As an organizer I am wondering when my fellow Brothers & Sisters will shift from being passive activists to legally aggressive organizers. Occupy Wall Street was a shot across the bow of corporate America; however we are now enrolled in labor college of taking passive activism to committed organizers action! The best and still only way to hit Wall Street financiers hard is in the pocket book!
So as labor college students going to school, engaging banks on their own terms would get results.
So moving from Zuccotti Park to form lines at target banks in and around Wall Street is but one form of organizing/activism that I would recommend. With hundreds/thousands of willing and paying customers standing in line for days on end, waiting to open checking accounts with all the banks “free stuff”- with the minimum amount of money required! So Brother and Sisters with the minimum amount of money needed to open a checking account, you are now a customer. With hundreds of organizers in the lobby legally opening an account, the bank staff would be overwhelmed. Then use your free ATM card Brothers and Sisters and stand in front of ATM machines and tellers withdrawing and depositing small amounts of money you have in a legal account, you are a customer within the meaning of the banking institution. Continue engaging the bank by asking every kind of legal questions about ALL the services of the banking institution. Are we not in need of knowledge as labor college students regarding mortgages, savings, retirement, just to mention a few of the needs a growing organizing/activist population, waiting in lines outside, and in the lobby of Wall Street Banks need?
The dollar cost of Occupying Zuccotti Park needed for shelter, food, clothing and sanitation would have been spent more wisely opening accounts with the banks, and then legally and lawfully using those bank facilities. When the business of business stops, or is severely impacted, then we cease to be students of a labor college, and start to become gradate students of change!
Fraternally,
Danny Caliendo
Organizer
Labor Combat Organizing College
