BofA customers are bloody pissed right now. This is about how to fight back, help those customers, and hit BofA where it counts.
BofA just slapped its customers with a $5/month fee for the privilege of having debit cards. Many BofA customers are ticket off and ripe to make a change, right now. Even those who haven't made the connection between BofA screwing its own customers with more petty fees, and BofA's evil deeds with mortgage fraud and mass foreclosures.
If you think $5 / month is no big deal, think of it as $60 / year. How many meals can you make for $60, eh? Money for food, or money for banksters?
Go below the orange squiggle for a simple, straightforward, easy-to-do, and effective form of direct action that YOU TOO can do.
Go to a bunch of local credit unions. Pick up a handful of each one's brochures.
Go to your local Main Street art supply store and buy four pieces of posterboard, some string, and a couple of magic markers. Note, pick nice happy colors for this.
Make up two signs for yourself and two for a friend. The signs should say something like "Another card fee? Ticked off at BofA? Move your $$ to a local credit union!"
The tie the signs onto the strings (punch a hole about 6" down each sign, and then tie the string where the loop meets from front to back, and reinforce it with masking tape) and make two "sandwich boards," one for you, one for your friend.
Wear these to your local BofA branch. Bring the credit union brochures with you.
Stand on the sidewalk, not in BofA's parking lot. Ideally they will not notice you there. Be friendly if the police come along and ask what's up.
Don't go shoving brochures into the hands of people who don't ask for them. That's a waste of brochures.
Instead, call out to people who are going into BofA: "If you don't like that new debit card fee, come talk to me!"
Be prepared to tell them: higher interest on savings accounts, lower interest rates on credit cards and loans, no petty fees, universal free ATM access at any credit union via the Co-Op ATM network, and so on.
Keep the pitch simple and to the point: BofA is screwing its customers, you don't have to take it, you can move your money and get a better deal. Keep ideology out of it. What matters is getting people to switch.
If someone asks how credit unions work, tell them this:
A credit union is a co-op, which means the members own it. Instead of paying dividends to shareholders, it returns that money to the members in the form of higher interest on savings and lower interest on credit cards and loans. Every couple of years you vote for the board of directors, just like shareholders in any regular corporation, except it's one person/one vote, just like any regular election.