Wall Street March Urges Bankers Behind Bars, But It Has Not Happened Yet

By Matthew Russell Lee

 

WALL STREET, September 15 -- Amid chants of "Bank of America, bad for America," marchers headed Saturday at dusk from Manhattan's Washington Square Park south on Broadway toward Wall Street. Video here.

 

Police on foot, scooters and in vans trailed them, then suddenly plunged into the crowd just north of White Street. Inner City Press, inside the march, was grabbed then released by NYPD. The march continued south to Zuccotti Park, the past and perhaps future Liberty Square.

 

There, marchers were allowed single file past NYPD and Brookfield Office Properties security officers into the park. There were mic checks about Occupy Trinity, and the upcoming September 17 attempts to shut down the New York Stock Exchange.

 

How much has changed in the year since Occupy Wall Street began here. Banks are near failing in Spain; austerity is protested there and in Greece. Some euphoria about the Arab Spring has dissipated among extremist attacks. Still Syria was cited among the marchers' chants.

 

A sign in the crowd read "Bankers Behind Bars." This has not happened. As Inner City Press noted from Washington on Thursday, while the Department of Justice brags of some fines that it has levied, Citigroup executives like Robert Rubin have escaped unscathed, still pontificating about foreign policy and the Euro. Still there are attempts to try to hold these to account. Watch this site.

Occupy Wall Street at Goldman Sachs, Crooks and Thieves Protected by Police

By Matthew Russell Lee

BATTERY PARK CITY, December 12 -- As police stood off in front of Goldman Sachs with Occupy Wall Street protesters, ultimately making arrests, the crowd chanted "Crooks and thieves, protected by police."

A mock press conference was held, in which faux reporters holding Fox News signs asked a woman dressed as a squid about Goldman Sachs' business. Video here, and embedded below.

When a final question asked about billions of dollars in bonuses Goldman has paid its executive after receiving bail out funds, the squid refused to answer. The crowd chanted, "Calamari." Inner City Press was threatened with arrest by the police.

Even before the financial meltdown in 2008, Bronx-based Fair Finance Watch had protested Goldman Sachs applications for regulatory approval, based on Goldmans' support for and securitization of predatory mortgage loans.

When Goldman wanted a bail out, it was allowed by the Federal Reserve to form a bank on an emergency basis to receive the money, without any public comment.

Inner City Press has asked senior Fed officials about this, only to be told they think that the time to review banks' Community Reinvestment Act record is not during mergers. But that's the only enforcement of the CRA.

#OWS Squid and police at Goldman Sachs Dec 12, 2011 (c) MRLee

The protest was in solidarity with moves to shut the ports in Oakland and elsewhere on the West Coast. A flier distributed said that "port truckers organizing a union at SSA terminals in Los Angeles have been fired; SSA is responsible for inhumane working conditions and gross exploitation of port trucks and is owned by Goldman Sachs."

After the squid press conference, protesters moved across the street to the Winter Garden atrium of the World Financial Center, run by Brookfield Properties which requested the eviction of the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park, re-named Liberty Square. It's a small world in Lower Manhattan.

Across the East River in Long Island City, Queens, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of the Obama administration's DHHS appeared, in the name of jobs, with the CEO of American Express and Katherine Wydle of the Rockefeller-founded NYC Partnership, a defender of banks. That's a small world, too. And so it goes - watch this site.

As Occupy Wall Street Swells, Bloomberg Blinks, March Heads to City Hall & Banks

By Matthew Russell Lee

WALL STREET, October 14 -- With the threat of at least partial eviction hanging over the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park, supporters and the Press gathered at 6 am on Friday morning, to wait for the police. Video here, and below.

Park occupiers and volunteers scrubbed the west side of the park, which in any event has been cleaner than many parks in, for example, the South Bronx. But Brookfield Office Properties, which owns the park which is supposed to be open 24 hours a day, had claimed a need to clean, and to prohibit sleeping bags and thus the occupation.

The crowd in the park swelled as the sun began to rise through the mist. A chant began: We are too big to jail, a play on the Too Big To Fail status of at least four, and prospectively five, US banks.

A long time wire service photographer who sometimes covers the UN approached Inner City Press with tears in his eyes. "This is beautiful," he said. "Twenty years I'm in this city and I've never seen anything like this."

People filming with their cell phones surrounded two men in military fatigues, thanking them for coming. "Now let's occupy Wall Street," one of the veterans said, to cheers.

But after the eviction / clean up was postponed, the march that tried to go south to Wall Street itself was diverted north, up to City Hall. There riot police with visors defended Mayor Bloomberg's office and the Boss Tweed courthouse, landmark of a previous era of corruption.

On the way the march passed branches of the Too Big to Fail -- Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase -- as well as the prospective fifth, Capital One. Each got chanted at in turn, with different degrees of volume.

Riot police in front of City Hall Oct 14 (c) MRLee

On the return south, police prepared orange netting of the kind used to arrest 700 marchers on the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1. The crowd remained peaceful, kept moving. An elderly woman counter chanted, "get a job." Inner City Press heard two marchers laugh, "I have a job, I have to be there in half an hour."

On Park Row, orange netting just in view Oct 14 (c) MRLee

Inner City Press, too, had to cover the UN Security Council at 10 am. Its invitation to Libyan Transitional National Council ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi to visit Occupy Wall Street has yet to be acted on -- but now the park remains open.

Back down on Wall Street, police blocked the entrance on Nassau Street, allowing in some but not others. And so it is in today's New York. Watch this site.