobs program
on the scale of the Work Projects Administration of the 1930s. The
stimulus legislation is far too little to make even a dent in the
estimated 20 million people who are jobless or underemployed. The
unemployed need a real jobs program, and they need it now.
The April 3 Wall Street march will also focus attention on the need for
an immediate national moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. Such a
moratorium should have been put in place two years ago. It is
unacceptable and scandalous, considering the historically unprecedented
level of government interventions and control of the mortgage industry
and the banks, that the government has failed to order an end to
evictions
Taxing multimillion dollar bonuses, putting a cap on corporate pay, and
new regulations on the banks may be good ideas, but they are no
substitute for a jobs program of sufficient scope and size to stop and
reverse the unemployment crisis.
Moreover, the measures being proposed in Washington are no substitute
for a vitally necessary single-payer health care program for all or the
need for the passage and signing into law of the Employee Free Choice
Act, so that working people will be better able to organize and defend
themselves against the robber barons of Wall Street.
The new so-called public/private bank bailout plan is a thinly veiled
attempt to make it appear as though private investors will share the
burden of bailed out banks. With the new plan, 90 percent of bailout
funds, or at least one trillion dollars, will come from the government.
The new plan is premised on exact same rational as the last bank bail
out plan. The government will continue to pump trillions of dollars in
to the banks until the banks are declared fixed. In the meantime, the
lives of tens of millions more people are going to slide into
life-threatening poverty.
The time has come for this rationale to be rejected. The idea that some
banks are too big to fail but untold millions of peoples' lives can be
devastated, or that profits must come before the welfare of the people,
are not commandments from heaven but rules made down here on earth to
protect the interest of the few against that of the many.
Henceforth, the fight must be about reversing the flow of government
money away from the banks and into social needs.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dedicated the last year of his life to
trying to open up what he considered the second phase of the civil
rights movement: the fight for economic justice. King's main focus in
the few months of 1968, before being gunned down on April 4, was to win
public support for the right of all to either a job or an income.
As King planned the poor peoples' march on Washington in those final
weeks, nowhere did he ever mention that the need and the right to a job
or an income must be based on the solvency of JP Morgan Chase,
Citicorp, Bank Of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, etc. and their
power to turn the economy on and off depending on what makes them
richer.
The message that thousands of marchers will bring to Wall St. on Friday
April 3, the day before the 41st anniversary of King's death, is that
society can no longer allow for jobs, housing, healthcare and all that
people need to be held hostage to the arrogance, greed and power of
bankers.
In addition to the need for a real jobs program and a moratorium on
evictions, some of the other issues that the April 3 march on Wall St.
will be drawing attention to include:
- THE NEED FOR A MORATORIUM ON LAYOFFS AND
BUDGET CUTS IN SOCIAL PROGRAMS
- OPPOSITION TO TUITION HIKES AND FARE HIKES
- SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE FOR ALL
- SUPPORT THE EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT
- SUPPORT THE RIGHTS OF IMMIGRANT WORKERS,
- AN END TO THE WARS AND OCCUPATIONS
Bail Out the People Movement
Solidarity Center
55 W. 17th St. #5C
New York, NY 10011
212.633.6646
www.BailOutPeople.org
Email: bailoutpeople.org/cmnt.shtml
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