Which side are you on? Join the virtual march on Wall Street if you cannot be there in person.
If you’re not already on your way to New York City to join AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and 10,000 union and community activists as they march on Wall Street’s Big Banks this afternoon, it’s not too late to join the call for real Wall Street reform.
You still can be part of the more than 13,000-strong virtual marchers to let the Big Banks know its time to pay to restore the millions of jobs their reckless practices destroyed and to let Congress know that working Americans will settle for nothing less than real Wall Street Reform.
Click here to join the virtual march.
AFL-CIO:Join Us Today to Make Wall Street Pay!
Webcast Here
The day’s actions start with a 4 p.m. EDT rally at New York’s City Hall, followed by a march down Broadway through the financial district and past Wall Street’s biggest players in the economic debacle that has left the nation with an 11-million jobs deficit.
Along with our coverage, MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan will broadcast his daily 4 p.m. show from a booth at the rally site.
Click here to join the virtual march.
Webcast Here
The head of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, explained what it's all about this morning in an article published on HuffPo:
Our message is simple: Big Banks tanked our economy and took our money when they needed a bailout. Now they're thumbing their noses at our communities but making billions in profits. It's time they pay up.
I'm Marching Today to Make Wall Street Pay
It's time they paid up. They broke it and now THEY should pay to fix it, not the rest of us who have been paying.
The bottom line is Wall Street should pay to clean up the mess they made and Congress must enact strong Wall Street reform.
We are supporting four ways for the Big Banks to pay -- President Obama's bank tax, a special tax on bank bonuses, closing the carried interest tax loophole for hedge funds and private equity and, most important, a financial speculation tax levied on all financial transactions -- including derivatives -- that would raise more than $150 billion a year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The financial speculation tax would have a negligible impact on long-term investors but would discourage the short-termism in the capital markets that led to so much destruction over the past decade.
Congress also must aggressively address the jobs crisis now -- if not because it's the right thing to do, then because of November 2010. That Pew poll I cited above? It found Americans united in the belief that the economy is in bad shape: 92 percent give it a negative rating.
Wall Street's values are based on greed. The American people's values are rooted in working hard, playing fairly and doing right by our family, neighbors and friends.
So which side are you on? Join the virtual march and stand up for working people. Stand up for yourself. It's time the banks started paying for what they did.
Click here to join the virtual march.